Now that Yahoo’s (YHOO) search deal is done, the company can finally focus on making itself a better Yahoo. The first step: Build a better homepage.

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When social network app-maker Slide took $50 million in funding to set its value at $500 million in January 2008, the only way to almost justify the outrageous figure was to say Slide wasn’t really a widget-maker, but a huge ad network in the making. Since then, the ad market has cratered even while inventory continues to expand.

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Walking into Gavin Purcell’s office at 30 Rockefeller Center the first thing you notice is his computer monitor. It’s a 52-inch flat screen mounted to the wall across from his desk. The desktop background is a picture of a Sega Light Phaser.

Ladies and gentleman, the co-producer of NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon”–debuting Monday–is a geek.

Or at least the former producer of G4’s Attack of the Show, is geek-y. He’s not stuck in a basement somewhere uploading pictures to 4chan, but he knows what 4chan is.

The point is that Gavin and his team are bringing a new sensibility to the business of making a late-night talk show. It’s one that they developed by living in an Internet-connected world. “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” will be a talk show for the Twitter era.

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When he joined the company last summer, Google CFO Patrick Pichette said he intended to “feed the winners” and “starve the losers.” Lately, insiders have begun crediting him for bringing new discipline to Google (GOOG).

One told us that Patrick has been “taking on a lot of the low-hanging fruit” and that “it’s going to make a difference in revenues over the next year.”

But while its true that since Patrick joined, Google (GOOG) has put its first ads against products like Google Images and Google Finance, the company still has a long way to go before there will be no–pick your metaphor–”losers” or “low-hanging fruit” left.

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Facebook applications don’t really do anything special yet. Neither, for that matter, do Facebook’s ads. But that’s OK, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg insisted yesterday at the D6 conference. Some of the applications, like Slide’s SuperPoke, are really popular. Just like Elvis, she says.The comparison fails on two counts.

First, we’ve listened to Elvis Presley, Ms. Sandberg, and SuperPoke is no Elvis Presley. Second, Elvis was a moneymaker–heck, he still is. The Elvis 30 #1 Hits album, released in 2002, has sold 16 million copies at $15 a pop. Conveniently, that adds up to $240 million–the same amount Microsoft paid for its 1.6 percent stake in Facebook. And what did Microsoft get? A company whose COO still can’t articulate what, precisely, Facebook’s advertising revolution will look like.

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Viacom continues to pursue a $1 billion lawsuit against Google’s YouTube for allowing video piracy. On Viacom’s Comedy Central, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone aren’t helping their corporate parent’s legal case. In last night’s episode, Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny asked themselves “How Do We Make Money on the Internet?” and predictably, they find it difficult–just like YouTube.

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