The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Robert Cyran
Reversing fading Internet brands is difficult — especially if it isn’t clear what a company stands for. Take AOL’s $315 million purchase of The Huffington Post. With this, AOL still looks like a patchwork of seemingly unrelated media sites compared to Yahoo’s centralized uni-brand approach. Yet both may not succeed in equal fashion.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Internet start-ups have needed less cash and left the venture capital industry out in the cold. The latest response to this growing conundrum comes from Yuri Milner, the Russian founder of DST Group, which has invested in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. He has decided to back dozens of start-ups sight unseen. It shows just how far power has shifted to digital entrepreneurs.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

LinkedIn is riding in on Facebook’s hype. The smaller, professionally focused networking site has plenty to offer in the IPO prospectus it just filed. LinkedIn boasts 90 million users, quick growth and even a little profit, at least for now. Yet its model looks a bit more like Monster.com’s than Facebook’s. Hungry Web 2.0 investors may overlook the difference.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Netflix is making it hard to run full speed with the bulls. The Internet video company keeps defying the studio executives questioning its business model and short sellers piling into the shares. Netflix added an astonishing 3.1 million net subscribers in the last quarter alone, bringing its total to more than 20 million. But worrying signs are cropping up.

Demand Media’s IPO seems to have kicked off Web bubble 2.0. Investors clamored for a piece of the Internet content sweatshop. The company upsized its offering, raised the sale price and the shares still popped 38 percent in their debut. Yet Demand is festooned with red flags. Just imagine how higher-quality Web firms would be received.

Investors are attracted to Demand’s growth: revenues grew at a 25 percent clip in the first nine months of 2010. And since Internet businesses tend to scale well, there’s the prospect of rising margins as sales growth outpaces costs. Yet it’s hard to see how the seventeenth largest U.S. website can really justify a market value greater than that of The New York Times.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Google has set a surprising example for chief executive succession. Usually it’s the founders that step aside for professional managers. But Google’s young co-founders did that a decade ago. Now, Eric Schmidt’s adult supervision is no longer needed — and Larry Page, who founded the company with Sergey Brin, is ready to run things again. This adds a fresh blueprint for Silicon Valley’s new crop of geniuses.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

Is getting people to post goofy pictures of cats and bad English signage a better business than venture capital? Cheezburger Network, the profitable publisher of “I Can Has Cheezburger?” and other absurd websites, recently raised $30 million to expand its business. The fact that venture capitalists are skirmishing to fund oddball businesses that don’t need their cash is a good illustration of the industry’s problems.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

NEW YORK — Apple needs a more formal delegation of Steve Jobs’ power. The tech giant’s chief executive is handing day-to-day control to chief operating officer Tim Cook due to health issues. Yet he retains his CEO title. This is the third such move, and this time the handover is indefinite. However painful, a more formal transfer to an acting CEO would have been better.

By Robert Cyran
The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

NEW YORK — Another breakup wave is hastening the end for some conglomerates. Motorola, Fortune Brands and possibly Sara Lee are doing the splits. Now ITT Corp, an offshoot of a three-way split in 1995, is breaking in three again. The financial benefits of specialization have long been in style. But reviving animal spirits explain the current swell of activity.

The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

NEW YORK — Apple has again turned iPhone buzz into gold. Despite all the talk of possible bells and whistles, Verizon Wireless looks to be offering the iconic smartphone on roughly the same terms as AT&T. The only clear winners will be Apple’s masters of hype.