Haven’t heard of it?  Exactly.  MingleNow, a “nightlife community website,” used to be owned by BlueLithium, and might have done all right by the standards of that company.  But now that Yahoo has bought BlueLithium, resources are being shifted to other projects.

“[Y]ou will have full opportunity to save your profile photos to your computer,” notes the MingleNow Blog.  Then comes the advertising: “Feel free to take your photos and friends with you to other communities such as Flickr, post your events on Upcoming or find your favorite bars and clubs on 123out.com.”

Of course, Richard MacManus discovered that 123.com currently does nothing more than redirect to MingleNow, so one product’s death appears to have become another’s (re)launch announcement.

It’s the circle of life (and/or a nice bit of cannibalism) at Yahoo.

Reuters cited the FTC list of approvals in noting the agency’s approval. The deal had been announced in early September, and managed to get through the review process in barely a month.

Yahoo’s purchase of BlueLithium gives them more tools to offer advertisers for performance marketing efforts. Performance marketing looks for conversions, which can be a straightforward sale, or another action completed by a customer.

Yahoo previously disclosed the appeal of performance marketing being related to the rapid growth of social media content. Performance marketing efforts may perform better than the typical cost per click or CPM models regularly used in many campaigns, due to the requirement of an action to complete the conversion.

Those actions provide a tangible benefit to the advertiser, even if it is a simple as adding a name to a mailing list and opting-in for further marketing messages. As such, they can be measured more easily, and beyond the original campaign that brought the visitor to the marketer.

The “word,” as such, comes from both Kara Swisher and Michael Arrington, which should satisfy any skeptics.  There aren’t yet any press releases, but Arrington states that his information came from “a very solid source,” and Zimbra’s price was “$350 million, in cash, confirmed.”

Zimbra, which makes “open source, next-generation collaboration and messaging software,” has received a fair amount of positive attention in recent months.  Also, just six days ago, the company was able to announce the registration of its 10,000th forum member.  (“We have a very good spam moderation system, and are fairly confident that just about all of those registrations are genuine,” John Holder added on the Zimbra Blog.)

So the acquisition looks like a good move on Yahoo’s part.  And as Swisher notes, this development follows the purchases of both BlueLithium and BuzzTracker; it seems like Yahoo has decided acquisitions may be the best way to attain some success.

As always, only time will tell if the strategy works.  Meanwhile, look for a link to Yahoo Maps to appear on Zimbra’s “About Us” page.

Bebo, in case you haven’t heard, is a social network, and in certain parts of the world (like the UK and Ireland), it’s more popular than both MySpace or Facebook.  So Yahoo, and Yahoo’s advertisers, will get the chance to reach what marketers consider a young and desirable demographic.

From Bebo’s perspective, everything is also coming up roses.  “The partnership with Yahoo! enables us to focus on custom sponsorship campaigns and groundbreaking original productions with the knowledge that our display advertising is handled by a partner that guarantees the highest quality ad for each user interaction,” stated Joanna Shields, Bebo’s “president, international,” in a press release.

Shields then presumably took a deep breath.  But jokes about wordiness aside, Yahoo is probably grateful for Shields’s comment – aside from the acquisition of BlueLithium, not a lot has been going right for the company lately.  Execs can consider this arrangement a very firm check in the “win” column, however.

Hat tip to bigmouthmedia.

Both Anmuth and J.P. Morgan Securities analyst Imran Khan rate Yahoo’s stock as “Overweight,” according to a Forbes report.

Anmuth also liked Yahoo’s purchase of BlueLithium for $300 million.

“We believe the acquisition of BlueLithium is a solid strategic fit within Yahoo’s recent shift toward performance-based advertising, including the acquisition of RightMedia and the recent launch of SmartAds,” Anmuth wrote in a client note.

Just as the Bear Stearns news did yesterday, the Lehman Brothers news has done today for Yahoo, pushing its stock price to $24.10 near midday. The stock still has room to move up to approach its 52-week high of $33.61 from earlier this year.

Yahoo Takes BlueLithium For $300M

Yahoo Publisher Network’s Todd Teresi disclosed the acquisition on the Yodel Anecdotal blog. The company will pay about $300 million in cash for BlueLithium.

Teresi said the purchase fills a gap in what Yahoo can offer its advertising clients. “They provide the dashboards and insights our performance customers have been asking for – capabilities that have been a bit of an Achilles heel for us,” he said.

Performance marketing is simply the quest to turn a website visitor into a converting customer. That conversion can be a purchase or any other activity an advertiser deems worthy of marketing dollars spent through an ad campaign.

Teresi noted performance marketing “has been exploding online over the past year because it