Yesterday, Yahoo reported mediocre quarterly results, sponsoring the usual instant analysis and speculation. Overall sales were down 23 percent, but that’s partly because Yahoo sold off HotJobs to Monster.com and doesn’t count its revenues anymore. What Yahoo calls ex-TAC revenue – as with Google, TAC stands for “traffic acquisition costs” meaning the money each shares with its ad network – was down 5 percent. (Yahoo would have generated more TAC when it was supplying search to other companies; now Microsoft does Yahoo’s search.) Sales of online display advertising, where Yahoo is still a market leader, were up a meager 5 percent, a figure CEO Carol Bartz attributed to a sales re-org that postponed some big deals. AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher thinks Yahoo’s products feel stuffy and old-fashioned, lacking a social media element. I wrote about that last fall. Others suggest Yahoo buy Hulu. A rumored new content/ad syndication network holds some promise.