Spanfeller’s departure comes amid a flurry of bad news for finance publications. In April, Condé Nast pulled the plug on Portfolio, its business magazine and Web site, after a very expensive two-year run. Earlier this week, publisher McGraw-Hill (MHP) announced that it was shopping BusinessWeek, and observers are floating the notion that the company may end up giving the magazine away to anyone who wants to take on its annual losses.

Time Warner’s (TWX) Fortune magazine has also been battered by the recession, which has been particularly hard on the finance, auto and luxury-good companies that business publications have traditionally relied upon. And Forbes itself has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs since last fall.

In a memo to the company’s employees, Forbes CEO Steve Forbes praised Spanfeller for building out the company’s Web property, which says it receives 18 million unique visitors a month.In the aftermath of the dot.com crash, Spanfeller helped turn Forbes.com, which the family-owned company was close to shutting down, into a powerhouse.

But Forbes’s plan to take the Web property public earlier in the decade never panned out. And once Forbes sold a 40 percent stake to private equity investors Elevation Partners three years ago, plenty of Forbes employees, including me, had speculated that Spanfeller would look for a job that promised a big payout. That said, it wasn’t that long ago that Spanfeller was the victor in a power struggle with Jim Berrien, the former publisher of the Forbes print edition.

The news was first reported by AOL’s Daily Finance. Here’s the company memo from CEO Steve Forbes:

To: All Hands

From Steve Forbes

July 16, 2009

Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com has decided to step down from leading our website after nine years. In the entrepreneurial spirit that Forbes has always championed, Jim will be setting up his own media management company.

Describing his future plans Jim said, “The world of media has changed rapidly in the past 10 years and the velocity of the change promises only to increase going forward. I’ve had a great run at Forbes and have been deeply involved in the breakthroughs and transformations between traditional and digital media.  Now I see a huge opportunity to have my own media management business that will help other traditional media companies make the most of their enormous prospects in digital venues, taking all I have learned here in the past decade and applying on a wider horizon. Forbes.com has truly been a truly wonderful ride and I am deeply in debt to the Forbes family for letting me be a part of it.”

Jim has done a monumental job of bringing Forbes.com to the lead position in business websites, and secured Forbes.com as the must visit site for not only global business leaders but also anyone interested in the finest business reporting and analysis available. At present Forbes.com has 18 million unique visitors a month.

Along the way, Jim has overseen the development and growth of Forbes Digital, which includes Forbes.com, ForbesTraveler.com, Investopedia.com, RealClearPolitics.com, RealClearMarkets.com, Real Clear Sports, and Forbes Business and Finance Blog Network, which together reach 40 million unique visitors a month.

This immense growth on the digital side of the business was spearheaded, pursed, and led by Jim with enormous success. The digital world is still uncharted with few rules, and Jim’s intellect, creativity, and business acumen helped bring us our number one position. For this the Forbes family is very grateful and we wish him all the success in his future plans.

Since Elevation Partners partnered with Forbes three years ago, Jim has worked very closely with them on the growth and development and vision for Forbes.com.  Commenting on Jim’s departure, Roger McNamee of Elevation said, “Jim did a fantastic job leading Forbes.com. In an era when competitors feared it, Jim embraced and evangelized the internet, with huge benefits to Forbes and its audiences. We are grateful for his contributions over the past nine years.”

Jim will be staying through a transition period at least through Labor Day. Please join me and my brothers in wishing Jim all the best in the future, which he deserves.

Here’s the memo Forbes distributed to his staff this afternoon:

Various media outlets today noted that Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners has stepped off the Forbes Media board and that this portends an imminent round of additional cuts. It does not.

Cutting costs has been necessary at Forbes and virtually every other company in response to the unprecedented economic downturn. We are doing what is necessary for Forbes to get through these difficult times. It is critical to remember, however, that while coping with current conditions, we are also pursuing new initiatives, the latest being ForbesWoman. We are actively examining a number of other new ventures.

Forbes continues to outperform its competitors. The brand is stronger today worldwide than ever before. In a few days I am going to India for the launch of Forbes India, our eleventh local edition and the first of its kind in India. No other business brand has a larger worldwide audience offline and online. At 5.4 million, readership of Forbes Magazine itself is at an all-time high, and Forbes Digital attracts some 40 million unique visitors each month.

Let us also remember that in 2001-2002 in the aftermath of the tech bubble bursting, and particularly after 9/11, magazine advertising plunged. We had to take many painful steps at that time as well. There were many who said we should shut down the then money-losing Forbes.com. We did not, and it went on to great success. Now, just as then, we are contending with crisis but also planting seeds of our future success.

As for the Forbes Media board, several Elevation partners have rotated on it. Bret Pearlman has been involved from day one.  And Roger McNamee is still very much engaged with the company, particularly web strategy and technology.

We fully understand the concerns that the present difficult environment causes. We want to thank everyone for their hard work. We profoundly believe that the steps being taken, not only short-term painful ones, but also new growth initiatives, will make Forbes stronger than ever when economic recovery comes.

McNamee, who spearheaded Elevation’s purchase of 40 percent of Forbes Media in 2006, tells the New York Post’s Keith Kelly that his company’s original thesis–that Forbes’s fast-growing Web site would offset its declining magazine business–”has proved to be wrong for reasons that are no fault of Forbes.” More from McNamee:

“The deterioration in the advertising market late last year caused Forbes and Elevation to agree that we could no longer count on Forbes.com to offset declines in print. We agreed to a strategy shift from investment in the Web to aggressive cost cutting.”

As part of that shift, McNamee will be replaced by Elevation’s Bret Pearlman, who has a reputation as an aggressive cost-cutter.

Said McNamee of Pearlman’s appointment: “Elevation’s cost-cutting team happens to be in New York, so swapping Bret in and me out was an obvious play. I remain engaged in strategy and Web technology at Forbes.

I asked Forbes for comment this morning and got back this statement:

Several Elevation partners have rotated on the Forbes Media board. Bret Pearlman, while not formally a member of the board previously, has been involved from day one.  Roger is still very much engaged with the company, particularly web strategy and technology. Cutting costs, while painful, has been necessary at Forbes and virtually every other media company in response to the unprecedented economic downturn. We and Elevation believe that Forbes is well placed to ride out the present market and emerge in a very strong position when the recovery comes.

It’s possible that Forbes’s woes exist in a vacuum, or at least in a vacuum specific to the business magazine sector, which has already seen one title–Condé Nast’s Portfolio–shutter this year. But I don’t think so.

Which means we’ll see even more pressure at Time Warner (TWX) to cut costs at publisher Time Inc. People familiar with Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes’s thinking tell me he would like to spin off the publishing unit in the next year once he’s finished cleaving AOL from the company. If that’s the case, he’ll want to clean up the magazine business as much as possible before putting it on the market.

So here’s a start-up–funded by a magazine, not coincidentally–with the same point of view. FlipGloss Media, run by Yahoo veterans using money from Forbes, wants to make Web advertising that looks… like some of the ads in glossy magazines.

“We think consumers love the magazine experience, but we wanted to build something that is native digital,” says CEO Kerry Trainor, who used to run the ad business for Yahoo’s (YHOO) music site back when that was a big deal.

Unspoken but crucial part of the pitch: Not only are traditional Web ads boring, but the prices publishers can command for them drop every day. So anything that can command a premium–as certain magazine ads still do–would be a huge boon for Web publishers.

What does a digital version of a magazine ad look like? FlipGloss has unveiled a site today that gives you a pretty good idea: Basically, lavish slideshows with hyperlinks. Like this (click to enlarge, hopefully):

Move your mouse over, say, the picture of this model from New York Fashion Week, and you’ll find that she’s wearing a Charlotte Ronson dress; you can also learn more about the designer and where you can find her clothes (coming to J.C. Penney this month, apparently).

The site is fun to monkey around with, but if FlipGloss pans out, you’ll encounter its slides on other people’s sites. The plan: FlipGloss hands its technology over to various publishers, who sell their own ads and give the company a cut. Alternatively, FlipGloss helps assemble editorial/advertising packages for various publishers and takes a bigger cut.

FlipGloss has taken an investment from Forbes Media, my former employer (more disclosure here), and its advisory board includes several representatives from Elevation Partners, the private equity group that took a 40 percent stake in Forbes a few years ago.

While I can imagine Forbes finding some practical applications for FlipGloss–Forbes.com, for instance, is a vigorous proponent of slide shows–the company will really need to find traction with publishers like Condé Nast, whose magazines are famous for their lavish advertising.

But while FlipGloss says it’s working with several unnamed publishers, I’m told it is not working with Condé Nast’s digital group. It would be good if the company could figure out how to do that.

The bigger challenge: convincing publishers who have built complicated systems to deliver crummy banner ads to try out another medium. And then convincing advertisers to pay a premium for it. Given that my livelihood is dependent on Web ads (you’re reading this story for free, right?), I hope someone figures it out.

Why is this news? Well, it’s not, really. Except that McNamee is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent investors–Elevation is the company betting big on a revival of Palm (PALM). And… how to put this politely… his hair, which had gotten really, really long lately, had been freaking people out.

You can get a sense of just how long it had been via this interview that Kara Swisher conducted earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

And, it turns out, McNamee knew his hair looked odd, too. He says that growing his hair was a political statement, and that cutting it was an act of charity–he has given 14 inches of the stuff to Locks of Love, a nonprofit that creates hairpieces for sick children. He explains it on a Facebook post:

My hair was a protest against the most mean spirited, incompetent administration in my lifetime. Giving to Locks of Love allows me to end the protest on a positive note on a positive night.”

See what you can learn via social media?

One question remains: What does McNamee look like now? I asked him for a new picture of himself, and he sent back these “before” and “after” shots.

Which are funny, but not satisfying. Anyone want to send in a bona fide pic? We’ll reward you with a grateful shout-out.

I’ll let the gadget pros assess the operating system and the Pre, the first phone that will feature it, once they’ve actually had a chance to play with them. But my first impression is that the phone incorporates a lot of iPhone-like features and flourishes–primarily the multi-touch screen and gesture system for manipulating data–but boasts a keyboard. That’s promising.

I’ll also note that the Palm folks spent very little time on the phone’s audio-visual capabilities, so it doesn’t look like they’re trying to take on Apple (AAPL) there. And there was no talk about corporate email compatibility–they’re clearly not shooting for the hardcore BlackBerry user, either.

The biggest unknown is price, which went unmentioned during the demo. My assumption is that Palm (PALM) would try to take market share by coming in significantly lower than the $200 or so Apple wants for its iPhone. But when I ran that theory by Palm CEO Ed Colligan, he looked at me liked I’d peed on his rug. “Why would we do that when we have a significantly better product,” he asked, then walked away.

Translation: Bargain hunters are going to be disappointed.

EARLIER Real-time notes from the Palm press conference:

Here’s former Apple exec and current Palm executive chairman Jon Rubinstein, with the windup pitch: Not enough to just have a good phone. Need good applications, too. Now here’s CEO Ed Colligan explaining why Palm can pull this off: “Mobile is in our DNA. We do mobile. That’s all we do.”

Still in windup mode: Colligan explaining history of the smartphone. Now explaining that today’s smartphone user has lots of stuff on the Web.

This is a new platform, “from the ground up.” It will be cloud-centric, not desktop-centric. Name: “Palm WebOS.”

Built with developers in mind: “If you know HTML, CSS and javascript, you can develop applications for this platform. That’s it.”

Back to Rubinstein, to applause. “It is my pleasure to show you the new Palm Pre.” Big applause as he holds up a gadget with a 3.1-inch touchscreen display with multi-touch capabilities. First impression: Looks like an iPhone with love handles.

For the gearheads: EvDo, Wi-Fi, 8GB, GPS. Bluetooth, 3-megapixel camera with flash. (John Paczkowski chimes in via IM: “Dude, 3 megapixel camera with flash is KILLER. I don’t know why apple hasn’t done that.”) “By popular demand” can remove back and replace battery (knowing applause).

Slide-out QWERTY keyboard. (Applause).

Now for actual demo:

Contacts scroll back and forth with iPhone-like gestures. There’s also a “gesture area” that sits below the screen, so you can manipulate data, photos, etc., without touching screen. So far: This is an iPhone with an extra gesture area. This is a compliment, by the way. More gestures bells and whistles.

Now demoing a new “deck of cards” metaphor that replaces the desktop for getting access to stuff on your phone. “How’s that for some real newness, hmm?” More applause.

Running through email, contacts, IM. All connected via “synergy.” Unclear whether Palm is trying to trademark that term, but they’ve referred to it throughout the demo. One messaging app for all your applications: SMS text and IM threaded together.

More multi-touch, zooming, pinching, etc. Like an iPhone. Screen rotates if you turn device sideways. Like an iPhone. Can use “gesture area” to flick around screen without getting in way of screen. Unlike an iPhone.

Glancing discussion of music player. But not playing up audio-visual à la iPhone. No mention of video at all so far. Real focus has been on UI and playing cards metaphor.

Back to Rubinstein, showing off a very cool gadget: Touchstone, a magnetized conductive charger.

Colligan on how phone fits in marketplace: Not just for work. Not just for play–“can do video and music and its fun to play with.” But again, they haven’t highlighted video and music.

Exclusive launch partner: Sprint (S). I hope the EVDO works better than my Sprint broadband card is performing today. Here’s Sprint CEO Dan Hesse: Stressing how Pre will be comfortable for “first-time users.” You can see where this is going: Palm isn’t trying to convert iPhone (or BlackBerry) users here. It’s trying to nab someone who doesn’t have a smartphone yet.

Hesse citing praise from Gizmodo, a “very well-respected Web site” re download speeds. I’ve seen so many Dan Hesse TV ads that its a little disconcerting to see him live. But he looks pretty much the same in real time as he does in black and white, strolling around Manhattan in an overcoat.

Hesse promises to have Sprint staff available to help users figure out how to use this thing. “We expect that the Palm Pre is going to be an iconic and in-demand device.” Taking pre-registrations now at Sprint.com.

Colligan: Available first half of 2009, “as soon as possible.” Not certified yet.

Here’s a new partner: Facebook. COO Sheryl Sandberg takes the stage. Now this is synergy: Sandberg’s brother-in-law is Marc Bodnick, a top exec at Palm investor Elevation Partners. Unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing exclusive in the Facebook/Palm relationship, though; Sandberg simply promises that Facebook mobile will continue to evolve and that she’s looking forward to working with Palm.

Colligan wrapping up. Praising Rubinstein, whom he brings back on stage. And we’re done. Back in a minute.

(Bear with me as I cover this live–my Sprint broadband card is giving me a very narrow Web connection today. Here’s Palm’s official real-time take on its own product, via its own blog.)