Did you hear it? Wall Street drew a collective gasp today when Halsey Minor, founder and chief executive officer of tech media powerhouse CNet (Nasdaq: CNET), announced he was handing off CEO duties to vice chairman Shelby Bonnie. Analysts wondered whether he was sending an ominous signal to investors about CNet's future prospects.

Poppycock. Keep in mind that Mr. Minor, who will remain involved as CNet's chairman, is a shareholder himself. "This is the strongest phase in the history of the company, and as a large shareholder, I would not have made this move unless I thought I would generate more value to shareholders this way," he told Redherring.com. Other shareholders barely reacted, nudging the stock price down $1.13 to $67.75 on Friday.

In the last few months, CNet has been building momentum to move from an aggregator of technology content to an aggregator of buyers, primarily through its $700 million purchase of the MySimon shopping-comparison engine.

So what value could Mr. Minor, CNet's guiding light, possibly provide by stepping out of the way? "While we are growing very quickly, in fact faster than ever before, we are also an 800-person company very quickly going to 1,000," he says. "The job of managing huge numbers of people and spending most of my time on internal and external communication is a job I neither desire nor am I as well suited to perform as Shelby."

In other words, Mr. Minor sees himself more suited to grow small businesses from the early stage. Yep, you guessed it: he's going to an incubator. He'll likely be heading to Twelve, a stealth incubator started by Scient (Nasdaq: SCNT) founder Eric Greenberg, according to TheStreet.com (Nasdaq: TSCM). Both Mr. Minor and Mr. Greenberg declined to comment on the new venture.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
You can count the number of well-known female VCs on one hand: there's Ann Winblad at Hummer Winblad, Robin Richards Donohoe at Draper Richards, and Heidi Roizen at Softbank. But keep an eye on the rosters: the next big name could be Rene Benedetto.

Ms. Benedetto is the new principal at New York's Impact Venture Partners, founded in January by Adam Dell, formerly of Crosspoint Venture Partners. (Yes, he is related to "that" Dell -- he's Michael Dell's little brother.) VC firms are packed with men in Dockers (on the West Coast) and suits (on the East Coast), but Ms. Benedetto says that's changing. "It's been an old-boy's network in general, but once they realize that you do know what you're talking about, they listen to you," she says.

Prior to joining Impact, she was working with later-stage deals as a director at CIBC Capital Partners. "This is an opportunity to get into investments a lot earlier and help companies build the team," she says.

Impact has a good chance of turning Ms. Benedetto's name into a well-known one. The $100 million fund, which invests in early-stage Internet companies, is behind business-to-business up-and-comers like Buzzsaw, the National Transportation Exchange, iMark, and Partminer. Another of its investments, GoAmerica, is an ISP in the scorching-hot wireless market; it recently filed to raise $150 million in a public offering this year.

MOTRO HEADS TO CANDO
Harry Motro's job as CEO at Infoseek used to get him up in the morning. But just a month after Disney (NYSE: DIS) completed its November acquisition of the portal, Mr. Motro was out the door. Now it's helping new startups like CanDo.com that gets him revved up.

In January, Mr. Motro started Motroventures.com to invest in early-stage companies and mentor their management teams. He touts a set of five values that guide his advice (including "be human" and "embrace change"), but his No. 1 priority is helping companies with marketing. "Every company starts out with a good idea and passion, but no matter what your idea is, there's always five to ten other companies out there doing it, too," he says. "Once you get funding, it's all about positioning."

This week he joined the board of CanDo.com, a series of disability-focused vertical portals (or "vortals") and one of his four Motroventures investments. He says his two criteria for investments in vortals are that the audience is an affinity group and that their common problem must lead to an electronic-commerce transaction.

"All of these people with their respective challenges have to spend money to address their problem," he says. "And as it turns out, their problems are not being addressed very well." CanDo.com raised its $11 million first round earlier this month, led by U.S. Venture Partners and Venrock Associates (the VC arm of the Rockefeller family).

I WANT CANDY
Milwaukee Brewers baseball player Matt Luke's got a sweet tooth, especially for chocolatey Chunky bars. So it's pretty fortunate for him that his brother represents The Candy Barrel.com, a candy retail chain and Web site based in Nevada. Mr. Luke signed on to be the company's official spokesperson, taking its sugar-laden message to kids across the country.

But there's a charitable twist: as part of the deal, a small portion of The Candy Barrel.com's proceeds will go to the children's hospitals Mr. Luke visits on tour. He was born with a large birthmark that spread across his face, and spent months in children's hospitals following surgery to remove the birthmark. Since then, he's made it a point to visit other hospitalized children. "I spent a pretty good amount of time in hospitals, so I'm just returning the favor to all those doctors and nurses," he says.

What a sweet gig: he'll get paid for talking to hospitalized kids and handing out -- of course -- free candy. "There's a natural link between kids and candy," he says. "It puts a smile on their face, which is what's rewarding for me."

TALENT POOL
All I needed to know about privacy I learned from city government? Banner-king Doubleclick (Nasdaq: DCLK), recently embroiled in privacy scandals involving its valuable customer data, named former New York City consumer affairs commissioner Jules Polonetsky to its newly-created chief privacy officer position. ... The gap between Hollywood and the dot-com world shrinks yet again, as Gary Levine leaves his role as EVP of creative affairs at Warner Bros. for the CEO slot at Icebox.com. Scheduled to launch by the end of March, Icebox.com plans to churn out original Web animation by former writers, producers, and animators of The X-Files, Seinfeld, King of the Hill, and The Simpsons. ... Harold Covert, former CFO of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE), donned a Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) this week and took a CFO position with the Linux crew in Durham, North Carolina. ... Industria Solutions, the fluids exchange formed by Chemdex (now Ventro (Nasdaq: VNTR)) and Dupont (NYSE: DD) in January, named Bechtel VP Tom Nardi as its first CEO. ... Pushpendra "Push" Mohtra, an AT & T (NYSE: T) VP who helped plan its new IP networks, is now back to the drawing board as a Benchmark Capital entrepreneur-in-residence.

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