TechCrunch’s report on AOL’s “sunsetting” of Xdrive, AOL Pictures, MyMobile and Bluestring spread like wildfire yesterday, at a time when the future of its ownership hangs in the balance.

Are these latest actions in anticipation of an AOL sale? Actually AOL’s been trimming for some time. Who hasn’t, given the state of the economy. You just haven’t noticed.

About 50 products including a video download service, a 10-foot UI experience (Internet in the living room), AIM phone line, and Tegic, have been “sunset”, we’re told.

Here’s AOL EVP Kevin Conroy’s memo to employees, dated July 14, from TechCrunch, which we also independently verified:

We’ve always wondered whether AOL had too many irons in the fire. Yesterday’s TechCrunch scoop is just the latest in a long string of trimming actions that are not only considered rational given the state of the economy, but also in line with others considering the industry-wide belt-tightening. Even Google has dialed back spending like “drunken sailors” to borrow Bernstein’s Jeff Lindsay’s words.

Arrington further speculates on Conroy’s future. We’re hearing from sources that Kevin’s not leaving any time soon. Rumors of his departure have dogged Conroy for years. Still not true. Conroy, who has been responsible for e-mail, software products, radio, video, Apple-related products and mobile, will continue to do so. Nothing changes.

The memo follows on the heels of TechCrunch’s reporting earlier yesterday about budget cuts at AOL’s blogs division, with some bloggers being told to stop working for a couple of weeks. Before you hyperventilate — Engadget won’t be affected.

Also, an AOL source tells us that the budget trimming does not reflect a cut back in blogs, but mainly affected its stable of freelancers and was designed to meet budgets that shot past projections.

From the memo to blog staffers:

It seems Time Warner’s ongoing discussions with Yahoo and separately with Microsoft over an AOL deal has now amplified every move the Internet unit makes.

Keep an eye on:

(Photo: Reuters / AOL CEO Randy Falco)

So often with these things, there’s a lot of PR-speak and dancing around. But let’s give Microsoft’s top brass some credit –  they pretty much addressed the whole Yahoo thing head on during the annual meeting with Wall Street analysts up in Washington state.

Finance chief Chris Liddel was particularly clear on the subject. Take it from his boss, Steve Ballmer.

“I think Chris was just about as black and white on that topic as we’ve ever been,” Ballmer said shortly after Liddell finished speaking.

So what did the CFO say? Have a read. Oh, and we bolded a couple of key points if you don’t want to read the whole thing.

 As Ballmer said, that’s pretty black-and-white. 

There’s a little something for everybody in the media industry in Frank N. Magid Associates’ annual study of user/viewer/reader behavior. We got a look at some of the findings and took especial note of stats on online video usage, research sponsored by video sharing site Metacafe.

Boiled down, YouTube is still king of online video watching, according to nearly 2,000 web users aged 12 to 64 surveyed by Magid Associates. But as online video becomes a part of our daily routine, corroding wholesome activities like watching TV and going to the movies, there should be plenty more room for sites like rival Metacafe or slick Hulu.

Here’s some of the data on the overarching trends. Magid managing director Mike Vorhaus attributes them to a growing appetite for “snack-sized content.” Now try to make some money off it:

* Half of those surveyed watch some type of online video weekly, more than 10 percent watch it daily.

* More male users aged 12 to 24 say they expect to watch online video more often in the next year.

* Comedy and music videos are the most commonly viewed web video content. News stories rank fourth, full-length movies come in 10th.

* More than 40 percent of online video viewers say they’d rather watch video content on their nice TV sets rather than a PC screen.

* 30 percent believe the Internet is the future of video viewing and 28 percent say they watch less TV because of their web video habits. 44 percent say they consider ads within online video clips as similar to ads in TV shows.

(Photo of prisoners in Manila dancing during an exercise program, an act made famous by a video circulated online. Reuters)

Microsoft’s president of platforms and services Kevin Johnson, who spearheaded the company’s pursuit of Yahoo, plans to bolt for the top job at nearby Juniper in a move that deals a setback to the software giant’s online chase after Google.

AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher comes up with a shortlist of candidates from her sources that include a roster of insiders, led by aQuantive’s Brian McAndrews, with SVP Satya Nadella, who will run search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts in a new reorg, and Strategic Partnerships SVP Yusuf Mehdi, who has previously led online businesses at Microsoft, considered long shots.

Heading the list of external candidates is former AOL Chief Jon Miller, who also happens to be a candidate for Yahoo’s board after activist investor Carl Icahn settled with Yahoo this week.

For a guy who was unceremoniously ejected out of Time Warner, Miller, now a partner at tech investment firm Velocity Interactive Group, is emerging as the prettiest girl at the dance.

(AllThingsD)

Keep an eye on:

(Photo: Reuters)

Tribune Co is making good on its promise to use its own reporters to break news about Tribune. It’s not the company’s fault if that news is depressing.

Chief Executive Sam Zell held a conference call with reporters at its papers on Tuesday, prompting a profusion of press coverage in Tribune-owned publications on Wednesday. Some of the most interesting excerpts showed up in The Hartford Courant:

What about his desire, expressed earlier this year, that he not make the business all about cutting jobs?

More coverage here:

The Morning Call (Allentown, Pennsylvania)

Newsday (Long Island, New York)

Chicago Tribune

The Sun (Baltimore, Maryland)

For reporters who cover Tribune, this is all very interesting stuff. Here’s hoping cost cuts don’t force those papers to cut the Tribune beat.

(Photo: Reuters)

As Facebook’s developers conference kicks off on Wednesday, PE Hub’s Connie Loizos interviews Jason Holloway, cofounder and CEO of Face it!, a startup in Palo Alto that makes Facebook applications for corporate customers like Adidas.

Initially excited about Facebook opening its platform to developers, Holloway is now a bit less so.

Why are you frustrated with Facebook?The pendulum just feels like it has swung so far in the opposite direction [of where it was in May 2007] that it feels a little punitive. The restrictions they’ve put on viral growth are extreme.

How has Facebook clamped down on viral growth?

Basically, rather than enforcing rules against those who are developing applications in bad faith, Facebook has changed the rules for everyone.

I know that on Monday, Facebook introduced a makeover meant to hamper spammers, and that developers were sent new policies to “prevent applications from creating artificial or inappropriate incentives to use Facebook features.” Is that what you mean?

No, let me give you an example. We came up with a neat little application for project management, finishing up a version of the application for the Obama campaign on Friday. The idea of the application is to help groups plan, so part of it involves sending messages, like Facebook notifications, back and forth. But Facebook stops allowing you to send notifications after a certain amount of exchanges - so you can be in the middle of discussing or planning something and you can’t finish the conversation.

How many notifications is too many?

It depends on the application, but from 20 to 40, which is admittedly getting into spammy territory with some apps. But we try to make applications that are useful and beyond the ultrasupersimple Facebook apps that users are so well-acquainted with by now.

Well, I get why they’d want to cut off applications after a point. What about BreakUp, another application of yours that automatically informed someone when a “friend” on Facebook delists them. I read in TechCrunch earlier this year that they’d taken it down even though it didn’t violate Facebook’s terms of use.

That’s a utility we wrote because a couple of us were curious if anyone had removed us as friends. The friend information is there, of course, if you look through your own profile, but we thought we’d automate the process. But Facebook got upset about it after Michael Arrington wrote about it. In fact, they were very heavy handed about the whole thing. They said, “We turned off application, but let us know if you fix it.” They wanted both parties to have to agree with the application. So we fixed it, told Facebook, and asked if they could turn it back on again, and they just never responded.

Are they generally unresponsive?

No, they’re generally really good about being responsive. Tech support has been very helpful. A couple of times when they’ve accidentally shut off applications and we’ve contacted customer support, they’ve gotten up the application again in a day or so. For a company of their size, I think that’s pretty responsive.

Why not just focus on other social networks? There’s MySpace. Other companies are opening up their platforms, like Apple’s App Store and Google’s OpenSocial…

We’re considering other social networks. One reason we haven’t done it yet is that we’ve been big believers in Facebook’s platform.

So what would you like to see change?

Facebook responds with general rules when people do bad things, and they hurt everyone in the process. Everyone gets punished together. I’d like to see them create a class of developers that get special privileges. If they establish a trusted class, then there’s a lot for the developers in that class to lose. They aren’t going to violate its terms of service. It’d be consistent with Microsoft and other companies that provide a certification level that makes life easier for those behaving properly.

Click here to read the rest of the interview at PE Hub.

As volte faces go, the Yahoo-Carl Icahn slugfest-turned-lovefest is a definite keeper for some future annal of corporate history. Until last week, Yahoo couldn’t slam Icahn enough, mocking the activist investor’s knowledge of technology, calling his agenda risky, and pointing to his failure to articulate clear alternatives to a Microsoft deal.

But since they made nice on Monday, rest assured we’re going to hear nothing but a din of welcome notes from Yahoo, as they sell to shareholders the idea that Icahn and his two designees are good for the board.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock set the sweet, full-of-possibility tone about Icahn on Monday, and Yahoo President Sue Decker picked up where he left off in a CNBC interview today:

Yahoo shareholders may buy into the company’s new attitude and vote accordingly at next Friday’s annual shareholder meeting. But proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis, which recommended that shareholders vote against three directors, did issue a word of caution about Icahn: “Shareholders should monitor Mr. Icahn’s ability to devote sufficient time and attention to the company.”

And The Wall Street Journal too wondered, in a recent story, if Yahoo might come to regret its move.

(Photo: Reuters)

If Steve Jobs’ well-being is somehow symbiotic with Apple Inc’s well-being, shouldn’t there be an application for tracking his whereabouts?

Someone must have a lucrative business plan for creating an “EDtv” or “The Truman Show” around the guru of the iPod Mac and iPhone.

Perhaps, this exclusive content could be piped to all Apple TV set-top boxes — for a fee. At the very least, how about a desktop widget that shows where in the world Steve Jobs is.

Its a scenario so fantastic that one wonders why noone has already discussed it. But maybe some have come close. The Wall Street Journal says one hedge fund in 2004 hired private investigators to follow Apple’s CEO to hospital visits, hoping to glean information about how sick, or well, he was. Remember — that was the year that Jobs had surgery to cure pancreatic cancer, a fact the company waited months to disclose.

All of this comes because of concerns about Jobs appearance of late, the company’s cloudy response to questions about his health, and their reluctance to disclose a successor-in-waiting at Apple that can match Jobs’s legendary status — and reassure shareholders.

For what its worth, the New York Times says all this sick talk is nonsense, and that Jobs has reassured people that he is “doing well” and free of cancer.

Silicon Valley long-timer John Markoff quotes “a number of his associates” as saying that Jobs is telling them that he is cancer free.
   
But Markoff introduced new details on Jobs’ health record by revealing that Jobs had a surgical procedure this year “to address a problem that was contributing to a loss of weight.” He cited people close to Jobs who were not authorized to speak about his health.  

Markoff also said Jobs ran a high fever the week ahead of his speech announcing the iPhone 3G and considered canceling his appearance. His gaunt appearance at that June 9 event resurrected rumors he was battling cancer. Sources tell Markoff Jobs has been dealing with nutritional problems in the wake of his cancer surgery. The article did not specify if this was a reference to the recent surgery or that of four years ago.

Still, I can’t help but wonder how many of us would subscribe to “The Steve Jobs Channel.”

Keep an eye on:

(Photo: Reuters)

If for some reason you assumed that Yahoo’s deal with Carl Icahn would quiet the chatter about a deal, you were mistaken. The conference call to discuss quarterly earnings made that clear.

Past distractions, future possibilities, it was all there for listeners. The only problem is that for all the chatter on the call about deals, there was no real insight offered about what Yahoo might do.

Here’s a look at what Yahoo’s executives said about M&A during the call:

OK, we get it. Yahoo wants to maximize shareholder value … whatever that means.

Clicks-and-mortar, PC-to-TV, T-Commerce. These are technology industry ideas that are resuscitated every couple of years only to fade into obsolescence.

In the case of the latter, T-Commerce, or Television Commerce,  the ability to click a remote and buy something that has appeared on television has seen its fair share of restarts over the last two to three decades. Big players from Time Warner to Barry Diller have tried it and failed. Forrester’s Josh Bernoff once called the concept buying “Jennifer Aniston’s sweater.”

Now digital video recorder technology maker TiVo and online retailer Amazon.com are the latest to give it a go. The idea is the same — Watch, Click, Buy. The experience might even be easier this time around. For starters, consumers are starting to get comfortable with the idea of interacting with on-screen cues, like clicking on ads on TiVo to watch, say, a longer BMW commercial. Consumers are also pretty comfortable with shopping on Amazon these days.

Making all this work this time around could be the conversations advertisers have with program producers. Branded entertainment or product placement — Ford sponsoring NBC’s “Knight Rider”, for example – is commonplace these days. It’s not hard to see how collaboration among TiVo, advertisers and programmers could make this work.

Enabling screen overlays during a program to hawk what’s on the show would require nothing more than a deeper conversation between advertisers, programmers and networks, TiVo’s director of broadband services Evan Young tells us. These conversations are going on, he says. 

The only catch? TiVo’s only got about 4 million subscribers and the company tell the New York Times its growth is no longer really in that business anymore. Problem is that’s where most of their revenue is generated.

(New York Times)

Keep an eye on:

(Photo: Reuters)