The woman started hearing from Seed writers after her Tumblr started getting a measure of online buzz. Mushrooming links and chatter about the blog, devoted to ridiculous Rosa Parks comparisons, must have spiked through one of the online tripwires at Seed, which robotically generates story assignments using data from search engines. (We've agreed not to use the blogger's name in the post, since she used to work for AOL, although you may well be able to figure out who she is from her site.)

As you can see in the email chain below, the torrent of interview requests started Jan. 29 and never let up. The first Seed writer sent a few emails, asking for an interview. When that writer ended up empty handed, different Seedsters put in their own interview requests, one after another. Out tipster said she wrote people back at first, but eventually gave up on responding to everyone.

Gave up, that is, until the eight or ninth email, at which point she kind of snapped and sent the missive at bottom, saying Seed "generally devalues the hard work" of writers and editors.

Well, sure, but only if you don't buy into Aol's innovative "human wave attack" style of journalism. Those sorts of tactica can be very effective, if you're a general. Not so fun if you're one of the infantry, inside the human wave.

(Top pic by Dan Coulter)

AOLers –

Just a few moments ago, AOL announced its first earnings in nearly a
decade. This is an important moment for our company and for every
employee.

The results are promising, with the lowest year-over-year quarterly
revenue decline in six quarters and the first sequential
quarter-over-quarter growth in over two years. And this was
accomplished even as the company was in the process of spinning off
from Time Warner and fully engaged with our Project Everest
initiative.

We couldn't have gotten to this point without the amazing amount of
work accomplished by you during the quarter. Your work is what the
future of the company will be built on, and we are incredibly proud of
that work.

Artie Minson and I will talk about the earnings in more detail on a
call with employees a little later this morning. Check out AOL Today
[http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2010/02/dont-miss-todays-post-earnings-call]
for a link to the earnings press release and to get the employee
call-in details.

We look forward to discussing the quarter's results with you as well
as taking a step back and reviewing what we've accomplished during
this crucial period. Thank you again for the hard work, focus and
execution – let's keep going, working hard, and holding ourselves to
producing the best content, products and services on the Web. Go AOL!
– TAM

An excerpt from VP Dave Harmon's memo forwarded to us by a tipster:

In the United States, we will begin notifying a limited number of individuals today, with the majority of notifications taking place in the U.S. on Wednesday, January 13. As of this point, this layoff will not trigger the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) in any of our locations. For many of the employees impacted in the U.S., Wednesday will be their last day in the office. My team will be on hand to help answer questions and provide separation package information.

You can read the full memo at Alley Insider.

The internet conglomerate has already indicated it plans around 1,400 layoffs this quarter, cuts Business Insider heard were to come next week. We hear the same, with one AOL tipster indicating they will come Wednesday, and another saying Thursday seems more likely, per the company's traditional preference for Thursday layoffs.

Whatever the precise date, managers are already preparing for what to tell their underlings. CEO Tim Armstrong (pictured), the former Google ad honcho, wants to impress upon surviving employees that the company has a clear strategy built around AOL's high-quality "winner" projects — the "loser" projects having been marked for death — and an aggressive expansion into promising areas like mobile internet and local websites, including a ramping up of operations at his former company Patch. There will also be a dedicated team formed to strike search deals, presumably search advertising specifically. The whole thing is supposed to amount to what Armstrong is said to have called a cultural revolution.

More finesse will be required to sell the troops on AOL's expansion in India, where hiring is planned despite the U.S. cutbacks. This is the company formerly known as America Online, after all, and one of its troops described to us as "nuclear" the cuts AOL is planning stateside. It would seem the company hasn't blunted the impact of its mass firings by pre-announcing them.

AOL plans significant additions in India, including at least 60 software architects and database administrators, plus further staff for its network operations center, managers have been told. AOL is also looking to make current interns and contractors in India full-time employees.

Here's how the outsourcing will be sold to U.S. staff, according to the aforementioned managerial briefings:

• It's a long tradition: AOL has been hiring in India since 2000.
  
• We're literally starving — for more profit: AOL has a margin problem and needs to get into the high 20 percentages. Or at least, that's the official line.
  
• All the cool kids are going it, along with the distinctly uncool kids: Google is in India, along with its way-less successful rival Yahoo, as are the suits at IBM and HP.
  
• We need to control costs: And by "costs" we mean your former coworkers.

Growing revenue is one thing; all signs are that Armstrong is looking to build a lean, mean and aggressive internet content company. Good for him. But it gets awfully hard to innovate when managers, designers, writers and coders in the U.S. have to collaborate with teams on the other side of the world, many time zones away. So hopefully Armstrong will leave a sufficiently large number of programmers stateside, rather than foolishly chop off a small but crucial slice of his U.S. staff to save an even smaller percentage on salaries.

Hopefully, too, he'll bear in mind that no revolution is sufficiently complete if it still leaves room for this sort of endemic corporate doublespeak. Just tell your staff the American programmers were too expensive and wouldn't work nights, and be done with it.

Here are Cashmore's exact, carefully chosen words, via Business Insider:

We're very open to partnerships and always talk with those that get in touch. We've certainly spoken to lots of potential partners, some of those conversations more significant than others. But I don't feel that any of those conversations reached a point at which Mashable is likely to cease being independent.

Translation: "You probably can't afford me." Playing distant and unobtainable with the suitors? No wonder this one drives the ladies crazy.

(Pic: Cashmore, by Brian Solis.)

It's not a terrible investment; Cashmore's panting fans ogle him at Mashable parties, endlessly retweet his site's articles and even post topless pictures of themselves on Mashable's burgeoning (and infamous) internal social network. Details showed how the vest-loving Scot reels in the ladies (and money-hungry male entrepreneurs) in the magazine's Oct. 2008 article, "Playboys of Tech:"

At the party, Cashmore high-fives his fans, throws himself into two-armed hugs, and drapes his arms around swooning women. There's a line of people waiting to be photographed with him...Cashmore's photographer, Mike, gets yelled at by a couple of girls because he didn't take their picture with Cashmore...[Cashmore:] "There are competitive advantages to this kind of visibility, you know."

Never let your date near Pete Cashmore, Exhibit A. By Andy Sternberg.

Never let your date near Pete Cashmore, Exhibit B. By Heather Muffy.

Also: Never let your mom near Pete Cashmore. Photo by tinythoughts on Flickr.

Don't even let your corporate mascot near Pete Cashmore. Photo by Brian Solis/bub.licio.us.

With "eve" and mbaratz from Flickr.

With "Alyssa and Stella." Photo by psuedoreid on Flickr.

Even when his soul leaves his body, as his blank eyes reveal in this shot, Cashmore has to beat them off with a stick.

As our commenters said, "mashable indeed."

With actress Lauran Niles, apparently at a Mashable event, photo by Marc Salsberry.

They like to make him smile, the ladies. Photo by Andrei Zmievski.

Can't you monsters ever leave Cashmore and miscellaneous ladyfriend alone?? He's only a man. Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

Can't a man talk to the host of the chest of the Midwest Teen Sex Show at a Valleywag party without having his picture... eh, nevermind, the outraged question answers itself.

Always a gentleman...

...even when in close proximity to man-sweat...

...or a superior vest on a fellow metrosexual entrepreneur.

Come hither, sugar. (Photo by Andrew Mager)

What it means to be fully vested. Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us.

A sale to the content-obsessed internet company would mean Mashable's founder Pete Cashmore really would have everything. Youth, being all of 24 years old. Looks, of the dark and smoldering sort the Scotsman pulls off so well (his current squeeze is said to be actress Lindsay Campbell Next New Networks' Michelle Deforest, and Inc. magazine popularized him as "the Brad Pitt of the blogosphere"). And cash, on the scale you don't get just by leaving TechCrunch in the dust to become the most popular tech blog on the internet, a feat Cashmore pulled off last year. The only hitch might be negotiating with AOL; visa issues have had Cashmore hopping back and forth between Silicon Valley, where Mashable is based, and Scotland, leaving one Valley observer to wonder if he would really attempt negotiating with AOL "from his parent's basement in Aberdeen." (We've emailed Cashmore's staff and will update this post if and when we hear back.) UPDATE: Cashmore wrote back with a sort of "no comment;" see bottom of post.

A deal would work for AOL, newly spun off from Time Warner, as well. CEO Tim Armstrong wants a "laser focus" for the company, on content. He's already bought a local content company from himself and launched a strategy to tailor content to internet statistics like search queries.

Mashable's proven ability to generate great numbers and game Google and Twitter is part of the appeal, then, our AOL insider tells us. The site excels not only at writing Google-friendly content but also at earning a flood of links on social networks, most notably Twitter. That re-tweeting, in turn, is driven by the party tours Cashmore stages, which draw crowds of 400-500 in cities across the country, according to Inc, and which no doubt have helped the site diversify beyond hard-cole young male geeks (Mashable has drawn notice for its half female audience, a rare thing among Silicon Valley blogs).

Mahsable has "definitely been brought up in meetings as possible driving force behind Seed," said our AOLer, referring to the stats-driven system for farming out editorial work to freelancers. The notion that there have been acquisition talks between the two companies is mere rumor at this point, but it has not escaped AOL's notice that Mashable writes the sort of content advertisers pay for at a time when AOL's own editorial staff has been heavily reduced amid company layoffs, said our source, clearly no fan of Seed: "Mashable has been getting so Mainstream News, and their writers get paid in Twitter followers and air, so it just seems like a good fit."

Disclaimer: Mashable writers do not literally get paid in Twitter followers and air. But then, they don't work for AOL yet.

If you know more, email us, we'd love to hear from you. Especially on pricing. It's entirely possible, for example, that AOL execs will try to pay Cashmore entirely in vests. But only if they're smart!

UPDATE: Cashmore writes us, "We don't comment on speculation, but we do hold our writers in high regard and pay a competitive salary for their tireless efforts."

UPDATE 2: Robert Scoble, the prolific blogger/microblogger, is told by his sources that a deal is in process.

Seed uses it's mad robot brain to generate story ideas based on what you, yes you, have been searching for on the internet, and then it asks you, yes you, to write articles based on these "assignments" and then pays money for them, but maybe not to you. It's really an evil plot to get cheap content to amuse the proletariat by both keeping them busy writing pap for a pittance while simultaneously reading all the dispatches from frustrated writers around the country.

It all sounds like a plot to crush the human spirit and drain the internet of what little beauty remains. We will resist: Here is our response to one of their tasks.

What Does It Mean to Square Something?*

She draws a perforated line in the air
with her index finger—four right angles
connected at the top, and then she gets out
of the old car, which would be vintage
with a little care.

Inside Jack Rabbit Slim's she finds the
recreated simulacra, camp sweating in nostalgia,
a pungent aroma for the love-lorn and irony-loving.
Dance, cat, dance. His fingers draw
invisible outlines of his eyes.

But triangles. Join them together,
like two shoes in their box, top to tail,
soles pressing against the confines. Rectangles
are close, but inherently deficient. A rhombus
is a ruse, slanted like the mind

On smack. There is no construction sounder:
four perfect lines like matches from the same book.
Light it on fire, it burns like anything else, its ashes
a powerful drug. Too much and you lie flat
and twitching.

The floor beckons for smooth congruity.
Wake it up. The needle is the fifth side, deep into her heart
as she lurches forward, fingers clutching
for the corner, your corner—finally:
square.

Original, actual assignment: Describe what it means for something to be square when it comes to building. What elements must be square when it comes to construction? How can one measure if something is square? What are the consequences of an element not being square during [sic] constrcution. TARGET KEYWORDS TO USE: construction. OTHER: Use embedded links where appropriate, with preference for links to relevant AOL properties. TONE: Friendly, informative, authoritative but not intimidating. SUGGESTED LENGTH: 350 words. PAYS: $30 USD

This time we submitted this for publication. We think we fulfilled all the requirements. We'll let you know if it gets accepted.

[Image via Dan Coulter's Flickr]

Seed is trying to recruit a cyborg army of underpaid freelancers who will write their content for them and will pay them anywhere from $25 to $7 trillion based on the difficulty of the assignment and the amount of traffic it gets. We are now all soulless creatures plugged into the Seed matrix and paid only in the life-sustaining fluid that keeps us alive and Seed is like those metal cockroach things running around feeding off our energy.

To extend this Matrix metaphor further, we are going to be the Neo trying to jack this entire system. Instead of quickly churning out content for this soul-crushing enterprise, we are going to feed it with poems. Hopefully it will find all this creativity to be poison and it will die from the inside out.

Burger Salad Decision*

A sesame-seed bun looks like a million lights
left on in Ewok village, plump and starchy
its dome echos over the green canopy of
lettuce peeking out of its peek. Tomato
shows its pudgy nose, a slip of taunting red
like Wilde's boutineer, drawing
you in and laughing you away at the same time.
The fruit slices moisture wicks into the dry
bread above it and its seeds rummage
in their embryonic fluid on a leafy bed.

Slowly, imperceptibly, a gush of juice rambles
from the patty. It is smooth and clear and carries
the weight of a million molecules, like the white water
in The River Wild, Meryl Streep
coasting to her doom, avoiding Kevin Bacon. Where
is the bacon?

It is sprinkled stingily on the salad nearby. Romaine, Arugula
the severed spine of frisée, radicchio's lilac gash,
Titanic crash of the iceberg: all of these castaways tossed
in suspense, buoyed on a Balsamic sea with fatty globules
floating to the surface as life rafts. A fork will not stick,
blue cheese crumbles. The mouth becomes
a needless destination.

But the burger, you can seize—
like a castle. Your fingers delapidating the bun's
towers, your thumbs undermining as teeth
finally sink into carnage and pull its vaguely
resistant corpse. Chew, you fool, chew, and
let the juice do the choosing.

Original, actual assignment: A photo of someone trying to decide between a plate with burger with fries and a plate of salad. JPEG is the preferred format; TIFF if no other format is available. Uncropped, untreated, original images. RGB. DPI should be between 150 and 300. Please note offer price is for all photos submitted. PAYS: $25.00 USD

[Image via Tracy 27's Flickr]

Combs, aka Diddy, aka Puffy, was inexplicably put forward by AOL as a company icon in the midst of its stock market re-debut, as evidenced in Kara Swisher's video for All Things D, excerpted above. The producer and entrepreneur does have a presence on AOL Music, so maybe that's why he was posing with AOL execs last night at a party on the New York Stock Exchange, the beating heart of Wall Street. "2010 is going to be an AOL year," Combs told the financey crowd. "Good luck tomorrow," the first day of trading following AOL's spinoff from Time Warner.

Shares of AOL closed down half a percent. Hopefully Combs can share more helpful words with the content-obsessed internet conglomerate on the art of creating profitable crowd pleasers in a notoriously crowded genre. Are the blog game and rap game really so different?

It's a tough challenge; Demand Media does something similar, and has become in the process a poster child for slapdash, disposable content churned out en masse. AOL's hiring announcement doesn't say what Hansell will be doing at Seed. But it does remind you that the tech reporter launched Bits, the Times' tech blog.

Hansell also worked behind the scenes on other Times new media efforts, judging from this YouTube interview, including the long-forgotten Bloggrunner aggregator, which Times lawyers originally wanted to sue. After shaking up the all-too-ossified Times, Hansell must do the opposite as employee No. 1 at Seed: lending some sort of structure and voice to articles written based on Google Trends or whatever. It's not what we'd do after taking a buyout, but, who knows, it could be just a little bit fun, in a post apocalyptic sort of way.

(Pic via Worth1000)

Reading it, we learned a little bit about how AOL — transtioning from a dying dial-up ISP to a huge media company — expects its 500 fulltime and ~2,500 freelance editorial staffers to produce 80+ content sites.

We expect some of the procedures outlined in the email will probably find their way to most any online-only publications — from the New York Times on down.

The email, from an editor at AOL site RentedSpaces.com, encourages writers to produce 300-500 word stories fast in a style that's "colorful, concise, [and] opinionated." But he doesn't want them to go too far.

"We're not Gawker, so be friendly and authoritative."

He tells them stories don't have to be based on original reporting. He writes, "All we want to know for a pitch is: what's the story, who broke it (AP, NYT, BW, Bloomberg,etc.), and how you will advance the story if you are following someone else's reporting," reads the email.

When writers file their copy, they're expected to "Include 140 characters for a Tweet or Facebook update."

AOL wants its editors to write in a way that will help Google will find their stories — that they're "search engine optimized." For example, the RentedSpaces editor tells his staffers to "make sure the first few words and first graf contain the critical keywords."

Of course, all these guidlines could change soon. AOL told the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that it's developing an algorithm that will assign freelance writers stories based on user Web searches and the sites AOL ISP subscribers visit.

We've pasted the whole email, below. Read:

Hi everyone:

Hope you are having a terrific break. I have a few notes before Monday. My apologies in advance for a long email.

First, I want to welcome Amy Cortese, who will now solo as news lead, and also announce Fred Bernstein of the New York Times as design lead, as well as the imminent hire of Robert X. Cringely as a senior columnist. Cringely was a bellweather of tech journalism, rising in the early 2000s to prominence via his own series on tech stuff at PBS (I, Cringely). Like many of us, he "discovered" real estate when his own 5/1 reset, and a couple of years ago, made some headway with a blog on the mortgage business that morphed into home-account.com. Bernstein is one of the Times' most eminent real estate and design writers. You'll find bios on all these guys at LinkedIn/Wikipedia/etc. It thrills me to have such an amazing group of early advocates for our mission, and I can't wait to witness them spread their wings through their writing, networks, and their experience of what makes real estate tick.

Second, I want to encourage each of you, writers, editors, and of course leads, to join our call Monday to Friday at 10AM. At this early stage of our formation, having the ability to build a shared DNA is a very cool thing. Don't pass it up. The calls are a half hour long, and lurkers are welcome. Of course, we're not about lurking, we're about participation, so listen in, learn, and pitch to get assignments. As I've said to many of you, this is a Darwinian platform. The more you contribute, the more you'll achieve. So pitch, pitch, pitch.

How?

Several of you have expressed confusion about how exactly you go about pitching, and what  to do once you get an assignnment. To make that a little clearer, here's a little step-by-step advice.

1) Build a pitch.  All we want to know for a pitch is: what's the story, who broke it (AP, NYT, BW, Bloomberg,etc.), and how you will advance the story if you are following someone else's reporting. Here's an example:

Owners Charge U.S. Made Toxic Drywall 
Now US-made drywall may be at risk, too. We blow out solutions with per foot cost estimates for each cure.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/23/cbsnews_investigates/main5752469.shtml?tag=stack

Simple, right? (And note the format: really helps to catch our eye in the AM.)

If you see a great story, or better yet, a great story than needs reporting, let us know, even if you're not the right writer. For now, send your pitches to me and Brett, and we'll forward to everyone else. By Tuesday or Wednesday, we'll have a new email address for pitches ([redacted]@housingwatch.com or something like that).

2) Write it. Don't hesitate. This isn't print. So do it fast. We're looking for colorful, concise, opinionated analysis that always expands the consumer viewpoint. We're not Gawker, so be friendly and authoritative, but on the other hand, don't be afraid to take sides.

Most important: Show, don't tell. Take a statistic and tell us a real human story attached to it. Or why current technical analyses miss the point. Don't just define MBSs (mortgage backed securities); find someone who sold them, tell his story, how the instrument evolved, what you think of it, and why we should or shouldn't allow them in their current state—and do it crisply. Appeal to, and link to, relevant facts. You have 300-500 words to make your argument, although going long is not a problem if the copy rocks.

3) Keep it clean. Yes you can write in another program and drop it into Blogsmith, but that program isn't Microsoft Word, which throws in all sorts of gobbledygood into your copy. Use TypePad (Windows) or TextEdit (Mac) and paste it in.

4) Until told otherwise, make sure the dropdown says RentedSpaces and tag your post HousingWatch (unless of course you're writing expressly for RS). Your lead will help you figure out where the story will go. 

Which raises another question: How will you know who's your lead? Simple: join the morning call, and make sure your pitch gets considered (i.e., speak up) . If your pitch is good, someone will grab it.

5) All that other stuff on the page:

Links: Link promiscuously based on major points in your story. Make your story good enough that someone won't want to lose you. Link to important search-engine-optimization keywords. For the drywall example above: Drywall, rot, fungus, mildew, construction might all be keywords that would need to be linked in a story. Try not to link to Wikipedia but to other sources, even smaller ones. Create a virtuous cycle between you (AOL) and a smaller site from which you may be capturing a story. Linklove is real. Use it. 

Headline: Make sure the first few words and first graf contain the critical keywords: "Now,US Drywall Rots, Sucks. Eats Your Home." That's a good head. Provoke the reader to click, and to think.

Categories: Basic taxonomical barns your story fits into. Think library science: the drywall story could be categorized under "development," "design," and if there was a local element, the specific location ("Florida"). Tags are not library science. They help you make organizational connections between stories. For example, drywall, drywallrot, construction, China, are all significantly related.

SEO: Hot topic of the day. The key is the keyword. Not any keyword, but keywords essential to real estate that AOL Real Estate can win on. For example, drywall isn't very descriptive, but "chinese drywall rot" is. Our aim is to be in the first three pages of Google listings on any term on a real estate story. Here's an interesting way to check if you're on the right path: check out your search term on Google and see who else is there, how your story can be better than theirs', and what you need to add to advance the story. Then keep sprinkling the words throughout your story without changing either the story or your voice. One keyword in every graf is a decent metric but avoid slavish repetition.

6) After you're done: Send a note to your lead telling them your story is up in Pending. Include 140 characters for a Tweet or Facebook update.

7) Our next job: capture your friends' content. If you know someone who can write for us, let us know asap. We still don't have enough writers.

8) Some pitches to pick up by or before Monday: 

30 Y Mortgages Hit 38Y Low
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/25/AR2009112504163.html

Why Dubai Matters To You
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/11/28/why-dubai-should-matter-to-you-u-s-real-estate-could-take-big/

For Athletes in Motion, Real Estate Can Be a Burden
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/sports/27homes.html

Bidding Starts at $5.9M for McCain's Home
http://blog.taragana.com/n/bidding-starts-at-59-million-for-former-mccain-home-in-phoenix-237084/

Also, get ready: It looks like Obama will mount a challenge to the mortgage industry Monday morning with a new campaign to pressure mortgage cos to reduce payments for many homeowners. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/business/economy/29modify.html
 
Have a great Sunday. Speak to you Monday.

Craig

(New AOL logo, top, via PaidContent)

AOL's dynamic vision of the future: Flood the web with content designed to pop up high in Google search results, with editorial ideas generated by an algorithm based on what stupid people are looking for, on the internet. In our business we call this "stealing post ideas from Google Trends." Getcher Tiger Woods Mistress Pictures here! Tell us, WSJ, how will AOL improve the life of me, an average Park Slope Parent?

AOL says its new system determined that the most popular topic on the Web last Tuesday was "crib recalls," following news of a massive recall by Stork Craft Manufacturing of Canada. AOL had only one story on its sites on the recall. But, if the new system had been live, editors would have geared up to supply stories on the subject from a number of angles, the company says.

So not only is AOL basing its entire dismal future on the most base sort of styrofoam traffic-whoring; it's not even whoring in a new way. Demand Media, for one, has long been doing the exact same thing, with an algorithm-plus-sweatshop editorial production line that makes Gawker Media look like Aristotle's School of Taking Your Sweet Time Thinking About Things.

Ah well. Neither useless crap on the internet nor AOL sucking is anything new.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong (pictured) said in a memo to staff (below) that the company is looking to lose 2,500 workers, or a third of its total staff. He'll be forgoing his own 2009 bonus, and is offering executives up to nine months pay if they volunteer for buyouts, according to Business Insider. Interestingly, rank and filers are being offered a weaker deal than their recent colleagues over at Time Inc.; AOL will pay them three months severance, whereas Time Inc.-ers get that plus two weeks for every year of service. Apparently unions are nice things to have in situations like this.

As it prepares to offer shares to the public next month, AOL has been on a diet plan in other ways, too:

• After steady increases, ad revenue from a deal with Google started falling this year, according to Peter Kafka at All Things D. The deal provided $700 million in ad revenue last year, about one third of the total, but was off $42 million in the most recent quarter.
• AOL surrendered bustling celebrity-news site and cable network TMZ to Time Warner; Tim Armstrong said as recently as July that he hoped to "actively" discuss whether to retain TMZ with Time Warner and that "‘If the value of TMZ increases, it's a really good thing for us."
• AOL may sell MapQuest, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D.

Pic above by Yaniv Golan.

Armstrong's memo to staff:————-

AOLers –

"Employees First" is the way that we have run the company since April and that mantra is something I take very seriously because our company is a collection of people and our brands are the work of our teams. We started by working together to determine AOL's strategy, then the correct structure for the strategy, and, as we have discussed, we are now faced with making sure we have the correct cost structure for the strategy. You have seen daily and weekly updates on Project Everest and many of you have been involved in trying to align our resources to maximize AOL's opportunity.

AOL's cost structure is something we have worked on for the past four months, and we have spent hundreds of hours reviewing ways to fix the cost structure as well as the revenue growth engine. As we are coming to the conclusion of this work over the next few weeks, it is clear that we will need to have a significant reduction of costs at the company and across almost all functional areas and geographies. Headcount costs are going to be a majority of the cost reduction recommendations coming out of Project Everest.

As I mentioned in our last Project Everest update, the idea for a voluntary layoff was suggested and we agree that it is an option that gives people more choice and decision-making ability instead of waiting for the final cost recommendations and involuntary layoffs. Starting December 4th in the United States and ending a few days after we spin out from Time Warner, we will allow employees to choose a voluntary exit from AOL. Additionally, tomorrow we anticipate beginning the communication process for voluntary layoff programs in certain international locations. We will be looking for up to 2,500 volunteers. For context on the target volunteer number, over the next several months we will be looking to reduce approximately one-third of our overall workforce at the company. We will need to do an involuntary layoff if we do not reach the target numbers through the voluntary option.

The reduction in costs is aimed at making AOL competitive for the future of the Web and it will allow us to focus the company on growth in the non-access areas of the business. After the cost reductions, we will have a company that is aligned and structured to drive our strategy in a competitive way. The number of potential reductions isn't aimed at getting us through 2010; it is aimed at resetting AOL at the correct baseline for the future.

As a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forego my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees. That plan is based on performance and overall company outcomes and it will be management's recommendation to the compensation committee of the Board to approve our performance-based bonus payouts for 2009. These are challenging times and today's news is difficult. But every day we are making changes and progress and we are on our way to re-engineering AOL for success. – TA

AOL is expected to complete mass layoffs after its spinoff from Time Warner is complete, supposedly by the end of this year. But it sounds like some cuts are too obvious to wait. One hundred firings is modest for a company of around 6,000 workers; AOL continues to work on "Project Everest" to plan the rest, our tipster said. If you know more, email us.

UPDATE: Kara Swisher at All Things D, who has written two books on AOL, was told by her sources that 100 or so layoffs are indeed coming down today. PaidContent later reported likewise.

Meanwhile Electronic Arts is laying off 17 percent of its workforce after the company saw net sales drop 12 percent from the prior year. Which, if you think about the state of the economy, is bizarre: Why aren't you unemployed people out there buying more videogames? Staying home is cheap.

(Image via Zazzle t-shirt/sticker)

Now that in itself is no big deal—a source says they meet frequently.  We also don't know where Tim and Ann met and what they talked about.

A reader of ours, however, claims to know.

This reader says the pair met to discuss a possible joint spinoff from Time Warner.

Time Inc CEO Ann Moore and Tim met last week with some of their confidants to talk about a potential "co spin-off" of the Time Inc and AOL. While synergies have been talked about in the past, turns out TW thinks that their could be serious benefit from this (you know what they are) merger and spin-off.

They are being told to look at the overlap/ benefit from a content deal with Time, Inc. Meeting lasted for 3+ hours. While it makes sense, I personally give it a low chance for success. Too much ego and vested interested on both side.

Our first reaction to this gossip was, yes, it makes sense for Time Inc and AOL to get together, especially if AOL's goal is to become "A Time Inc. for the 21st century."

So, Tim and Ann would be nuts not to consider the idea.

But we agree that there's a very low chance of this deal being successful given the cultural difference between the companies.  It would just be a mini-AOL-Time Warner all over again.  Also, it seems a bit late in AOL's spin-off process for this kind of talk to start now.

In her job promoting YouTube to corporations, Kovner did get some camera time, like in the video attached to this post by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. And the former Yale cheerleader was presumably able to spread some of her inner joy while attending various events around town. But Google did not afford Kovner any chance to indulge her longtime passion for singing — until now.

There's no word yet on whether the marketer/vocalist's new gig at AOL might allow for a few choice solos. But if not, Kristin, we have just one word for you: Broadway.

Kovner's goodbye video is above, and her goodbye email follows below.

Armstrong, the former Google advertising chief (pictured), jettisoned some top lieutenants from AOL, the internet conglomerate, last month. Beyond that, he's believed to be planning major job cuts as part of a sweeping reorganization of the company. "AOL is not going to change itself by incremental movements," Armstrong recently told PaidContent. Asked if this meant "large cuts," he talked about going "deep into the employee organization... to come up with ways to structure the company... I would expect announcements about that by early next year."

Early next year would mean just after the spinoff from Time Warner, assuming it goes forward as expected late this year. An AOLer who attended a recent internal "Town Hall" meeting on the restructuring, dubbed Project Everest, confirmed the layoffs are planned for post-spinoff.

One explanation we've heard for that timing is that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes didn't want layoffs taking place while AOL was part of his company. That makes some sense — layoffs typically carry a price tag, and Time Warner presumably doesn't want to take the hit for a move that will benefit another company over the long term. Time Warner isn't taking on debt as part of the transaction, our AOL tipster said, which jibes with the media conglomerate's statements that it is AOL that might load up on debt as part of the spinoff.

But a delayed deep restructuring means uncertainty for investors considering what to do with AOL shares in the earliest days of tradubg, which in turn means a potentially depressed price. A weak re-debut for AOL shares would not bode well for a company that has already had more than its share of struggles. Then again, if anyone can sell uncertainty, it's a consummate salesman like Armstrong.

UPDATE: 3:38 pm ET: Post updated with comments from an AOLer.

By selling her a vision of online media moguldom, in which Elisabeth Murdoch (pictured) would conquer the one medium that still thwarts her father's ambitions, the internet. Under the arrangement, Elisabeth's media company Shine will invest in Shields' content startup, Kara Swisher of All Things D reports, helping launch a new player in the hot online video space. Murdoch, to her credit, conceived the idea to import The Office and Pop Idol to America. But she's also a sucker for charmers: Her "close friend" and sometime yacht guest Ben Silverman unloaded his production company, Reveille, onto Shine for a cool $125 million. The Australia-born mogul-in-the-making should hope her new partner does not similarly boomerang.

That deal seemed smart when Silverman was an NBC honcho in a position to steer business Elisabeth Murdoch's way, but now he's been ousted — and is all set to compete with Murdoch with the online video startup he's building for Barry Diller's IAC.