As soon as he got his new job last week, new AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong sent out a rather hopeful email to the troops–his first communication as the latest leader of the ragtag online service.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing you and would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions,” wrote the former Google (GOOG) exec Friday (who alarmingly kind of resembles this Elvis image), “on how to make AOL and its sister properties the most powerful brands on the Internet.”

Well, one can hope!

To goose that dream, although he still does not officially start in the job until April 7, Armstrong is also addressing all the troops tomorrow at 11 am EST and has chosen to do so from, of all places, AOL’s old center of power in Dulles, Virginia.

AOL staffers I spoke to also hope most of all that Armstrong will quickly and transparently lay out plans for a spin-out of the Time Warner (TWX) online unit from the media conglomerate, where it has languished for years.

“Armstrong would not have taken the job if the plans for a spin out of AOL were not in place and it’s in everyone’s interests to signal that it’s a go right away,” said one source close to the situation. “The only catch is the poor economy, but even that should not prevent Time Warner from doing what’s right to finally fix AOL.”

And sources said Armstrong could further up the ante tomorrow and help raise the layoff-weary morale by having some former AOL execs from its glory days as the top online player in person at the event.

Several sources said one exec most likely to make an appearance is Ted Leonsis (pictured here), one of AOL’s most colorful top early execs and a longtime inspirational figure within its ranks.

Unlike most AOL execs from those days, many of whom were eventually run out on a rail, Leonsis also stayed on through its disastrous merger with Time Warner and beyond.

But, like all of the Dulles complex–which was once the bustling worldwide HQ for AOL–Leonsis finally left the company, after a falling out with the management regime that Armstrong just hipchecked out of power. He is now AOL’s vice chairman emeritus.

Both CEO Randy Falco and President Ron Grant moved AOL’s locus largely to New York, and minimized the staff and influence at Dulles, where most of AOL’s products have been made since its origins in the early 1990s.

“It’s a smart move to go to [the Dulles staff] directly first…the last regime pretty much shut them out…and that created bitterness, when we need to be unified,” wrote one AOL insider to me in an email.

(Sidenote: As the AOL beat reporter at the Washington Post back then, I actually went with then-PR head Jean Case to look over what became the Dulles facility, to see if it would be a good place to expand to; previously, AOL was located in nearby Vienna, behind a car dealership.)

A Leonsis visit at AOL will be like old home week, although some are hoping too that former AOL CEO Steve Case could also make an appearance. He and Leonsis still make online investments together.

But that might still be deeply controversial within Time Warner, where Case and also former Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin are widely blamed for situation that the company found itself in when the Web 1.0 bubble burst and AOL’s once vaunted valuation collapsed.

Although Case and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes have since moved on, bygones have not been bygones within Time Warner.

And, while it is often denied by top execs, AOL has suffered because of ill-hidden grudges, which have partly prevented it from being revived, even as other Internet giants have been born in the interim.

Ironically, many of the current crop of shooting stars owe a lot to the pioneering and innovative AOL products, including: its AIM and ICQ instant messaging services, which echo an early version of Twitter; the “Buddy List,” which was all about friending; and its deep social networking roots, with chat rooms and profiles that were the Facebook of its day.

The question for Armstrong is: Can AOL go home again?

As part of its ongoing rejiggering of its social-networking offerings, AOL is formally rolling out its expected Lifestream platform today, with a new “timeline” depicting a user’s online life in a streaming horizontal calendar called a Lifestory.

(See image above; click on it to make it larger.)

The moves are the latest made by AOL’s People Networks related to its Bebo social site, which this column previously reported about in December.

AOL is hoping its efforts will focus users more on Bebo, which it bought for $850 million in March, a high price that has been controversial both inside and outside Time Warner (TWX), which owns AOL.

While Bebo is one of the larger social networks, it is still not popular in the U.S. and lags well behind leaders like Facebook.

Lifestream will first be available on AOL’s Bebo and include updates from friends on Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Del.icio.us. Lifestream can also be used by brands, celebrities, bands and companies.

Lifestory uses a zooming technology to look at various times, using text, music, videos and photos, and can be done with many contributors. It also includes a feature called Social Slider that allows a user to have more granular filtering control over who sees what in Lifestory.

AOL had previously launched other social-networking features, such as Social Inbox, a one-stop destination with aggregated social feeds from across the Web, multiple email accounts and media recommendations.

AOL also has an upcoming service called Site Social, with plans to use its advertising platform to help monetize the offering.

Many large Web portals like AOL have recently rolled out by large Web players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO). All are attempts to offer a competing product to the most popular social-networking sites, Facebook and the News Corp. (NWS) unit, MySpace, where users have flocked. (News Corp. is the owner of this Web site.)

Those two companies have also been making moves of late to allow consumers to aggregate their disparate piles of online information through connective offerings that allow them to pool all kinds of Web content and communications in one place.

AOL’s People Networks unit, which includes Bebo, AIM and ICQ, has an overall audience of 92 million, according to a recent comScore (SCOR) survey.

Here are some screenshots of the AOL pages with the new features:

Moviefone Lifestory

VH1 Lifestory

Social Inbox

User Profile

User Profile 2

Here is the letter AOL CEO Randy Falco (pictured here) has penned to the entire staff about layoffs of 10 percent of its workforce–or 700 people–and other cost cuts, which the online service is announcing today.

“We’re at a pivotal point in AOL’s transformation, and need to be even more strategically focused and operationally efficient as we weather the economic storm,” wrote Falco, in part, about the move.

As BoomTown reported earlier today, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL is making huge staff cuts, due to the weak economy and the ensuing deep falloff in advertising revenue, but also because of recent structural changes made to refocus the once-mighty service.

The layoffs will take place over the next several quarters, with most of the U.S. cuts to be completed by March. AOL has 7,000 employees world-wide, with most located domestically.

Here’s Falco’s letter:

Dear AOL colleagues,

I’m writing to tell you about some important decisions we’ve made about AOL’s business and why we’ve made them.

The deepening economic recession has affected every corner of the economy, including our own. Online marketers have tightened their ad buying across the board, reducing their spend by hundreds of millions of dollars.

As a result, we will be reviewing our entire organization to further align resources and expenses against the real revenue opportunities in this difficult market. Part of this will involve consolidating groups to gain efficiencies that will unfortunately lead to head-count reductions. We anticipate this will result in a net reduction of our workforce of up to 10% over the next several quarters–and we will attempt to finalize all domestic actions by the end of March. Reducing our workforce is never easy, particularly in the current climate, but our goal in doing this is to provide our core businesses the resources they need to thrive. Please know that, as always, we’ll be doing everything we can to help and support those affected, including offering severance packages and other services.

To further keep employment costs down, we will also forgo merit pay increases in 2009. This is a painful decision, but one that many companies have prudently taken to help minimize the number of layoffs they have to make.

To provide some perspective on these decisions, right now we’re two years into a three-year turnaround plan. Since day one, our strategy has focused on building and growing mutually dependent publishing, advertising and social media businesses to take advantage of the shifting media landscape. We’ve worked shoulder-to-shoulder to make considerable progress during this time.

We acquired best-in-class companies across the digital advertising space (AdTech, Third Screen Media, Lightningcast, buy.at, TACODA and Quigo, respectively) and integrated them with Advertising.com to build Platform-A, the largest, smartest display advertising platform in the world.

We grew our MediaGlow audience via an efficient content development model that in 2008 enabled us to launch more than 20 new sites that are generating significant page view (up 64% year over year in December), engagement (up 39% year over year) and unduplicated user (70+ million) numbers. This momentum will continue in 2009 with our goal of creating an additional 30+ editorially curated sites focused on consumer passion points.

We combined Bebo with our longtime community assets AIM and ICQ as well as newer acquisitions Goowy, Yedda and SocialThing, to build People Networks, gaining AOL a foothold in the critical social media space, with more announcements to come on the next phase of development in both the social media space and in the integration of social and publishing capabilities.

This progress continues to put AOL in a strong position to capitalize on our new business model when the recession ends.

In addition to focusing our investments, a successful turnaround plan also requires us to realign our cost structure against this three-pronged business model–making difficult decisions to cut costs in areas that aren’t critical to our growth. Splitting out the Access business improved the transparency of what’s working and what’s not, and allowed us to make better decisions about exiting businesses that weren’t performing while investing in growth areas. A successful turnaround plan also mandates we control costs, operate with healthy margins and position the company for sustainable growth. As you know, we’ve moved repeatedly to bring discretionary expenses in line to spare across-the-board job cuts.

But we’ve also had to make many hard decisions along the way. And this moment is no exception. We’re at a pivotal point in AOL’s transformation, and need to be even more strategically focused and operationally efficient as we weather the economic storm.

In addition to the head-count reductions and the 2009 merit pay decision, we are also making changes throughout the organization to improve efficiency and better align it to our three core businesses. This includes a review of our international operations and our global shared-services functions. In addition, we will continue throughout the year to carefully and thoroughly review all our products and services to make sure every one fully supports our strategy and has the potential for growth.

Finally, we are going to realize significant savings by continuing to consolidate our facilities–for example, moving from two buildings to one in Mountain View, from two floors to one in Los Angeles, and leasing unused space on our Dulles campus.

With these and other changes, we will take significant annual run-rate costs out of our business while, importantly, retaining the flexibility to invest in our growth strategy.

I know all this will raise questions, but I wanted to share as much as I could with you now. Senior management will provide more details as appropriate to their teams in the weeks ahead.

As difficult as things look right now, the economy eventually will turn around. Some companies will use this time prudently and make difficult decisions to come out of it in better shape–growing toward areas of opportunity, scaling back in others and maintaining a line on costs all around. Our only choice is to be one of these companies. With your continued hard work and dedication, we will position ourselves to emerge a stronger company ready to lead in a vibrant online market.

Randy

Yesterday, TechCrunch’s U.K. blogger Mike Butcher spun the tale of buyer’s remorse run amok with a report that Time Warner online unit AOL was “seriously considering selling Bebo, the social network it acquired for $850 million only a year ago,” citing poor performance and a bad advertising market.

Later, AOL went on the record saying “there is no truth to this rumor,” although Butcher–in a third update to his piece–insisted otherwise from his sources.

In my favorite hedge ever, Butcher noted: “I’m not saying Bebo is formally on the block, but I am saying that a sale is something under consideration.”

Well, actually, no.

What is true, which Butcher did do an excellent job outlining, is that AOL most certainly overestimated the prospects for Bebo as an advertising and growth vehicle, hoping that Bebo’s interesting new media offerings–like its “KateModern” online series–combined with a social network, were the magic bullet.

It did not hurt that Bebo was then being sold to advertisers by its very deft top exec Joanna Shields, who is now head of AOL’s People Networks.

Thus, AOL woefully overpaid for it, especially if you look back from the current dire economic environment and also now realize that social-networking advertising is a little bit harder to get going than promised (a shock, I know).

No inside sources you talk to at AOL or Time Warner (TWX) will deny any of this today, and Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has even said so publicly.

This was not exactly a secret then either. As I wrote right after the sale last March:

What’s AOL getting for its $850 million in cash to purchase social-networking site, Bebo?

A very attractive social-networking service and a very experienced exec who has been running it.

But, perhaps more importantly for those who focus on pesky numbers, not a whole lot of revenue and negligible profits, judging financial information I got a gander at, courtesy of sources at several companies that looked at funding or buying Bebo.

And the rest of the overall outlook for Bebo? A small but growing business, with nice user engagement with strong page views and minutes spent per session, but little traction beyond Britain and Ireland, and too small a presence in the critical U.S. market.

(Bebo is also strong in New Zealand, but BoomTown does not have to point out that that country is not exactly the kind of game-changer that AOL CEO Randy Falco mentioned in his email to the troops about the purchase.)”

And in another post I did at the time:

Thus, I am still trying to figure out why AOL–which was built on the pillars of community, communications and connectivity–has consistently not been able to leverage its still-valuable assets.

I suppose it is sexier to do a big, splashy deal, of course, which takes focus away–for a while at least–of the essential need to take hits, while doing the slow block-and-tackle work it will require to really build a strong ad and social network.

Buying Bebo, the third-ranked social network, for so much and trying to turbocharge it is a very lofty goal, of course, but the real problem with the acquisition is that it feels like an answer in search of a question.

While Bebo President Joanna Shields–who will enter the AOL exec team as part of the deal–and the Birches have clearly built a very interesting property, the weight of Falco’s calling it a “game-changer” on which AOL’s future rides could turn out to be much too much for Bebo to carry.

That is, especially with that heavy bag of Time Warner cash it is also shouldering.”

That’s why it takes about two seconds these days to uncover much residual anger within both AOL and Time Warner about the huge slug of cash that the company handed over to get Bebo, which mostly went to its quirky founders (who, many sources told BoomTown, thought they were underpaid!).

But, even so, that does not mean Time Warner is going to pull yet another stupid Internet trick–remember this was the company that sold itself to AOL for a song back in 2000, in what is now considered one of the worst merger deals ever–and sell Bebo for bupkis.

In fact, spending even more effort, it has been trying to use Bebo as the main vehicle to renovate all its communications assets, including its unsung AIM and ICQ instant messaging properties.

The center of the People Networks, run by Shields, Bebo is the third leg of the “new” AOL, as it has been recently touted, with its Platform-A ad unit and new niche content studio called MediaGlow as the other parts of the stool.

Will it all work? Will Time Warner change its mind? Will Shields give up? Will even the AOL brand continue?

“Who knows?” is the right answer, of course. With Facebook, MySpace, Yahoo (YHOO), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG), as well as Twitter and FriendFeed, all vying to be the consumer’s dashboard to the Web, no one actually does.

And, if Time Warner is truly interested in selling off AOL whole, as it has been trying to do mightily, you might wonder if it would suddenly change course and dismember it now, causing even more confusion, when it is already facing so many other more pressing complications–all for a lousy price in the current weak economic landscape?

I called it “insane” when AOL bought Bebo for so much last year. I’d be dubious if it would get crazier still.

But if you want to see Shields in action–be careful, as she apparently so persuasive she could probably sell a big bailout to a Republican–take a look at this video I did a while back before the AOL acquisition:

This morning, AOL will launch an updated look for its Bebo social-networking property, with a new “social inbox” profile for its users.

The inbox, which you can see below in the old and new versions, essentially gives its users a one-stop destination, with aggregated social feeds from across the Web, multiple email accounts and media recommendations.

But, according to sources with knowledge of AOL’s plans, the online service is preparing a more radical series of announcements after the new year, well beyond its release today.

Interestingly, the changes to its social-networking and communications properties yet to be announced have been among the things that have impressed Yahoo (YHOO), whose execs have been briefed on the changes, as part of the never-ending talks with the Time Warner (TWX) about buying its AOL asset.

That includes offering AOL’s various social-networking tools–such as chat rooms, news feeds and instant messaging–to be easily embedded by any Web site. The service will be called “Site Social,” with plans to use AOL’s advertising platform to help monetize the offering.

In addition, the renovation of the Bebo profile pages will continue, with more innovative features, including the introduction of an interactive “timeline” that shows a person’s online “lifestream” in a scrolling fashion.

BoomTown has seen the timeline–in which events of any kind can be depicted, from your book club schedule to a trip to Hawaii.

While it looks like eye candy at first, it is also pretty useful–especially a mobile version. And it is definitely the most visually striking version of a news feed that is offered by competitors.

“It is part of a left brain/right brain strategy to improve our services, distinguishing them from the pack,” said one person familiar with the upcoming changes at AOL. “But we also have all these tools and want to reach out to publishers who need to socialize their sites and find it hard to do so.”

The move today to update Bebo, though, is strikingly similar to redesigns that have been recently rolled out by large Web players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo.

All are attempts to offer a competing product to popular social-networking sites like Facebook and News Corp. (NWS) unit MySpace, where users have flocked. (News Corp. is the owner of this Web site.)

Those two companies have also been making moves of late to allow consumers to aggregate their disparate piles of online information in through connective offerings that allow them to pool all kinds of Web content and communications in one place.

AOL is hoping its efforts will focus users more on Bebo, which it bought for $850 million in March. Bebo is one of the larger social networks, although it is not popular in the U.S. and lags behind the leaders like Facebook.

AOL execs are hoping to change that by changing the game, focusing on Bebo’s strong media offerings and making it the centerpiece of its social-networking and communications unit, run by former Bebo head Joanna Shields.

AOL’s People Networks unit, which includes Bebo, AIM and ICQ, has an overall audience of 92 million unduplicated users worldwide, said AOL, referencing a recent comScore (SCOR) survey.

“The current fragmented social networking environment makes keeping up-to-date with others increasingly difficult,” said Shields, who is now president of People Networks, in a press release statement. “By opening up our network to the most popular sites and allowing our users to pull in the best of the Internet, we are creating an environment where everyone can easily and effectively manage their online lives, no matter where the individual pieces reside.”

The launch companies for the new inbox include: Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, as well as AOL-owned AIM and AOL Mail. In addition, all AOL and AIM users now can now log into Bebo using their credentials and create a profile.

Here’s more specific info, from the AOL press release:

Today’s enhancements to Bebo.com, the first in a series of scheduled releases for early 2009, include:

• Media Favorites: A new recommendations engine built on the foundations of Bebo’s Open Media Platform delivers the most relevant online entertainment (including video, music, groups and games) into one place. Media Favorites are based on users’ stated preferences and aggregated data such as: what their friends are watching and listening to and what people like them like, subject to appropriate privacy settings. This feed pulls in current Bebo content and group subscriptions, making it easy to get a quick snapshot of all personalized content. Bebo already boasts one of the most extensive online media offerings available, with programming from over 500 media companies including MTV, ESPN, CBS and the BBC.

And here are the before and after Bebo profiles (click on the images to make them larger and keep clicking to make them clearer):

OLD BEBO

NEW BEBO

Someone get a dose of Ritalin stat to the noisy but deeply misguided critics who took news of the huge number of downloads of apps for the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and immediately concluded it was just not good enough.

Thus, as reported today in The Wall Street Journal, 60 million downloads in 30 days–mostly for free apps, but with about $30 million in revenue, and a runway of three million more new iPhones out there too–is a chance to talk about how it all is just so unexciting and how the apps market is officially saturated?

Am I missing something here? One would assume that were these pundits pioneers, they would get to Ohio and declare that the going farther west held very little promise, thank you very much!

Wrote TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld:

The question is how many apps can one person really manage before becoming overwhelmed. While the initial impulse is to download as many apps as possible to try them out, there is a limit to how many apps you can juggle on your iPhone. It is not much different than a PC. You have tons of apps, but how many do you actually use on a regular basis? For most people, that number is probably no more than ten apps, and on a daily basis, maybe three or four, tops.”

Yes, that personal computer thing has been such a disappointment for us all and a real failure in spurring the creation of a plethora of multi-billion-dollar software makers, hasn’t it?

In actuality, while there is obviously going to be an initial period of frantic trying-out of apps and a fall-off of regular usage, the entire point is that a useful and important platform is being developed here.

Stlll, GigaOm’s Om Malik talked to new iPhone analytics company Pinch Media and managed to find lemons in the lemonade:

Using the caveat that only a few app makers were using the Pinch Analytics library, [Pinch's Founder Greg Yardley] pointed out that as per their data, the ratio of free downloads to paid downloads is at least 10 to 1. He also said that the pace of downloads is slowing, which is expected because the early rush is behind us. According to data collected by Pinch Media, on average, less than 20 percent of an application’s overall unique users return to an application each day. Yardley also pointed out that people are using the apps for just under five minutes at a time, on average. The majority only use the applications once per day; the average number of uses per day is around 1.2.

Looks like I am not the only one who is getting bored with some of the more blah apps. Phew!”

Of course, Malik and others will not like each and every app, but that is not exactly a surprise; nor should it be the focus.

As Apple CEO Steve Jobs correctly noted to The Journal:

“Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that. We think, going forward, the phone of the future will be differentiated by software.”

Exactly. This is less about the iPhone, than it is about all mobile phones, going forward.

But, because of the iPhone’s trailblazing, they will be easier to use, because of apps and multi-touch and a much richer multimedia experience.

That market will thus require a lot of apps, some of which will work and some of which will flop.

As I wrote about the popularity of the third-party apps and Apple’s iTunes App Store:

That’s because Apple has built a platform for adults.

Like many, I have downloaded dozens of iPhone third-party apps over the last several days.

And, unlike what one can discover on the other hot apps platform–namely Facebook–they are uniformly superb, lovely, useful and fun in a really nonjuvenile way. …

I think you would not say so after looking over a lot of what is available at the App Store on iTunes.

Lots and lots of the apps there are games, of course, which are the most popular.

But what amazingly clever games, like MotionX Poker with the delightful rolling dice, or the humming swish of PhoneSaber (totally silly, but in a profound manner that Vampire-biting on Facebook will never achieve).

And the list of useful stuff–Pandora Radio, Starmap, WeatherBug, Evernote and WHERE–is long and growing longer, and these seem to enjoy as much prominence and popularity as the sillier stuff.

In addition, the ability to truly use other Web services in a mobile setting–from Photobucket to Yelp to AIM to the New York Times–makes the iPhone an even more useful device to me.

And for each of the apps I can also imagine various monetization schemes that now make a lot more sense since the iPhone platform enhances them with mobility and simplicity.”

Or, as the cliché goes: “The Plains are covered with the bodies of pioneers.”

But some of them, of course, made it to California.

The rest, as they also say, is history.

Speaking of which, here is a video of AllThingsD.com‘s Co-Executive Editor Walt Mossberg discussing the iPhone’s significance at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, in a short snippet from his talk there:

AOL’s AIM started out with enough popularity to freely ignore the need to integrate with other programs; now, it can be argued that AIM retains its relevancy by operating with other messaging programs like Google‘s Gmail chat and Apple‘s iChat. Other IM clients paired up with one another to increase usability, like when Microsoft and Yahoo became interoperable over two years ago.

But nowadays, social-networking offerings — like leaving messages on Facebook walls and receiving Twitter “tweets” from friends — compete with traditional instant-messaging programs. And advanced technology in mobile devices has helped these chats move from desktops to iPhones and BlackBerrys, where conversations can continue on-the-go, using mobile applications.

Three free programs — Meebo, Adium and Digsby — work by consolidating numerous messaging accounts into one combined program.

This week I tested three free programs that seem to acknowledge the fading star of isolated instant messaging, as we once knew it. Meebo, Adium and Digsby work by consolidating numerous messaging accounts into one combined program. Some of these include social-networking integration or even built-in email notifications, turning the service into a one-stop shop for online communication. The result can save people from choosing one IM system over another.

All three of these programs are straightforward and work without much effort or instruction. They require users to enter the user names and passwords to log onto each IM account, which may make some people uncomfortable, even though each site explains its privacy policy. Of the three, Digsby offers to integrate with the greatest number of programs all at once, including instant messaging, email and social-networking accounts. It also lets people handle email by deleting or sorting it directly in the IM window, which neither of the other programs does.

But Digsby isn’t yet usable on Macs or Linux, and Adium (the second-best offering) is available only on Macs. When used with the correct operating system, these programs perform as promised, easing communication overall and saving people the hassle of logging into various accounts — or missing out on chats with friends because of not signing into certain programs.

Meebo, www.meebo.com, is the only one of these three products that is completely Web-based. It works on all major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari, and doesn’t require any installation — a plus for those who would like to be using instant messaging in the office but aren’t able to install software on corporate computers. It can log users into one of six messaging programs simultaneously, including Yahoo, Microsoft, AIM, Google, ICQ and Jabber.

I signed onto three instant-messaging accounts at once on Meebo by entering the username and password for each and selecting one overall “Sign In” button, which logged me into each program simultaneously and displayed all of my contacts in one condensed panel. Meebo can be configured to automatically launch within Firefox if a Firefox extension is downloaded.

Meebo.com is also usable on the iPhone and iPod Touch, allowing people to log into multiple accounts simultaneously from their mobile device. As of now, neither Adium nor Digsby has an application that allows it to work with the iPhone or iPod Touch.

Digsby, www.digsby.com, was a cinch to set up on my laptop, which was running Windows Vista. It walked me through the steps of adding accounts from instant-messaging programs, email accounts such as Gmail and Hotmail, and social-networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Digsby works with IM and emails accounts from AOL/AIM, Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. Jabber, ICQ and Facebook chats also work with Digsby, along with IMAP and POP email accounts.

Once added, all of these accounts are represented in one clean panel. These consolidated communication programs saved me many extra clicks on my computer over a weekend, and I easily chatted with friends while checking messages. New emails received in my Gmail account were visible in a preview panel that popped up when I moved my cursor over the email account name. Right within this email preview panel, I could delete or archive each message; I was also able to mark a message as read or report it as spam. I performed all of these email tasks without opening my Gmail account in a browser or email client. Shortcuts in this preview panel labeled Open, Compose and Inbox sent me to my browser to perform these more-involved tasks.

This in-line functionality also applies to other email accounts, according to Digsby. But though I could see a tally of newly received Hotmail messages in my Digsby preview panel, these messages weren’t as interactive as those received in my Gmail inbox.

Digsby also tracks Twitter alerts and timelines, as well as Facebook newsfeeds and alerts — including posting notifications in your Digsby panel whenever someone “friends” you on Facebook.

Adium, www.adiumx.com, wins points for cuteness. The downloaded program is represented by a goofy, green duck, which plops itself in the Mac operating system dock and closes its eyes when not in use. When new messages are received via Adium, this duck flaps its wings until you open the message. The Adium user interface incorporates sleek visuals, such as status windows that gracefully float above user names whenever a cursor moves over these names.

Adium works with AIM, ICQ, .Mac, Jabber, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. Adium supports new email notifications for some accounts, but doesn’t enable reading or sending email within the program. Instead, it offered to open my account via the browser or using Microsoft Entourage on the Mac. Social networking is limited to MySpace IM on Adium, though the next version will support Facebook Chat.

Adium organizes multiple conversations using tabs stacked at the bottom of a chat window. Icons line the top of each chat window, such as a file icon for transferring files and a lock that switches a conversation to be encrypted and off-the-record. Any conversation that isn’t designated encrypted is automatically stored in a table of Adium transcripts, which can be sorted by To, From or Date. Transcripts can be sorted using rough timelines like “within the past two weeks” or “since yesterday.”

I saved myself time and mouse clicks by using these three consolidation programs, though I preferred Digsby in the end because of its intuitive email integration. These programs will help to take down the instant-messaging barriers that have become turn-offs over the past couple years, and may better integrate IM with the social networks and mobile devices that are on the rise.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Write to the Mossberg Solution at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

It’s a lot of weight to put on the slim shoulders of Apple (AAPL), even though the company has shifted in recent years–largely due to the iPod and now iPhone phenomena–from a maker of devices for the elite to a mass consumer icon and a major influencer of key technology trends.

And, as has been much written about, Apple’s iPhone has brought the vision of a touchscreen minicomputer-on-the-go to the kind of reality that seemed impossible only a few years ago.

But more important to me is what is happening with the plethora of third-party apps now available from the iTunes App Store–both free and paid (picture below)–for use on the iPhone platform.

That’s because Apple has built a platform for adults.

Like many, I have downloaded dozens of iPhone third-party apps over the last several days.

And–unlike what one can discover on the other hot apps platform–namely Facebook–they are uniformly superb, lovely, useful and fun in a really nonjuvenile way.

The iPhone Facebook app is, by the way, stellar.

It’s more than a little ironic, then, that about a year ago it was the social-networking site that reinvigorated the idea of the importance of having a platform that a multitude of developers could thrive on.

It’s not exactly a new idea–Microsoft has nourished an ecosystem of developers for its powerful Windows software platform for, like, forever.

But Facebook surely made the idea bigger, looser, wilder and more exciting. Except that a lot of what has been created for Facebook has been profoundly stupid.

Last year, Boomtown set off a mini-tornado of debate when I suggested that I was less than impressed by the quality and endurance of most of the new Facebook apps–also called widgets–that began to take off.

In a post called: “The Children’s Hour: Facebook Apps Are for Toddlers (There, We Said It),” I wrote:

I get it, I get it. Millions upon millions of people are downloading and using these apps, part of a very clever ecosystem [Facebook CEO Mark] Zuckerberg unleashed in late May.

Under the scheme, widget-makers got to go wild on Facebook, and Facebook got to offload a chunk of its feature development onto others.

‘Until now, social networks have been closed platforms,’ said Zuckerberg at the [f8] event, calling on outside developers to integrate their applications into the service. ‘Today, we’re going to end that.’

But so far, as popular as those apps have become, what Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting, and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison.

While I will admit when I am not chewing nails that a lot of these apps are somewhat fun, I can’t help but ask myself that lyric from the old Peggy Lee classic: ‘Is that all there is?’

And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

Too harsh?

I think you would not say so after looking over a lot of what is available at the App Store on iTunes.

Lots and lots of the apps there are games, of course, which are the most popular.

But what amazingly clever games, like MotionX Poker with the delightful rolling dice, or the humming swish of PhoneSaber (totally silly, but in a profound manner that Vampire-biting on Facebook will never achieve).

And the list of useful stuff–Pandora Radio, Starmap, WeatherBug, Evernote and WHERE (pictured here)–is long and growing longer, and these seem to enjoy as much prominence and popularity as the sillier stuff.

In addition, the ability to truly use other Web services in a mobile setting–from Photobucket to Yelp to AIM to the New York Times–makes the iPhone an even more useful device to me.

And for each of the apps I can also imagine various monetization schemes that now make a lot more sense since the iPhone platform enhances them with mobility and simplicity (Carling’s branded iPint is very smart, for example).

I also get the feeling that, knowing they would otherwise not be granted entrance into the elegant kingdom of Steve Jobs, developers tried to design their apps just a little more perfectly.

I cannot say the same about adding widgets to Facebook, which only seem to put more burden on my experience there.

Some are great and some are truly awful, but you never know exactly what you are getting until you go through the typically onerous addition process.

That will soon change with the new Facebook redesign.

I do have great hopes for it, as it gets rolled out this week for users, because it looks like it will make the service much easier to manage and enjoy.

I hope so, because right now, Facebook feels too much like a garden in constant need of weeding.

Perhaps this is because these apps or widgets are more useful in a mobile setting, when you are truly looking for a wide range of discrete pieces of information, rather than on a large screen–which gets larger all the time–at home when the browsing experience lets you handle more information coming at you from all over.

I don’t know, but I do know that I have gotten more use out of my iPhone apps than any Facebook app so far, making me more productive and happy in the process.

Yes, the BubbleWrap app is pointless, but it did give me a few minutes to decompress and read the newspaper as my six-year-old son digitally popped away in glee this weekend.

You know what I mean–it’s called adult time.