Let’s begin by drawing the distinction between a tool and a robot. Tools enable us to work more efficiently. Robots do the work for us (in fact, the original word robata means “hard work” in Czech). The vast majority of the Web sites and apps we use today are tools that enable us to work, play and share more efficiently. Over the last few years, through advances in artificial intelligence and data science, Web sites and apps are evolving. There is a new breed of applications focused entirely on working on our behalf. As humans, we constantly seek means to reduce the amount of work needed to reap rewards from a system. While the tools of today allow us to work less, the robots of the future will eliminate much of the work in the first place.

This incredible transformation is happening right before our eyes.

Your Search Robot

A long time ago, we would search for information by painstakingly looking up sources in a card catalog and reading a book. As much of that knowledge moved online, the directory (like Yahoo!) enabled us to browse and find content of interest. In time, the amount of information flowing online overwhelmed the directory — it would simply require too much work to browse the entire Web. Fortunately, a revolutionary tool, search — Google, really — made it very easy to find the documents that contain the answers we’re looking for. But while search presents us with a huge set of choices, it still takes a lot of work to find the answers.

Today, a new technology is eliminating that work by acting on our behalf to find the answers and even solve our problems. Siri is an artificial intelligence client that turns our devices into a virtual assistant. It removes the steps between searching for answers and finding them. Have a question about converting metric units? Ask Siri. Need to order your mother flowers? Let Siri handle that. Need to make dinner reservations for your date Friday? Let Siri do the work for you. And we’re just scratching the surface. We possess the vastness of all human knowledge in our pockets, yet much of our usage is limited to Angry Birds. This transformation to intelligent machines means we no longer have to work as hard to apply the knowledge locked in our devices; they’ll do the work for us.

Your Location Robot

In the 20th century, an enormous yellow book was delivered to our doorstep every year. We would heft this behemoth and flip through hundreds of pages to find a local business or restaurant of interest. Eventually, that process gave way to more efficient tools as local information moved online through apps like CitySearch and Yelp. Recently, via the mobile check-in, we can be presented places of interest and people near our current location. This new layer of geographical context is great, but checking in is still work.

Today, ambient location apps like Foursquare, Radar and Highlight are beginning to do that work for us. By passively monitoring our locations, they alert us to interesting people and places around us. Over time, as they learn our preferences, they’ll be able to filter these places and help us discover the best restaurants and people wherever we are. At last, we are within reach of the “Danger, your ex-girlfriend is in the area!” robot.

Your Personal Robot

Not that long ago, the primary way we would discover new media was through browsing a printed newspaper, magazine rack or record store. As this content moved online, it became much more accessible and real-time. As the option pool grows, we have to put in more and more work to find the content that’s interesting to each of us. There are more and better options than we could ever imagine. But it would take an incredible human effort to find all the needles in the growing haystack.

To address this, many Web sites have offered customization tools for users to focus their experience. But manual customization also requires a lot of work, and it usually fails to paint the rich, dynamic picture of who we are and what we like. Fortunately, a solution is emerging from companies like Pandora (and, full disclosure, my own company, Gravity). Using machine learning, these platforms get to know you based on the things you read about, listen to, or share. They can then move way beyond customization by generating adaptive, personalized experiences that bring the best content on any website or app right to the top. It completely shifts the paradigm from you having to search for information to information searching for you. It’s like having a personal robot who thinks just like you do reach across the Web and return the best music, stories, videos, even daily deals everywhere you go. “Welcome back to ESPN, Amit. The surf report in Venice tomorrow is 3-4 feet, and the Lakers are leading by 10 points at the half.”

All of this paints just a small picture of what’s to come. Imagine the applications in fields like education, health care, or personal finance (wouldn’t you love a robot that does your taxes?). As the Internet starts to work for us, it will enrich our lives in ways we can’t even imagine. I, for one, am very excited that my childhood dream of owning my own robot is finally coming true.

Amit Kapur is the CEO and co-founder of Gravity, a company that makes the Internet adaptive and personalized. He was formerly the COO of Myspace. As an early Myspace employee, he led the development and growth of Myspace Music and Myspace Mobile.

When the selling of Myspace winds down in the next week or so, it’ll probably attract a spate of comments about what a failure the whole social networking enterprise turned out to be.

And — especially when you recall what a Web phenom the social networking site was before it got blown out of the water by Facebook — it was.

That is, unless you think of the mob of former execs who have worked at the company over time, many of whom have moved on to some more golden opportunities after leaving the News Corp.-owned property.

That includes, most recently and notably, former sales head Michael Barrett, who is about to score big as CEO of AdMeld, which is reportedly in the process of selling to Google for $400 million.

Also a big winner: Former Myspace CEO Owen Van Natta, who was fired from that job in one of its many putsches and who quickly rebounded to a top job at online gaming powerhouse Zynga.

So, while it is one of the more overused memes of Silicon Valley, the “mafia” analogy — which has been applied to fertile entrepreneurial breeding grounds such as PayPal, before its acquisition by eBay — is useful when thinking about Myspace.

It is also a good thing to keep in mind about any tech company that goes off the rails: There might still be a silver lining, even if the start-up never sees the light of day again.

As proof, herein is a list I created after pinging a bunch of former Myspace folks:

Jason Oberfest: Former SVP of business development. Now, VP Ngmoco, which was sold to Japanese gaming giant DeNA for $400 million last year.

Dmitry Shapiro: Former CTO, Myspace Music. Now, at Facebook competitor Altly.

Adam Bain: While at Fox Interactive Media, he ran the ad platform for Myspace. Now, head of sales at Twitter.

Jeff Berman: Former president of sales and marketing. Now, GM of the NFL’s digital media unit.

Jason Hirschhorn: Former co-president and chief product officer. Now, on MGM board, angel investor, and there are rumors of him working on a curation start-up.

Amit Kapur: Former COO. Now, CEO, Gravity, an information filtering service start-up.

Chris DeWolfe: Co-founder and former CEO. Now, CEO, MindJolt, an online gaming roll-up.

Ross Levinsohn: Former president of FIM, he was integral to buying Myspace. Now, EVP of Americas unit, Yahoo.

Mike Lang: Former News Corp. strategy exec also involved in Myspace purchase. Now, CEO, Miramax.

Aber Whitcomb: Former CTO. Now CTO, MindJolt.

Jim Heckman: Former chief strategy officer of FIM. Now, CEO of 5to1, recently sold to Yahoo for $25 million.

Dani Dudeck: Former communications head. Now, PR head at Zynga.

Travis Katz: SVP of international. Now, CEO of Gogobot, a social travel start-up.

Richard Rosenblatt: Former CEO of Intermix Media and Chairman of Myspace, he sold it to News Corp. Now, CEO of Demand Media.

Angela Courtin: Former SVP of marketing. Now, EVP at Aegis Media.

These folks should be on the call list of whoever ends up buying Myspace. Last week, I wrote that an investor group, including Activision head Bobby Kotick, is now in the lead for the deal.

As an update, according to sources, Kotick has gotten clearance from Activision’s major shareholder Vivendi to do the Myspace transaction as a passive personal investment.

Today Gravity is unveiling its plans to be an information filtering service. The idea is to combine social and semantic understanding of users to identify content they are likely to be interested in.

The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company is demoing this idea as a personalized newspaper app called The Orbit (to be released soon). The Orbit takes a user’s Twitter account and computes the topics a person is interested in and the network she is connected to. For any one Web page, Gravity might look at how recent it is, how popular it is, how relevant it is to a person’s interest and how many of that person’s friends have shared it.

Eventually, said Gravity CEO Amit Kapur, the company wants to offer personalization services to publisher sites. So when I go to the New York Times with Gravity enabled, for example, I would be able to get a view of the site’s content that’s weighted to what I am likely to be interested in.

I think that’s an awesome idea (though I do appreciate the roles of editorial curation and serendipity in bringing me my news). This is similar to what Facebook is trying to do with its controversial Instant Personalization product, where a user logged in to Facebook arrives at a new site that already knows who his friends are.

The problem is, what Gravity is setting out to do–both the natural-language processing and computational side, and the nitty-gritty of integrating into other peoples’ Web sites–is really freaking hard. And, no offense guys, but the Gravity team’s big experience to date was working at Myspace–not exactly a pinnacle of technical achievement.

When the company briefed me on what it was doing, it prepared a poster-size personal interest graph based on analysis of my Twitter account (that’s it at the top of the post; click to enlarge). Well shucks, guys–it seems to be just a bunch of words and topics I’ve mentioned in Tweets over the last few years, connected by lines. Doesn’t really convince me that you understand that much about me and what I want to read.

Still, Gravity has quite a bit going for it: A good idea, and $10 million from top investors at Redpoint Ventures and August Capital, plus advising by machine learning and computational linguistics professors at Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Especially departures, it seems, as the massive restructuring of the digital units of News Corp. (NWS) keeps shaking out.

Top engineer Max Engel (pictured here), who ran the social networking site’s open initiatives, for example, is leaving to join the new stealth start-up being helmed by ex-MySpace employees, including former COO Amit Kapur.

In a blog post on his Web site yesterday, titled “Farewell, MySpace…,” Engel did not say where he was headed, but noted:

“While MySpace presented opportunities through their scale and reach, I’ve spent the past 3 years at large companies, and now I’m ready to go small and give the startup life a try.”

In addition, while I was poking around on this story, sources also told me that there are more higher-level departures in the works, including those whom the new team of execs at Beverly Hills, Calif.-based MySpace had kept in place, despite a recent round of layoffs.

Those execs include Tom Andrus (pictured here), who was a key product exec in the last regime at MySpace, sources said, but is poised to go. His former charge was as SVP of product management under MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson.

While Anderson remains at MySpace, his role has been changed and product is now headed by Jason Hirschhorn, and Andrus reportedly decided recently that he did not want to stay at the company in a lesser role.

Andrus is also listed as a developer at Gray Ghost Ventures on LinkedIn.

In the longer term, sources said it is also likely that once he completes the work to downsize MySpace’s international operations–which were cut drastically–its head, Travis Katz (pictured here), will move on in the fall.

While some thought he would leave during MySpace’s international layoffs several weeks ago, he did not, given all the work involved in closing down a lot of operations there after 67 percent the staff abroad was cut.

Katz, sources said, is preparing to move to California in the next several weeks and is interested in working for a start-up, after many years at News Corp.

Lastly, on the goodbye train, is MySpace Music’s SVP Strategy and Global Marketing, Jamie Kantrowitz (pictured here).

She had previously worked as a top exec in MySpace’s international business.

Not everyone is bidding adieu, though, although they are moving chairs.

Dan Fawcett (pictured here), president of Fox Digital Media, is likely to be moving to work with News Corp. digital head Jon Miller as his general counsel and right-hand man at the Fox Interactive Media division.

The former GC, Mike Angus, has moved to FIM’s Fox Audience Network, run by Adam Bain.

FIM, of course, is being rejiggered into a new smaller unit, as I previously reported, and is likely to be renamed simply the Digital Media Group.

(Full disclosure: FIM is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones–owner of this site.)

Finally, Owen Van Natta is about to win out over a founder.

The former Facebook COO (pictured here) is poised to become the CEO of MySpace, replacing co-founder and current CEO Chris DeWolfe.

DeWolfe will likely get a title as a special adviser to MySpace in a deal that is still coming together.

Settling all the specifics could take at least a day and there is always the possibility that this changing-of-the-guard deal could fall apart. But multiple sources close to the situation said it is more just a matter of ironing out the details.

Thus, the die seems cast for Van Natta to take over the thorny job of rehauling MySpace, which is owned by News Corp. (NWS).

(News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this Web site).

In a post this morning, MediaMemo was the first to name Van Natta as the only candidate in the running to take over as leader of MySpace.

It’s familiar territory for him.

Van Natta never got the big job at Facebook, which is under the firm control of founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

But Van Natta–who got to Facebook in its early days after stints at various companies, including Amazon (AMZN)–was a key early player in making the social-networking site into the juggernaut it is today.

He played a large role in its advertising and investment deals with Microsoft (MSFT), for example, as well as in hiring many of its current execs.

But, like many at Facebook, Van Natta left Facebook in early 2008 under tense circumstances, although he now is on good terms with Zuckerberg and others at Facebook.

Maybe not any longer.

In a delicious digital irony, he will be taking on Facebook head on, as MySpace–once the momentum player in the space–tries to regain its step against Facebook.

Van Natta is currently CEO of music start-up Project Playlist and it is not yet clear what will happen there. When he was previously talking to MySpace about running its music site, there was speculation that it might buy the start-up.

Today’s developments have happened quickly and without a lot of advance planning.

The talks to complete this deal are being led by new digital boss Jon Miller (pictured here), who came to News Corp. last month.

News Corp. officials declined to comment on the developing situation.

But sources said that Miller hadn’t been planning on getting rid of DeWolfe in the near future, and until yesterday, he was still evaluating his options.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch had once treated DeWolfe as a favorite and gave him significant autonomy at MySpace.

But Murdoch, who brought Miller on, has been leaning toward a change in leadership as MySpace’s traffic has stagnated and its buzz and momentum have moved to Facebook.

Under DeWolfe, many have felt it has dropped the ball on innovation and in making key improvements to its technology and features.

Worst of all, MySpace’s lucrative $900 million search advertising deal with Google (GOOG) is also coming to an end, a deal that essentially paid for the News Corp. acquisition.

Recently, several key execs have left too, including COO Amit Kapur.

In general, the social-networking giant has had an air of decline about it, despite its still-enormous size.

Nonetheless, Murdoch had left the decision about the site’s leadership to Miller, his new hire, sources said.

Miller had been talking to many and was indeed leaning toward putting a new CEO in place, but not in this fashion. He had hoped to work out the transition with DeWolfe, said several sources.

Miller himself had been badly treated, when Time Warner (TWX) dumped him as CEO of AOL several years ago. Ironically, the media giant just ousted the execs who ousted Miller.

But Miller’s options narrowed last night, once TechCrunch ran a story claiming that News Corp. had hired a headhunting firm to “scour for possible replacements” for DeWolfe.

News Corp. hadn’t actually hired a headhunter at all, but the story spooked DeWolfe into calling Miller to ask what his plans were. That conversation led to today’s negotiations.

Van Natta is well known at News Corp. and was, at one point, the leading candidate to head up MySpace Music, which launched last fall, and the two sides held extensive conversations.

But Van Natta did not like the job’s org chart: Rather than a standalone company, MySpace Music is simply a unit of MySpace, reporting to DeWolfe.

MTV executive Courtney Holt eventually took the job.

Van Natta is intertwined with MySpace in other ways.

Project Playlist, the free music-streaming site he took over last fall, has seen traffic plummet after MySpace, along with Facebook, cut off the sites’ access to their users, a move prompted by lawsuits from several major music companies.

Van Natta has made some headway at extracting the company from its legal mess, which predated his hiring, and he has hammered out a settlement with EMI Music Group.

But Playlist is still being sued by other music labels.

And, even music sites that aren’t in legal trouble are struggling to keep their heads above water.

Thus, plenty of Silicon Valley watchers–including BoomTown, who calls Van Natta periodically to ask why he seemed to enjoyed the pain of running an online music business–have wondered why Van Natta landed at Playlist in the first place, and have speculated that he has been looking for a way out.

He has been on the short list for many big Web jobs at places like Microsoft and other Silicon Valley start-ups, but has not bitten until now.

Amit Kapur, who was elevated to COO of MySpace early last year, will be stepping down from the position. He’s leaving the company to start a new venture with two other MySpace executives, Jim Benedetto, SVP of Engineering, and Steve Pearman, SVP of Product Strategy.

Selected by CEO Chris DeWolfe, Kapur had been charged with helping drive innovation in content and also business development at the social network, which has lately seen some of its thunder stolen by the faster-growing Facebook.

MySpace declined comment.

But here is a video interview I did with Kapur, as well as DeWolfe, at a MySpace party in San Francisco, right after he got his COO title.

(News Corp. also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

BoomTown just got to Paris, as in France, to attend and moderate sessions for the third annual Le Web conference.

Le Web is organized by Loïc and Geraldine Le Meur, with 1,500 people signed up to hear a range of Internet players, many of whom are from the U.S., tomorrow and Wednesday.

U.S. speakers include TED’s Chris Anderson, News Corp. (NWS) social-networking site MySpace’s Amit Kapur, Marissa Mayer of Google (GOOG), Linda Avey of 23andMe, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, and Dan’l Lewin of Microsoft (MSFT).

And some interesting European execs include France Telecom Orange Chairman and CEO Didier Lombard, and Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and co-founder of a very interesting fashion sale site, Vente-Privee.com.

Of course, there’s a passel of bloggers here like BoomTown. I’ll be interviewing Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon (AMZN) and well-known Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi.

Besides this conference, Loïc Le Meur has been trying to make a go of it with his San Francisco-based start-up Seesmic, which–like a lot of Web 2.0 companies–has recently made cutbacks. See my video interview below with him in better times, when I visited Seesmic in February.

You can also watch the conference streamed live from its site. More shaky–but Frenchtastic, although no lip-synching extravaganzas for me!–videos from me at Le Web to come, of course.

[Full disclosure: My partner, Google exec Megan Smith (you can read all about it here in detail), is judging a start-up competition at Le Web on Wednesday. But I am trying to find an excuse not to go to that panel, because I always nod off at those things, even if the crazy version of Britney Spears were a judge. Instead, I hopefully will be enjoying the lovely artwork at the Louvre right then.]

Last night, BoomTown checked out the new space MySpace is renovating for its soon-to-open San Francisco office. The occasion was a party the social-networking site held for developers as part of its recent platform launch.

In other words, the night MySpace started kissing up to the widget makers with tasty burgers and big techie hugs.

And those widgeteers showed up in full force for the sandbox-themed event (I even brought my kids, who played in the actual sandboxes set up and made quite a mess!), including Slide’s Max Levchin, RockYou’s Jia Shen, Google’s OpenSocial guru Joe Kraus (who apparently did not get to go to Disneyland with the rest of the company) and many others.

Also in attendance were MySpace’s top brass, including Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, as well as its new COO Amit Kapur and lots of other MySpace minions, coming up from Los Angeles.

MySpace –which is owned by News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones, which owns this site–is still the largest social network both in terms of users and page views. But its growth has been slowing and, worse, its thunder has been stolen by the faster-growing and more-hyped Facebook, based in Silicon Valley.

Last year, that competition was in sharp relief when Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckberberg opened its platform up to third-party developers. The crafty move sent widget makers into near ecstasy. (“He likes us, he really likes us!”)

And while widgets were actually on its site for a while, MySpace had not formalized those relationships with programmers and even battled with them, which has been the source of consternation in the development community.

Now, the company is trying to mend those broken links and has built more organized systems for letting software developers build a range of new services for its users. It also partnered with Google in the search giant’s efforts to open up the development process with its OpenSocial initiative.

Time will tell if the make-nice efforts by MySpace will work, but here’s a video of the party (and in the following post here features longer interviews with DeWolfe and Kapur):

BoomTown went and did a video of the event here, where the trendy, Beverly Hills-based social-networking site made nice with the geeky widget makers of Silicon Valley.

And we also talked to MySpace Co-Founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe and new COO Amit Kapur: