According to sources, AOL will be announcing that it is making cuts of up to 40 employees in its communication products teams, specifically its AIM instant messaging and AOL Mail units. As part of the changes, its SVP of business operations, Eric van Miltenburg, and AIM head Jason Shellen will be leaving.

[UPDATE: AOL confirmed those moves to be several hours after this post appeared.]

Shellen is a particularly high-profile departure, having sold his start-up Thing Labs, maker of the Brizzly family of Web-based social software, to AOL in 2010. The Thing Labs team, headed by the Google and Blogger vet, had been integrated into AOL’s AIM and other similar offerings.

Van Miltenburg, a former Yahoo exec, had headed up business operations for the now-shifted consumer applications unit.

The departures are among a number of exits by AOL execs who had come to the New York-based Internet company, which has struggled to turn itself around in recent years under CEO Tim Armstrong. The company is now facing a challenge from an activist shareholder, one of the reasons for a renewed focus on cost-cutting and other restructuring.

Here’s today’s Silicon Valley roundelay:

Rob Macdonald (pictured here), head of traditional media and publisher partnerships at Google (GOOG), just joined online publishing and document-sharing start-up Scribd as SVP of business development.

He will be based in New York, where Scribd is opening an office too.

Over at AOL (AOL), former Yahoo (YHOO) exec Brad Garlinghouse has snagged longtime Apple veteran Alan Eyzaguirre (pictured here) as the new VP of AOL Mail.

Eyzaguirre, who was most recently director of software product marketing in Europe at Apple, will be based in Mountain View, Calif.

But Google is not without seat at this job switcheroo–it has hired Venkat Panchapakesan (pictured here), a high-ranking former Yahoo tech exec and a longtime company veteran who left the Internet giant last year to be an entrepreneur-in-residence at Greylock Partners.

At Yahoo, Panchapakesan was last EVP of the Audience Technology Group and at Google will be VP of Enterprise Engineering, according to his new LinkedIn status.

Mr. Garlinghouse joined AOL earlier this year, and on Thursday, as the company completed its spinoff and began trading, he fired off another memo, this time promising AOL mail customers that change is coming:

Today marks a very important milestone in AOL’s history–and future. As we separate from Time Warner and become an independent company, we mark the beginning of a fresh start and open the door to new opportunities. I believe this is a perfect time for rebuilding trust, confidence and passion around AOL and the products we bring you.

I realize that–at times–over the past few years, it’s been challenging to be an AOL Mail user. I’ve heard your feedback and we’re going to start making changes with a renewed focus on you. We can and will make our free AOL Mail product world class!

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Although about one-third of its user base–30 million people–has already switched over to its new design, which has been opt-in since July, Facebook will now officially start to move the entire site and the other 70 million Facebookers.

The changeover–which is not optional–will be complete in a few weeks, Facebook said.

I do like the new look, which is definitely cleaner and simpler, although it makes the experience a little more disjointed, since everyone’s profile is now cut up into tabs.

But it is nice to be able to better customize your information via those tabs, and it is easier to navigate (although search on Facebook still stinks, and BoomTown actually looks forward to Microsoft’s attempt to tame this savage beast).

Of course, there have been a lot of complaints from users, and there is even a popular “I Hate the New Facebook” group on the site (natch!).

And not all third-party application developers like it either, including new navigational changes that limit instant user access to as many applications as before.

But that’s life in Zucker-berg!

Over at AOL, a division of Time Warner (TWX), there has also been some primping going on, which includes an interesting integration of popular third-party emails.

Now it is easy to add access to non-AOL email accounts, such as GMail and Yahoo! Mail, which sit right next to AOL Mail at the top of its main AOL home page. (See the image above and click on it to make it larger.)

Other changes are coming soon, all part of AOL’s laudable attempt at openness, to keep its Web site as relevant as possible.

Not that it has a choice. Back in its glory days, AOL was the emperor of the walled garden strategy, which kept users inside well-tended online paths and out of the wilds of the Internet at large.

Which, if you think about it, seems as quaint as the faux political nostalgia around small-town life these days.

But, since you apparently can’t put lipstick on a pig (or a pit bull either!), Green Acres is no longer the place to be in real life or on the Web.