This feature appears to have popped up today, and there doesn’t seem to be any other details about the offer, like the number of days in advance that Newsstand buyers will get their iPad editions. I’ve asked Hearst for more information.

[UPDATE: A few more tidbits, via Hearst pr's Alexandra Carlin: She says the length of Newsstand buyers' headstart "varies", depending on publication, and that the offer applies to single copy sales as well as subs. As far as the deal's origins: "Apple suggested this initiative, and it’s a great offer they can provide to their newsstand users. We’re always working with our retail partners on unique ways to drive consumer sale and engagement."]

Right now, Hearst is the only publisher offering the option, for 22 of its titles. An Apple rep says it will be happy to let other publishers try the same thing.

This looks like the first time any publisher has tried an early digital “window” for their magazines, anywhere. Hollywood has recently warmed to the same idea when it comes to selling their movies online.

Bigger context for the tweak: Magazine publishers, who were once giddy about the prospects of selling their titles via the iPad, have sobered up.

The general consensus: Tablet editions are a nice revenue stream that in some cases brings publishers new readers, and in others helps them hang onto existing print subscribers, via online/offline bundles. But they’re not enough to save many publishers from the decline of their print businesses — a reality that Time Inc. staffers are bracing for as they get ready for long-reported and significant layoffs.

Earlier this month, Hearst Magazine boss David Carey told his employees that the company had reached 800,000 paid digital subscribers by the end of 2012. We’ll talk to him about where he goes next in a few weeks, at our D: Dive into Media conference. See you there …

Redmond is facing all sorts of challenges, but its Xbox is a clear success, not only as a gaming console, but as an Internet-connected entertainment device, which gives users access to video services like Netflx and HBO Go, and, increasingly, cable programming from the likes of ESPN. Microsoft says Xbox users now spend more time consuming media than playing games.

Which is why we’re very excited to bring two key Xbox executives onstage next month at D: Dive into Media: Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, and Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who is building a new production studio for the device.

Mehdi is the man running marketing, strategy and corporate development for Xbox, and he’s the guy who links the console up with all the studios, networks and publishers who are creating content for the device. Prior to this job, he oversaw Microsoft’s media presence on the Web.

Tellem, a veteran TV executive, is the former CBS president now tasked with creating new programming for the device. She’s building out a Hollywood presence for Steve Ballmer, and her hire last fall was Microsoft’s most aggressive move into the content business so far.

They’re joining a stellar lineup of speakers Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, USA Today publisher Larry Kramer, and Dish Network founder Charlie Ergen.

And, yes, we’ll have yet more names to announce in the coming weeks. But if you want to see these folks in person, register now, and we’ll see you soon.

But while lots of pay-TV operators are happy to keep things the way they are, Ergen keeps trying to blow them up: The Dish Network co-founder and chairman is constantly fighting with the rest of the TV Industrial Complex, in disputes that often end up in court.

His most recent and prominent battle is also the most important one: Dish’s new “Auto Hop” technology lets satellite TV subscribers automatically skip commercials, and that has both advertisers and TV networks in fits, for obvious reasons.

But that’s just one of Ergen’s recent adventures. He has also bought Blockbuster out of bankruptcy in an attempt to take on Netflix, engaged in bruising battles with Cablevision and its AMC Networks spinoff, and rattled his saber against ESPN and its ever-increasing sports fees.

Oh. He’s also talking to Google, and everyone else, about getting into the wireless business.

All of which means the former blackjack and poker player is someone everyone in the media world watches very, very closely, even though he doesn’t say much in public. Which means we’re very excited to interview him at our D: Dive Into Media conference in February.

Ergen will be joining an all-star cast on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos (and guest), New Republic owner Chris Hughes, and USA Today publisher Larry Kramer.

And there’s more to come! Stay tuned. Meanwhile, we’re getting close to showtime, so make your reservations now.

Ask Chris Hughes and Larry Kramer.

Hughes, one of the original Facebook friends, used a bit of his newfound wealth to buy the storied New Republic earlier this year. A few months after that, Gannett put Kramer, a longtime digital media pro, in charge of its iconic USA Today.

Those are two very disparate publications, but they share a similar challenge: It’s very easy to find the stuff they’re best at — political opinion and general news — for free, all over the Internet. So how do you get readers and advertisers to pay attention, and/or money?

There’s a very good chance Hughes and Kramer won’t solve that one by February, when they appear at our D: Dive into Media conference in Laguna Niguel, California. But we’ll get a very interesting progress report. And since they’ll be onstage at the same time, we should get a very entertaining conversation, too.

Kramer is a former reporter and editor who ended up building and running big Web businesses — most notably MarketWatch, which he sold to CBS in 2005. He then stuck around long enough to help the TV giant embrace digital, via deals like the ones that put March Madness on the Web and CBS TV shows on iTunes. For a smart overview of his challenges at USA Today, see Ken Doctor’s take from earlier this year.

Hughes, quite famously, was one of Mark Zuckerberg’s roommates at Harvard, and became Facebook’s first marketing and PR head. Then he joined Barack Obama’s first presidential run, where he played a key role in the campaign’s pioneering use of social media. Now he’s trying to revamp a 98-year-old magazine that used to play a key role in Washington politics; for more on that see this excellent New York magazine profile.

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun, Netflix content chief Ted Sarandos and The Person From “Arrested Development” We’d Like to Name But Can’t (Yet).

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

Now it’s a bit of everything: Old and not-so-old TV shows, movies you haven’t heard of, movies you have heard of, and starting next year, TV shows that Netflix is making for itself.

The man in charge of all that is Ted Sarandos, who negotiates all of the Silicon Valley company’s deals with Hollywood. So he’s a perfect guy to bring onstage for our upcoming D: Dive Into Media conference, which is all about the confluence of tech and media.

And appearing onstage alongside Sarandos will be … well, we can’t come out and say who, exactly. (Believe us. We’d like to. And we will! But not today. Hollywood is an odd place.)

But we can tell you that it’s someone intimately involved in Arrested Development, the much-loved Fox comedy series that Netflix is reviving next year.

So that should be fun! And informative, too: Sarandos can explain what it’s like to haggle with partners who can’t figure out if they want to cash your checks, or kill you off, or both. And … person to be named later can explain what it’s like to create a big TV show for a digital-only audience. Among other things!

They’ll join a pretty great cast at the stunning Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, Calif., on February 11 and 12. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen, Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith, Intel media head Erik Huggers and Samsung media head David Eun.

More to come! In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference. See you soon …

At our D: Dive into Media conference in February, we’ll be talking to people who make amazing content, the people who make a living selling amazing content and the people who help distribute all of that stuff.

But if you want to figure out the future of media, you also have to talk to the people who make the boxes and gadgets you’ll use to consume all of that content.

That’s why we’re very happy to hear at Dive into Media from two heavyweights with important new roles: Intel’s Erik Huggers, corporate vice president at Intel Media, and Samsung’s David Eun, executive vice president for global media.

Intel’s chips have been powering entertainment boxes for a long time. Now the company is reportedly getting ready to plunge directly into the pay-TV business itself by trying to cut deals with cable programmers and rolling out a next-generation set-top box of its own.

Huggers, who used to run the BBC’s digital efforts, is heading up that push, but hasn’t talked about it publicly yet. For now, the company says his efforts are “focused on exploring new ways to access, interact with and share the latest in digital entertainment.” We’ll get a chance to figure out what that really means when he gets on our stage.

And Samsung is already a huge deal in the media world, given its position of power in both the TV and mobile markets. Eun, a tech and media veteran (Google, Time Warner, NBC, AOL), is supposed to leverage that clout to bring software and services to his company’s devices.

Now he’s trying to expand the company’s presence in Silicon Valley, where he’s opening up a new outpost in an effort to build out digital content and services. His Dive appearance will be his first public opportunity to make his case to tech and media hotshots.

Huggers and Eun are joining an all-star lineup in February. Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines president David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino, CollegeHumor co-founder Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media co-founder Shane Smith.

And we’ve got more great names to announce very soon: Watch this space. In the meantime, head here to find registration information for the conference, which will be held Feb. 11 and 12 at the stunning Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, California.

Or you can save yourself a lot of hassle and ask two guys who are already making pretty good progress.

That would be CollegeHumor’s Ricky Van Veen and Vice Media’s Shane Smith. And you can find them both at our Dive into Media conference next year.

To refresh your memory: Dive Into Media is our one-night-plus-one-day tour of the media landscape, and the way technology is changing that world day by day. That means unscripted, unrehearsed conversations with an all-star cast of moguls who hold very different perspectives. They’re all joining us Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, just south of Los Angeles.

Here’s who we’ve told you about so far: Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines President David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora, Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose, HBO co-president Eric Kessler and Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino.

And here are two more — both of whom have done very well on the Web and are now trying to figure out how to apply those lessons to more traditional outlets:

Ricky Van Veen co-founded CollegeHumor in 1999, when he and his buddies were actually in college. Seven years later, the site had evolved from a frat-tastic side project into an ambitious, successful content creation machine, and Barry Diller bought it for his IAC conglomerate. Now Van Veen is still working for Diller, but he’s moved from the Web to older media: He’s making TV shows like “Chopped” via IAC’s Notional production company, and next year he’ll release “Coffee Town,” a full-length feature film.

Shane Smith and his Vice Media co-founders started out publishing a raucous, no-holds-barred magazine back in the ’90s, and fumbled their way into the Internet during the first Web boom. Now they seem to have it figured out: They’re on track to generate $200 million this year, while making eye-popping videos — here’s a tour guide for Kabul — backed by blue-chip advertisers like Intel. Next up: An HBO series, and lots of attention from guys who run really big media empires.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now, you can find registration information here.

Last month, we announced our second Dive Into Media conference, and you guys told us you liked what you heard. Thanks! Here’s Act Two: We’ll have top executives from HBO and Live Nation joining us in February.

A reminder: Dive Into Media is our one-night-plus-one-day look at the way the media business is grappling with the challenges, and opportunities, that the whirling world of technology presents. That means thoughtful but lively conversations with a stellar cast of movers and shakers, and a chance to learn about new players, as well.

So far, we’ve announced that Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton, Hearst Magazines President David Carey, Google chief business officer Nikesh Arora and Facebook partnership vice president Dan Rose will be joining us on Feb. 11 and 12 at the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, just south of Los Angeles.

And here come two more moguls:

Eric Kessler is HBO’s co-president, and by the time you see him onstage, he’ll be the pay channel’s COO. He’s the guy who has mapped out HBO’s distribution and marketing strategy since 2007, which means he’s the guy behind the company’s much-praised HBO Go service/app. That also means he’s the guy to complain to when you insist that you want to watch “Game of Thrones” on your iPad without subscribing to cable. Kessler can explain why HBO says it has no interest in doing that — for now — even as it experiments with digital distribution outside the U.S.

Michael Rapino is the CEO of Live Nation Entertainment, the world’s most powerful events and ticketing company. Live Nation does more than $5 billion a year in revenue — if you sat in a concert hall, stadium or club in the last year, you probably contributed to his take. Even as digital has decimated other industries, live sports and music remain remarkably strong, which is why Rapino has lots of upstarts at his heels. He’s also trying to turn a company with famously creaky technology into a much more nimble player.

Just like our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, D: Dive into Media will give you rare access to deep, smart talks with the people who matter. And we’ll be announcing more of them in the weeks to come. For now, you can find registration information here.

Want to hear more? We’re happy to oblige: We’ll be hosting our second edition of the event next February.

Like our first event, we’ll use the Dive conference to highlight a story we cover at AllThingsD every day — the way the media business responds to technology’s threats and opportunities — by letting you meet some of the industry’s most powerful and fascinating leaders.

You’ll also learn about new players that will have a big impact in the months and years to come. And like every All Things Digital event, you’ll get all of this via our trademark interviews: Unscripted, uncensored and thought-provoking.

The setting is awfully compelling, too: We’re coming back to the excellent Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Niguel, perched above the Pacific, about an hour south of Los Angeles. It’s a great way to spend a night and a day.

We’ll be announcing speakers throughout the fall, but here’s a sampling of what we’ve got planned:

Michael Lynton is CEO of Sony Entertainment Inc., a new post which gives him control of Sony’s movie studio, its music label and its powerful Sony/ATV music publishing joint venture. Each of those businesses faces very different prospects, and we’ll talk about all of them, in one of Lynton’s first appearances since taking the job last spring.

David Carey became president of Hearst Magazines in 2010, and since then he has pushed the publisher aggressively into digital apps and editions for iPads, Kindles and other platforms. But he’s also insistent on keeping the magazine industry’s core bundle of content plus ads intact, and he’ll explain why.

Nikesh Arora is senior vice president and chief business officer at Google, which means he’s in charge of all revenue at Google (2011 total: $38 billion), which means he may be the most powerful person in the advertising industry. We’ll have lots of questions for him.

Dan Rose is vice president of partnerships at Facebook, a big job that makes him the man to see for every media company trying to figure out how to work with the social network and its 955 million users. We’ll ask him what publishers, movie studios, TV networks and music labels are asking for, and what Facebook can deliver.

On behalf of Walt Mossberg, Kara Swisher and the rest of the AllThingsD staff, I’d like to invite you to join us Feb. 11 and 12.

That’s spread out among sales from Apple’s App Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and the Zinio digital reader platform. “Now we’re going to get a fourth distribution channel tomorrow,” says Hearst president David Carey, without ever saying the word “Amazon.”

So what does that mean? Because digital numbers aren’t uniformly reported yet, it’s a little hard to figure how that compares to the rest of the industry.

Earlier this summer, for instance, Conde Nast put out a release announcing that it had distributed 242,000 digital copies in the six weeks after it started selling subscriptions via Apple’s App Store. But 136,000 of those came from print customers who got digital copies for free with their subscription.

[UPDATE: Conde offers some updated numbers: It says its monthly digital circulation is now 500,000; 225,000 of those are digital-only subscribers, with the rest getting bundles.]

And in Hearst’s case, the publisher is stressing that all 300,000 of its downloads were tied to a payment. Because unlike its peers, it doesn’t offer print/digital bundles.

Another way to look at it: Hearst sells yearly digital subscriptions for $19.99 a year. Since some of those download numbers come from individual sales, each monthly digital unit represents annual revenue of $15 to $20, according to people familiar with the company’s operations. In other words, Hearst’s digital editions are now on an annual run rate of $4.5 million to $6 million.

And yet another way: Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine, one of Hearst’s most popular titles, sells about 2.5 million copies a month.

So this is still smallish stuff. But it is new stuff, and that’s encouraging for an industry trying to ease into the digital world without cutting off its legacy business.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see if Amazon’s tablet buyers behave like iPad owners or Nook/Zinio users. While most of the digerati have focused on digital magazines on the iPad (guilty), Hearst has done best so far on the Nook and Zinio, both of which offer what digerati used to dismissively refer to as “glorified PDFs” (guilty again).

Then again, those platforms also generate more sales for Hearst because the publisher sells all of its 19 titles on those platforms. So far it has sold just 3 titles via Apple. What about Amazon?

Carey again declines to say the word “Amazon” out loud. “But for any future e-commerce opportunities, stores that we would go into would get everything,” he says. Do your own math there.

Plans for the move were first reported yesterday by the New York Observer.

The swap is really a testament to the power of Google (GOOG) and the long-tail theory: Even though Condé had been running Portfolio.com with a skeleton crew since the beginning of the year, the site was still generating four to five million page views a month, primarily because of search queries, says Condé Nast Group President David Carey. So that alone made Portfolio.com worth saving.

It will now serve as the central hub for ACBJ, a collection of 40 local business publications (including one I used to work for many moons ago). But it won’t just be an aggregator, insists ACBJ President Tim Bradbury. He intends to rebuild the site’s staff–he’s keeping two of the last Portfolio.com employees and intends to launch with a full-time editorial staff of five, plus freelancers–and pump out new content.

Bradbury says he’d “like to get the old band back together,” but I’m not sure exactly what that means. In the last few months of Portfolio.com’s life, the site was essentially a blogging platform for the excellent duo of Felix Salmon, who covered finance, and Jeff Bercovici, who covered media. But Salmon jumped ship for Reuters prior to the shutdown, so he’s presumably locked up. No word on Bercovici’s plans. But even if Bradbury can’t get those two back on board, I’m guessing there’s no shortage of applicants for full-time and contract slots.

Here’s the release:

New York, NY, May 20, 2009 – Portfolio.com will become part of the American City Business Journal’s bizjournals.com effective in July, it was announced today by Tim Bradbury, President, American City Business Journals, New Media, (ACBJ) and David Carey, Group President, Condé Nast. ACBJ and Condé Nast are units of Advance Publications.

Bizjournals.com will oversee both the editorial and business sides of the site. The Portfolio.com editorial team and sales staff will be based in New York. In addition to newly created content, the site will share content with other Condé Nast sites including Wired.com, GolfDigest.com, and WWD.com, as it did previously. The site will also be the home of the archives of all the popular content published by Portfolio’s print and digital properties over the last two years.

“We are excited about continuing Portfolio.com and including the site in the bizjournals network because we were impressed by Portfolio’s strong web presence, its clean and crisp design, and its voice in the business journalism marketplace,” Tim Bradbury, President, American City Business Journals, New Media said. “We believe our readers will benefit as the re-launched Portfolio.com will have a stronger focus on industry news and a greater mission to offer information relevant to today’s business professionals.”

On top of its existing strengths, Portfolio.com will be able to leverage the collaborative skills and insights of the more than 600 ACBJ business journalists around the country. The site now will have access to local market intelligence and work collaboratively with ACBJ newsrooms across the country, presenting the most important local insights through a national lens and making it unique among national business media.

“We knew that Portfolio.com was a highly valuable asset, with an established digital brand, strong direct navigation by users, and a solid long tail of traffic from content published over the past two years,” David Carey, Group President, Condé Nast said. “We saw ACBJ as a perfect match due to its great editorial resources in the business arena, and view this as a win for both Portfolio.com’s readers and the company.”

Condé Nast Portfolio magazine and its website Portfolio.com, launched in April 2007 and the magazine closed in April 2009. The site provided insight into the day’s top business stories, with analysis from bloggers and columnists. During those two years Portfolio.com grew to 2.8 million monthly uniques and won industry praise with awards such as the MIN:  Best of Web 2008, MIN: Hottest Launch of the Year 2007, WebAward: Outstanding Achievement in Website Development 2007, and Webby nominees in Best Business blog and Financial Services categories.

The magazine’s May issue, which is out now, will be its last. The Web site will be shuttered “in the second quarter,” the company says.

Portfolio has had its doubters even prior to its launch in 2007. Long before the advertising market cratered, critics worried that the market couldn’t support a fourth business magazine to compete with Forbes, Time Warner’s (TWX ) Fortune and McGraw-Hill’s (MHP) BusinessWeek; they also marveled at the reported $100 million budget that Condé Nast had committed to the launch.

No telling whether that bet would have paid off in a healthier market for the high-end advertising that business magazines thrive on. (But likely not: “Condé Nast made a classic mistake of spotting a consumer magazine ‘opportunity’ based on advertising and demographic considerations, not actual reader demand,” as BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine puts it). But the current market is as bad as it could get: In the first three months of 2009, magazine ad pages declined more than 25 percent, according to an industry trade group, and Portfolio’s pages dropped by more than 60 percent. Some of that drop stems from the magazine’s move to a 10-issue-a-year schedule, down from 12 a year.

But Portfolio has been suffering for quite some time. Last fall, the magazine laid off a good portion of its staff and turned its Web site into a skeleton operation. And parent Condé Nast, which also made a round of layoffs last fall, has continued to cut back this year, eliminating perks, staff and titles throughout the company. In March CEO Chuck Townsend sent out a memo warning that “as the downturn extends, we have to make additional difficult decisions to manage costs and ensure our financial well-being.”

Here’s the full statement from Carey:

Earlier today, Condé Nast announced, quite regrettably, that it is pulling back from its investment in Portfolio.

For this high-profile, 21-issue launch, the recession has helped and hurt the brand. While the unprecedented nature of these times has made business and the economy the main topic of conversation, it has also led to high levels of uncertainty and a tremendous reduction in ad spend in the five key sectors Portfolio’s business model depends on.

The company is deeply grateful to Portfolio’s readers and for the broad support of marketers and executives all around the country.

And here’s the beginning of the magazine’s obituary from soon-to-be-unemployed Portfolio.com media writer Jeff Bercovici:

For nearly two years I’ve been covering the media industry’s bad news on this blog, including some that’s hit very close to home. Now it hits closer still: Condé Nast Portfolio is closing.

Our editor in chief, Joanne Lipman, just broke the news to staff, saying the decision had been made “because of financial reasons at Advance,” Condé Nast’s parent company. “It’s not anything that the company wanted to do.” She said she was informed by Condé Nast chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. this morning of the decision.

And here’s the press release:

Condé Nast will cease publication of Portfolio effective with its May issue and Portfolio.com will close in the second quarter of the year, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and CEO of Condé Nast.

“The pressures and realities of the continuous deep economic slump have lowered Portfolio’s revenue projections below what is needed to continue publication,” Mr. Townsend said. “Portfolio was an ambitious and innovative magazine and website, and we were proud to publish them. The challenges facing this launch however proved too great. Joanne Lipman is an extraordinarily skillful editor and William Li is a very talented publisher. We thank them and their staffs for their tremendous efforts. It is unfortunate we were unable to give Portfolio the time needed to fully mature.”

Portfolio and Portfolio.com were launched in May 2007. The magazine has published 21 issues since its launch. The magazine received a National Magazine Award in 2008 and has been nominated for multiple awards since.

Condé Nast Publications, a unit of Advance Publications, includes consumer magazines, Condé Nast Digital, the Fairchild Fashion Group, the Condé Nast Media Group, and the Shared Services Centers.

A second source says they’ve been told the staff will shrink down to three people and that a “plan would be worked out in the next couple of days.”

Also unclear: Which one of Condé’s digital units will end up adopting the Web site. Portfolio.com had been run as a standalone property. That made it a rarity at Condé, where most of magazines’ digital arms are run by its Magnet unit, and the rest are run by Sarah Chubb’s CondéNet group.

Confused? So are most Condé Nast staffers, who spend lots of time complaining about the publisher’s byzantine digital architecture. But you won’t hear them complaining too loudly right now–they’re trying to hang on to their jobs, or at least protect their exit packages.

Web site staffers were told about the cuts in a meeting led by General Manager Ari Brandt and publisher David Carey, who didn’t provide much detail, according to people who attended the meeting.

Portfolio.com staffers have been told they have been meeting their revenue goals for 2008 while the magazine has not. According to a person who attended the meeting, one of the staff’s braver souls asked Carey why the Web site was being punished more severely than the magazine.

“He gave a sort of corporate-speak answer, and what it appeared to boil down to is, is ‘This is a magazine company,’” says a person who attended the meeting. ”And it left the impression that the Web site was sacrificed to save the magazine.”

In a separate meeting, Portfolio magazine editor Joanne Lipman told her staff that the publication would cut some positions and publish 10 times a year instead of monthly.

UPDATE: A partial list of departing Portfolio staffers.

Time Warner’s Time Inc. (TWX) won’t be the only magazine publisher making cuts this fall: Condé Nast is trimming its sails, too.

The New York Observer reports that every title at the privately held publisher is being required to cut five percent from both its editorial and business ledgers, a number that MediaMemo hasn’t been able to confirm.

But I can tell you that the staff at Portfolio, Condé’s business magazine launched with equal parts fanfare and controversy last year, has been summoned to an all-hands meetings that should be starting … now. I’ll pass along more details as I get them.

UPDATE: A partial list of departing Portfolio staffers.

Recall that just two days ago Condé Nast publisher David Carey was expressing (guarded) optimism about advertising budgets next year. I’m guessing that if he were less optimistic, the cuts would be even larger.

And what about CondéNet, the Condé division that handles Web properties for some, but not all, of the publisher’s magazines? No comment, but one might imagine Sarah Chubb’s unit will be cutting back, too.

UPDATE: Condé is firing most of the staff of Portfolio.com, shrinking it from two dozen down to “single digits.”

UPDATE: I’m told that Portfolio staff has just been told the magazine will now be published 10 times a year, down from 12, and will cut five percent from its edit budget. (A second source says that will amount to 18 to 20 staffers) The December and January issues will be combined, as will the June and July issues.

UPDATE: One officially announced cut: Men’s Vogue will be shrunk down to a twice-yearly schedule. The one-paragraph release:

Men’s Vogue will be absorbed into Vogue and published in the spring and fall, it was announced today by Charles H. Townsend, President and C.E.O of Condé Nast Publications. It will continue to be edited by Jay Fielden.”

Disclosure: I’ve done freelance work for Vanity Fair.

Last year MediaMemo made some intemperate comments about paidContent’s “Future Of Business Media” conference.

But I am happy to say that I don’t have any complaints about this year’s event. (OK, I do–the Wi-Fi’s been a bit spotty.)

But lots of good speakers and thoughtful questions. I look forward to checking out Rafat Ali’s paidContent reporting to catch up on the sessions I missed from this morning.

But I can tell you about an amazing event I saw this afternoon–an optimistic magazine publishing executive, who didn’t appear visibly drunk or otherwise intoxicated.

Here’s the quote, in its entirety, from Condé Nast publisher David Carey, who was part of a panel on business magazines: “We’ve talked to a lot of clients who are surprisingly bullish about their ad spend next year.”

“Who’s that”? Forbes.com publisher Jim Spanfeller immediately asked. But David just smiled.

Remind me to follow up with Carey on that next spring.