In an interview BoomTown did yesterday with Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving–the video of which will be posted later today–at the Silicon Valley Internet giant’s HQ in Sunnyvale, CA, he managed to actually give me some news to report: the hire of crackerjack user experience design head Tim Parsey.

Parsey’s title will be SVP of User Experience Design at Yahoo, which is now centralizing the important task, Irving said. Previously, in the 67-ring circus that has been Yahoo’s product organization, design was widely dispersed.

Parsey certainly has the cred in the industry, with stints at Apple, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices unit, Mattel and Motorola. Most recently, he was a principal at a Seattle-based design firm called shiftalliance.

The British native ran Apple’s design studio for five years in the early 1990s and and was the main dude behind Motorola’s freaky V70 switchblade mobile phone in 2001.

Best of all: Parsey was once responsible for Barbie, as you can read below from his bio from shiftalliance, which announced his departure several days ago on its site:

[Tim Parsey] co-founded shiftalliance to focus on higher order value creation in business. The company is built on three beliefs: 1. that higher order, or meaningful, value is the next value driver in mature markets; 2. that sustainable innovation needs to consider the whole business model and; 3. that establishing a people-centric continuous change process is critical for success in today’s markets .

Prior to shiftalliance, he served as Partner, User Experience (UX) Director, Xbox Design at Microsoft, where he led a 22-person team responsible for the design and development of a new technology-enabled paradigm of interaction and entertainment that would not disrupt revenue streams from the existing Xbox gaming platform and contribute to the business in a more strategic way.

Previously, at Mattel as VP, Consumer Products Design, Tim was responsible for the Barbie, Hot Wheels and Fisher Price brands (in all non-toy categories) across 45,000 sku’s contributing nearly $2 billion in revenue worldwide. His charge was to establish the strategic and creative vision, and evolve the culture from a traditional licensing to a ‘leveraged innovation’ and ‘marketed product’ based approach. Key components of this evolution were to establish the first design languages for Mattel brands; lead design innovation for cross-functionally conceived marketing platforms (product, entertainment/web and 360 degree marketing); and nurture the individual licensee businesses and 5,000 designers across the portfolio into a community motivated to share and innovate together, thereby driving the business evolution at an appropriate pace. Before that, as VP, Wheels Design, he led 45 toy designers to advance the Hot Wheels, Matchbox and Pixar CARS toy design businesses. Activities included establishing product and brand design strategies, evolving the toy teams and building the first licensed consumer products design team, all of which led to re-energized business growth. This experience was a planned opportunity to understand toy design and specifically play innovation, and led to the formalization of the first play design methodology for Mattel.

Prior to Mattel, Tim served as Corporate Vice President at Motorola, where he built and led the Consumer Experience Design (CxD) group for the Personal Communications Sector (mobile phones) from an established industrial design team of approximately 22 in the US to a multifunctional design organization of approximately 150 distributed. This journey that included developing design as a competitive advantage for the company began 5 years after the StarTac and led to the design of Razr, the most successful brand and product range to be informed by a design strategy called ‘rich minimalism’. At the time, approximately 100 cell phones a year were being designed with a broad range of derivatives for different markets and carriers. CxD was distributed across Asia, North America and Europe and included Advanced Design and Design Planning groups that fed advanced thinking and strategies into the User Interface, Industrial Design and Human Factors groups. Specific achievements included establishing a collaborative industrial and user interface design methodology with key carriers.

Before that, Tim served as VP, Product Design and Development for ACCO, a manufacturer of office supplies and Manager, Design Studio at Apple after working as staff designer at ID Two (now IDEO) and other leading design consulting firms.

And here is a video of him speaking at a TEDx event about a year ago:

In a bold and definitive move, AOL is paying $315 million, mostly in cash, to buy the Huffington Post, one of the Web’s most prominent news and opinion sites.

As part of the deal, Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington (pictured here)–who was derided by some when she co-founded the left-leaning site in 2005 with investor and well-known communications exec Kenneth Lerer–will become president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group within AOL.

The deal was signed late this afternoon, and the board of directors of each company and shareholders of the privately held Huffington Post have approved the transaction.

In an exclusive video interview BoomTown conducted earlier today in Dallas, just before Super Bowl XLV, both Armstrong and Huffington were jovial that the whirlwind deal, begun in November, actually worked out so quickly.

Perhaps giddy, they hit upon a common motto:

“One plus one equals 11.”

Get it? One and one next to each other is the number 11!

Let’s move on, shall we?

AOL said it is expected to close in the late-first or early-second quarter of 2011.

Once culminated, it will put Huffington in charge of all AOL content and other properties, including well-known names such as Engadget, Moviefone, MapQuest and TechCrunch.

She said she plans to move to New York from Los Angeles, although she will also maintain her longtime Brentwood home there.

And content for all these sites will be integrated deeply into the Huffington Post, giving it a huge new infusion of editorial material.

More to the point, the flashy acquisition–which essentially came together in less than two weeks in January–will become the linchpin of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s aggressive, if risky, strategy to focus the long-troubled company as a content and advertising powerhouse.

For AOL, the deal gives it a popular branded site that is very good at generating lots of page views and impressions very efficiently–which is the company’s whole thrust these days.

That means lots more ad inventory to sell and an injection of content talent, giving AOL the scale it desperately needs.

The move also obviously gives AOL a much-needed editorial identity and cohesion, which it doesn’t really have.

In fact, many think AOL needs a rallying point to bring clarity to its hodgepodge of recent acquisitions that all center on the notion that a strong company has yet to emerge in the premium content space.

Here is a mock-up of the front page of AOL tonight (click on it to make it larger):

While it all makes for a riveting narrative by the charming Armstrong, AOL still has not delivered the business turnaround promised after its spinoff from Time Warner in 2009.

Wall Street, which has given Armstrong a lot of rope, has become more impatient of late to see results–especially more robust increases in its display advertising business, as its access business dies off–after AOL spun off from Time Warner in 2009.

In its quarterly report last week, AOL reported earnings of 61 cents a share on revenue of $596 million.

But, as MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka wrote:

The bigger picture is that Armstrong’s turnaround is still in progress. Ad revenue was down 29 percent in the last quarter, although that number is worse than it looks. A big chunk of the decline comes from moves AOL has intentionally made that will cut revenue in the short run in return for more profitable sales down the road.

A more representative data set for Armstrong are his display ad sales, which are down 14 percent overall and eight percent in the U.S..

The bad news is that the rest of the Web ad industry is well into rebound mode; the good news is that AOL has trained Wall Street to expect numbers like these. If you’re waiting to see positive sales numbers, Armstrong said during AOL’s earnings call this morning, wait until the second half of this year.

In any case, the move is a good one for the Huffington Post since it will vault it to the next level of growth.

Other companies, such as Yahoo and NBC Universal, had looked at the company as a purchase target, and many expected it to eventually sell out to a larger company.

Sources close to the Huffington Post said that that outcome seemed the most likely, and the recent expansion of the site and its audience made it a good time to do a deal now.

Talks with Yahoo last year went nowhere, sources said, but Armstrong was not as slow to act.

Indeed, the actual deal happened quickly, said Armstrong and Huffington in a video interview with BoomTown earlier today (which you can see here).

The pair started talking in early November of last year at the Quadrangle Conference in New York and continued their discussions through the holidays.

Armstrong made the official offer to Huffington by phone in January, while she was at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he was snowed in in New York.

Five time multiple to the Huffington Post’s upward of $60 million in expected revenue for the coming year, and nearly 10 times the $31 million for 2010, the offer was accepted quickly.

AOL used cash for $300 million of the purchase and $15 million in stock for the rest.

“The idea of turning a fire hose of traffic onto our content made enormous sense,” said one person close to the situation. “Everything is changing so fast, it seemed like the time was right.”

An IPO was also considered for the Huffington Post, sources said. But since the site only recently moved into profitability–although barely–such an event would have been farther out.

That’s despite the fact that the Huffington Post has seen fast-growing traffic and influence, spurred in part by Huffington’s larger-than-life persona in both the mainstream media and blogosphere.

The wide-ranging site–which has added a number of content areas in recent years beyond its flagship political offering–currently has almost 26 million unique monthly visitors, according to recent stats, moving in close range to established news organizations such as the New York Times.

That kind of success seemed unlikely when the Huffington Post launched on May 9, 2005, positioning itself as as a liberal counterweight to the popular right-leaning Drudge Report.

But the Huffington Post’s heady mix of celebrity bloggers, personality and voice, as well as aggressive curation of links from other sites, quickly caught on.

To fund its efforts, the New York-based online media company has raised $37 million from angel investors such as Lerer–the largest individual shareholder, followed closely by Huffington–and venture firms such as Greycroft Partners, Softbank Capital and Oak Investment Partners.

The growth has not been without controversy around issues such as lack of payments to bloggers who contribute and accusations that the site uses too much content from other Web sources when linking.

And Huffington herself has also been a lightning rod, which has been both positive and negative for the site.

But, there is no question she is one of the Web’s most prominent players, along with writing books, appearing on television frequently and being a fixture at high-profile events in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

That includes a never-ending panoply of parties that feature a potent mix of movie stars, corporate poo-bahs, glad-handing politicians and lots of journalists from all over the media.

In fact, full disclosure, I was at one of those parties this past weekend for actor Colin Firth and others involved in the making of the Oscar-nominated film “The King’s Speech.” (Apropos of nothing, actor Helena Bonham Carter is as smart as you would expect, but much more delicate.)

As part of the AOL deal, CEO Eric Hippeau–who has been integral to professionalizing the business and will be joining Lerer Ventures–and Chief Revenue Officer Greg Coleman will leave the Huffington Post.

Ironically, Coleman was replaced by Armstrong as head of ad sales at AOL after he took over as CEO. Coleman got a big payout and will now apparently get another.

But the rest of the 200 Huffington Post employees are moving over to AOL with Huffington, who Armstrong hopes will be the company’s ace in the content hole going forward.

There are likely to be changes to come too at AOL, within weeks, especially in its content-side management and site staffs.

AOL provided some quotes in support of the deal from prominent Internet figures who know Huffington well.

“Arianna is one of the preeminent authors and editors of our time, and Tim has a remarkable track record of business success,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. “Bringing them together creates tremendous potential for AOL.”

And Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said:

“Editorial vision and leadership are essential in order to transmute our shared cacophony of voices into a valuable dialogue. Arianna’s expertise, empathy, and entrepreneurial enthusiasm forms a kind of alchemy turning mere words and phrases into powerful expressions of humanity.”

Inter-Internet harmony: How sweet!

Here is the official press release, with all the details, but there is also an 8 am ET AOL conference call tomorrow:

AOL AGREES TO ACQUIRE THE HUFFINGTON POST

Acquisition Will Solidify AOL’s Strategy of Creating a Premier Content Network With Local, National and International Reach

Arianna Huffington To Lead Newly Formed The Huffington Post Media Group Which Will Integrate All Huffington Post and AOL Content, Including News, Tech, Women, Local, Multicultural, Entertainment, Video, Community, and More

The New Combined Media Group Will Reach 117 Million Americans and 270 Million Globally

Group Uniquely Positioned To Redefine the Future of Brand Advertising and Marketing For an Engaged and Influential Audience

New York, NY–February 7, 2011–AOL Inc. [NYSE:AOL] announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire The Huffington Post, the influential and rapidly growing news, analysis, and lifestyle website founded in 2005, which now counts nearly 25 million unique monthly visitors*.

The transaction will create a premier global, national, local, and hyper-local content group for the digital age–leveraged across online, mobile, tablet, and video platforms. The combination of AOL’s infrastructure and scale with The Huffington Post’s pioneering approach to news and innovative community building among a broad and sophisticated audience will mark a seminal moment in the evolution of digital journalism and online engagement.

The new group will have a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States and 270 million around the world**. Following the close of this transaction, AOL will accelerate its strategy to deliver a scaled and differentiated array of premium news, analysis, and entertainment produced by thousands of writers, editors, reporters, and videographers around the globe.

As part of the transaction, Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, will be named president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group, which will include all Huffington Post and AOL content, including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, AutoBlog, Patch, StyleList, and more.

“The acquisition of The Huffington Post will create a next-generation American media company with global reach that combines content, community, and social experiences for consumers,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “Together, our companies will embrace the digital future and become a digital destination that delivers unmatched experiences for both consumers and advertisers.”

Armstrong continued, “Arianna is a singularly passionate and dedicated champion of innovative journalistic engagement, and a master of the art of using new media to illuminate, entertain and enhance the national conversation. Arianna is a remarkable person and she will continue to create remarkable outcomes for the combined company.”

“This is truly a merger of visions and a perfect fit for us,” said Huffington. “The Huffington Post will continue on the same path we have been on for the last six years–though now at light speed–by combining with AOL. Our readers will still be able to come to the Huffington Post at the same URL, and find all the same content they’ve grown to love, plus a lot more–more local, more tech, more entertainment, more finance, and lots more video. We are fusing a legendary and powerful new media brand with a vibrant, innovative news organization, known for its distinctive voice, a highly engaged audience, an expertise in community-building, and a track record for demystifying the news and putting flesh and blood on the data while drawing our audience into the conversation.”

Huffington continued, “By uniting AOL and The Huffington Post, we are creating one of the largest destinations for smart content and community on the Internet. And we intend to keep making it better and better.”

Kenneth Lerer, The Huffington Post’s Co-Founder and Chairman, said, “The Huffington Post team has created a potent brand with the proven track record of knowing how to grow traffic, inform and entertain its readers and build a one-of-a-kind online community. Add that to the powerful scale and resources of AOL and you have the perfect combination for today and the future. Together these two companies will be a premier online content provider. From local citizen reporting through AOL’s Patch, to The Huffington Post’s national reporting on politics, business and culture, consumers will have access to everything they want whenever they want it.”

AOL has agreed to purchase The Huffington Post for $315 million, approximately $300 million of which will be paid in cash funded from cash on hand. The Huffington Post is privately owned by its two cofounders, as well as a group of investors. The proposed transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of government approvals. The boards of directors of each company and shareholders of The Huffington Post have approved the transaction. The transaction is expected to close in the late first- or early second-quarter 2011.

The Huffington Post over-indexes on educated, affluent users, reaching the key decision makers in C-suites around the globe. The Huffington Post speaks to this influential audience via a host of prominent voices on its group blog. Among those who have blogged on The Huffington Post are: President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Larry Page, Diane Sawyer, Buzz Aldrin, Nora Ephron, Bill Maher, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Katie Couric, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Mia Farrow, Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Harry Shearer, Senator John Kerry, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Madonna, Lawrence Summers, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, Alec Baldwin, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Russell Simmons, Sean Penn, Bill Gates, Norman Lear, Charlie Rose, Elizabeth Warren, Tavis Smiley, Sheryl Sandberg, George Clooney, and former President Bill Clinton. And the audience speaks back, generating four million comments a month***.

The Huffington Post’s affluent, influential audience, that is growing at a rate of 22 percent (December 2009 vs. December 2010)****, when combined with AOL’s massive scale, video offerings and local expertise, will represent an incredibly desirable demographic for a broad range of advertising partners across the board.

And here is Armstrong’s internal memo to the AOL staff:

AOLers,

We are taking another major step in the comeback of AOL. Today we are announcing that we have agreed to acquire The Huffington Post, one of the most exciting, influential, and fastest growing properties on the Internet. We believe in brands, quality journalism, and the positive role of communities in the world–The Huffington Post shares our values and the combination of the two companies will create the premier global and local media company on the Internet.

Co-founded six years ago by Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer, The Huffington Post has grown to become an industry leader–one of the Web’s most popular and innovative sources of online news, commentary, and information. Arianna and team have created a brand and a destination that focuses on the consumer experience. By combining The Huffington Post with AOL’s network of sites, thriving video offerings, local expertise and enormous reach, we will create a company that is laser-focused on serving our audiences across every platform imaginable–social, local, video, mobile and tablet.

The Huffington Post is core to our strategy and our 80:80:80 focus–80% of domestic spending is done by women, 80% of commerce happens locally and 80% of considered purchases are driven by influencers. The influencer part of the strategy is important and will be potent.

The Huffington Post is a strong influencer brand and it attracts a valuable audience, including a great focus on women’s content. In addition, Arianna Huffington is a world-renowned expert on women’s topics and issues, and has enabled The Huffington Post to grow rapidly by continually developing new audiences.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a scaled connection between global and local communities on one platform. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely and entertaining way.

The Huffington Post will join the family of AOL Brands that are destinations for an influencer audience, brands like TechCrunch, Engadget, AutoBlog, and Moviefone. Uniquely, The Huffington Post is the platform for influential people–the people that drive trends, commerce, politics, entertainment, news, and information. Adding this strategic platform to our already strong network of sites, including the AOL homepage, has the potential to make AOL the most influential company in the content space.

Arianna Huffington is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the Internet space and someone that is even more successful in building communities and relationships in every corner of the globe. The Huffington Post and Arianna have created a company that has partnered with the most successful and well-known leaders in all aspects of society that touch important topics to give consumers direct access to the most influential decision makers and community leaders.

This acquisition will create a high-quality and diverse digital ecosystem encompassing local, national and international news, politics, entertainment, technology, fashion, sports, health, personal finance, green, lifestyle, the arts and more. This deal will combine the amazing talent at AOL with the innovative and talented staff of The Huffington Post. Here are just a few high-level points around what this deal brings to market:

* Together, AOL and The Huffington Post will have 117MM unduplicated domestic monthly UVs, and ~270MM monthly UVs worldwide (according to comScore Dec 2010).

* The Huffington Post is one of the fastest growing web properties on the Internet. It grew 22% last year–that’s faster than Twitter, which grew 18% – and 15x as quickly as the Internet grew last year (comScore Dec ’09-’10).

* Both AOL and The Huffington Post count powerful, affluent users among their top loyal visitors, significantly over-indexing in $100K+ income users.

* AOL passed Hulu in unique viewers on video in the fourth quarter of 2010; video views on AOL are up 400 percent year-over-year.

* Between AOL’s innovative Project Devil ad unit, engaging users for 27 seconds longer than traditional display ads, and The Huffington Post’s highly-vocal community, with 4MM+ comments per month, we will marry attention-grabbing content and brand experiences for both advertisers and consumers.

In the local area, the combination of the two companies will create a premier global/local syndication network at scale. This will create a new way for people to get local and global information in a timely, informative and entertaining way.

To maximize the strategic advantage of this great deal, we will be creating a new group at AOL called The Huffington Post Media Group. Within this group will be AOL Media, AOL Local & Mapping, AOL Search and our new friends at The Huffington Post. We will continue operating the towns structure, AOL.com and HuffingtonPost.com.

I’m thrilled to announce that Arianna Huffington will join AOL’s executive team as President and Editor in Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group. We have asked Jon Brod to lead the overall operational integration on the AOL side of the combined entities. Jon will lead the local group integration and work closely with David Eun and the teams in AOL Media. We will work quickly with The Huffington Post to create a combined organizational design to coincide with the deal closing. While we wait for the required regulatory reviews to be completed and the transaction to close before implementing the design, we will move very quickly to plan the details of the integration of the two companies. To this end, we will announce the new organizational structure as soon as possible.

In the meantime, we will continue creating great content and products for our consumers within the town structure and stay laser-focused on the aggressive goals we have set for our winter luge. We are on the right track and will continue our weekly operating cadence and town structure to drive successful results against our company goals.

Here’s a special message for all of you we taped to welcome The Huffington Post and Arianna to our AOL Family:

http://today.office.aol.com/company-news/2011/02/aol-agrees-buy-huffington-post

And of course we wanted to welcome Arianna to our “You’ve Got” video of the day–check her out on AOL.com.

We will be holding a company all hands meeting to address your questions related to today’s exciting news. We will video conference from our New York office on the 6th Floor at 9:30 AM ET and will be joined by Arianna Huffington and key executives from her organization. We will also be holding a call for our west coast offices at 2:00 PM ET and for our Patch offices at 2:45 PM ET. See below for meeting info (conference rooms will be sent out shortly).

AOL is playing to win…and The Huffington Post and AOL will occupy a unique place in the future of the Internet. Let’s go get it done.

–TA

(More full disclosure: As has been previously reported by MediaMemo, All Things Digital had the briefest and most preliminary of discussions with Armstrong about moving to AOL last year, while exploring several other options. All’s well that ended well: We stayed at Dow Jones, which is owned by News Corp.)

The company’s “social modules” dynamically populate with fresh content on any topic.

So, for instance, a news organization could automatically input the tags associated with its articles into a module, and on each page it would show relevant tweets about similar topics (and not just lame redundant retweets of the article itself, like you often see).

Or a site could show a live-updating widget that displays its most tweeted articles that day. Publisher IDG is already using the modules on some of its sites.

Anyone can create a self-service module, and Topsy will offer premium features such as analytics and revenue-shared advertising. Content within the modules is automatically filtered for profanity and language preference.

You might ask why Topsy and its random blog widgets are important. For one thing, Topsy is among the few independent players remaining in real-time search, with OneRiot pivoting to focus on ads, and Ellerdale acquired by Flipboard. Twitter does have its own search service, but it stores only a week of tweets at a time.

Topsy organizes its index of eight billion tweets using social signals, such as figuring out which accounts on Twitter are influential and which tweeted links are important, something Google and Bing are only starting to do. That’s a change from the dominant PageRank mindset, where a parent domain carries a certain weight without differentiation for all the different people who have accounts on it, from influential authorities to spammers.

And while it’s true that few Web pages need any more widgets than they already have, prominent tech publishers like Business Insider and TechCrunch use Twitter sidebar widgets from PostUp (formerly TweetUp) that show a rotation of promoted accounts. A more timely and dynamic alternative like Topsy Social Modules might be more useful.

The event, at the Marriott Copley Place downtown, is just getting under way. I won’t bore you with every detail, but will post whenever things get interesting.

In the meantime, enjoy this take on Angry Birds for the BlackBerry.

Update, 10:17 am ET: The intro is still going on. RIM Vice President Alec Taylor is talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis for some reason. However, RIM was nice enough to pass out slides for the whole day. Here are some of the highlights:

BlackBerry Mobile Voice System
Launching in early 2011, this is an update to RIM’s effort to unify the desk and mobile phone, offering a single identity, voiceover Wi-Fi calling, a single voicemail box, dialing office extensions and more. RIM says the new version will support more types of business phone systems.

Other features coming later this year include automatic hand-off from Wi-Fi to mobile networks, a “move call from desk” feature and more.

BlackBerry Balance
A new effort to support mixing personal and corporate data on the BlackBerry. RIM is adding features such as the ability for IT to choose to wipe only corporate information from a device or to limit users from cutting work data and pasting it into a personal application or email. Other features include warnings when sending emails or calendar invites outside of the organization, the ability to encrypt media cards and options for preventing access to work data by third-party applications.

BlackBerry client for Microsoft SharePoint
Launching in early 2011, this will bring data from Microsoft’s portal software directly to BlackBerry handhelds. It will work with both the 2007 and 2010 versions of SharePoint and integrates into a number of BlackBerry programs, including E-mail, calendar, Documents To Go and the browser.

PlayBook
As for the forthcoming tablet, RIM says it will ship with 1GB of memory, have 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash memory, include a 3-megapixel front-facing and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and have micro USB and Micro HDMI ports. (I can’t remember if they have said all of that before.) The slides say only that it will ship this quarter and will be “competitively priced,” reiterating past company positioning.

According to the slides, the company also plans to talk about cloud-based device management and changes to allow one BlackBerry server to support multiple corporations.

10:35 am ET: The Cuban Missile Crisis is apparently over, and VP Pete Devenyi is now outlining the company’s business product road map and making the pitch for its strategy.

“We really do have a great story,” he says, noting that the enterprise is different from the “arms race” of the consumer market.

“It’s not just about the number of apps in App world,” he says, noting that businesses can and are building programs just for use within the corporation. Some businesses, he says, have hundreds of internal apps, none of which show up in the public storefront. BlackBerry, he says, also allows businesses better control than rivals over what programs are on a worker’s device. For example, Devenyi says, when workers change groups within a company, the programs they have access to can be updated automatically with programs deleted and added from their devices.

“That kind of power is power that no one else has,” he says. “We don’t read about that much.”

10:43 am: In addition to both the paid BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the slimmed-down free “Express” version of the server, RIM plans to launch an email system aimed directly at small-to-midsize businesses–MDaemon Messaging Server, BlackBerry Edition. The idea is to give smaller businesses a full email server that has full BlackBerry support. The product stems from an acquisition RIM made a year or two ago and offers what RIM says are features similar to Microsoft’s Exchange Server but at a fraction of the price.

The company is also launching “very, very soon” a modest update to its flagship server product, BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0.3. It will add more support for employee-owned devices (including the BlackBerry Balance feature described earlier), support for encrypted attachments and certification for Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and the latest version, known as Lync 2010.

11:18 am: RIM is launching yet another server this year, known as the BlackBerry Enterprise Application Middleware (BEAM). BEAM, which companies would have to buy in addition to their BlackBerry email server, aims to streamline enterprise content for use on a BlackBerry. ‘What that results in is a much more efficient application than you would otherwise have,” Devenyi says. It’s in beta now, he adds.

11:25 am: BlackBerry is launching its equivalent of Find My Phone, known as BlackBerry Protect, which will allow individuals to remotely wipe or post a message if a device is lost. Protect will launch later this year, Devenyi says.

Finally, the company is talking about a number of changes it is making to the core BlackBerry Enterprise Server so that it can run via the cloud. Launching later this year, RIM will have the ability for its server product to be remotely hosted and support more than one business. It’s not clear yet if this will be RIM offering BlackBerry as a cloud-based service or if this is a product for hosting partners, though it sounds more like the latter.

11:32 am: Devenyi told Mobilized that the company is just showing the architectural changes it is making, not saying how it will bring the cloud-based capabilities to market. “We’re still working through a number of those details ourselves.” Devenyi said. “It could be both, but we are not announcing.”

11:42 am: On to the PlayBook finally. Senior Product manager Ryan Bidan gives the spiel. He says there is a lot that the company isn’t ready to share. Addressing concerns around battery life, Bidan notes the PlayBook has a 5300-miliamp battery, but doesn’t give specifics on how much battery life that will translate to.

“We’ll have good battery life,” he says. “Don’t worry about the battery life.”

Other details:
Software updates will be pushed down to the device on an ongoing basis. There will be a version of App World on the device for downloading developer-created programs.

And with that, the formal part of the event is over.

This will be short and–considering the topic–bittersweet.

Despite a report in TechCrunch saying layoffs at Yahoo might be imminent, previously reported termination of employees in its product unit will not take place this week.

Actually, according to sources familiar with the situation, they will take place in about two weeks, around December 13th.

As BoomTown previously reported earlier this month, the cuts in staff will total about 10 percent and be almost completely centered on the product organization under Chief Product Officer Blake Irving.

That would mean layoffs of about 650, since that part of Yahoo has about 6,500 employees.

In addition, said sources, the layoffs might result in the outsourcing of some functions at the company.

The move will surely be yet another blow to morale at the much-buffeted Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Google recently gave each of its employees a 10 percent pay raise and $1,000. Facebook, similarly, is showering benefits on its fast-growing pool of workers.

Yahoo currently has just over 14,000 employees. It has undergone many restructurings and layoffs.

While everyone is considering whether to brine or deep-fry the turkey this week, All Things Digital HQ will be busy with our preparations for D: Dive Into Mobile.

That includes setting the program, which takes place in two weeks and will open with an evening interview with Google’s Andy Rubin (pictured here).

As the search giant’s mobile chief and principal force and creator of its Android operating system, Rubin is responsible for the ongoing development of the major rival to the Apple iPhone.

Many have challenged Android, including a recent jab from Apple CEO Steve Jobs, questioning its overall experience and whether or not it’s actually open.

Nonetheless, Rubin and Android have proven to be a disruptive and fast-growing force in the mobile space, aiming for dominance akin to Microsoft’s on the desktop.

Ironic? Yes.

Rubin started as an engineer at Apple and later worked at General Magic, where he participated in developing Magic Cap, an operating system and interface for handheld devices. When Magic Cap failed, Rubin joined Artemis Research, founded by Steve Perlman, which became WebTV and was eventually acquired by Microsoft.

After several years, Rubin left to found another smartphone effort called Danger, which was also acquired by Microsoft, in 2008.

Disillusionment with his ouster as CEO of Danger motivated him to found Android, which was later acquired by Google.

Now, it seems Rubin is poised to make good on his first efforts at making a truly smart smartphone ubiquitous.

And he is only one of many of the industry heavyweight speakers at D: Dive Into Mobile, among them: Dan Hesse, president and CEO of Sprint Nextel; Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of Research in Motion; Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard; Joe Belfiore, vice president of Windows Phone Program Management at Microsoft; Jon Rubinstein of Palm, now owned by Hewlett-Packard; Foursquare CEO and co-founder Dennis Crowley; Google advertising czar Susan Wojcicki; and Glenn Lurie, president of Emerging Devices for AT&T.

Plus, there is also one more big speaker we’ll be announcing soon, so stay tuned.

D: Dive Into Mobile will be held at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco on December 6 and 7.

It represents the very first brand extension of our flagship D: All Things Digital conference, now in its ninth year of grilling the big names in tech and media to sold-out analog audiences and scores more on the Web.

And, as always, there will be no PowerPoints, no panels and definitely no pontificating. What there will be are unrehearsed, unscripted and unexpected interviews, where real news is often broken.

But, unlike big D, D: Dive Into Mobile is topic-focused, drilling down deeply into the ubiquity of mobile technology and devices, and its implications for brands, organizations and consumers worldwide.

Along with Walt Mossberg and me, Mossberg Solution’s Katherine Boehret and MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka will be conducting the interviews.

As usual, we’ll be liveblogging the whole thing and also posting highlight videos.

But there’s nothing like being there, so you can sign up for the D: Dive Into Mobile conference here.

Yahoo is indeed preparing to lay off employees, in a reduction in force that will be done in December.

But the layoffs, first reported in TechCrunch at 20 percent, will be closer to 10 percent and be almost completely centered on the product organization under Chief Product Officer Blake Irving, said sources close to the situation.

That would mean layoffs of about 650, since that part of Yahoo has about 6,500 employees.

Yahoo, in fact, just put out a statement saying the 20 percent figure was “inaccurate.”

Said the company in a statement: “Yahoo! is always evaluating expenses to align with the company’s financial goals. However, a 20% reduction in Yahoo’s workforce across the board is misleading and inaccurate.”

Well, kind of, because it is a big layoff nonetheless.

In addition, said sources, the layoffs might result in the outsourcing of some functions at the company.

Even at a lower figure, the move will surely be yet another blow to morale at the much-buffeted Silicon Valley Internet giant.

Just this week, for example, Google gave each of its employees a 10 percent pay raise and $1,000. Facebook, similarly, is showering benefits on its fast-growing pool of workers.

Along with a spate of top-level executive departures, Yahoo is under scrutiny by Wall Street, as well as the subject of much takeover speculation.

This has put Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz under even more pressure to show results after almost two years as top manager.

Known as an exec who knows how to cut costs, she has yet to prove she can grow the Yahoo business with new innovations.

Yahoo has just over 14,000 employees. It has undergone many layoffs and restructurings, but only once in a major one under Bartz.

Here is a very charming PSA for the American Jewish World Service, which appeared on FunnyorDie.com.

It was done by Hollywood directing and writing phenom Judd Apatow and a passel of celebrities, celebrating the organization’s 25th anniversary.

BoomTown’s fave, as usual, is Lindsay Lohan, who–as washed up as she is now as an actor–really could still be a contender.

Enjoy:

Dear Ross,

Perhaps more than anyone, BoomTown is thrilled to have you back in the Internet ops game, after several years on the sidelines.

Besides introducing an exciting new character and plotline into the daily digital drama set in Sunnyvale, Calif.–kind of like when one of Alexis Carrington’s ex-husbands returned after a bout with amnesia on “Dynasty”–it’s clear you are not going to be a shrinking violet.

Plus, you know how to handle drama after all those crazy years herding digital cats at News Corp.’s MySpace.

In other words: Nobody puts Ross in the corner!

But it’s a very big job you have, running both Yahoo’s massive media properties, as well as its giant sales organization–especially after all those years of long lunches as a venture investor.

Thus, I prepared a short list for you–kind of a Yahoo cheat sheet–to cut out and put in your cyber-wallet, and pull out if the need should arise:

10. If you have any internal emails, product roadmaps, acquisition plans and–especially–juicy memos, please immediately forward them to kara@allthingsd.com via the secret Gmail account every Yahoo staffer has. (Don’t worry, everyone does this! Really!)

9. If anyone offers you $31 a share for Yahoo, take it.

8. If someone asks you the question, “What is Yahoo?”: Run for the hills.

7. If anyone tries to drag you back to Sunnyvale from Los Angeles, resist, even after what happened to Lloyd Braun. There are no advertisers nor any significant digital media folks in Silicon Valley, however much anyone tells you there are.

6. If a billionaire shareholder activist named Carl whom you used to canoodle with about taking over Yahoo calls, please refer to No. 8.

5. If you can locate where Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang has gotten to of late–he has been sighted at Yahoo “strategery” meetings and playing golf with advertisers–please send his coordinates to kara@allthingsd.com. I am not a stalker. Well, only a little bit.

4. If you have to ask who Judy is, you have already lost, because Judy is actually in charge at Yahoo. (By the way, since you are both from Jersey, work that angle hard!)

3. If a smiley, cheekboned, Don Draper-looking dude calls from AOL wanting to do a “reverse merger” and offers a ride on Air Tim to discuss it, please refer to No. 8.

2. If you feel frustrated and have the need to utter naughty words and curses, stifle it! That’s a job for the CEO!

1. Ignore me.*

* At your peril.

A national poll released today by Common Sense Media asking how well social networks protect kids online produced an answer that should come as a shock to exactly no one:

Not very well, at least according to parents.

A full 75 percent of them gave social networking sites such as Facebook a negative rating for the task.

About 2,000 parents were polled by the nonprofit media organization, as well as 400 teens, who also gave thumbs down to social networks’ ability to police themselves.

There will be a big roundtable discussion on the topic in Washington, D.C., this morning, which will include Common Sense Media head Jim Steyer, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz and Deputy Secretary of Education Anthony Miller.

Along with the poll results, San Francisco-based Common Sense Media said it will also announce the launch of the “Protect Our Privacy–Protect Our Kids” campaign to help parents protect kids’ reputations and personal information online.

I love the smell of impending privacy legislation in the morning!

Already from Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts: “As the House author of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, I remain intently interested in ensuring that children are not targeted online and their privacy is strictly protected. Twelve years after the bill was signed into law, entire new technologies and industries have emerged that could put children’s safety at risk, making a legislative update necessary. I look forward to introducing such legislation to bring COPPA into the 21st century.”

Thus, here is more for pols to chew on: The bulk of those surveyed are more concerned with online privacy than they were five year ago (another obvious one); parents do not believe Web sites, including search engines such as Google (GOOG), should share the location of kids (count me in on that one too!); and teens think their friends overshare (you think?).

But instead of me telling you, just read it all here in top-line results for adults and teens, as well as in the official press release:

Final CSM adults topline

Final CSM teen topline

Privacy Poll Results and Campaign Launch

Sorry, folks, but–despite reports–Yahoo will not be unveiling another new organizational structure this week.

In actuality, the beleaguered Internet giant is just cleaning up from last week’s shake-up–in which it announced that a chunk of its top media and sales leadership was leaving–as well as settling in new hires made in recent months by its relatively new product head, Blake Irving.

In fact, those changes in Irving’s unit have resulted in the departure of two more execs. That would be former SVP of Media Products and Solutions Jeff Kinder and SVP for Cloud Computing Shelton Shugar, who are on their way out.

Kinder actually left his job many weeks ago and was offered the chance to find another within Yahoo (YHOO), although sources said he has now definitely decided to leave the company on his own.

CEO Carol Bartz held a meeting Friday with senior leadership to go over the situation and to assure management that changes to come would stabilize the company going forward.

To be sure, Yahoo needs some kind of reassurance and fast.

BoomTown broke the news last week that U.S. head Hilary Schneider was departing the company (see her goodbye memo below), along with U.S. Audience head David Ko and SVP of Media Jimmy Pitaro.

Pitaro has since landed a big job as co-president of the Internet unit of Disney (DIS).

The overall corporate turmoil has put more scrutiny on Bartz. For two years, she has been trying to turn around the company, with only a modicum of success.

While Bartz did strike a search and online advertising partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) to better battle Google (GOOG), she has not goosed flat revenue nor been able to boost Yahoo’s moribund stock.

Perhaps more critically, she has not stopped the steady exodus of talent, especially of more senior execs.

Departures in the last six months include U.S. advertising sales head Joanne Bradford, Integrated Consumer Experiences SVP Tapan Bhat, CTO Ari Balogh, as well as the heads of its social platform and communications product units.

But last week’s departure trifecta of the execs running Yahoo’s powerful and successful media unit drove the talent drain issue home for many investors and other observers.

While each departure case was different, of course, the leavings have lent a feeling of instability inside and outside the company.

That has happened more quietly over the several months of reshuffling by Irving (pictured here), who came to Yahoo from Microsoft, and which I have reported on here previously several times.

For example, in September, Irving hired Microsoft exec John Matheny to head the communications products and communities unit.

Previous to that, in July, Irving brought in another old colleague from the software giant–Bill Shaughnessy–as SVP of Product Management.

Thus, Irving–who is a little too busy traveling to a number of Yahoo product and technology units in Asia and India over the next weeks to announce yet another reorg–has pretty much already moved his part of the business around, although there are likely to be some more hires to come.

It is not unusual for a new senior exec to do this, of course, but Irving’s many moves reportedly sparked some tension between him and Schneider.

That might have been moot, since she had decided to leave some months ago, but was asked to stay on by Bartz.

To be sure, in recent months, many sources said that their relationship had become strained too as Yahoo ad sales continue to struggle, and they also disagreed on the company’s strategic direction.

Still, it should be noted that Schneider is staying on until a new exec is named to replace her.

Whatever the various machinations in the corporate suite at Yahoo, Bartz needs to find a way to convince Wall Street that she still has the ability to complete her much touted turnaround of the Silicon Valley pioneer to a new period of growth and innovation.

How quickly she is doing that will come into sharp relief in a few weeks when Yahoo reports its third-quarter earnings on October 19.

And while executive departures garner a lot of attention, that is the bottom line for Yahoo, the thing most important of all to watch.

Finally, given I love a good internal memo, here is, belatedly, the email that Schneider sent to her staff last week about her leaving:

Team,

I’m sure by now you’ve all had a chance to read Carol’s note, and know that I made the decision to move on to the next stage of my career. When I joined Yahoo! four years ago, I knew it would be an amazing and rich experience…and it has exceeded every expectation. Our consumers look to Yahoo! as they navigate their lives, our advertisers look to Yahoo! for leadership, and publisher looks to Yahoo! for our amazing scale and reach. Our team, however, is our secret weapon!

Meanwhile, the search for my successor is under way and I will continue to lead our team until we make the transition.

Additionally. David Ko, SVP of Audience and Mobile, and Jimmy Pitaro, VP of North America Media, have decided to leave Yahoo! David and Jimmy are amazing leaders and we will miss them. Yahoo!’s leadership positions in Sports, News, Entertainment, Finance and Mobile are their legacy that we have to proudly continue.

Raymond Stern will be the SVP of North America Audience and will be responsible for the Audience teams. Raymond has been an integral part of Americas leadership team as the SVP of Business Development and Partnerships. Before joining Yahoo! a year ago, he held a wide range of business leadership positions, including more than 10 years as a Partner the Boston Consulting Group where he ran the Technology and Media Practice on the west coast. He also held senior leadership roles at Intuit, including CMO.

Raymond will immediately start diving in to the Audience business, and David and Jimmy are committed to working with Raymond through the transition. Right now, Raymond will continue overseeing the business development and partnership teams while we think through the best structure for these teams moving forward.

I know that transitions can create swirl–but our customers, both consumer and marketers, are looking to us for continued leadership…and I know we can deliver this.

You are Yahoo!’s magic, and I thank you for your tremendous commitment, leadership, and support.

Hilary

This latest swing of the ax brings total job cuts at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to about 22,500 since the 2006 merger that created it. And though the company will be leaner and meaner for it, that new found agility won’t count for much without a shift in business strategy bold enough to reverse the brutal reduction in market share and market capitalization Alcatel-Lucent has suffered. And an oblique and, frankly, baffling mention of Web 2.0, does not a business strategy make.

Alcatel-Lucent’s plan is to “combine the trusted capabilities of the network environment with the creative communications services of the Web (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and beyond).” What the hell does that mean?

This latest swing of the ax brings total job cuts at Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to about 22,500 since the 2006 merger that created it. And though the company will be leaner and meaner for it, that new found agility won’t count for much without a shift in business strategy bold enough to reverse the brutal reduction in market share and market capitalization Alcatel-Lucent has suffered. And an oblique and, frankly, baffling mention of Web 2.0, does not a business strategy make.

Alcatel-Lucent’s plan is to “combine the trusted capabilities of the network environment with the creative communications services of the Web (Web 2.0, Web 3.0 and beyond).” What the hell does that mean?

CBS Interactive continues its integration process, which now calls for the further combination of several portions of the division into unified groups oriented around similar content. This important move allows us to better align our premium content for our audiences and our advertisers, and also results in reduction in certain areas that are now duplicated in the new organization structure. We believe these moves are necessary to continue building CBS Interactive into the most creative, most efficient, most profitable and fastest growing Internet company in the media business.”

News of the re-org was first reported by paidContent this morning. No details yet on how the restructuring will play out, though a person familiar with the situation did confirm that the company will push CNET’s News.com news site and CBS’s own CBSNews.com units closer together. Both groups have already been reporting to former CNET exec Joe Gillespie since the merger went through this summer. More details as I get them.

UPDATE: Here’s the complete re-org memo.

A note to CBS employees: Since this is one story you folks are going to have a hard time covering, feel free to pass along your tips to me. You can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. If you want to be completely anonymous, which is understandable but less useful to me (I won’t have any way of reaching you for follow-up) you can use the blind tip box here.