The Finnish handset maker said on Thursday that it would cut 300 jobs and transfer hundreds more to other firms. All told, 1,100 jobs, mostly in IT services, will be removed from Nokia’s payroll, with about 820 added to those of its operating partners, India’s HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services. Nokia describes the cuts as an “IT realignment.”

The moves — which ironically follow the preannouncement last week of better-than-expected fourth-quarter results — are part of a massive cost savings plan Nokia announced last summer. At the time, the company said it intended to eliminate 10,000 jobs in its mobile division by the end of this year. Today’s cuts are said to be the last from that plan, which was implemented to “rescale” Nokia’s operation as it scrambles to reverse its fast-declining fortunes.

Think of it like TaskRabbit, Redbeacon, Pearl.com or LawPivot — but instead of getting help around the house or medical or legal advice, Directly helps people with their problems related to AT&T, Bank of America, DirecTV or one of the other 24 companies it independently supports.

For those companies’ customers, Directly wants to be an alternative to tweeting out into the ether, struggling through often-unhelpful overseas call centers, or scanning the dead ends of online forum discussions to find the occasional relevant comment.

Directly co-founder Antony Brydon claimed in an interview last week that companies don’t mind that Directly is stepping in between them and their customers. He said that, in testing — Directly has been operating for the past year under the name Insidr.com — companies often informally asked staffers to participate with their own expert knowledge.

Unlike some Q&A sites like Quora that shun actual cash payments, Directly supports both karmically driven and monetarily driven helpers.

Directly’s questioners can opt to assign a reward — say $10 — for an answer. Answerers can cash out the money or donate it. The two can connect to each other for a one-on-one consultation.

Also, contrary to the trend of using social authentication from Facebook to make a marketplace more transparent, Directly allows for pseudonyms, with answerers ranked on their “helpfulness.”

After customer service, Directly wants to target mortgage advice. The company — which currently has six employees and is based in San Francisco — sees itself as a platform for matching up customers and experts in all sorts of fields, Brydon said.

Brydon and his co-founders have a history of starting and selling companies together, including Visible Path and IUMA. They’ve raised $1.75 million in seed funding from True Ventures and other investors.

Access to the Internet has come to represent the new wealth gap, and the Web is now so pervasive that this gap can be found everywhere — between states, countries, demographic segments and business sectors. But while the educational, social and cultural impacts of being connected are well documented, is there also a very real financial factor? What is the correlation between Internet connectivity and prosperity? Can getting more people online help turn around an ailing global economy?

The closure of the divide will suddenly grant everyone an equal chance to succeed. But the onus is on both the public and private sectors to keep innovating to deliver the low-cost services, connectivity and devices to help close this gap as quickly as possible.

In the United States, the divide is slowly but surely being eradicated. Broadband penetration currently stands around the 70 percent mark with more than 85 million homes having fixed broadband subscriptions. The FCC National Broadband Plan will further extend the connected experience with the goal of taking Internet access to every American by 2020. The implications are huge. Connecting the masses, both domestically and internationally, to the Internet is set to fundamentally improve the quality of people’s lives and close the Internet Divide.

While providing broadband access is a critical step, it will be engagement that really closes this technology gap. People willing to immerse themselves in the Web and harness its connectivity to shop, learn, consume information and do business will find their lives enriched. Embraced in the right fashion, the Internet provides power and opportunity where it never before existed. Small businesses can compete with much larger corporations on a footing they would never have thought possible. Organizations are being forced to deliver a better experience and be far more price competitive than they ever needed to be, which is great news for the consumer.

The Internet has opened up a world of competition, giving consumers far more power than ever before, especially in markets like retail — competitors have increased, prices have fallen. In 2010, $142 billion dollars were generated by retail shopping sites, with that number expected to reach $269 billion by 2015. The number of online shoppers in the U.S. is expected to grow from 140 million in 2010 to 170 million in 2015. We no longer need to touch, feel or see the products before we buy them. Our retail behaviors and our attitudes toward shopping have fundamentally changed.

Retailers that embraced the Internet in the right way early on carved out a huge financial advantage over their less progressive foes. Connectivity made physical location irrelevant and gave the individual with a bright idea the power to challenge the mighty corporations. Without the need for expensive stores, they can administer their business from wherever they choose and cost effectively ship product from around the world. But while that connectivity allows a business to operate from anywhere, it enables its competitors to do exactly the same — the opportunity for growth and the threat from competitors created by the Internet are two factors that are intrinsically linked. Connectivity opens up markets to a slew of new entrants; those that are strong, innovative and, most-importantly, focused on customer experience will be the ones that survive.

And that customer experience has become paramount, especially for markets like hospitality. While once restaurants only needed to worry about word of mouth to drive reservations, now their potential patrons have a world of reviews on their mobile devices. A bad review of their service can be shared in seconds via the Internet and has the capacity to destroy a business in a matter of weeks. Reports have revealed that a one star increase in a Yelp rating provides a 5 percent to 9 percent increase in revenue. An impeccable experience has suddenly become table stakes.

Arguably, the quality of experience for shoppers, diners and guests is better now than it was a decade ago because of the Internet. And while connectivity has leveled the playing field for retailers and restaurants, the same is true for big business.

The Internet has put developing nations head to head with developed countries in many industries — in geographic terms, the Internet Divide is starting to disappear. The ability to deliver comparable services for a far lower cost thanks to the Web has again created opportunity for the traditionally disadvantaged competitor. In the last ten years, top U.S. corporations like General Electric, Microsoft and Chevron have outsourced some 2.4 million jobs from North America to developing nations. That outsourcing is taking place because we, as a planet, are more connected. And countries like India and the Philippines are capitalizing on the investment of global businesses.

The link between connectivity and prosperity is real. In a time where the global economic situation has rarely looked so dire, connectivity can create significant financial opportunity. Every person online who is demanding and accessing services or consuming content is not only experiencing an improved quality of life, but is also generating revenue for someone. And the more people we get online, the more that revenue increases. The economic benefit has the potential to be vast.

My vision is for a world in which the Internet Divide — and the wealth gap it creates — no longer exists. People who harness the Web effectively will compete on an even footing, and the quality of life will be improved across the board. For the gap to be bridged, though, corporations and governments need to maintain their focus on bringing the Internet to the masses and on educating the masses on how to capitalize on the opportunity. We need to continue to push broadband access into rural areas, support developing nations in building out their infrastructures and keep developing increasingly advanced devices — from handsets to tablets to routers — that give individuals the power to connect, regardless of location. And beyond the devices and the access, we need to ensure people have the tips, tools and training they need to become proficient and productive online. This will ensure that the opportunities and benefits the Internet offers are enjoyed by the masses.

Every day we’re developing these tools and taking strides that help us bridge the gap. Increased access and better connectivity creates opportunity for everyone.

Patrick C.S. Lo is the co-founder of Netgear and has been the Chairman and CEO since 2002. Patrick founded Netgear with Mark Merrill with the singular vision of providing the appliances to enable everyone in the world to connect to the high-speed Internet for information, communication, business transactions, education and entertainment.

Here’s her question, which you can find on page 48 of the transcript:

Crowley: Mr. President, we have a really short time for a quick discussion here. IPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China, and one of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper [there]. How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?

The correct answer is that, under current conditions, which are highly unlikely to change no matter who is president, the job of assembling iPhones and iPads and other consumer electronics is now done mostly in China by companies that specialize in manufacturing, and will never come back to the U.S. And that’s okay.

Sadly, both Obama and Romney flubbed their answers, and educated voters not at all.

Romney made his response about how China is a currency manipulator and steals American intellectual property. Obama got started down the right path, correctly admitting that certain low-skilled jobs aren’t coming back, and mentioned “high-wage, high-skilled jobs.” But he failed to close the deal on his point. He then got off track talking about investing in research and training engineers. In part because the time was so short, neither delivered a clear correct answer about an issue that is widely and fundamentally misunderstood by most voters.

Here’s what one of them — either one, I don’t care which, and assuming no time limit — should have said in response:

“Candy, I understand how some people might get frustrated when they see Chinese workers assembling iPhones. It’s easy to think that those jobs rightly belong in America. The reality is a little more complex, but when you understand it, there’s a surprising amount of good news for American workers.

“The fact is, assembling iPhones and iPads is the final step of a complex process, and is really a low-skill, low-cost kind of job. China has spent decades building much of its economy around these low-skill jobs, in part because it has such a large labor force and plenty of workers who are willing to do the work. And, frankly, here in America you wouldn’t want to try to support a family on the kind of wages a job like that would pay. I know it sounds harsh, but it’s true. So I know this may sound odd when I say it, but I ask you to hear me out: I’m perfectly comfortable letting those kinds of jobs go to China or somewhere else.

“In fact, some researchers at the University of California at Berkeley found that for every iPad or iPhone manufactured, Chinese workers add $10 or less to the value of an iPad or iPhone. On an iPad, they found that American workers add $162 worth of value, and on an iPhone it was more than twice as much.

“In America, when we talk about manufacturing, we should be talking about advanced manufacturing jobs for highly skilled workers that require a solid education and pay wages on which you can support a family. And the fact is, there’s a lot of American work that goes into an iPad or an iPhone or a Mac.

“For one thing, there’s our semiconductor companies, like Intel, an American company that makes the most advanced and complex device ever created — the microprocessor — and that does it better than any other company in the world. It makes the primary brain that goes inside the Mac, most of the world’s personal computers and most of the servers that power the Internet. And most of those chips are made right here in California and Arizona and Oregon. Some are made in Israel, too. But most are made here in the U.S.A.

“And the microprocessors that go inside the iPad and the iPhone are made right here in America, too. Apple doesn’t make its own chips, and when it went looking for another company to help it do that, it picked a Korean company called Samsung. And where did Samsung decide to build these chips? Some place in Korea? No. The answer will surprise you: Texas. That’s right. Samsung operates one of its very biggest chip factories in Austin.

“Then there’s the shatter-resistant glass that you touch every time you use an iPhone or iPad. It was invented in America. And it’s made in America, too, by American workers at a company called Corning, in Kentucky and New York.

“And that’s just one piece of it. There are a lot of other great jobs held by American workers. Apple has a lot of smart designers who sweated over every little detail of how the iPad and iPhone look, and how they feel in your hand, and how the button works. Teams of software developers slowly, painstakingly designed and built and tweaked and refined the software that makes it so fun and useful.

“And we’re not done there. If you have an iPhone or an iPad, you have a favorite app. Right now, my favorite app is the one created by my campaign staff. And when I take a break on the campaign bus, my wife and I like to relax for a few minutes playing Words With Friends. She beats me every time. And how many apps are there? A million? A zillion? But that’s an example of another American company, Zynga, creating jobs for the people who create game software. And there are lots more Zyngas, some of them really small companies with just a few people, and some a lot bigger. Apple once counted, and said that there were more than 200,000 people working at jobs just making apps.

“And let’s not forget that just a little more than five years ago, this branch of the technology industry didn’t exist at all. Apple brought out the first iPhone in 2007, and the first apps started coming to the marketplace in 2008. And don’t get me started about Google and its Android phones and tablets, and the chips and software that go into those. Or Facebook, and all the interesting things it’s doing.

“So, to answer your question, Candy, I’m not terribly worried that American workers aren’t assembling iPhones and iPads in America. They’re busy doing more important jobs, and earning good wages doing it right here in America. And as president, I’ll do everything in my power to help encourage the creation of more jobs right here in America, and to encourage entrepreneurs to start new companies so they can create the next Apple or Google or Intel or Facebook.

“It’s something we in America do better than anyone else. And we can argue about the details of how we should go about doing that. My opponent and I have some strong differences of opinion on some of those things we might do, and you should learn about those differences and think long and hard about them, because they’re important. But, over the long term, when I look at the iPhone and the iPad, I see something that could only have happened in America. And I feel pretty good about the role the American worker plays in it. And so should you.

“Next question.”

=====
Update: A few people have pointed out that President Obama in his response to Crowley’s question got off to a better start than I initially gave him credit for. However, I don’t think he quite closed the deal on the argument. Then, owing I think in part to the tight time constraints, he got off track. Either way, I’ve adjusted that lead-in paragraph above to reflect this.

For the sake of discussion I’ve added the text of the full exchange below.

CROWLEY: Mr. President, we have a really short time for a quick discussion here.
IPad, the Macs, the iPhones, they are all manufactured in China, and one of the major reasons is labor is so much cheaper [there]. How do you convince a great American company to bring that manufacturing back here?

ROMNEY: The answer is very straightforward. We can compete with anyone in the world as long as the playing field is level. China’s been cheating over the years, one, by holding down the value of their currency, number two, by stealing our intellectual property, our designs, our patents, our technology. There’s even an Apple store in China that’s a counterfeit Apple store selling counterfeit goods. They hack into our computers. We will have to have people play on a fair basis. That’s number one.

Number two, we have to make America the most attractive place for entrepreneurs, for people who want to expand a business. That’s what brings jobs in. The president’s characterization of my tax plan …

OBAMA: How much time you got, Candy?

ROMNEY: …. is completely … is completely false.

CROWLEY: Let me go to the president here, because we really are running out of time. And the question is can we ever get — we can’t get wages like that. It can’t be sustained here.

OBAMA: Candy, there are some jobs that are not going to come back, because they’re low-wage, low-skill jobs. I want high-wage, high-skill jobs. That’s why we have to emphasize manufacturing. That’s why we have to invest in advanced manufacturing. That’s why we’ve got to make sure that we’ve got the best science and research in the world.

And when we talk about deficits, if we’re adding to our deficit for tax cuts for folks who don’t need them and we’re cutting investments in research and science that will create the next Apple, create the next new innovation that will sell products around the world, we will lose that race. If we’re not training engineers to make sure that they are equipped here in this country, then companies won’t come here. Those investments are what’s going to help to make sure that we continue to lead this world economy not just next year, but 10 years from now, 50 years from now, a hundred years from now.

Well, it wasn’t as tasty as free food this week at Yahoo, but in her second official all-hands meeting with employees — now reportedly called “Friday FYI” — new CEO Marissa Mayer rolled out another new Google-inspired Q&A tool to get the company talking about what matters.

The system allows anyone at the Silicon Valley Internet giant to post questions, ideas or suggestions on a variety of topics, which can then be voted up and down.

Actually, it’s been in use internally at — you guessed it — Google for some time, and is even available to the general public in a product called Google Moderator. Mayer has been importing a lot of corporate practices from the search giant where she worked for her entire career — from free food to better swag to these weekly confabs to, now, its method of hearing from the staff.

While Yahoo previously used its Messenger product to garner questions for its less-regular all-hands meetings, this is apparently a new interactive tool built by the company’s engineers (and not using Google’s free APIs, as far as I can tell).

It seems to be working fine, and there were a number of questions that bubbled up.

That included one about Mayer’s thoughts on her current executive team — which is still largely inherited from a series of previous administrations, despite some departures recently — and also how her regime will hold them accountable.

Algorithmic accountability among Yahoo execs? Things have changed!

Even better, declared the questioner of that particular query, to whoops from the audience: “I want an honest answer!”

But Mayer was diplomatic, only saying she was “pleasantly surprised” by the top execs. She also noted that the management would have quarterly goals that are transparent to the whole company. (I won’t say they do that at Google, but — ahem — they do that at Google.)

Mayer went through a number of questions in a precise and cut-the-mustard manner that employees seem to be enjoying, overall.

One very voted-up question was about leaks to the media, in particular to this Web site, and whether a board mole hunt has been successful (obviously not). Also, of course, what she was going to do about the situation.

Apparently, Mayer said she won’t be tracking down leakers, and that this new openness will solve the problem.

Good idea, but all that lovely transparency also needs some pretty good products if it’s going to work.

And product focus most definitely appears to be the path now. Mayer also showed off the new Yahoo Mail — which has been under revamp for a while, and was started under former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving — with some good response from Yahoos (last week, it was a look-see at its recent iteration of its IntoNow video offering).

There are other interface changes that have been in the works too, likely under the direction of Tim Parsey, Yahoo’s head designer, who also came on under Irving.

In fact, a lot of what Irving had pushed, including keeping advertising technology in-house and also maintaining control of key monetization engines, is the likeliest path going forward. The ad tech outsourcing deals, pushed by the interim CEO and his strategy head Jim Heckman, are apparently gone (and so are Levinsohn and now Heckman).

Also of interest to many at the company is the increased involvement of co-founder David Filo, who has become much less quiet under Mayer. I’d expect him to report directly to her — he’s actually been reporting for years to a variety of product and tech execs, despite owning more than six percent of Yahoo.

Thus, here’s my question for the new Q&A system for next week: So, when’s Jerry Yang showing back up?

Crowdflower went through its own image moderation tool to find inoffensive images for this sample screenshot.

CrowdFlower traditionally charges customers at least $10,000 per month to do little tasks on a big scale — like fill out their e-commerce product listings or catalog online media content. Its customers include eBay, Microsoft and Toshiba.

Now, a new CrowdFlower self-serve photo moderation tool will screen image uploads for objectionable content, starting at $100 per month. Each image will be screened by three to 10 people (the photos that moderators disagree about get put back into the system), with results delivered in a few minutes.

The so-called “Real Time Foto Moderator” is already being used by the flirting app Skout, and existing customers will be moved to the lower pricing.

“I retook the CEO job because I had a new idea for the company,” Biewald told me. “It always bothered me that we served only the biggest customers.”

CrowdFlower already moderates photo uploads for user-generated content sites, at a rate of three million photos per month. The photo moderation tool is just the first self-serve CrowdFlower application, with others planned, Biewald said, adding that looking for objectionable images is “not our most common task — but the simplest and easiest to explain.”

In an effort to minimize the impact of massive layoffs that Yahoo’s top management has been planning, according to sources close to the situation, one of the latest ideas to save costs and presumably jobs by new CEO Scott Thompson is to sell off much of its advertising technology platform, including Right Media.

And among the possible buyers Thompson has been targeting in recent visits: Google and Microsoft, as well as Silver Lake, the private equity firm that had once been talking to the Silicon Valley Internet giant about making a large investment in the company.

(That particular deal has gone south, but there is always yet another scheme on the horizon at Yahoo!)

The concept behind such a sale, according to several sources inside and outside the company, is to turn a cost center into a revenue source, with Yahoo essentially outsourcing a business that was a cornerstone of its strategy. A negotiable number of employees affiliated with those units would then move over to the new owner.

The most ideal plan, said sources, would be to sell Yahoo’s whole advertising technology “stack,” including the Right Media Exchange, a marketplace for advertisers, publishers and ad networks to trade online ads. Yahoo bought it for $700 million in 2007.

According to info on the company’s site, it has “300,000 active global buyers and sellers and more than 11 billion daily transactions.”

Also part of the possible package is APT, a system Yahoo has built to make buying and selling online advertising easier. In addition, Yahoo’s technologies for display-ad serving have been mentioned as a possibility for sale.

It’s unclear what the potential sale means for the new ad strategy that U.S. boss Ross Levinsohn and his lieutenant Jim Heckman have been pursuing since last summer. That plan included its own acquisition of ad network Interclick and an attempt to sync up with rivals AOL and Microsoft in an effort to fend off Google and some third-party players, like ad networks.

But the reason for contemplating much a major move — which has been considered before, but never has been seriously offered — are obvious: While Yahoo once dominated this arena, it has steadily lost ground, especially to Google. The search giant has made almost all of its money in search-related ads, but has been moving aggressively via its DoubleClick and other ad-serving entities into higher-level ads.

Microsoft has also been trying to compete, as has AOL, but it’s getting to be an expensive race, and one where Yahoo would have to make major investments to once again gain momentum. Building up this business again had been the aim of co-founder Jerry Yang, who wanted to go big in the arena in a number of ways before he left the company earlier this year.

But those days seem to be over at Yahoo.

“A lot of what has happened so far under Scott [Thompson] has been trying to find more revenue anywhere it can be generated, and get out of businesses that are not growing,” said one person. “Right now, it’s a lot about what we shouldn’t do rather than what we should.”

That has meant visits to see both Google and Microsoft about possible deals by Thompson, with the involvement of CFO Tim Morse and Chief Product Officer Blake Irving.

Thompson (pictured here) has also recently been talking to Silver Lake about the ad-platform sale, in a deal that might include the Andreessen Horowitz venture fund. This would be a different kind of transaction, said sources, in which a separate company would be formed, with Yahoo owning a piece and contracting with the new entity to provide ad technology.

All this activity is related to the layoffs in the works of perhaps thousands of employees, which were to have been communicated to the company this week.

Sources said those have been delayed for some weeks for several reasons, including whether to consider more deeply if certain larger business units can be spun off, sold or somehow transformed. (To be clear: Major layoffs are still being planned, but now might take place in two parts, said sources, in what is a quickly changing and volatile atmosphere at Yahoo.)

Another area being looked at, said sources, is Yahoo’s search advertising partnership with Microsoft, which has not been as successful as had been expected. While Yahoo has been working with the software giant about improving the results, Thompson has apparently been contemplating other possibilities, including working with Google (calling all regulators!) and/or laying off up to 900 employees who work on the company’s search offering.

Any of these moves could, of course, cause a firestorm of controversy, which Thompson appears to not worry much about. He was the driving force in Yahoo’s patent lawsuit against Facebook earlier this week, which is largely attracting a negative reaction across the tech landscape.

A number of prominent voices have spoken out against the legal action, including well-known VC Fred Wilson, who yesterday penned a poisonous blog post, titled “Yahoo Crosses the Line.”

It ends thusly: “I am not writing this in defense of Facebook. They can and will defend themselves. I am writing this in outrage at Yahoo! I used to care about that company for some reason. No more. They are dead to me. Dead and gone. I hate them now.”

Ouch!

Also weighing in publicly via Twitter was former Yahoo director Eric Hippeau, who was one of the company’s first investors, which is embedded below:

Pathetic and heartbreaking last stand for Yahoo bit.ly/yirCcj It’s all over. I loved you very much.

— Eric Hippeau (@erichippeau) March 13, 2012

Double ouch!

All I can say is that Thompson certainly has a lot of gumption. That has actually been his M.O. from the start, said several sources, with the former president of eBay’s PayPal payments unit and dark horse cold-emailing his way into the Yahoo CEO job.

True story: He had not been among its list of possible candidates — largely because he had been placed in his job at eBay many moons ago by Heidrick & Struggles, which was conducting the Yahoo CEO search, and that’s a talent acquisition no-no to poach someone you placed.

That did not stop Thompson, who thought he might be good for the job and reached out directly to board members at the end of the selection effort, which then led to the search committee and soon enough to the job in what was a very quick vetting and secretive (although not secretive enough!) hiring process.

Since then, Thompson has been on a tear, from working on a restructuring to trying to assuage activist shareholder Dan Loeb to helping put the kibosh on its Asian stake sale talks to suing Facebook. And now this sale effort, too.

If the peripatetic Thompson — who might need a dose of Ritalin before this thing is over — wanted to get noticed by the tech powers that be: Mission accomplished!

“He’s definitely someone who appears to have decided on shooting the moon with a lot of these actions,” said one person close to the situation, referring to the move in the card game of Hearts, which is a risky gambit to capture every penalty card worth 26 points in order to win. “I just hope no one loses an eye in the process.”

(That would be triple ouch, by the way.)

No comments all around, but everyone was certainly cordial on this rainy morning.

Now, it is targeting people many have never heard of on its home turf.

The company, part of India’s flagship conglomerate, the Tata Group, has launched a new business unit called iON—for information technology services that are available all the time. It offers services aimed at India’s small and medium-sized businesses, a sector traditionally overlooked by outsourcers that have focused on winning large accounts from major companies in the West.

The new campaign is based on cloud computing–meaning that small companies can download software that allows them to effectively manage their data and other computing needs from a remote server run by Tata Consultancy. Most clients will pay Tata Consultancy on a per-user basis, and, in some cases, with a portion of their revenues.

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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.

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.

In 1999, Paul Flanagan became one of the early employees at StorageNetworks Inc., a company that rented and managed data storage equipment so its customers wouldn’t have to buy their own. The company was an immediate hit, reaching $123 million in annual sales in its third year of business.

But StorageNetworks ultimately fell into bankruptcy because the technology that would let it add more customers without spending too much capital on the back-end just wasn’t there yet. “When I wrote the financial model for StorageNetworks, the worst part [of the business model was] owning all the back-end infrastructure,” recalled Flanagan, who later became the company’s chief executive.

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With staff attrition inching higher toward pre-recession levels, Indian outsourcers are now searching for talent in the lost sheep lot. Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, the country’s two big outsourcers, are welcoming back performers who’ve left their companies in search of greener pastures.

Infosys, the country’s second largest software exporter by sales, has opened a “green channel” initiative, whereby employees who have left the organization can join again with minimum processing time. The policy currently only applies to positions in India.

The new initiative follows a less successful human resources program called Infosys Role and Career Enhancement, or iRACE, which created tougher performance benchmarks and less-frequent promotions, resulting in several experienced staff exiting the firm. Infosys management maintains the “green channel” program will help it leverage employees’ learnings from other experiences.

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Another strong sign of improving times was a 5.2 percent on-month growth in business volume, as well as the addition of 47 new clients and the hiring of more than 9,000 employees.

“The results are pretty decent for the quarter. The guidance definitely indicates that they are feeling pretty confident about their ability to grow in the given environment,” said Tejas Doshi, vice president of research at Sushil Financial Services Pvt. Ltd.

Infosys’ consolidated net profit in the three months through March was 16.00 billion rupees ($360.6 million), down one percent from 16.15 billion rupees a year earlier and compared with 15.59 billion rupees in the previous quarter.

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Over the past two years, H-P, Dell and Xerox have spent billions to muscle their way into better positions in tech services. The market, traditionally led by International Business Machines Co. (IBM), is regarded as attractive because it provides steady revenue from customers who pay recurring amounts to outsource their tech systems like email or payroll.

But even as the total number of new services contracts awarded each year more than doubled globally between 2000 and 2009, the amount spent on those new contracts fell to $74.5 billion from $90 billion in the same period, according to tech-consulting firm TPI.

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Say this about the toolbar and distribution deals, which Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz keeps saying were too pricey for the Internet portal: They have certainly given Microsoft’s search offering, Bing, a very nice boost.

In all likelihood, it is that and more causing Bing to make solid gains on Yahoo (YHOO), whose market share declined yet again this month, according to comScore’s monthly report of search market share in the United States.

According to comScore (SCOR), Microsoft (MSFT) saw its share rise to 11.5 percent in February, up from 11.3 percent in January.

Meanwhile, Yahoo dropped from 17 percent to 16.8 percent, another month in a troubling run of them. Each point of share lost, according to many sources and analysts, represents about $100 million in online advertising revenue.

Bartz has also repeatedly said Yahoo’s share would improve soon, as the company innovates its consumer search experience in the wake of outsourcing search technology to Microsoft as part of a recent deal.

And it goes without saying, still at the tippy-top as the mice battled, elephantine search giant Google (GOOG) also managed to eke out a small gain, rising to 65.5 percent 65.4 percent.

Is there more than one way to skin a social graph?

Yesterday, Yahoo (YHOO) took another step in its efforts to play fast catch-up in the social networking arena, by dramatically expanding its relationship with Twitter and integrating the microblogging service broadly throughout its Web site.

In much the same way it did recently with Facebook, Yahoo’s move is part of a massive integration of more innovative and popular third-party social networking sites across the giant Internet portal, which is code-named internally “Project Rushmore.”

Some think outsourcing the job to more capable companies is yet another monument to Yahoo’s failure at its own much touted plans to socialize itself.

And while this is true to a large extent, BoomTown is not so sure it’s a bad idea, especially compared with the flailing experienced by Google (GOOG) recently from its own attempts to compete with Facebook and Twitter via the rollout of Google Buzz.

That has certainly turned out to be a confusing mishmash so far and most definitely a privacy quagmire for the search giant, which–let’s be honest–might not be able to grok social even if it got poked in the head relentlessly.

And while Google execs have loudly claimed that they are not aiming at the social networking’s twin phenoms, the air of aggressive desperation–or maybe desperate aggression–is palpable.

That’s why what the Silicon Valley icon is doing might be the best solution for it at this point–if you can’t innovate, aggregate!

“We want to integrate across all social networks to give consumers a better experience,” said Cody Simms, senior director of product management for Yahoo’s open strategy, in an interview yesterday. “Yahoo then becomes a network of social networks, making it easier for users.”

And that effort to make Yahoo the one place to gather it all is just what it seems to be trying to do. In December, Yahoo announced it would integrate Facebook Connect with its many properties–from its powerful media sites to its Flickr photo service to its email.

That has now been followed by the weaving of Twitter’s real-time feed throughout the service in a variety of ways. Under terms of the deal, users can access the data stream of tweets while on Yahoo, make status updates and share Yahoo content.

In addition, Yahoo said that search and media properties “like News, Finance, Entertainment, and Sports will include real-time public Twitter updates across a variety of topics.”

Yahoo sources said the company would be striking similar deals with other social networking sites, and MySpace and LinkedIn are likely candidates for the next two spots on Yahoo’s social monument.

This kind of search and presentation improvement is key, of course, as Yahoo must present a more innovative palette of tools to consumers as Microsoft (MSFT) takes over its search technology and others offer users an increasing number of features.

Without naming Google Buzz, Jim Stoneham, Yahoo’s VP of Communities, said he thinks it is the best course at this point in the game, in which Facebook and Twitter have run far ahead with the social ball and do not show any signs of slowing down quite yet.

“I don’t think yet another social network, no matter how you try to force it on consumers, is what people want,” said Stoneham, in a not-so-veiled slap at Google Buzz. “So, Yahoo will obviously not be doing another social network.”

That’s the best news I have heard in a long time from Yahoo. Now, let’s see if it can turn not making something into, well, something.

Caso says the group is likely to take another leg down, forecasting that April conference call season will see most of the companies issue guidance below Street expectations. He writes that “demand remains lackluster and decision-making slow.” Customers budgets are down 10-20 percent this year, he contends, but with many operating on a month-to-month basis and focused solely on cutting costs. Caso writes that he is hearing pricing has come down close to 10 percent, and that existing contracts are being repriced. He also says the sector is seeing increasing competition for deals from Accenture (ACN) and IBM (IBM).

Caso cut his ratings today on Cognizant (CTSH), Wipro (WIT), Infosys (INFY) and Syntel (SYNT) to Underperform from Market Perform. He also reduced EPS estimates for all four companies. Caso said the stocks could see another 15-30 percent decline from Friday’s close.

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Egypt seems like an unlikely place for Western companies to send tech work and open call centers, but Tarek El-Sadany, a government official in charge of helping to grow the country’s information-technology industry, says that the country is well positioned to do these tasks–literally. Egypt is only two hours off of Greenwich Mean Time, so daytime there corresponds nicely with the European workday. For U.S. companies committed to outsourcing, Egypt can be a hop between the U.S. and India.

Another benefit, according to El-Sadany, is that the weekend in Egypt is observed on Thursday and Friday. People typically work on Saturday and Sunday so companies won’t have to pay extra for those shifts–or get stuck with second-class workers–as they might in other countries.

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Pichel offered three reasons for his more cautious approach to the stock:

• He contends the company is “rapidly losing its polysilicon cost advantage” as the price of polysilicon approaches $100/kg and as “competition intensifies in an over-supplied environment.”
• Pichel says he has “little visibility” into the company’s new strategy to outsource production in Asia.
• The company’s balance sheet “leaves little flexibility for pursuing alternative expansion strategies in Asia.”

He says the stock at $2 “represents an option on solar’s growth in the U.S.,” but that “future growth and profitability prospects have become murkier in the last two months in an intensely competitive environment.”

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