WebProNews

AOL Cleans House

What once was considered an Internet powerhouse, seems to be dwindling away. AOL is getting rid of (or has already) more than 50 of its projects according to Silicon Alley Insider. We knew about AOL Journals and AOL Hometown, but this list is huge. The dead projects fall into a number of categories including video, audio, messaging, social, toolbars, desktop, safety, mobile, and email. Check SIA's article for the complete list.

Yahoo AOL Merger Rumors Resurface

Those old Yahoo-AOL rumors are persistent, if anything. Surfacing again are details related to a deal that could thwart a Microsoft takeover forever. But at the same time, it would seem damaging to an already heavily-scrutinized search ad deal with Google.

Majority Of Fortune 1,000 Companies Will Use Social Media

Social media will be adopted by more than 60 percent of Fortune 1,000 companies with a Web site by 2010, according to research firm Gartner."A key benefit of establishing a community is the amount of information an organization can gain about its customer base, which can be used for short-and long-term customer relationships," said Adam Sarner, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Salad Days Over In The Valley

Things aren’t looking so good in Silicon Valley these days. As the US economy adjusts to recession, funding for ventures is down, stock prices are falling, and online tabloids have to let go even their decadent Valley prostitution reporters.

Yahoo Exec Moves To MySpace

Valeh Vakili joined Yahoo after graduating from Harvard, and over the course of eight years, climbed quite high up its corporate ladder.  Now, she's moved from her position as the director of media sales operations to join MySpace in a similar capacity.

27-Month-Old GigaOM Raises Another $4.5 Million

Giga Omni Media has raised another $4.5 million to help it continue expanding. This is quite the contrast to Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton's announcement of cutbacks due to economic "doom" planned for January.Om Malik has now raised $5.8 million since his firms inception. The latest funding round was led by  Alloy Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm.

MySpace, Facebook Top Mobile Social Networks

Close to half (46%) of those who use social networks have visited a social network by using their mobile phone, according to ABI Research.The majority (70%) have visited MySpace and another 67 percent have visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15 percent mobile adoption.

SMX East: Search And Branding

In the session "Search and Branding", Noah Elkin, VP of Corporate Strategy, Steak spoke about why brands matter in search.Coverage of the SMX East conference will continue at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Matt Cutts, Hitwise Check In On Google Chrome

Like its metallic namesake, Google's browser named Chrome attracted a lot of attention at first, then seemed to lose its shine and fall out of favor.  Still, Hitwise found a surprising side effect of Chrome's introduction, and Matt Cutts believes that it's solid in most fundamental senses.