Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while.

Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment about the purchase. Xoopit did not respond to emails earlier today.

But sources said it was a done deal to buy the San Francisco-based social email start-up that finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

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After his 100-day VisionQuest to figure out what to do at AOL, Tim Armstrong is in a chattier mood.

So, BoomTown did not waste a New York minute in getting on the horn with him to finally hear his take.

There’s not a lot of new stuff to reveal, of course, beyond what Armstrong has already said about AOL’s new direction.

That would be a spinoff in November, a focus on advertising, content, local, communications and starting a venture unit. But there is also the question of AOL’s ad deal with Google and more.

Here is the interview.

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Yesterday, shares of Netflix got their semiregular rocket boost–with its stock up more than five percent to close at just over $42–from rumors that Amazon was interested in acquiring Netflix.

Oh, it’s a seemingly dreamy match–the top online retailer snapping up the upstart U.S. mail-order DVD movie and television show service.

But there are some serious issues in an Amazon-Netflix marriage, so those interested in seeing the independent company in the embrace of a larger one might want to consider a more suitable and very interested candidate: Microsoft.

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Adding the final leg of its new strategy to reinvigorate AOL, the Time Warner online unit said it was buying two small local start-ups, Patch Media and Going.

Each acquisition–which focus on hyperlocal community news (Patch) and events (Going)–is small, about $10 million.

Ironically, local has previously been a big arena for AOL, which launched its Digital City unit with great fanfare more than a decade ago. AOL still runs Digital City, as well as its CityGuide listing offering.

But, in a move that will surely be scrutinized, Patch is a company whose principal investor has been AOL’s new CEO Tim Armstrong. AOL declined to say how much he had invested in the company, but sources said it was less than $5 million.

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As promised, we kick off posting the full sessions of the seventh D: All Things Digital conference with the interview that Walt Mossberg and I did onstage with two of the three founders of the hot microblogging service Twitter, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Our selection of the pair as the first interview was due to the enormous attention and, yes, hype, the San Francisco-based start-up has received of late. Along with a massive funding and a frothy valuation, Twitter has also attracted the acquisition attention of Web giants like Google and Microsoft.

And there is no question–thanks be to Oprah!–they’ve become the latest It boys of Silicon Valley.

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After officially announcing that AOL was going to be spun off yesterday, Tim Armstrong, the CEO of the Time Warner online unit, held an all-hands meeting for employees today.

BoomTown reported the details of the new structure of AOL yesterday, which the former Google advertising exec discussed at the gathering.

Here is a quick synopsis of the meeting, which included a focus on content, advertising and making AOL’s acquisitions work better via a new ventures unit.

Also, a dash of Googleyness.

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Was it more than a month ago that the Google was rumored to be in “late-stage negotiations to acquire Twitter”?

Not so much late-stage, I guess. So, I guess it should come as no surprise that it was time to fob yet another rumor that yet another moneybags of a company–this time, Apple–is in “late-stage negotiations to buy Twitter.”

But despite very serious interest in the hot microblogging service by every company that can afford considering such a thing, including Apple, getting across that late-stage line would require major investors in the hot start-up to be very involved, and they are not as yet.

So, rather than be on the edge of your seat about all these endless, alleged late-stage high jinks, here is a five-step list to cut out and keep when the questionable rumors of “late-stage negotiations” with Microsoft, News Corp., Verizon, Cisco and more inevitably show up.

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Here’s an interesting irony–Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz will have her 99th day in office on the very one that the Internet giant will announce its first-quarter earnings: April 21, 2009 at 2 p.m. PST.

Technically, it will mean that she has been running Yahoo for 100 days, a time when most administrations get their first evaluation.

Thus, if it’s good enough for President Obama, it’s good enough for Bartz!

While most expect the results for the quarter to be weak, due to the econalypse, the overall verdict from BoomTown’s needling of Yahoos to give me info on their new leader recently: Love, love, love Bartz’s innate decisiveness, and wanting more of the same.

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This weekend on Twitter, someone paid BoomTown a compliment of a sort: “I read you because you are a solid fact-based reporter with a Miss Cleo intuition ”

Yipes, because of being fact-based and since I had brought her up in an originating tweet, I had to point out that the well-known-via-infomercials Psychic Friends Network shaman turned out to be a bit of a fraud, although she’s always entertaining, with her jaunty Jamaican accent (she was not, of course, from there).

Nonetheless, it got me thinking about how I would predict what would result from all the deal-making that is suddenly in the air, after six months of ennui from the current economic downturn.

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In this digital era’s version of “Spy Vs. Spy,” Microsoft and Google find themselves in yet another sharp-elbowed battle to be the one to strike some sort of commercial search deal or product partnership with Twitter, many sources with knowledge of the situation said, as they also jockey for position to evaluate the potential of the much-hyped microblogging start-up.

After last week’s explosive rumor that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which BoomTown reported was wildly premature, I set out to try to sort out exactly what was going on.

As I found out, there was a lot–mostly much talking related to possible product and distribution partnerships, centered around Google or Microsoft, as both struggle to gauge the importance of Twitter.

It’s a familiar roundelay for the two most powerful companies on the Web.

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Last year, Yahoo EVP Hilary Schneider and then-Media Group head Scott Moore had a summery seaside dinner with Demand Media co-founder and CEO Richard Rosenblatt in Santa Monica, Calif., right around the corner from the online publishing company’s HQ.

While many speculated that Yahoo could be doing some friendly kibitzing to get a sense of where the eclectic network of general- and special-interest sites was headed, for a possible acquisition, nothing came of it.

But now, a year later, with recent indications that a major strategy for new CEO Carol Bartz will finally follow through on making Yahoo’s massive but disparate service more social, especially in its content offerings, several sources close to the company tell me another look-see at Demand is likelier than ever.

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While the “news” that Google was in “late-stage” talks to acquire Twitter, which TechCrunch reported last night, certainly sounds exciting, it isn’t accurate in any way, according to a number of sources BoomTown spoke to close to the situation.

In fact, Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in “some product-related discussions,” according to one source, around real-time search and the search giant better crawling the microblogging service.

More importantly, said another source about the idea of an imminent acquisition or serious acquisition or even early talks: “Seriously, no negotiations, no deal, nada.”

So for all those Twitterers madly typing 140 characters and caught up in the grand idea of Twoogle, we return you to your regularly scheduled tweeting.

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About three weeks ago, BoomTown surmised that the they’re-practically-giving-them-away prices for some prime but distressed tech companies–combined with cash hordes by stronger players–would eventually result in some acquisition activity sooner than later.

One combination I flagged most prominently, based on several sources, was that IBM would try to grab Sun Microsystems.

And today, The Wall Street Journal reported that that was indeed the case. Such a deal has been long rumored in Silicon Valley, so I wasn’t the first to suggest such an obvious move, and these talks come as a surprise to very few, which would rescue the long-declining Sun and give heft to IBM’s Internet aims.

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About 10 days ago, BoomTown posted a piece titled, “With a King’s Ransom in Cash, Why Is There Still No Buying Spree in the Tech Space Yet?”

Noting the big cash hordes being held by a plethora of giant tech and Internet companies and their strong cash flows too, even in the midst of the economic meltdown–I wondered when the mergers and acquisitions would ever begin.

With no hooking up as yet–which feels about as annoying as the persistently unconsummated flirtation of Chuck and Blair on “Gossip Girl”–that just won’t do!

So, here are a few suggestions to get this party started.

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Even in the midst of the economic meltdown as prices for acquisition goodies decline, tech companies are keeping their mega-billion-dollar cash hordes warm and dry.

When will they open the purse strings? Or will Oracle’s Larry Ellison be the only hey-big-spender out there in the months ahead?

And when do you think tech companies should commence to gobbling?

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