Essentially–although AOL is located in New York and not California–it’s going to be like tremors before the Big One at the online company today as about 100 employees are set to be laid off by management.

It is part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s “Project Everest”–the code name for cost-cutting across the company. After this small cut, there could be a call for voluntary departures, followed by a much more drastic layoff.

The action comes in the same timeframe as the online site’s spinoff from Time Warner.

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The Seattle area is going to get another jobless jolt today, with RealNetworks planning to lay off four percent of its workforce, sources said.

That’s a small number–just about 70 people out of its 1,700-person staff–but the move comes on the heels of layoffs of another 800 employees at nearby Microsoft yesterday.

The reasons for the layoffs at RealNetworks are, as was the case at Microsoft, to realign the workforce after the recent economic downturn and to control costs.

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Well, well, well, that financial imp at Microsoft–CFO Chris Liddell–pulled a fast one on Wall Street and turned in first-quarter earnings that blew away all estimates and even whisper numbers.

BoomTown liveblogged the morning conference call, which took place at 7:30 am PT–thanks for the Kiwi-laced wake-up call, Chris!

While revenue and net income in Q1 were down significantly from the same period a year ago, they were not as bad as investors expected.

Which apparently passes for terrific these days!

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Yahoo reported its third-quarter earnings earlier today, a pretty good performance in which it soundly beat Wall Street expectations with a stronger net income than expected.

While advertising revenue was down at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, also as expected, cost-cutting by CEO Carol Bartz and the sale of its stake in China’s Alibaba seem to have more than made up for it.

Here are Yahoo’s financial presentations, full of more numbers than you will ever want to crunch.

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Uh-oh, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was expected to appear on the Internet giant’s third-quarter earnings call, but she apparently “came down with something,” according to CFO Tim Morse.

BoomTown is sending over chicken soup right now, but let’s hope she gets her vaccinations tout de suite!

Thus, no sassy quotes or cursing, but a very earnest Morse, who sounded like he was once a Boy Scout.

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Yahoo exec Brad Garlinghouse–famous for his controversial “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” which correctly chided the Internet giant for becoming so lugubrious several years ago–is taking a job at AOL very similar to the one he left at Yahoo last year.

Garlinghouse, who will remain on the West Coast, will be named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He will also be, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, its “CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

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After a while–in a BoomTown mangling of the old cliché–if you are a nail, everything begins to look like a hammer.

So, it is probably inevitable that the next thing for much-beleaguered AOL staffers to start rumbling about is 2,000 people getting laid off next week.

After all, the Time Warner unit has a long history of whacking employees. So, it is easier to assume things will not be different under the regime of the latest CEO, Tim Armstrong.

Except it’s not actually true that such massive cuts are in the offing, since–as many sources I spoke to said–Armstrong is in the early part of figuring out what to do about the cost structure of AOL, after laying out a company strategy and rejiggering management.

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A few weeks ago, when I was having breakfast with legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen about his new venture fund, he talked about what he thought was critical to being successful as an Internet company.

Ticking off names, from Apple CEO Steve Jobs to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Andreessen said he always favored technical entrepreneurs for one key reason: “You need someone who lives and breathes product.”

It’s a refrain I have heard a lot recently from a wide range of people in the sector, most especially when talking about two of the more challenging renovations of key Internet brands going on of late.

That would be: Yahoo and MySpace.

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Here is the letter AOL CEO Randy Falco has penned to the entire staff about its layoffs of 10 percent of its workforce–or 700 people–and other cost cuts, which the online service is announcing today.

“We’re at a pivotal point in AOL’s transformation, and need to be even more strategically focused and operationally efficient as we weather the economic storm,” wrote Falco, in part, about the move.

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Time Warner online unit AOL is cutting 700 employees due to the weak economy and the ensuing falloff in advertising revenue, but also because of recent structural changes made to refocus the once-mighty service.

AOL CEO Randy Falco sent a memo this afternoon to AOL staff about the layoffs and other cost cuts being made, confirming the moves.

Other changes: Goodbye to raises and a hello to a consolidation of AOL’s facilities.

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Microsoft said its financial performance took a major hit, with revenue up only two percent and net income down 11 percent, whiffing badly on Wall Street’s expectations. In addition, the software giant said that it would cut 5,000 jobs and other costs across many divisions over the next 18 months, starting with 1,400 today, pegging operating cost savings at $1.5 billion annually. Perhaps most ominously, Microsoft said it would not give profit and revenue guidance for the rest of the year because of the economy’s turmoil. Apparently, even the smartest of techies have little insight to this very foggy financial situation.

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Yahoo is losing yet another top executive–Toby Coppel, its EVP and managing director of Europe and Canada, is set to announce today that he is stepping down.

The departure, which has been in the works for months, is not related to the recent news that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is also relinquishing his job as soon as the company completes its search for another CEO.

His successor will be Rich Riley, who is currently SVP of Europe’s Advertiser & Publisher Group, which put him in charge of all revenues for the division.

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While they’re not as significant as the potentially 6,000 layoffs at Sun Microsystems, several sources at Yahoo said that the previously announced layoffs at the Internet giant are set to take effect on Dec. 10.

On Oct. 21, as part of its third-quarter earnings call, Yahoo CEO confirmed it would cut its workforce by “at least” 10 percent of its global workforce–or about 1,400 to 1,500.

But, as much as some critics would like it, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is not leaving.

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Happy days aren’t here again, it seems.

Still, I am not quite sure what to make of his big, happy smile on Seesmic founder Loïc Le Meur’s face, which went with a story in the New York Times about start-ups cutting costs.

In fact, the whole Seesmic crew is grinning awfully hard, putting a very game face on recent layoffs that cut the staff at the video blog service by more than a third.

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As usual, colorful serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis makes lemonade from lemons–or is it vice versa?–touting cost-cutting at his human-powered search engine start-up and newest venture, Mahalo, almost as much as he touted its prospects when he started it up a year ago with $20 million in funding.

But in a blog post yesterday, Calacanis sang perfectly in tune with the new, decidedly grimmer, times. But BoomTown has videos of when things were sunnier for Mahalo.

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