One word: Shameful.

So, no surprise that Yahoo (YHOO), which is trying mightily to burnish its image worldwide, quickly apologized for the presence of women lap dancers onstage at its Open Hack Day in Taiwan last weekend.

In a post on its Yahoo Developer Network blog tonight, titled “Sorry,” YDN head Chris Yeh wrote:

All,

I wanted to acknowledge the public reaction generated by the images of female dancers at our Taiwan Open Hack Day this past weekend. Our hack events are designed to give developers an opportunity to learn about our APIs and technologies. As many folks have rightly pointed out, the “Hack Girls” aspect of our Taiwan Hack Day is not reflective of that spirit or purpose. And it’s certainly not the message we want to send about our values here at Yahoo!. Hack Days are about making everyone feel welcome, including women coders and technologists.

This incident is regrettable and we apologize to anyone that we have offended. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

Best,
Chris Yeh
Head of YDN
twitter: @ydn
email: cyeh at yahoo-inc dot com

Ironically, in a post listing the winners and details of of the Open Hack event, at which Yahoo invited outside developers to brainstorm, Yahoo’s Erik Eldridge noted earlier today (italics are mine):

“This was our second visit to Taiwan, and we were really looking forward to coming back to see the passionate Taiwanese developers.”

Ouch. Worse still, top Yahoo execs–such as Taiwan CTO Joy Chan, Asia head Rose Tsou and Chief Technologist Sam Pullara, all pictured here with another Yahoo exec, Peter Lin–were in attendance at the event, although it is not clear if any of them attended the lap dance performance. (Yahoo PR is checking on that now for me.)

Like the image above, here are some more pictures of the lap dancers from a Flickr video, posted here, which has since been made private (click on the images to make them, um, larger):

And, rut-roh, here is a link to some more, even shorter-skirted photos on Flickr.

But, perhaps worst of all, this kind of thing is not new for Yahoo’s hack events in Taiwan, at least, where there seems to be some history of this sort of Pussycat-Dolls-meets-geeks tone.

It is not clear why all the thumpa-thumpa music and dancing gals did not engender complaints last year, although I am guessing the nerd lap action sent over the top.

In any case, here are four videos from the event in 2008 of even more gyrating ladies, which you can contrast with a video from Yahoo’s New York event on Oct. 12 of this year.

UPDATE: The videos have been suddenly made private by the person who posted them since I posted them last night, as they now say when you click them. They are not searchable or available any longer on YouTube. But you can see the situation from the images on the videos.

(If you want to know what a lap dance is, by the way, try Yahoo Answers!)

In the ongoing game of musical chairs among top managers at Internet companies, former 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, 38, has been named president of Internet and mobile communications at AOL, putting him in charge of the New York-based Time Warner (TWX) online unit’s powerful email and instant-messaging properties, including ICQ and AIM.

He has only been in talks with AOL–which used Spencer Stuart’s Internet-top-exec-finder-in-chief Jim Citrin–for a few weeks, in a deal that came together quickly, he and the company said.

Garlinghouse, a longtime Web entrepreneur and exec, had reportedly been considering a number of start-up and venture-related jobs since he left Yahoo last summer after six years there.

Sources said he was seriously considering becoming the CEO of a mobile firm.

He was most recently at Silver Lake Partners, as an “in-house senior advisor,” the private equity firm that recently bought the Skype Internet telephony firm for $1.9 billion. Garlinghouse also reportedly helped work on that deal.

“It’s really exciting to be to able to rebuild and revitalize an industry giant,” said Garlinghouse in an interview with BoomTown earlier today. “I make no bones that these [properties] are in need of that…but there is also a huge opportunity to do something cool.”

Garlinghouse has to hurry. Despite being among the top communications players online–a group that also includes Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT) and, more recently, Google (GOOG)–AOL has lost relevance with key audiences, even as social networking properties like Facebook and the microblogging service, Twitter, have innovated in the communications space.

The hiring of Garlinghouse, well known in Silicon Valley circles, is meant to counter that.

He will head up AOL’s operations from its Mountain View, Calif., campus–which is also the former HQ of AOL-acquired Netscape Communications–where, said AOL CEO Tim Armstrong, Garlinghouse will “be CEO of Silicon Valley for us.”

Between all its various properties, AOL has several hundred employees in the Northern California area.

Armstrong said AOL–which was founded 25 years ago on the East Coast and has tried and failed many times to get a true foothold in the West–thinks having an important player at the center of the tech industry is critical as it moves to spin off as an independent company by the end of the year.

“We have a triple play in getting a great executive, who is a master in the communications on the Web and who is well known out there,” said Armstrong. “Brad is our senior AOL manager there.”

Along with running all of AOL’s communications properties, Garlinghouse will inherit some of its community properties, although AOL’s Bebo social networking unit–now considered to be an overpriced acquisition error–now resides in its ventures unit, headed by Jon Brod.

Garlinghouse will also be aiding Brod, said Armstrong, with AOL on the lookout for acquisition opportunities in communications and other arenas.

While Garlinghouse declined to be specific about what would pique his buying interest, he was responsible for such big Yahoo deals as its $350 million purchase of Zimbra in the fall of 2007.

He was also key to bringing both Oddpost, which is at the heart of Yahoo’s email offering, and the popular Flickr photosharing service to Yahoo.

Garlinghouse said he has admired what Twitter and Facebook have done, but that they were not destroying traditional online communications, pioneered by AOL, as some assert.

“It’s a vibrant segment and this just means there are a lot of opportunities to enable integration,” he said. “I think of it as an expansion of online communications and I hope AOL can do more collaboration and partnerships.”

Garlinghouse also has to watch AOL’s basic products like email, which was recently passed by Google’s Gmail as the No. 3 email service in the U.S. Yahoo Mail is the top email, while Microsoft’s Hotmail is second.

How much Garlinghouse can do will depend on the future financial strength of AOL. Its advertising business has been hit hard in the econalpyse, with hopes it will return before its money-generating access business continues its slow decline.

Armstrong is now in the midst of looking over AOL’s cost structure and employee base, which most expect will eventually result in another round of layoffs and cuts.

He has been busy creating a different strategy for the company since he arrived earlier this year, as well as hiring (and firing) top execs to create a new management structure.

Now, that includes Garlinghouse.

So, for a look-see at AOL’s latest talent acquisition, here’s a video interview I did with him, just after Yahoo bought Zimbra:

And here’s the full press release from AOL about the hiring of Garlinghouse:

AOL NAMES BRAD GARLINGHOUSE AS PRESIDENT, INTERNET AND MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS

NEW YORK, N.Y.–September 8, 2009–AOL today named Brad Garlinghouse as President of Internet and Mobile Communications, spearheading AOL’s global efforts to expand the reach of its e-mail and instant messaging. Garlinghouse will also take on an expanded leadership position for the company, heading up AOL’s Silicon Valley operations from its Mountain View campus and serving as the West Coast lead for AOL Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm headed globally by Jon Brod. Garlinghouse was most recently at Silver Lake Partners as an in-house Senior Advisor.

Prior to Silver Lake, Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo!, where he led that company’s communications and community products. Garlinghouse will report directly to AOL’s Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong.

” Brad Garlinghouse is an all-star in the Internet industry with an unparalleled background and proven track record, having led Yahoo’s communications products to unprecedented growth,” said Armstrong. “In addition to leading our efforts to grow our communications products, Brad will be bringing his global leadership and business experience as a key member of our company’s executive leadership team. He will also be a major force for AOL in Silicon Valley, working to expand our presence there and in the tech community in general. We’re delighted to have Brad on board and know he’ll do great things for AOL.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to join AOL at this pivotal moment in its history,” Garlinghouse said. “Tim has set out a clear strategy and vision for where he is taking this company as it becomes independent again. I’m looking forward to working with him and the rest of the team to realize that vision.”

Armstrong, who joined AOL in April, identified Communications as one of the five key areas of strategic focus for AOL after an extensive 100-day review of the company’s business. Other focus areas include Content, Advertising, Local & Mapping and AOL Ventures.

Garlinghouse spent nearly six years at Yahoo! where he most recently served as SVP of Communications and Communities. Prior to that he served as SVP of Communications, Communities and Front Doors, which included the Yahoo! home page. He came to Yahoo in 2003 as VP, Communication Products. During his time there, Yahoo! Mail went from No. 3 to leading all competitors by a wide margin, and the company’s instant messaging service rose to become the leader in that market as well. Garlinghouse also oversaw the company’s Flickr photo-sharing service and Yahoo! Groups.

Prior to Yahoo!, Garlinghouse was CEO of Dialpad.com Inc., responsible for all aspects of the company’s operations, finance, sales and marketing. He was also General Partner at @Ventures, Category Manager of Media Development for the @Home Network, Inc., and Manager at SBC Communications.

Garlinghouse, 38, received his BA in economics from the University of Kansas and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

It looks like the local market is heating up even more, with MSNBC.com announcing the acquisition of Chicago-based EveryBlock.

MSNBC.com–a joint venture of Microsoft (MSFT) and GE (GE) unit NBC Universal–paid several million dollars for the “hyper-local” information site, which is up and running in 15 cities, including New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and Boston, sources said.

In June, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL paid about $10 million to buy Patch Media.

The New York-based start-up is a platform that does deeply localized coverage of communities on a range of topics, from announcements to news to events to obituaries. It is aimed at competing with local newspapers and other media.

EveryBlock takes a slightly different approach, scouring a mass of publicly available data in a variety of U.S. cities from a variety of public records–such as crime stats, building permits and restaurant inspections–and reassembling them into more comprehensible and geographically relevant news feeds, depending on what a user asks for.

It also pulls up related Flickr photos and information from Web sites like Yelp and Daily Candy and can get very granular, down to keeping track of what is happening on your block or neighborhood.

Maps are also deeply integrated into EveryBlock, as it was on an earlier effort–ChicagoCrime.org–of founder Adrian Holovaty.

The innovative little start-up has a tiny staff of a half-dozen, still calls itself a “project” on its Web site and was started with $1.1 million in grant money won from the Knight News Challenge, an annual contest held by the Knight Foundation.

MSNBC.com is the news channel for Microsoft’s MSN portal, whose execs are very interested in weaving more local results into the site, as well as into the software giant’s new search offering, Bing.

The aim of having EveryBlock data integrated, for example, would be to create a local information dashboard on MSN.

Here’s a screen grab of EveryBlock’s take on my zip code in San Francisco, below (click on the image to make it larger)–and a video interview with Holovaty on YoChicago in early 2008:

Some interviews will be quite serious (Eve Ensler, talking about the dire situation in the Congo) and some possibly funny (Mark Cuban, who simply defies definition).

But this picture that Twitter founder and CEO Evan Williams posted today on his Flickr page is easily the most unusual bit of research I have come across.

Here it is, aptly titled, “This doesn’t seem awkward at all”:

Taken at Time magazine’s Time 100 fete in New York recently, where the pair were among this year’s honorees, Williams and fellow Twitter founder Biz Stone were looking, well, I could not say at first just what the microblogging potentates were looking like.

That is, until I compared the photo with the one below of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller, who played supermodels Hansel and Derek in the nearly perfect movie, “Zoolander.”

Is it the “Blue Steel” pose?

How lucky that All Things Digital readers can see the pair strut their stuff onstage in real-time (how Twittery of us!), starting next Tuesday night in posts and videos, in the opening night interview Walt Mossberg and I will conduct with Williams and Stone.

In their honor we’ve already tweeted–in fewer than 140 characters each–their bios thusly for our program–I hope they appreciate our editorial license with their short and sweet lives:

Williams was raised on a farm in Nebraska, dropped out of college, was co-founder of Pyra Labs, which created Blogger and sold to Google.

Stone helped found things besides Twitter: Xanga, Blogger and Odeo. He worked for Google with Blogger. He once won a debate at Oxford Union.

You can also see the rest of the D7 speaker list and click to more bios here.

[Photo of Williams and Stone courtesy of Evan Williams on Flickr.]

Yesterday, several Flickr engineers posted news of their layoffs from the Yahoo photo-sharing unit on Twitter, which caused GigaOm’s Om Malik to notice that Flickr architect Cal Henderson (pictured here) was also no longer on its About page.

According to several sources I spoke to, Henderson was actually not laid off at Yahoo (YHOO), but is leaving to start a new company–in the social-gaming arena, I am told–with Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield.

He and several other of the original core development team for Flickr transitioned out or have been transitioning out for quite some time, sources said.

Henderson’s Web site, called iamcal.com, still says he is the head of engineering at Flickr.

Butterfield (pictured here), as well as another co-founder, Caterina Fake, left Yahoo last year. Yahoo had paid $35 million to acquire Flickr in 2005.

Fake joined another start-up, called Hunch, last summer as chief product officer. Hunch is an answers site and is now in beta testing.

You could see this one coming a mile out: After telling users they could not upload new videos late last year, Yahoo is finally shutting down Jumpcut.

“This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!,” said Jumpcut in a note to users today.

That’s code for the stylings of new CEO Carol Bartz, who is hard at work axing many of Yahoo’s similarly lagging services.

She has reportedly been readying plans to sell off Yahoo’s lackluster HotJobs employment listing service, for example. And there will surely be more to come, from the many companies Yahoo has gobbled up in the last few years and has done nothing much with.

Such as the sassy video editing service, which was bought by Yahoo in 2006 amid high hopes of the Internet giant becoming a big player in the hot online video market.

That honor, as it turned out, went to YouTube, which was more cats-on-skateboards-oriented than tools-oriented.

Yahoo (YHOO), ironically, was poised to buy YouTube in the month after it grabbed Jumpcut, until it was snatched away in a last-minute acquisition grab by Google (GOOG).

Now, Jumpcut is a wrap.

Curiously, Yahoo is making users download the videos to their computers, and then suggests they upload them to another Yahoo property, Flickr, which now allows video.

Why the company doesn’t just let people migrate the videos is probably due to the silos of tech at Yahoo, which are infamous and which the company is trying to fix.

But not today.

Thus, Jumpcut sent this note to its customers:

Dear Jumpcut user,

After careful consideration, we will be officially closing the Jumpcut.com site on June 15, 2009. This was a difficult decision to make, but it’s part of the ongoing prioritization efforts at Yahoo!

Very soon, we’ll be releasing a software utility that will allow you to download the movies you created on Jumpcut to your computer. We’ll send instructions to this email address when the download utility is available.

Once you download your movies, you may choose to upload them to another site such as Flickr, which now allows video uploads. You can find out more here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/video/

Thanks for your understanding and thanks for being a part of Jumpcut.

The Jumpcut Team

And, for a trip down memory lane to happier times, here is the memo Yahoo wrote when it bought the San Francisco start-up:

SEPTEMBER 27, 2006

Jumpcut Joins the Yahoo! Video Family

Yes it’s true!

Jumpcut just announced they’ve agreed to join us, which will make Yahoo! Video an even better place for people to create, share, and discover great video online. If you haven’t heard of Jumpcut, it’s a San Francisco-based startup that has a passionate community of users and a great suite of online video editing capabilities.

Ever since Yahoo! Research Berkeley launched the International Remixer, our interest in this space has been pretty clear–we couldn’t stop talking about how cool it is to mashup multimedia of all kinds.

So needless to say, we are very happy to have Jumpcut join the Social Media group here. They’ll be bunk-mates with Flickr, and just around the virtual corner from Delicious, and Upcoming.

Please head over to Jumpcut’s blog for the official word.

Jason Zajac
VP Social Media

BoomTown visited Twitter’s San Francisco HQ for a pie-filled tour yesterday.

But I also got a chance to sit down to have a chat with two of its founders, CEO Evan Williams and Biz Stone (pictured here, right to left), about all the doings at the wildly popular microblogging start-up.

For the record, Williams is the quiet one, while Stone is more voluble–but don’t let appearances deceive you, as both are ambitious and aggressive entrepreneurs.

I asked a lot before I did the video–so don’t give me a hard time for not pushing too hard on it–but neither deigned to talk about the swirl of rumors about which giant Internet behemoth–Google (GOOG) or Microsoft (MSFT)–was going to get its wealthy mitts into the innards of Twitter (or not!).

Nonetheless, the pair actually took time to talk about what they think is behind the surge in growth and awareness of the simple-to-use service, as well as the state of innovation in Silicon Valley.

As hard a time as I have given them for Twitter’s defocus on an actual business plan, there is no question that the pair have an unusually compelling product on their hands that has many more possibilities than it does pitfalls.

Both Stone and Williams, in fact, are going to be appearing onstage at our upcoming D: All Things Digital conference in late May to talk about all that and more, so here is a taste of what is to come.

And, yes, that’s a bird–Get it? Tweet!–over Stone’s head, etched in the glass of the conference room door.

(I also did a video tour of Twitter’s HQ with Stone, which is here.)

Here are Williams and Stone:

[Photo taken by Mai Le, posted via Flickr, uploaded to Wikimedia and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0]

Back in the heyday, Peter Currie was the money man to see in Silicon Valley.

As CFO of Netscape Communications, he led the start-up into history, as the first great Internet rocket ship, when it went public on Aug. 9, 1995.

With the first consumer-friendly browser software, which made the Web easily understandable to the masses, Netscape was at the red-hot center of the nascent digital revolution.

“Wall Street went bonkers,” said one news reporter about the IPO, and the craziness did not stop for quite a while.

Rising to insane levels, the stock was ground zero of the Internet gold rush too, despite the fact that it had no profits to speak of.

But it did have a 23-year-old co-founder and tech wunderkind in Marc Andreessen, and a growth trajectory that was astounding.

If you think it sounds somewhat similar to Facebook today–where Currie will now help out as temporary financial adviser after the social-networking site parted ways with its CFO, Gideon Yu, yesterday, following mutual disagreements and announced a search for a replacement–you are correct.

In that job, the 53-year-old Currie will be helping Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 24, navigate–albeit temporarily–through some stormy economics seas on a journey that will hopefully end in an initial public offering.

The search for a new CFO will also involve Currie, obviously, and will be conducted by Jim Citrin of Spencer Stuart.

But until a new CFO is in place, Facebook’s quest still entails sorting out a substantive advertising monetization strategy while also keeping up its speedy growth rates and managing the high costs that mount with its popularity.

That certainly was Netscape’s major challenge, which it never met successfully and which was made worse by intense attacks from Microsoft (MSFT) on Netscape’s core browser business.

That eventually led to the antitrust trial against the software giant, even as Netscape saw its star fall dramatically.

It was sold to AOL in 1998 for $4 billion, a shadow of its bubble valuation, and is now more of a footnote than an ongoing tech product (although the now-popular Mozilla browser is a direct descendant of Netscape).

In fact, in 2008, Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL dropped its support for the Netscape browser and said it was no longer releasing new versions.

Still, a lot of former Netscape execs now hold other key jobs in the Web space.

Its investor relations exec, Quincy Smith, now heads up the digital arm of CBS (CBS), for example.

And Andreessen has started a number of companies and has transformed himself into an kind of elder statesman of Silicon Valley of late, as well as a newly minted venture investor.

Andreessen, many sources said, was a shadow influence on Zuckerberg’s decisions related to Yu, with whom relations had gotten tense, and to bring in Currie (pictured here).

Currie is certainly a great choice, in terms of the close-knit tech sector’s respect and experience.

Currie is also unusually tall, aggressively avuncular and laid-back, loves Elvis and enjoys pranking reporters like BoomTown. (Case in point: He once tried to spread the rumor that I am short due to a medical condition.)

Now the president of Currie Capital, a private investment firm, he had previously worked at General Atlantic in private equity.

After Netscape, he was a partner and co-founder of the Barksdale Group, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Before Netscape, he was CFO of McCaw Cellular Communications and also worked at Morgan Stanley (MS).

Currie is also board-happy, serving as a director of a variety of tech firms, private and public. They have included CNET Networks, Critical Path, Clearwire (CLWR), Safeco, Ofoto, Tellme Networks and Zantaz, as well as Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

He has an MBA from Stanford University and went to Williams College.

Here is the video interview I did with Currie and others at an event to support his friend and former Netscape exec Mike Homer, who recently died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Currie is at the 2:16-minute mark):

(Image of Netscape IPO T-shirt courtesy of intothefuzz on Flickr.)

At least he’s not going to Microsoft (MSFT)!

But nonetheless, sources said another major Yahoo tech exec and a longtime company veteran, Venkat Panchapakesan (pictured here), EVP of the Audience Technology Group, is readying his departure from the company.

This time, it’s to return to India, where he has long told colleagues he wanted to return.

Sources said Panchapakesan will not be leaving until the end of the summer, but “his departure is well along the road.”

At Yahoo (YHOO), Panchapakesan has most recently been responsible for the company’s overall product technology and platform strategy, such as its open efforts.

He’s an old-timer at Yahoo, having arrived in 1998, and has been involved in the development and execution of technologies for lots of Yahoo products, such as Mail, Flickr, Answers, Groups, Messenger and its content properties.

But recent reorganization of the tech unit, along with Panchapakesan’s interest in working in India, hurried along his leaving.

According to his profile on LinkedIn, Panchapakesan moved to Bangalore, India, to become the CEO of the Yahoo India R&D in 2003, returning in 2006.

Previous to Yahoo, he worked at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ).

As part of its ongoing rejiggering of its social-networking offerings, AOL is formally rolling out its expected Lifestream platform today, with a new “timeline” depicting a user’s online life in a streaming horizontal calendar called a Lifestory.

(See image above; click on it to make it larger.)

The moves are the latest made by AOL’s People Networks related to its Bebo social site, which this column previously reported about in December.

AOL is hoping its efforts will focus users more on Bebo, which it bought for $850 million in March, a high price that has been controversial both inside and outside Time Warner (TWX), which owns AOL.

While Bebo is one of the larger social networks, it is still not popular in the U.S. and lags well behind leaders like Facebook.

Lifestream will first be available on AOL’s Bebo and include updates from friends on Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Del.icio.us. Lifestream can also be used by brands, celebrities, bands and companies.

Lifestory uses a zooming technology to look at various times, using text, music, videos and photos, and can be done with many contributors. It also includes a feature called Social Slider that allows a user to have more granular filtering control over who sees what in Lifestory.

AOL had previously launched other social-networking features, such as Social Inbox, a one-stop destination with aggregated social feeds from across the Web, multiple email accounts and media recommendations.

AOL also has an upcoming service called Site Social, with plans to use its advertising platform to help monetize the offering.

Many large Web portals like AOL have recently rolled out by large Web players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO). All are attempts to offer a competing product to the most popular social-networking sites, Facebook and the News Corp. (NWS) unit, MySpace, where users have flocked. (News Corp. is the owner of this Web site.)

Those two companies have also been making moves of late to allow consumers to aggregate their disparate piles of online information through connective offerings that allow them to pool all kinds of Web content and communications in one place.

AOL’s People Networks unit, which includes Bebo, AIM and ICQ, has an overall audience of 92 million, according to a recent comScore (SCOR) survey.

Here are some screenshots of the AOL pages with the new features:

Moviefone Lifestory

VH1 Lifestory

Social Inbox

User Profile

User Profile 2

Usually, BoomTown plays the stalker of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang. But, with an interesting product to show off, this time he invited me and also Walt Mossberg to take an on-the-floor look-see at the company’s new “Connected TV” effort yesterday.

Wading into what has been a longtime dead end for many tech companies–bringing the Internet to the television–Yahoo (YHOO) has struck a deal with South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung and other major television makers to put its software in televisions to link them to the Internet.

Using an onscreen dock, Yahoo is presenting its own services (like Flickr) and those from outside Web sites (YouTube) with this “widget engine.” With a regular remote, you can click through these applications easily and launch them in a side screen.

Yahoo hopes to create an entire ecosystem of these widgets, similar to what is occurring with the iPhone.

Publishers and vendors can use Yahoo’s open technology, although the company will offer monetization services, keeping itself at the center of the platform.

In the short amount of time I used it, it’s a nice effort and an important one if Yahoo is to try to lead in being a key player in devices other than computers.

Here’s the video of me talking to Yang (check out his attempted scary stare at me at the start!) and Yahoo President Sue Decker about Connected TV, along with an interview with Yahoo’s point man on other devices, Connected Device EVP Marco Boerries.

Here’s the video (I had to use YouTube to upload it, since Brightcove isn’t downloading properly):

Here’s a video interview I did yesterday at the San Francisco event where Yahoo finally launched a lot of the new open and social elements that it has long said it was injecting into its most popular products.

BoomTown talked with the key movers of the initiatives: Ash Patel, Yahoo’s EVP of its Audience Product Division, and Tapan Bhat, its SVP of its Front Doors, Communities and Network Services.

(You can see screen shots and an official Yahoo video of the new features here.)

The initiatives Yahoo (YHOO) finally released into the wild have been long in the making, first discussed as just vaporware by Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (see that video below too).

Yahoo also hosted a session at its Sunnyvale HQ about its open plans in the fall.

And, after the longest of gestation periods, they arrived yesterday, in an impressive rollout.

The changes include some very deft rejiggering of Yahoo Mail, called a “smarter inbox,” with a new dashboard welcome page, easier ways to make connections, more filtered views, updates and third-party apps integrated into the application.

I thought the changes to the mail product were the most interesting, especially given the hundreds of millions of people using the product. It’s an interesting choice for a social entry point, aiming to give nonsocial-networking types enough of a taste of it without inundating them.

Of particular note were the third-party applications, such as for WordPress and Flickr, that launch nicely right in the email program.

Also cool was one app from Xoopit that surfaces old photos and photo links lost in the musty archives of old emails.

Yahoo also debuted an enhanced version of the homepage (previously announced in September) and My Yahoo, as well as a new toolbar and socialization elements added to its popular media properties.

It remains to be seen how popular these changes will become, especially since many consumers already have their social-networking lives on Facebook or MySpace.

In addition, both Time Warner (TWX) online unit AOL and Microsoft (MSFT) have rolled out similar social and open changes to their sites recently, making it super-confusing for everyone.

But, better late than never, I always say, so here’s Bhat and Patel talking about Yahoo’s new stuff.

I had to load the video onto YouTube, as Brightcove had snafus (also below is Yang talking about the concepts at CES in January 2008):

Tapan Bhat and Ash Patel

Jerry Yang at January 2008 CES

This morning, AOL will launch an updated look for its Bebo social-networking property, with a new “social inbox” profile for its users.

The inbox, which you can see below in the old and new versions, essentially gives its users a one-stop destination, with aggregated social feeds from across the Web, multiple email accounts and media recommendations.

But, according to sources with knowledge of AOL’s plans, the online service is preparing a more radical series of announcements after the new year, well beyond its release today.

Interestingly, the changes to its social-networking and communications properties yet to be announced have been among the things that have impressed Yahoo (YHOO), whose execs have been briefed on the changes, as part of the never-ending talks with the Time Warner (TWX) about buying its AOL asset.

That includes offering AOL’s various social-networking tools–such as chat rooms, news feeds and instant messaging–to be easily embedded by any Web site. The service will be called “Site Social,” with plans to use AOL’s advertising platform to help monetize the offering.

In addition, the renovation of the Bebo profile pages will continue, with more innovative features, including the introduction of an interactive “timeline” that shows a person’s online “lifestream” in a scrolling fashion.

BoomTown has seen the timeline–in which events of any kind can be depicted, from your book club schedule to a trip to Hawaii.

While it looks like eye candy at first, it is also pretty useful–especially a mobile version. And it is definitely the most visually striking version of a news feed that is offered by competitors.

“It is part of a left brain/right brain strategy to improve our services, distinguishing them from the pack,” said one person familiar with the upcoming changes at AOL. “But we also have all these tools and want to reach out to publishers who need to socialize their sites and find it hard to do so.”

The move today to update Bebo, though, is strikingly similar to redesigns that have been recently rolled out by large Web players like Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo.

All are attempts to offer a competing product to popular social-networking sites like Facebook and News Corp. (NWS) unit MySpace, where users have flocked. (News Corp. is the owner of this Web site.)

Those two companies have also been making moves of late to allow consumers to aggregate their disparate piles of online information in through connective offerings that allow them to pool all kinds of Web content and communications in one place.

AOL is hoping its efforts will focus users more on Bebo, which it bought for $850 million in March. Bebo is one of the larger social networks, although it is not popular in the U.S. and lags behind the leaders like Facebook.

AOL execs are hoping to change that by changing the game, focusing on Bebo’s strong media offerings and making it the centerpiece of its social-networking and communications unit, run by former Bebo head Joanna Shields.

AOL’s People Networks unit, which includes Bebo, AIM and ICQ, has an overall audience of 92 million unduplicated users worldwide, said AOL, referencing a recent comScore (SCOR) survey.

“The current fragmented social networking environment makes keeping up-to-date with others increasingly difficult,” said Shields, who is now president of People Networks, in a press release statement. “By opening up our network to the most popular sites and allowing our users to pull in the best of the Internet, we are creating an environment where everyone can easily and effectively manage their online lives, no matter where the individual pieces reside.”

The launch companies for the new inbox include: Twitter, Flickr, Del.icio.us, YouTube, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, as well as AOL-owned AIM and AOL Mail. In addition, all AOL and AIM users now can now log into Bebo using their credentials and create a profile.

Here’s more specific info, from the AOL press release:

Today’s enhancements to Bebo.com, the first in a series of scheduled releases for early 2009, include:

• Media Favorites: A new recommendations engine built on the foundations of Bebo’s Open Media Platform delivers the most relevant online entertainment (including video, music, groups and games) into one place. Media Favorites are based on users’ stated preferences and aggregated data such as: what their friends are watching and listening to and what people like them like, subject to appropriate privacy settings. This feed pulls in current Bebo content and group subscriptions, making it easy to get a quick snapshot of all personalized content. Bebo already boasts one of the most extensive online media offerings available, with programming from over 500 media companies including MTV, ESPN, CBS and the BBC.

And here are the before and after Bebo profiles (click on the images to make them larger and keep clicking to make them clearer):

OLD BEBO

NEW BEBO

This morning, FriendFeed, which is a kind of content delivery version of Twitter, went international, launching in six new languages–German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and simplified Chinese.

Now live, the move is a natural extension for the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up–which was founded earlier this year by a small gang of ex-Googlers: Bret Taylor, Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh. The company says that one-third of users already use FriendFeed in languages other than English.

More languages are planned, said the company, which specializes in super-aggregating updates of all kinds for social-networking and news items in an ongoing feed from places like Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Twitter and Flickr.

Given all the dissipated ways people communicate on the Web, FriendFeed lets users collect all these links, some of them in rich media and some just text messages, to share publicly or privately.

I find the service very useful and compelling, so I paid a visit to its HQ last week to chat up Taylor and Buchheit.

We talked about a range of topics, including–my favorite–monetization, or lack thereof, of a lot of terrific Web 2.0 services like FriendFeed and Twitter.

The pair, in a less overt manner than Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams, did acknowledge the focus on growth over revenue, although they did seem intent on figuring out a true business plan sooner than later.

FriendFeed certainly has time to do so–it is a small and inexpensive start-up with a dozen employees, funded with only $4 million from Buchheit and Singh and $1 million from Benchmark Capital.

Here’s the video (excuse my gruff-cold-and-cough voice):

Yahoo–which has stuck to its guns by staying in the search business, even though many think it is a losing game and should be sold off to Microsoft–has lost a key engineer in that arena to, uh-oh, Microsoft.

Sean Suchter, the VP of Search Technology at Yahoo, was also deeply involved in Yahoo’s efforts to open up its search platform, initiatives the company has touted aggressively as a bright spot in its not-so-lustrous landscape.

The departure of Suchter–who came to Yahoo (YHOO) almost six years ago after it acquired Inktomi (the company that got Yahoo into the search business) in early 2003–has been in the works for a while and was not linked to this week’s announcement that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang will be stepping down.

Yahoo confirmed Suchter’s departure, but Microsoft (MSFT) has not yet announced his arrival there.

[UPDATED: Microsoft has now officially announced that Suchter is coming to the company.]

But sources said it will be in late December, with Suchter will be working in search for Satya Nadella, the SVP who heads engineering for Microsoft’s search, portal and advertising platform group.

Sources at Microsoft had told me of that they were close to locking down this impressive get several weeks ago. “If we can get someone like Sean, it says a lot,” said one source.

Indeed, Suchter has been an important tech leader at Yahoo, much as Qi Lu–the well-regarded Search and Advertising Technology group EVP, who left earlier this year–was.

In his LinkedIn profile, Suchter noted about his duties at Yahoo:

“I run Yahoo’s Web search engine, with overall responsibility for its success. This includes engineering, product responsibility, operational stability, results quality, capex spending and revenue (from the paid inclusion program).”

There are big questions, now that Yang is stepping down, whether Yahoo will stay in the search business or sell it off. Yang has been a big proponent of doubling down in search, considering it integral to the entire Yahoo ecosystem.

But others make the very persuasive argument that Yahoo will be increasingly outspent by both Google (GOOG) and Microsoft, in what is turning into a very vicious and expensive arms race.

If it sold off its No. 2 search business to Microsoft–ironically, Yahoo used to deliver Microsoft’s search results–many think it could have huge costs savings and garner guaranteed revenues.

News of Suchter’s departure, including the internal Yahoo memo announcing it, appeared in Valleywag this morning, which speculated that Suchter was headed to Microsoft.

In the memo, Tuoc Luong, Yahoo’s SVP of Search, stated the very obvious about Suchter’s departure:

“Unfortunately, I have to give some bad news to you. Sean Suchter has resigned. Sean’s last day will be December 19th.

Some of you will find this news shocking given that Sean has been a Gibraltar rock at Yahoo and in particular for the Search team. I understand this.”

Interestingly, Yahoo has recently nabbed several of former Microsoft execs, including U.S. ad head Joanne Bradford and U.S. Audience SVP Jeff Dossett.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

[Photo from Flickr stream of WebProNews.]