According to an internal memo obtained by BoomTown, Joanna Shields, who came to AOL via its troubled acquisition of the Bebo social-networking site, will be returning to London to spend more time with her family and to “pursue entrepreneurial interests.”

Until recently, People Networks has been the third leg of the Time Warner-owned online site’s businesses, which also include advertising and content.

But under new CEO Tim Armstrong, who was one of the top sales execs at Google, AOL is largely abandoning its business-unit approach for a more functional and centralized structure.

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That would be Walt Mossberg and his well-known Personal Technology and Mossberg Mailbox columns–as well as BoomTown, John Paczkowski’s Digital Daily, Peter Kafka’s MediaMemo, Katherine Boehret’s Mossberg Solution and video and pictures from our famous D: All Things Digital conferences.

Today, All Things Digital is introducing its very own app for Apple’s iPhone and the iPod touch, offering all the posts and columns you get on this Web site–including news, product reviews, analysis and video–from our crack team.

Just smaller and cuter.

So download us and take us along everywhere you go–ATD really enjoys long walks on the beach.

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Since leaving Google several years ago, where he last worked on wireless spectrum issues, it’s hard to say exactly what role the digital jumping bean who is Chris Sacca plays.

He’s not an entrepreneur, although he seems to know all of them in Web 2.0 world and advises 18 start-ups. He’s no longer a big-company exec, although he was one and knows a lot of them too. He’s not a venture capitalist, although he is involved in a private equity firm and invests in a lot of the start-ups he advises, like the red-hot Twitter, and knows those guys too.

In any case, here’s my chat with the Silicon Valley gadfly, whom BoomTown has dubbed the Start-Up Whisperer.

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On BoomTown’s recent grand tour of Europe, I paid a visit a week ago to London to moderate some sessions at Media Guardian’s Changing Media Summit 2009.

As in the U.S., a lot of the same questions were asked there about when and how the new media business would cross the Rubicon to transform into a strongly profitable and sustainable business.

And the answer to that query was just as hard to find as here.

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Oh dear, one endless, screwed-up global airline ride without Internet connectivity and when I finally manage to get online (looking right at the Spanish Steps in Rome–sweeeeet!), BoomTown finds that a new round o’ MicroHoo is apparently on again.

(In the immortal words of Michael Corleone–see video below–in the otherwise awful “Godfather: Part III”: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”)

Except, judging from exactly how loud the loudmouthed chatter from a trio of Microsoft execs has become about wanting to make a search deal with Yahoo, it’s actually not.

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Bucking a trend of contraction in the venture industry, Accel Partners today announced that it had raised two funds totaling $1 billion.

The well-known VC firm said that it had closed the $480 million Accel Growth Fund and the $525 million Accel London III.

The first will be managed from its Palo Alto, Calif., HQ, focusing on “growth equity” across several sectors, while the London fund will be managed there and aim to invest in early-stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel.

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Last night, I was the master of ceremonies, as I have been for several years, at the laudable annual Astia Awards Dinner, which celebrated venture firms that support women-led companies.

And VC Tim Draper really went above and beyond in showing–quite literally–his support.

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Another week, another nonpick for the still-outstanding position to lead Microsoft’s digital business.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has cast about for more than three months, both internally and externally, for the person who will turbocharge Microsoft’s Web efforts, but no one has emerged a favorite.

Nonetheless, new prospects include former Cisco exec and current Joost CEO Mike Volpi, sources said.

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Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet:

When it officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, the London-based company will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”

Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.

There will also be cooler social-networking elements.

While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.

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Actually, although BoomTown is staying right around the corner from Buckingham Palace in Mayfair, I am in London on my way to the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam later this week, where I will be interviewing some digital leaders onstage.

We’re still working on rolling out a version of our D: All Things Digital conference in Europe next fall, so it’s important to get a sense of what is going on here in the digital sector and, of course, what is not.

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Since Sony Pictures apparently wants to make a movie from the story of the two men who bought a lion from London’s Harrods department store, it’s a good time to replay one of the many online videos of their reunion a year after they had released him into the wild in Africa.

Although the event took place in 1971, the videos of the meeting with Christian the Lion have been hugely popular on YouTube, with millions of views.

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Is it just me or does the dire situation of Grizabella the Glamour Cat in the musical “Cats” remind you a little bit too much of what’s been going on with Yahoo and its CEO Jerry Yang over the last year?

Thus, BoomTown has decided to make that scraggly cat’s anthem Yahoo’s for its annual meeting tomorrow, because the similarities are simply startling.

(Grizabella’s signature song, “Memory” is even wildly purplish, just like the Internet company!)

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AOL announced today that it has forked over the $850 million dollars in cash for Bebo–presumably in small bills in big bags, so all the fully vested Bebo employees can’t run away quite as fast–completing its acquisition of the quirky #3 social networking site.

As part of the process, it has also created a new business unit, called the People Networks, which will be headed by Bebo President Joanna Shields.

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The Public Relations Society of America, Silicon Valley chapter, asked me to make a short video for its dinner last night about what was hot in tech in 2007 and also what surprised me. They did not use it, as I got it in too late, so here it is!
I made it when I was [...]

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I have seen the future of online entertainment and–no surprise–it’s not being created by Hollywood.

That’s because people there are too busy fighting over nothing these days.
Still, Hollywood’s writers and studios come back to the bargaining table again today, resuming their discussions to settle the strike that has been going on for three weeks now.
The Writers [...]

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