The board of iLike planned a meeting earlier tonight to go over a buyout offer by MySpace, several sources close to the situation said. But it was suddenly canceled because of some thorny tax implications related to the talent-retention part of the deal to purchase the social music start-up.

This does not mean the pending acquisition is in jeopardy, sources said, and it could be on track to be signed as early as today, barring any more complications.

What’s also been unclear is the actual price the social networking giant is paying for iLike, which has been reported as about $20 million. In fact, only $13.5 million will be paid in cash, with $6 million slated for forward payments to retain key talent.

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Yesterday–in a somewhat rambling and also riveting blog post about charging for content–serial entrepreneur and perennial gadfly Mark Cuban made a very important point that execs at every large media company should take to heart as they try to cope with the digital challenge.

Use your noggins, why dontcha?

He also threw out some very good ideas for doing so.

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Oh, who doesn’t just love, love, love the two latest viral videos to hit the Web–“United Breaks Guitars” and the joyful wedding dance of Minnesotans Jill and Kevin? Combined, they have more than 20 million views on YouTube.

While that’s all well and good, like a lot of these kinds of viral phenoms, neither is likely to make much money and become more than watercooler wonders.

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It’s hard to know what to think of the economy’s direction, even if you are trying to glean some knowledge from those whom you imagine might know a thing or two about it.

Indeed, if you listened to a variety of tech and media execs talk about what its status is of late, it’s a wonder we can get out of the woods, since no one knows exactly where we are in them.

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BoomTown is wearing all-black today, in profound mourning for the prospect of no Paula Abdul on “American Idol” next season.

“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return,” tweeted Abdul yesterday, bidding goodbye, natch, on Twitter.

Here is a cool video look at her and co-judge Simon Cowell and one of her appearance at the D: All Things Digital conference. (I kid you not!)

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What’s next for AOL?

Reviving the “You’ve Got Mail!” motto?

Or: “The Future. Now Available.”–set to music from “The Jetsons”?

What about: “So easy to use, no wonder it’s #1!”

Or maybe, it should just use a nice loooooooong busy signal as its calling card again?

Well, it could happen, now that new CEO Tim Armstrong has fallen prey to the siren call of the AOL brand name, after years of seeing the company wander in the anything-but-the-AOL wilderness.

Thus, he’s decided to try to welcome the prodigal brand back home, even as he prepares to spin it off in November from Time Warner.

Uh-oh.

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Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, is the kickoff interview onstage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference, which is taking place over the next three days in Pasadena, Calif.

The event is packed full of Web and media luminaries.

So, BoomTown will be sitting in the front row and liveblogging some of the sessions here, including this one, titled, “Digital Kingdom: New Business Models for a Media Giant.”

Translation: When you Twitter upon a star, makes a–big–difference what you earn.

Which, right now, is not a whole lot, as Iger and others in the media business know all too well.

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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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For all the noisy hubbub over should-we-or-shouldn’t-we-publish confidential documents hacked from password-protected accounts of Twitter employees, as well as a Twitter spouse, it is actually pretty simple.

Stolen equals stolen.

But, because this is a “hot” issue and it concerns an even hotter Web 2.0 company–Holy traffic-gooser, Batman!–the debate will surely go on and on, even as the stolen information inevitably leaks its way out.

Still, let’s not pretend what it is and is not.

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As BoomTown previously reported, there have been a lot of exec departures and shifts at Fox Interactive Media and its MySpace unit, which seem to be continuing.

Especially departures, it seems, as the massive restructuring of the digital units of News Corp. keeps shaking out.

Top engineer Max Engel, who ran the social networking site’s open initiatives, for example, is leaving to join the new stealth start-up being helmed by ex-MySpace employees, including former COO Amit Kapur.

And there are a lot of others too.

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Two years ago, Index Ventures was part of a group that invested $45 million in Joost, the then-hot-and-hyped online video service, while bringing on well-known tech exec Mike Volpi as CEO.

Now, he is headed to Index as a partner in the venture firm, in what some might think is an ironic move.

That’s because last week, after much effort to get traction for Joost, Volpi announced that the service was undergoing a major shakeout–drastically cutting staff and shifting its business model and strategy.

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Jeff Zucker runs one of the world’s leading media and entertainment content companies, which is also being caught in the throes of a major shift, due to the impact of the Internet over the last decade.

In this onstage interview with me at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference, Zucker talks about the state of the television business; the changing advertising market; the impact of Hulu, an online premium video joint venture NBC launched with News Corp.; and precisely what he meant when he said that the Web was turning “analog dollars into digital pennies.”

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Here at All Things Digital, we are always fussing away on our site, making a variety of improvements regularly to make the experience better for our readers.

In that vein, we have recently added two new features over the last weeks, which deserve a look-see: Topic pages and job listings.

Check them out.

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Over the last weeks, News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller and MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta have had their hands full directing massive layoffs at the flagship social-networking site, as well as throughout the Fox Interactive Media division.

The pair discussed the many challenges faced by the giant media company in its digital enterprises in an onstage interview at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last month.

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The layoffs at Fox Interactive Media moved on to Photobucket today, as one-third of its staff of about 120 were let go, sources close to the situation said.

The photo- and video-hosting service was bought for $250 million in mid-2007 by News Corp.

A FIM spokesperson confirmed the layoffs after being contacted by BoomTown, but declined to give specific numbers. But sources told me a total of about 75 people were fired.

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