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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Last week, BoomTown paid an economically-minded visit to the Redwood City, Calif., offices of BillShrink, a Silicon Valley start-up aimed at helping consumers find cheaper prices on gas, cellphones and plans and credit cards via a Web-based comparison and alert system.

Launched about a year ago and armed with about $9 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, it has aims of moving into a range of other money-saving arenas too.

But today, it got a major boost in its existing business by inking a deal to be part of a huge national advertising campaign by T-Mobile aimed at boosting price awareness among consumers, an apt message for these econalyptic times.

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Microsoft officially rolled out its next version of its Windows Live Services tonight, with a heavy emphasis on socializing its online offerings and giving users better tools to share all sorts of information from across the Web within them.

Microsoft said the changes–similar to those made by Yahoo and AOL recently–would “begin rolling out to customers in the U.S. over the coming weeks and will be made available globally in 54 countries and in 48 languages by early 2009.”

You might call this the “Facebooking” of Windows Live, which is the brand name for Microsoft’s communications and other related online services aimed at consumers, especially because the much anticipated changes also include a new profile and a “What’s New” feed.

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Someone get a dose of Ritalin stat to the noisy but deeply misguided critics who took news of a huge number of downloads of apps for the Apple iPhone and immediately concluded it was just not good enough.

Thus, as reported today in The Wall Street Journal, 60 million downloads in 30 days–mostly for free apps, but with about $30 million in revenue, and a runway of three million more new iPhones out there too–is a chance to talk about how it all is just so unexciting and how the apps market is officially saturated?

Am I missing something here? One would assume that were these pundits pioneers, they would get to Ohio and declare that going farther west held very little promise, thank you very much!

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When Apple releases its third-quarter earnings after the close today, Wall Street will be looking hard for a solid performance from the company to help buoy a tech sector smacked silly by weak reports from industry leaders Microsoft and Google last week.

But more important to me is what is happening with the plethora of third-party apps now available on the iTunes App Store–both free and paid–for use on the iPhone platform.

That’s because Apple has finally built a platform for adults.

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Here’s a video I did from a cool party I went to Tuesday night in Santa Monica, Calif., at the offices of ad network optimizer, Rubicon Project.
Organized by Beta South, a networking organization for digital start-ups in the Los Angeles area, it’s an interesting contrast to the frenetic nature of comparable Silicon Valley parties.
In [...]

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When Microsoft is willing to fork over $6 billion to buy an online ad network, in the wake of a $3.1 billion bid by Google for another, you know the industry was going to develop a serious case of faux acquisition fever.
It is characterized by heedless speculation, rampant rumormongering and delusions of grandeur. The known [...]

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