According to sources close to the situation, AOL has been busy selecting the board for the company, which is still set to spin itself off by year’s end–even as it slows down a decision on a new search deal with either current partner Google or a more emboldened Microsoft.

AOL is using Spencer Stuart in the search for directors, led by well-known headhunter Jim Citrin, sources said, and the company has already settled on several outside candidates.

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Jim Bankoff–the well-regarded former AOL exec who runs an online sports news network called SB Nation–has nabbed $7 million in funding from investors, including Comcast Interactive Capital, said sources.

People familiar with the situation said SB Nation’s post-investment valuation, after this second round, will be $30 million and also include previous investors, such as Accel Partners and Allen & Co.

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That was fast.

Longtime–well, five years, which is a dog’s age at the search giant–Google sales exec Dennis Woodside will become VP, Americas Operations, replacing outgoing exec Tim Armstrong, who was named chairman and CEO of Time Warner online unit AOL last week.

Woodside will start in the next few weeks, said Google in an internal communication about the appointment, as Armstrong transitions from Google to AOL.

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As BoomTown reported earlier today, AOL was abuzz with the rumors that former execs from the online service’s glory days, including still controversial former CEO Steve Case, might make an appearance at a huge staff pep rally called by its new CEO Tim Armstrong.

And so Case did show up in front of a cheering crowd this morning, along with former AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis.

Considering that many at Time Warner, which owns AOL, still harbor resentment towards Case about the disastrous merger between it and AOL a half-decade ago, the move is groundbreaking for the troubled online service and perhaps a sign that it is finally time to move forward.

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First came the go-go hello email, and now new AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong will address all the troops tomorrow at 11 am EST and has chosen to do so from, of all places, AOL’s old center of power in Dulles, Virginia.

Many at AOL hope that Armstrong will quickly and transparently lay out plans for a spin-out of the Time Warner online unit from the media conglomerate, where it has languished for years.

And sources said Armstrong could further up the ante and help raise the layoff-weary morale by having some former AOL execs from its glory days as the top online player in person at the event.

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In a move to dramatically increase its traffic and give it more tools to offer publishers, Clearspring Technologies said it will acquire AddThis, the top bookmarking and content-sharing tool on the Web.

As with many social-networking start-ups, whether this disparate traffic can be easily translated into a revenue-generating business remains to be seen.

The McLean, Va.-based Clearspring–one of several widget networks seeking to connect publishers and advertisers with social tools by helping them embed small pieces of content across Web and monetize that content–would not disclose the price it paid for the Princeton, N.J.-based AddThis.

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BoomTown recently had lunch in Silicon Valley with Ted Leonsis, one of the most colorful, interesting and early of the modern Web’s entrepreneurs.
Leonsis is best known as the man who put the oomph into AOL during its glory days in the last century, when he joined CEO Steve Case in 1993 to grow the company [...]

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As expected, from a story we broke in BoomTown more than a week ago, AOL confirmed it has bought the Israeli content-targeting ad network Quigo.
The sale price, said sources, was a lofty $300 million, around what Yahoo paid for data analytics ad network BlueLithium in September.
Well, it’s probably a good thing for AOL as it [...]

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Here’s some video from the halls of Web 2.0 Summit, which is taking place this week in San Francisco.
As you will see, it is quite the Bubblefest, with all sorts of geeky bonhomie and aspiring hopefulness of also landing a $15 billion valuation, as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg noted he was about to do onstage [...]

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News that AOL was No. 3 in the access business in the U.S. was a little bittersweet for any longtime watcher of the online service. At 12 million customers, it sits behind AT&T (12.9 million) and Comcast (12.1 million) and is bleeding subscribers from its once-mighty dial-up business, who are not shifting over in the [...]

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