In a week, the entire advertising sales staff of MySpace will gather at a swanky new seaside resort about 20 miles south of Los Angeles to get a first glimpse of the fresh direction the company is preparing to take under its new management.

The beleaguered social networking site has been in the midst of an effort to reinvigorate its image, spur innovation in its product and–most of all–pull itself out of a too-long slump, even as longtime rival Facebook has seen explosive growth.

On the possible agenda: A new strategy aimed at music and entertainment; a new look; and, perhaps, a new boss for the ad sales team.

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Four years ago, the movie, “Snakes on a Plane,” became a genuine Internet phenom well before the movie was in theaters.

Which, in the end, only showed that online buzz had negligible impact on the viewing public, given that the movie’s box office turned out to be tepid at best.

But will another small film, about a demon-plagued couple with an infrared-equipped videocamera, called “Paranormal Activity,” prove that the chatter of Facebook and Twitter has more legs today?

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In the ongoing fight between Redbox–which rents DVDs from kiosks for $1–and major Hollywood studios, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment just filed a brief to dismiss Redbox’s lawsuit against it.

The fascinating legal battle between Redbox and the studios centers around the issues of steep discounting, windowing and the price for premium content.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt gave what he just had to know would be a much quoted comment to the Nikkei today, explicitly saying that the company had “begun seriously looking into acquisitions again.”

Music to the beleaguered mergers and acquisitions market, to be sure, especially after a recent uptick from other big companies pulling out their wallets again as the impact of the econalypse subsides.

According to sources, Google is working on at least a half-dozen acquisition deals, most of which are small start-ups in the online advertising and cloud-computing arenas.

That would be welcome news for many.

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Yesterday, BoomTown did a tour of the Mountain View, Calif., HQ of Guitar Hero, which is poised for a series of launches, including the fifth version of Guitar Hero and new music games Band Hero and DJ Hero.

While there, I interviewed CEO Dan Rosensweig, the well-known Silicon Valley exec who was once COO of Yahoo and who took over the high-profile division of Activision Blizzard in May in what was a bit of a surprise move into the music gaming industry.

Here’s a video of an interview I did with him about it all.

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If you want to get Hollywood movie studio types irked, mention Google. And if you want them steamed, bringing up Netflix will usually work.

But if you want to see the tops of their heads blow off, Redbox is just the ticket.

Except not to their movies, it seems, if the major movie studio execs have their way in an ever-growing legal battle with the DVD-rental kiosk company.

A typical consumer named Louie Swisher, though, begs to differ.

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Despite the challenges the music gaming industry has been facing of late–such as sales dropping, yipes, almost 50 percent in the U.S. this year–the top companies in the field are still churning out new products like it’s nobody’s business.

Case in point is a spate of new products from the Guitar Hero division of Activision Blizzard, which is coming out this fall with three separate major launches, starting tomorrow with the GH5 and including the hip-hop flavored DJ Hero in late October.

Here’s BoomTown’s sneak peek from GH’s HQ in Silicon Valley.

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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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MySpace has officially announced the appointment of entrepreneur and former AOL exec Mike Jones as COO, as BoomTown had reported earlier today.

But the social-networking site also named former Sling Media top exec Jason Hirschhorn as chief product officer in what has become a series of senior management moves at MySpace.

Both Hirschhorn and Jones will report to newly named CEO Owen Van Natta, the former COO of Facebook, who replaced MySpace CEO and co-founder Chris DeWolfe last week.

Once the trio get their bearings, many sources indicate that News Corp., owner of MySpace, has given Van Natta and his key execs free reign to remake the unit from top to bottom.

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Legendary former MTV Networks exec and co-founder John Sykes will replace outgoing CEO Owen Van Natta as CEO of the controversial music-sharing site, Project Playlist.

He is a high-profile choice to take over for Van Natta, who was officially named CEO of MySpace this morning by News Corp.

Sykes is well regarded in the music industry, an important criterion since Playlist has been dealing with legal attacks from some music labels. Settling with them will be key to the start-up’s survival.

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The national PR tour of Twitter co-founder How-To-Succeed-in-Biz-Without-Really-Trying Stone continues tonight with a television appearance that is sure to be tasty.

Stone–who has clearly become the chatty spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service at public events all over the place of late–is set to be a guest on Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report.”

I have no doubt it will be snarktastic–video to be posted later, but here is a video of Stephen Colbert on the Internet and Jon Stewart of the “The Daily Show” on Twittermania.

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With Yahoo board Chairman Roy Bostock reportedly assuring investors and others that the company will have a CEO in place by the end of the year, it seems prudent for BoomTown to initiate an official Yahoo CEO Countdown.

After all, this column had a 100-Day No-Sacred-Cows Vision Quest to mark the time that Jerry Yang said he needed to give Yahoo a top-to-bottom look-see when he took over last summer as CEO.

So here’s today’s update: No Peter Chernin and a lot of thorny issues for other candidates.

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When everyone else has been selling, it seems Carl Icahn has decided to throw good money after bad–as in nearly $1 billion bad–by buying almost seven million more Yahoo shares, according to a regulatory filing.

Why is he doing it? BoomTown is guessing that the billionaire investor thinks he can recoup some of his massive losses in Yahoo, as Jerry Yang prepares to step down and the board, on which Icahn sits, names a new leader.

That’s why my guess is that the choice of a new CEO is likely to be sooner than later, much more Icahn-friendly and strong on operational skills.

BoomTown’s new guesses: Yahoo board member John Chapple or perhaps an ops star like HP’s Todd Bradley.

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BoomTown might have been remiss in my post yesterday on top candidates for the Yahoo CEO job, in the wake of news that Jerry Yang was stepping down, by leaving out several key possibilities.

Yesterday’s roster included News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, Google’s Tim Armstrong, Kevin Johnson of Juniper Networks and also two Yahoo board members, among others.

So here is an addendum to my initial list–all of whom are Yahoo outsiders, the likely choice versus more tarnished insiders.

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With a $10 stock price, the turning down of Microsoft’s $31 a share offer, a collapsed search ad deal with Google, fleeing execs and bad news aplenty, it’s easy to blame Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and call for his ouster.

After all, the buck does stop with him.

Or does it? Because, to my mind, if there is anyone to cast stones at in the ongoing crisis at Yahoo, BoomTown would have to toss a large boulder in the direction of the company’s incredibly shrinking board.

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