Nerd idol Wil Wheaton claims to have seen the next version of Digg clone Propeller.com — and it's even clonier than before! "Holy crap are they awesome. I can't wait for it to go live," Wheaton Twitters. Propeller, formerly Netscape.com, was bulldog aficionado Jason Calacanis's attempt at building a better Digg by supplementing the wisdom of crowds with the snobbery of human editors. Interesting that AOL is still pumping money into the site. Maybe Propeller isn't sinking quite as fast as we'd thought?

A tipster tells us mid-level managers at AOL started getting word yesterday from their directors that they're getting what they always wanted for Christmas: a severance package. AOL already laid off 2,000 employees this fall, and its not over yet.

Former AOL CTO John McKinley has joined with IAC alumnus Sean Green to create LaunchBox Digital. It's an investment fund for digital media, with incubator services and oh-so-helpful advice, according to reports. To his credit, McKinley oversaw the success of TMZ.com, but seriously, if you've got an idea with legs, why take it to the guy who couldn't figure out how to turn millions of instant-messaging users into a social network?

AOL announced it bought Israeli online questions-and-answers service Yedda. Yedda, we're told, uses a semantic engine to match user questions to other related questions and topics. It also searches for other users who might be best to answer the question. The idea behind this type of service (Yahoo has a similar one) is that consumers trust each other when making buying decisions, so a nice place to serve an ad is in the middle of their conversations.

IAC and the Huffington Post brought fake news site 23/6 out of beta today. It only took them two years to come up with this? The site features political satire and targets people in the news with articles, videos and photos. If this sounds familiar, it's possibly because HBO and AOL already tried the same concept out with This Just In, to which the Wall Street Journal compares 23/6. The Journal does not note that This Just In shuttered in September. Another reason for pessimism? The site hasn't sold out its inventory for launch. It's currently running ads for BustedTees, another IAC company. Seriously, what kind of crappy blog displays ads from its parent company's network?

AOL has lost 5.1 million subscribers — a third of its paying user base — in a year, according to the latest numbers from Time Warner. AOL is down to 10.1 million subs from its peak of 30 million shortly after the merger between AOL and Time Warner in 2001. This could be why AOL is moving to an advertising-based business. Just a guess. [TG Daily]

AOL has confirmed it will buy Quigo, an Israeli startup which targets ads based on the content of websites. Earlier this week, we reported Yahoo had its eyes on Quigo too, but failed to acquire the company because Quigo CEO Mike Yavo and Yahoo exec Chris Bolte couldn't get over differences rooted in their time together at search engine AltaVista. But some of you told us Yahoo got lucky losing out. Reports put Quigo's price at around $300 million. Tell us, did AOL overpay?

When Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook, we told you the real losers were AOL and Yahoo, because they depend on email usage to drive traffic through their portals. Email is dying as a form of communication, we said, but some smartass commenter didn't believe us. He wanted to see some numbers. Fine. Here are some numbers from Hitwise.

It may not be Christmas yet, but AOL CEO Randy Falco is feeling downright jolly despite the company's recent layoffs of thousands of employees. At a roast held in his honor by the Center for Communication, Falco traded quips with execs from NBC Universal, where he worked before joining AOL. After his former colleagues made fun of laid-off AOLers, Falco proceeded to play an audio recording of a call where he supposedly pitched incoming Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes on switching AOL from a subscription business to advertising. One small problem: Former AOL CEO Jonathan Miller, the man whom Falco replaced, actually came up with that idea. So, to review:

Come January, Jeff Bewkes will be Time Warner's new CEO, displacing Dick Parsons. The change was widely expected since Bewkes's appointment as chief operating officer in 2005. That's also when AOL, for the first time, fell under Bewkes's command. AOL CEO Randy Falco was widely seen as a Bewkes hire, and Bewkes's hand was also seen in the purchase of Tacoda, an ad-targeting firm headed by Curt Viebranz, who formerly worked for Bewkes at HBO. The most intriguing rumor I've heard: When things settle down at AOL, Falco could be headed upstairs to fill Bewkes's recently vacated COO spot — and Viebranz would then become AOL's next CEO.

Last week, we reported that AOL was in the market to buy another ad network. Then, over the weekend, reports came that the Time Warner unit will pay $300 million for Israeli ad network Quigo. Mazel tovs all around, of course. But the big loser in the deal? Yahoo, natch.

AOL and CBS have cancelled their efforts to stream HD video online because of extremely low viewership. Which is no doubt due to extremely high borership. [PaidContent]

In the current contract, writers only get paid when viewers actually buy the content online, like from iTunes, for example. Problem is, the broadcast networks aren't exactly enamored with the online-retail model. Just ask NBC CEO Jeff Zucker. The broadcast business has always been ad-supported, which is why NBC and News Corp are comfortable with Hulu and the Disney-ABC Television Group signed a deal with AOL Video. And naturally, writers want a cut of the ad dollars, too.

AOL already owns Advertising.com and is looking to acquire another ad networks similar to text-links broker Quigo, according to a source. And it's rolling up its motley collection of ad plays into a new unit, Platform A. Today AOL announced a new system to allow users to opt out of ads targeted to their online behavior, like the websites they visit. Some users are creeped out by the thought, so AOL's letting them decline the ads. Here's how the news affects others.

After Microsoft won the Facebook deal, we were just starting to like Google again. Did you see Sergey's puppy-dog-sad face? And the cute story about how he and Larry got the company's name? But now, Google's pathetic competitors are giving it more material for hateful gloating. The Financial Times blogs that in the third quarter, Google generated more advertising revenues than its three largest competitors — AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo — combined. Out of the three, only Microsoft approached half of Google's advertising growth over the quarter, 25 percent to 57 percent, and that bump only came due to its purchase of aQuantive.

Add one more to the AOL body count. At AOL's parent company, Time Warner, CEO Richard Parsons will soon resign, according to reports of a board meeting in London last week. But we all know it's not official till there's a drunken layoff-victim email. The axe drops after Parsons led Time Warner through five years of stagnant growth. His problem, according to some, was a sentimental attachment to the failed AOL-Time Warner union. Parsons's reported replacement, current Time Warner president Jeff Bewkes is not considered so sentimental. His ascension would increase the likelihood of an AOL spinoff or sale. We say Parsons isn't allowed to go till he makes his own French music video. (Photo by AP/Stephen J. Carrera)

The website for Hulu, NBC and News Corp.'s online-video joint venture, looks pretty. But the reality of getting ready for next week's launch? Very messy. A tipster tells us that a dozen members of the Hulu launch team are stuck on an agonizing "all-night" conference call. Also on the call: Executives from distribution partners including AOL and Yahoo. The topic of discussion? No doubt the fact that the site, days away from launch, isn't quite ready. Poor, unlucky souls. No wonder their old-media colleagues have nicknamed them "Hulusers." And I suppose that makes the videos on the YouTube-notgonnabe website Huluser-generated content.

I've never thought of AOL as having particularly attractive employees. I mean, come on: What would you expect from Dulles, Va.? But AOL France is another story. Or was. I don't think AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant, the inseparable management duo known on campus as "Smithers and Burns," knew much about the French employees they laid off in last week's spasm of cost-cutting. But ... damn. If Rondy had only gotten a gander at them. AOL France reportedly lost 90 of its extremely good-looking 140 employees, most of whom apparently spent their last day on the job creating this stupendous single-take music video to the tune of "L'amour a la française."

Hey, folks! Check it out: The Washington Post has done a really well-researched story about layoffs at AOL. I wonder where they got all that incredible detail. [Washington Post]

Randy Falco, the machete-swinging chief of AOL who accomplished the biggest layoffs in the company's layoff-happy history, is so super-jazzed to be moving corporate HQ to ad-friendly New York! "By April, he said, AOL should be in its new headquarters on lower Broadway, in Greenwich Village, which he described as 'a hot, cool place for young people to be.'" Seriously, he did!