WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — At a panel discussion about making money in online video, Federated Media VP of sales Chas Edwards said he'd pulled checks "from a million dollars down to $10,000" for video ads on Federated's network, which includes the popular shows Diggnation and Ask a Ninja. The burning question: Who paid a million bucks to Federated, run by Web 2.0 conference co-chief John Battelle, and for what? We were unable to tackle any of Federated's execs at the jam-packed conference Wednesday. Somebody get Edwards or jbat to spill the details, and send it to us. Otherwise we'll wonder if Edwards wasn't actually referring to Microsoft's non-video advertorial deal for which Federated bloggers wrote ad copy. Why? Because Edwards also said the biggest dollars come from selling "host endorsements" rather than separate advertiser-produced spots.

WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Is preternaturally tan conference organizer John Battelle, who runs online-ad network Federated Media, here to interview top industry executives — or cut some deals of his own? "There's this idea that you can sprinkle some pixie dust on all this inventory and make more money," he observes, speaking of the mass of Web ads sold at bargain-basement rates. AOL's Curt Viebranz says that ads sold on Tacoda — the startup he just sold to AOL for a reported $275 million — sell at a $4 cost per thousand viewers. When he hears that figure, Battelle raises his eyebrows and asked Viebranz to talk to him after the panel.

So everyman AOLer, you made through bloody Tuesday and got a good laugh at your fallen colleagues. Think you're safe? Not according to our latest tipster. He reports that one employee, after watching his team get hit hard on Tuesday, thinking his job was safe, got the dreaded layoff email last night. "This is pretty messed up," our source writes. Did our tipster's friend suffer from a network snafu or is AOL still culling the herd? Let us know what you're hearing.

Those of us who actually work all day at our tech startup jobs — unlike AOL staffers, apparently — saw the drunken, typo-strewn missive from an AOL employee and thought, whoa, seems funny but I've no time to read all this — can you text me a summary? Here's the SMS-sized edit of the AOL epic.

We hear that Marcien Jenckes, general manager of AOL's instant-messaging products, was among those cut in today's mass layoffs. The Dulles, Va.-based executive was hired by an executive close to former CEO Jonathan Miller, so this may well have been a purge of the ancien regime, according to a former AOL executive. Too bad: Jenckes's moves in the IM business prompted Forbes to wonder if AOL might actually have a clue. (Well, no, but hope springs eternal.)

Welcome to D-Day, AOL employees! Today is the reported day when 2,000 AOL employees will be released into the wild. Your consolation prize? Four to 12 months' severance and, we hear, lump-sum payments of up to $50,000 to make up for missed bonuses. Not satisfied with that? Valleywag reader bobzmudaguy has created a line of commemorative T-shirts to recognize this momentous occasion. Our favorite? This one, celebrating the Smithers and Burns relationship between AOL head Randy Falco and his lackey, COO Ron Grant. We hope, for the pint-sized Grant's sake, that the shirts come in extra-extra-small, to go along with the size of his layoff-loving heart. (Photo by bobzmudaguy)

"You can drink your pain away, but it usually takes substantial amounts of alcohol," an AOLer writes us. The rambling email proves he was up to the challenge. When your employer is shedding a fifth of its staff, why not down a fifth of your pantry's finest Scotch? And they say not to drunk-dial you ex-girlfriend, but drunk-emailing a gossip blog? Gentle readers, never avoid the temptation. The email, in all its drunken-typo glory, after the jump. Bring your drinking shoes.

VIENNA, VA. — AOL CEO Randy Falco has, at long last, confirmed the obvious in an email to all AOL employees. His company is laying off 2,000 employees — less than our earlier tipster had suggested, but more than some had expected. A few notes: Falco says AOL has 10,000 employees, which is 2,000 lower than some estimates, suggesting that he may have, as rumored, already eliminated a substantial number of employees through rolling layoffs. Kara Swisher at AllThingsD has the full letter to employees, reproduced here after the jump.

AOL's head of HR has followed American counterpart Lance Miyamoto out the door. Expect the European bloodletting to continue in coming days. AOL UK will reportedly slash half its newsroom editorial staff soon and AOL Germany isn't expected to fare much better. What we want to know, though, is when someone is going to start translating the layoff-themed Christmas carols.

VIENNA, VA. — A source close to AOL's upcoming layoffs has shared numbers exclusively with Valleywag. The expected body count? 4,000 — a third of the estimated 12,000-person staff of the pain-wracked Internet giant. (Update: In a companywide email, CEO Randy Falco now says 2,000 employees out of a shrunken staff of 10,000 will be laid off.) The Dulles, Va. headquarters alone will see 400 jobs eliminated. Member Services, the organization responsible for AOL's rapidly defecting dialup customers, may get cut by as much as 90 percent. A data center in Reston, Va. is closing, with the facility up for sale, and another one in nearby Manassas could be on the block in the future. As deep as those cuts go, however, they may not be all. Remember the old adage "Measure twice, cut once?" Don't worry — neither do AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant.

VIENNA, VA. — The mood, as AOL employees face next week's widely expected mass layoffs, remains downright jolly. Why, AOLers are spontaneously bursting into song! This latest mock Christmas carol arrived in our inbox — and Valleywag has a cameo:

VIENNA, VA. — How do you now you're fired at an Internet company? When your biography's removed from the website. AOL's Lance Miyamoto, head of HR, has left the building. As a Valleywag tipster first told us and Silicon Alley Insider confirms, Miyamoto is the executive who's quitting in protest of new week's layoffs. (We had guessed, incorrectly, that it might be Kevin Conroy or BIll Wilson.) The question, though: Were AOL CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant so furious over leaks that they fired him? Or was he allowed, nevertheless, to resign?

VIENNA, VA. — A good many AOLers won't see their jobs last through Christmas, if you go by the rumors of mass layoffs next week. And yet holiday cheer is, incredibly, spreading through Randy Falco's company! After the jump, a little ditty we received in the tips jar from "BobZmudaGuy":

VIENNA, VA. — In a way, I can't blame AOL CEO Randy Falco for wanting to pack up his bags and decamp for New York. The mood at AOL's Dulles headquarters, judging by the stream of emails I'm getting, could be worse — but only if the layoffs don't hit as expected. From what I gather, more people are hoping to put out of their misery than are praying to have their jobs spared. Top executives draw a special flavor of bile, like Bill Wilson, AOL's vigorously muscular — and vigorously hated — head of programming. The email's subject line read "AOL's Bill Wilson would frag his own mother" — and it got worse from there:

Is any company as prone to fits of overenthusiastic hiring and then desperate firing as AOL? Even in the go-go '90s, America Online binged and purged on employees. A veteran employee who claims to have survived 35 — 35! — rounds of layoffs throughout the years put together a partial listing of some of the bigger cuts. But from everything we hear, next week's bloodletting will be, as they say, off the chart. The list, after the jump.

VIENNA, VA. — I grew up in this northern Virginia town 20 minutes outside Washington, D.C. As did the company formerly known as America Online, before it moved to the more-distant suburb of Sterling — sorry, "Dulles." That's where it will continue to be headquartered for a few more months, before its top executives decamp to New York. Somehow I doubt that AOL CEO Randy Falco knows, or cares, about that piece of AOL's history, as he and COO Ron Grant prepare to dismember the struggling Time Warner Internet business. I'm the first to admit that I'm a geek nostalgia junkie. And really, do AOL's roots have much to do with any of the problems it's facing today?

AOL's Dulles headquarters is wracked by rumors. We hear that one reason the company has writhed in the agony of impending layoffs is that its overworked human-resources department has been stretched to the limit by the task of preparing so many severance packages — otherwise, CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant would have made the cuts sooner. October 16 continues to be the day people expect to get the sack. As the start of a pay period, the date will save AOL a bit of money by letting them include staffers' last paycheck as part of their severance. How thoughtful! For Time Warner's shareholders, at any rate. Sightings of boxes for employees' belongings are spreading, too. But there's one mystery: Which high-level AOL executive is quitting in protest of the layoffs?

Finally, undeniable photographic evidence arrives of plans for mass layoffs at AOL's doomed Dulles, Va. campus. In a parking garage, pallets of shrinkwrapped moving boxes are stacked up, awaiting deployment a week from today, when the firings are reportedly scheduled. Call it an act of technic cleansing, as CEO Randy Falco prepares to relocate the company's headquarters from geek-heavy Dulles to advertiser-friendly New York next spring. As AOL's Internet-access business shrinks, so, too, must its staff — but one would have hoped Falco was capable of a bit more subtlety. Would a tarp to cover the boxes really cost that much? (Photo by marc.redtilde.com)

A reliable tipster tells us that AOL just terminated all of the contractors in its Dulles, Va. headquarters — a cheaper cost-saving move, naturally, than actually firing employees, though perhaps a precursor to actual staff layoffs. Anyone know how many people were affected? Let us know.

A patent holding firm is suing Google, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo over its patent for "Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications network such as the Internet." Or rather, for using automated bidding systems to sell online advertising — in other words, where all the money is. At least the company's a clever patent troll. [InformationWeek]