CNET has sold photo-sharing site Webshots to American Greetings for $45 million — a website it spent $70 million on three years ago. And this in an age when MySpace bought Photobucket for hundreds of millions. An internal memo reads:

Reformed stock promoter Henry Blodget has a suggestion for CNET: Take it private, with the help of former CEO Shelby Bonnie. An excellent idea. From all we hear, morale couldn't be lower at the tech-news portal. And current CEO Neil Ashe isn't helping matters. His idea of a pep speech? "We should be more like Al Qaeda," he told an assembly of employees. You mean, hated by everyone on the planet? Judging from how his underlings feel, Ashe is getting a head start on that project inside his own offices. Cheer up, Neil! You just won the latest prize for being a Silicon Valley Tool.

Gawker Media publisher Nick Denton, the owner of this site and my worthy predecessor as its editor, has weighed in triumphantly on the battle of the gadget blogs, declaring his Gizmodo site the winner in its heated competition with Engadget, the rival site started by founding Gizmodo editor Peter Rojas and now owned by AOL. The last time I covered this fight, I was working at Business 2.0, and an ostensibly neutral party. And so I got a fusillade from all sides. Scarred from that experience, and hardly neutral now, I'm not going to comment, save to observe that in the days to come, you're sure to hear an elaborate, exhausting point-counterpoint from Gizmodo and Engadget about international licensees, traffic-counting methodologies, and so on and so forth. Trust me, you won't want to hear it. And anyway, I'm more interested in my boss's obvious, embarrassing gaffe.

Hey New York CNET employees, have a good time last night? Some of you did, from what we hear. Whomever you were, um, "entertaining" posted a missed connections ad on Craigslist. Behind the scenes research (er, IM chats with employees and former employees) has revealed that the "CNET girls" in question are not on the editorial side of things, which rules out our best guess, New York-based reporter and sometime CNBC pundit Caroline McCarthy. So far, speculation centers on the ad-sales department, known to insiders to include at least one "perverted, young girl-chasing alcoholic" figure who reportedly inspires most of the wild nights out. We're dying to know if the missed connection was made, and if the alleged girl-chaser was a factor. Fill us in.

The writing is on the whiteboard for Business 2.0, the tech-focused monthly magazine published by Time Inc. (and, I should note, my former employer). The October issue is definitely the last one to be published by the current staff, some of whom have already secured new jobs. But could Business 2.0 live on in some fashion? Time Inc. is ostensibly still entertaining offers to buy the magazine, if only for form's sake. But even if the sale process is a charade, some serious bidders have nevertheless emerged. Who are they?

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington's breathless writeups of Web 2.0 startups practically parody themselves. As does the incessant expansion of his "Crunch"-branded empire. But his overripe prose has met a near-perfect sendup in CrunchFood, a faux dot-comestibles blog written by a fake Michael Arrington. (Imagine that: a poser poseur.) CNNMoney's Jim Ledbetter writes, "Whoever is writing it has a seasoned grasp of Arrington's astonishing mixture of depth, conflicts of interest, timeliness, and hint of arrogance." A post about lemons and limes includes an obligatory disclosure about the fake Arrington's citrus-grove ownership. Whoever's behind it has a keen sense of irony. CNET, the tech publisher and particular Arrington bugaboo, has recently diversified into food writing. Given Arrington's knack for slavish imitation, could a real CrunchFood be so far off?

Michael Kanellos details 10 tech clichés that will either allow you to "rise through the ranks" by being "a pleasing, predictable suck-up" or will get you laughed at. More often the former but preferably the latter. [CNET News]

When not focused on Jesus, privacy is the cornerstone of the Ask.com campaign — it's the second-tier search engine's only hope for gaining ground on Google. So it's not entirely surprising that CNET ranks it as the most secure search engine. But by eerie coincidence, CNET was also serving an Ask.com ad right next to the chart that proclaims Ask the privacy king. That's what we call a-squidge-too-targeted marketing.

Dan Rosensweig, former Yahoo COO and CNET exec, will start up the Silicon Valley office of buyout firm Quadrangle. [San Jose Mercury News]

Two weeks after canning News.com's video team, CNET is staffing up its video department again — with an intern. [CNET Networks Jobs Career Page]

Turns out that the rumor we heard was on target: CNET, in an effort to rationalize its video operations, laid off News.com executive editor Harry Fuller and Neha Tiwari, a video producer. "The reasoning behind it is that News.com Video was often competing internally with CNET's video property, CNET TV, and that there was too much content overlap," says a tipster. "There are also indications that Harry had a falling out with [News.com editor] Jai Singh, but the details of this supposed disagreement were not revealed." Sounds juicy. Anyone got more?

Here's a strange rumor: We hear that CNET, the tech publisher that's desperately trying to hold onto its audience, just laid off its video news team. "Major, major changes," says an insider, including the canning of news director Harry Fuller and some video reporters. Strange, if only because online video is supposedly hot with advertisers. With CNET's audience, perhaps not so much. Anyone know more?

• Oprah Winfrey endorses Barack Obama. Hell, if she can move copies of The Road she can probably sell anything. [NYT]
  

AOL's human "computer," Ron Grant, is building an elite team of high-tech ubermenschen to lead the Dulles-based online service back to technological dominance. Or maybe not. Former CNet employees are snickering over Grant's choice to head AOL's platforms division, the weightlifting, Corvette-driving, cat-loving Ted Cahall. According to one former CNet staffer, Cahall left such a miasma of bad feeling that the exodus continues a full year after he left the San Francisco tech publisher.

It's the sort of drama written for Second Life nerds. CNET writer Daniel Terdiman nabbed an exclusive! hot! interview with supposed second-life millionaire Ailin Graef. After the interview started, Terdiman and Second-Life publicist were assaulted with animated flying penises. You can't make this crap up. But virtual reality geeks can.

• Evil, Inc.'s Rupert Murdoch and Liberty Media's John C. Malone kiss and make up. [NYT]
  

Some news on missing CNET editor James Kim:

• Big shakeup at Yahoo includes resignation of former ABC head Lloyd Braun. [NYT]
  

• Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Paul Steiger set to retire at the end of next year. [NYP]
  

• Latest bullshit startup to ask Valleywag for a plug: Kizmeet, which hopes to help people hook up online through their "missed connections." Kinda like people already do on Craigslist's "missed connections." When I asked Craigslist founder Craig Newmark about his reaction, he said, "The innovation is good, but we already have too many distractions." In other words, why bother thinking about this failure in the making? [Kizmeet]