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?

A tipster reports that Snocap, the once-hot digital music startup from Napster founder Shawn Fanning and Silicon Valley bad boy Jordan Mendelson, has laid off 60 percent of its staff, and the company is up for sale. If true, it's not surprising, giving industry trends. Snocap was something of a second coming for Fanning; rather than fight the music labels, he aimed to help them release copy-protected files on peer-to-peer networks, so they'd get paid even if users shared files. But despite cutting a range of deals, the idea never really took off. And lately, the music industry has started to embrace the idea of doing without digital-rights-management software altogether. It's not clear who would want to buy Snocap, really. At any rate, this explains why we haven't seen Mendelson, pictured here in bubblier times, at many parties lately. Anyone hear more about Snocap's firings? Drop us a line.

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)

Holy smokes. The BBC will lay off between 2000 and 3000 people. They only have 23,000 employees. [FT]

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.

From the mailbag: "Did you guys hear that Hearst laid off the entire production staff of 17 magazine last week? Did you also hear that they announced in a meeting with production directors this morning that they are eliminating all production positions company wide starting in 2008? What's that... 60 people on 17 magazines having their positions terminated? That's gonna flood the market a little." Actually, we hadn't heard. On the one hand, it seems a little... over the top? On the other hand, it would definitely reduce costs! Anyone know anything more?

AOL employees, apparently, have not lost their gallows humor in the face of what most in the industry now believe are impending layoffs. For one thing, some have taken to referring to CEO Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant as "Smithers and Burns," the curiously close assistant-and-boss couple from "The Simpsons." But also, according to one tipster, they're volunteering to tell people, falsely, that they've been laid off — a prank so successful that it may have generated the rumors of layoffs that reached our ears late last night. How the prank supposedly went down, after the jump.

Ted Leonsis, the semi-retired AOL executive, is drawing fresh attention for a blog post he wrote last week insisting that all was fine at the Internet giant, citing a raft of lofty numbers. As rumors of new layoffs have bubbled up, commenters on his blog are tearing Leonsis apart for his sunny claims of AOL's health. Leonsis's shiny, happy mantra: AOL has huge traffic. His detractors' retort: Yes, but it's stagnant or declining. Leonsis has yet to respond. Perhaps he's too busy puzzling over buddy Steve Case's perplexing new credit-card startup.