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MySpace has extended its war on bloat overseas. This morning the company announced plans to close at least four of its offices outside the U.S. in a bid to reduce costs. Some 300 of the company’s 450 international employees will lose their jobs as a result.

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The ax has finally swung at MySpace. This morning the AOL of social networks announced plans to sack 30 percent of its workforce. All told, 420 workers will lose their jobs, reducing the size of the company’s staff to 1,000 employees. CEO Owen Van Natta’s all-hands memo, after the jump.

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At the Democratic National Convention, we were like rock stars. At the Republican National Convention, I sat in my hotel room by myself for three days. No one would meet with us. I was begging people to meet with us.
–Facebook Marketing Director Randi Zuckerberg
With all due respect, Randi Zuckerberg is totally full of sh*t [...]

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Yahoo announced some updates to its homepages today–mobile and Web both. Designed to make them more personally relevant to their users, the pages are more customizable than they’ve been before. The release in full, after the jump.

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With $25 billion in its coffers, Microsoft isn’t exactly hurting for cash. So why is the company planning a bond offering that could raise billions in additional capital? Microsoft will say only that the sale of the notes will be used for “general corporate purposes.” Those include working capital and share buybacks. They also include acquisitions.

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Verizon Wireless is reportedly working with Microsoft to develop a new smart-phone. Plus, layoffs at Nokia and Microsoft’s “societal network.”

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Think of it as Facebook for the people you actually know and like, those whose health and safety you’d worry about in a natural disaster. It’s called Microsoft Vine and it’s not so much a social network as it is a “societal” one–or at least, Redmond likes to bill it as such.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going to turn the social network’s “stream” of user experiences and information into a revenue stream one way or another. And if that means allowing others to pan its waters for gold, then so be it.

And so, at an event in Palo Alto later today, Facebook will reportedly announce plans to open its stream to third-party developers, offering them the chance to build new services and applications outside the site that access the status updates, photos and videos uploaded by users.

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It was a banner week for earnings calls. Yahoo, Microsoft and Apple all got the liveblogging treatment on All Things D.
First up, BoomTown’s anticipation for pistol-packin’ Carol Bartz’s first earnings appearance paid off when Bartz dropped the F-bomb, live and uncensored.

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In a move that most likely would not have been made without the recent efforts of Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom announced his candidacy for the California Governor’s seat this morning via Twitter.

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Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation. And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game, and Google and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.

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American Airlines domestic passenger jets are fast becoming a fleet of airborne Wi-Fi hotspots. After a successful six-month pilot program on 15 planes, the airline will expand its in-flight Wi-Fi service to 300 more over the next two years.

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In Silicon Valley, it’s hard to believe that not everyone follows each shiny new thing on the Web, tracks OS versions as intently as the storyline for “Battlestar Galactica” and remains jacked-in pretty much 24/7. But it’s been known to happen.
For instance, BoomTown was in Rome earlier this week attending a conference on business, brand and innovation that happens only once every seven years–and one of the biggest takeaways? Hardly any Italians have heard of Twitter, and those who have don’t really use it.

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Hard to believe, but social networking has eclipsed email in popularity. The latest Nielsen survey found that 66.8 percent of the global online population spends time at “Member Communities”–a category that includes both blogs and social networks. That makes social networking about two percent more popular than email.

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