Brand new MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta started things off Monday with his first day on the job. He was joined by new COO and former AOL exec Mike Jones and new chief product officer and former Sling Media exec Jason Hirschhorn. Down in Los Angeles at the AlwaysOn OnHollywood conference, Boomtown ran smack into Huff Post mastermind Arianna Huffington, who extolled the virtues and abilities of new managing editor Jai Singh, former editor-in-chief of CNET Networks. At AOL, in preparation for spinning off the Time Warner (TWX) Online unit, new CEO Tim Armstrong began appointing new senior execs and spinning off existing ones. Platform-A president and former Yahoo (YHOO) sales exec Greg Coleman, who joined the AOL team in February, is leaving the company, to be replaced by Jeff Levick, who is leaving Google (GOOG)–where he had a close relationship with Armstrong. CFO Nisha Kumar is also leaving AOL, and a search is underway for her replacement. MediaMemo has more on Time Warner’s decision to spin off AOL. A number of Flickr engineers were laid off Wednesday, but Chief Architect Cal Henderson has left the company of his own accord and is working on a stealth start-up with Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Last, but not least, one of the voices covering the digital scene has found a new gig. Owen Thomas, self-described “scourge of [Silicon] Valley,” is leaving Valleywag to head up GE (GE) unit NBC Universal’s new “Bay Area” Web site, whose motto is “Locals Only.” He’ll be replaced by fresh-faced Ryan Tate, recently the night editor for Gawker. Both reporters talked to BoomTown on Friday about the changes.

MediaMemo wrote on Monday about Condé Nast shutting down Portfolio–both the print magazine and the accompanying Web site. On a cautionary note, MM outlined the reasons why Portfolio’s business magazine peers should not celebrate the loss of a competitor, even (or especially) during tough economic times. Is the meteoric ascension of Twitter flattening out? According to a Nielsen Online study, 60 percent of Twitter’s users leave after a month. This was met with a lot of skepticism so Nielsen ran the numbers again with the same results–and this time it’s sticking with them. MediaMemo also had an explanation for why the long-awaited deal between Disney (DIS) and Hulu took months and months and millions of dollars to finally come together. Digital Daily had more on that story.

Digital Daily also had more info on the ever-evolving Palm (PALM) Pre story. First, a rumor that Palm plans to launch the handset on June 7–which would be crazy, given the fact that June 8 is both the first day of Apple’s (AAPL) Worldwide Developers Conference and the day that those in the know expect the next-generation iPhone to drop. Then, there’s an assertion by Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar based on supply chain research that Palm has greatly reduced its production numbers. Time will have to tell, though, because Palm certainly isn’t talking yet. Of course, things could be worse. Dell (DELL) hasn’t even solidified plans for its rumored smartphone, and already, no one really cares.

Dell’s new Adamo laptop and Studio One 19 desktop aren’t causing much excitement either. In this week’s Personal Technology column, Walt Mossberg reports that although both machines look good and function well, neither is groundbreaking. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered readers’ questions about improving performance on a PC, using peripheral devices with an iPhone and installing Apple’s OS X on a Windows machine. And in this week’s Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret tested three apps from the iTunes App Store that make it possible for the iPod touch to function like an iPhone.

More next week.

In this week ramping up to the holidays, good cheer–unsurprisingly–was hard to find. 2008 may well be remembered as the year the econalypse stole Christmas.

Yahoo (YHOO) was bereft of cheer, for sure. BoomTown covered its long-dreaded layoffs and published Jerry Yang’s complete memo to Yahoo staff about the painful process, which began on Wednesday. Ex-Yahoos from all corners of the company declared their preferences (and vented) to BoomTown about the as-yet fruitless search for a CEO to replace Yang, who laid himself off last month. But wait–Digital Daily pointed out a singular moment of misplaced cheer–akin to fiddling while the proverbial Yahoo burns–as the company, uh, celebrated the holidays with a bafflingly lavish year-end party last Saturday–four days before its massive layoffs began.

Digital Daily covered a lot more bad news this week–even some for Apple (AAPL). Belkin, historically the largest exhibitor at January’s MacWorld, announced it won’t be at the convention this year. In addition, registrations for the annual Macfest are down 20 percent since last year. Fairchild became the latest in a long procession of semiconductor companies to lower estimates in the face of dwindling demand, and IPO activity dropped 50 percent in 2008, according to Ernst & Young’s year-end Global IPO Update. What’s that word? Oh yeah, schadenfreude. In a cold bit of circumstance, almost any company can feel a little bit better by comparing itself to Nortel (NT), which lost an astonishing 97 percent of its value this year.

MediaMemo wrote about CBS’s (CBS) appointment with the piper–it spent $1.8 billion on CNET last year, and started paying the consequences this week. The re-org of the entire CBS Interactive group is laid out in Quincy Smith’s memo to its staff. Hulu was hurting this past week, too. Its traffic dropped sharply in the absence of Tina Fey/Sarah Palin viral videos. There was at least one happy anomaly in this week’s news, though: Microblogging site Tumblr brought back memories of the heady early days of Web 2.0, announcing a $4.5 million-dollar round of funding from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital.

On the Mossberg front, Walt is on a holiday break, but Personal Technology is not. Nick Wingfield sat in for him this week with a column about digital projectors, which are getting smaller and more portable. And in anticipation of Mac-themed holidays for Windows PC users, Katherine Boehret discussed reliable methods of getting data from a PC to a Mac.

Chuck: Do we carry any Rush CD’s?

Morgan: No, but not to worry buddy! I have every Rush track on my Zune.

Chuck: Wait, you have a Zune!?

Morgan: Pfft! No, I’ll go get my iPod.”

– Some recent dialogue from NBC’s “Chuck” (see video below)

Microsoft is adapting its Zune digital music player to the “realities of the market”–those created by recent turmoil in the economy, as well as the harsher ones created by Apple’s (AAPL) iPod juggernaut. It’s slashing prices across the Zune line in the hopes of protecting holiday sales.

Once priced at $199, the 16GB Zune will now sell for $179. It’s 8GB counterpart will sell for $139, down from $149. And the 4GB Zune will sell for $99.

The price cuts come just two months after Microsoft (MSFT) introduced the third-generation Zune platform. “Hopefully we have a good holiday season,” Zune marketing director Adam Sohn told CNet’s News.com. “We’re trying to take into consideration what the realities of the market are.”

Those realities being as harsh as they are, is $10 to $20 off really going to be enough to trump financial concerns and temper long-running consumer disinterest in the device?

The leadership of CNET Networks Inc. (“CNET” or the “Company”) has presided over massive value destruction, with CNET’s shares declining (21)%, (52)% and (25)% in the one, two and three year periods ended March 28, 2008, respectively, compared to (1)%, 6% and 39% returns, respectively, for its stated benchmark peer index. CNET has also consistently underperformed numerous peers in profitability and growth, ranking last among these peers in key metrics, as set forth herein. This underperformance comes despite CNET’s premiere assets, including the tenth largest collection of Internet sites in the world and strong brands and content.”

–Jana Partners, CNET: Value-Unlocking Change for All Shareholders

“The Stars’ Address is CBS.” And now it is CNET Networks’ (CNET) as well. CBS this morning said it agreed to buy the Internet news and entertainment laggard for $1.8 billion in cash. The deal values CNET at about $11.50 per share–a 44.6% premium to yesterday’s closing price of $7.95. That’s $.50 more than the $11 Jana Partners, the investment management firm plotting a proxy fight for control of the company’s board, had hoped to squeeze out of CNET, so presumably even dissident investors are glad to see CBS (CBS) stepping in here.

The deal, expected to close in the third quarter, will vault CBS into the top 10 Internet companies in the United States, with a combined 54 million unique visitors monthly, and about 200 million visitors worldwide. CBS CEO Les Moonves says he expects interactive revenues to hit $1 billion by 2010. “I think the ability of this company to grow together with us just made sense for right now,” Moonves told paidContent. “We’ve stated our goals are to expand in three areas: content, Internet and outdoor. This accomplished two of the three.”

Yesterday a group of journalists whose personal phone records were scrutinized by investigators working for H-P as part of the investigation sued the company, its former chairwoman Patricia Dunn, and former ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker. Bringing suit against the company in separate legal filings were CNET reporters Dawn Kawamoto, Stephen Shankland and Thomas Krazit, and Associated Press reporter Rachel Konrad. Each seeks damages for “illegal and reprehensible conduct” and invasion of privacy. “Defendants conspired to and intentionally intruded into the plaintiffs solitude and private affairs,” the reporters allege, claiming a company hired by H-P used a controversial technique called “pretexting” to obtain their personal phone records. Pretexting is an illegal method of obtaining personal records through misrepresentation of someone’s identity.

HP, for its part, reiterated its regret over the affair, noting it had apologized to the people affected. “As we have said since last fall, H-P regrets these events, and we have apologized individually to those who were affected,” said Ryan Donovan, an H-P spokesman. “In an attempt to resolve this matter short of litigation, H-P made a substantial settlement offer to the reporters, their family members and a charity of their choice. Unfortunately, rather than respond to the offer, they have decided to sue. HP is disappointed by their decision and will defend itself.”

A tough break for H-P, which has suffered untold damage to its once storied reputation, sadly now just a storybook legend penned by H-P founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard.