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.

Sony (SNE) has no plans to divest its stake in Sony Ericsson, but it is divesting itself of something else: the executive charged with overseeing the joint venture. Najmi Jarwala, the president of Sony Ericsson’s operations in North America, is leaving the company at the end of March. Why? “To pursue other career opportunities.”

“It has been an incredibly rewarding time for me and we have achieved a lot together in North America,” Jarwala said in a statement. “We have introduced an increasing number of new products, grown market share, built operator relationships and, perhaps most importantly, have laid the foundation for North America to play a key role in the long term growth and success of Sony Ericsson.”

An incredibly rewarding time. Really?

An interesting choice of words coming as it does just days after Sony Ericsson said it expects to post an ugly loss for its first quarter–its fourth consecutive one–amid waning customer demand for its largely unexciting handsets.

An ugly blow for Motorola (MOT). With the economy in a deadspin and stronger rivals like Nokia (NOK) lowering handset sale expectations, things are looking decidedly bleak for the company.

A likely explanation. There’s little doubt the botched debut of the new Blackberry Storm undermined RIM’s performance this quarter. But perhaps there’s something more at work here as well–like the quality of RIM’s handsets themselves. “We think an additional factor is a poor reception to the much-anticipated Storm and Bold,” analysts at Deutsche Bank wrote in a client note. “We think the Storm has numerous flaws and the functionality of both devices is largely unchanged from previous devices.”

Marked by panic selling and wet-your-pants fear, it was one of the worst weeks in the financial world’s history–a week that cut the legs out from under Google (GOOG), beat Yahoo until its market cap bled purple and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to swing more than one thousand points on an intra-day basis.

It was a week that saw Sequoia Capital warn its portfolio companies to prepare for a protracted downturn or, in the words of partner Michael Moritz, be “spattered on windshields and radiator grills and be forgotten.” Turns out Bubble 2.0 sounds a lot like Bubble 1.0 when it pops.

Beneath the screams of agony echoing across Wall Street, there was other news worth noting:

• Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced plans to spin off its manufacturing operations.
• “Legal” turned out to be a poor choice of adjectives for RealNetworks’ RealDVD (RNWK), the company’s new “legal” DVD ripper. A judge extended the temporary restraining order barring the company from distributing it.
• This just in: Time Warner’s (TWX) AOL and Yahoo (YHOO) are still talking about a merger and Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.
  Where is Microsoft (MSFT) in all this? Sitting on the sidelines hoping the deal will go through.
• Finally, activist investor Eric Jackson, the creator of the Yahoo! Plan B investor community, revealed Yahoo! Plan C: his hedge fund’s divestiture of its Yahoo stake.

We just want you to know that as we assess our capital allocation options, we will continue to adhere to the disciplined framework that I just outlined.”

– Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes, Aug. 06, 2008

Disciplined capital allocation is a key priority for Time Warner (TWX). That said, the company “may have overpaid” for Bebo, the social-networking site it acquired for $850 million in cash back in March. So said Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes in an interview with Portfolio.

Portfolio: And if you had to do it all over again … would you pay $850 million for Bebo?

Jeff Bewkes: Maybe. I’ll tell you why I can’t give you an answer. Because when you’re doing an acquisition in an auction, the core purpose of the auction is to try to get as much buyer and competing interest. When you look back at it, you then have to reveal–which I can’t to you–what I know about the other bidders. And you learn more of it after than before. The reason we said–when we kept being pressed by people, when they said “did you overpay or not?” we said we don’t know–is if our plans work out, we did not overpay. But then somebody says it’s compared to what you could’ve paid. If our plans work out less well than we thought, we would have overpaid by a few hundred million dollars. I’m not sitting here now–I don’t know if that’s the case–under a high case, we’ve actually made a lot of money on it. So it’s really too early to say. It’s kind of like saying, did Google (GOOG) overpay for YouTube? What was that number–$1.6 billion? They haven’t monetized that yet