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. Well, that, and conversations with Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, and several Italian business leaders. Mark Zuckerberg, though, is most definitely plugged into the white-hot microblogging service. This week, he used his Twitter account, plus an appearance on “Oprah,” as a platform to herald the launch of Facebook’s own Twitteresque homepage redesign. In other news, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes laid off AOL President and COO Ron Grant and Chairman and CEO Randy Falco. BoomTown interviewed Falco’s replacement, Google (GOOG) ad sales exec Tim Armstrong, who’ll start at AOL as Chairman and CEO on April 7.

MediaMemo had the full memo from Time Warner on the Falco/Grant-Armstrong transition and also spoke with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen this week. Boxee is the start-up that lets you watch Web video on your TV, basically bypassing your cable box. Which is probably why it’s caught up in a cat-and-mouse game with Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox that would much rather have you watch TV on the Internet instead. Guess who’s the mouse? Still, Hulu is down two networks, ABC and CBS (CBS)–though presumably, the aim is to offer all three. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.) MediaMemo also noted that Google rolled out its behavioral targeting functionality this week and points out that we all might be hearing a lot more from a man named Rick Boucher in the near future as a result.

Behavioral targeting wasn’t the only thing that Google rolled out this week–it also launched Google Voice, the initiative based on the company’s acquisition of voice communications start-up GrandCentral. Digital Daily covered the story. Elsewhere in the telecom world, major Palm (PALM) investor Roger McNamee made some bold (read: crazy) assertions about iPhone users switching en masse to the Pre, which later needed to be clarified (read: backed away from) by Palm itself. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky is also bullish on the Pre and its WebOS, but in a less crazy way. He gave it a glowing write-up on Friday. For a product that hasn’t yet been given a price or a launch date, it’s certainly building itself some high expectations. Of course, it’ll need to fulfill them to compete with the ever-evolving iPhone, which for which Apple (AAPL) is having a press event Tuesday to announce version 3.0 of the device’s OS.

Walt Mossberg reviewed the new version of Apple’s ever-evolving iPod Shuffle this week, which has the distinction of being the first mp3 player to “speak.” His verdict was in Wednesday’s Personal Technology column. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions about using a stylus with the iPhone and offered an explanation on how to change Apple’s Safari 4 beta so that it looks and works more like the previous version. And in this week’s Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at iSkoot’s Notifier, an app designed to endow basic cellphones with smartphone-like capabilities.

More next week. And beware the Ides of March. Or not.

Quite a coup for Facebook. As Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations, Sandberg managed the division that handles sales for about 99% of the company’s advertisers. Her absence at Google (GOOG) will almost certainly be felt as deeply as her presence at Facebook, which stands to benefit a great deal from her experience building Google’s online sales and operations organization. Said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “She has just about the most relevant industry experience for Facebook, especially since we need to scale our operations and scale them globally.”

Interesting to see a Google veteran like Sandberg jump ship for Facebook. Especially after the departures of
Gideon Yu, now Facebook’s CFO, and Benjamin Ling, who heads up Facebook’s developer platform. Perhaps the search giant is beginning to suffer from the same sort of brain drain it brought to bear on the industry a few years back. Recall this 2005 quote from LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman?

Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did. It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.”

Comments like Moskovitz’s are a far cry from the accusations of talent-hoarding leveled at Google just a few years back. “Google is doing more damage to innovation in the Valley right now than Microsoft ever did,” LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman told the New York Times in 2005. “It’s largely that they’re hiring up so many talented people, and the fact they’re working on so many different things. It’s harder for start-ups to do interesting stuff right now.”

Quite a contrast in perceptions, yeah? Funny, how quickly the hottest-of-hot Valley companies can begin to lose currency in tech’s talent pool. Not that we haven’t seen this sort of thing before. “Twenty years from now, Google … will essentially become the Microsoft of today,” said management consultant David Goodenough. “This is the norm.”