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Just last week, Aol celebrated its re-emergence as an independently-traded company. But it's one main advantage is that it still commands a large audience, and in fact was the fourth largest Website in the U.S.—until last month. ComScore data for November, 2009 shows that Facebook surpassed Aol with 102.9 million unique visitors in the U.S., versus 99.7 million for Aol.

AOL is in talks to sell its ICQ instant-messaging service to Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies, according to people familiar with the matter.

Today, AOL comes back on the NYSE following its spinoff from Time Warner (TMX) — and the one-time Web titan is marking the transition with a rebrand.
Gone is the blue AOL of old, replaced with goldfish, monsters, butterflies and the partially lower case “Aol” branding we previewed previously. These symbols represent themes on the site; pick one to change the color scheme and background.

AOL won't officially become an independently traded company again until December 10 when CEO Tim Armstrong is scheduled to ring the bell on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Yahoo continues their strategic defeat from the front lines of innovation. Earlier today they announced that they'd be "deeply integrating" with Facebook Connect, allowing Yahoo users "to see your Facebook friends’ activities on Yahoo! and share Yahoo!

Yahoo Inc. is jumping on the Twitter bandwagon in its latest attempt to get people to use its Internet search engine more frequently. Beginning Thursday, Yahoo will mine the short messages posted on Twitter to find fresher information about hot topics. Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. had earlier announced plans to incorporate Twitter messages into search results, but Yahoo said it will be the first among them to include such "tweets" on its main search results.

About 2,500 jobs will be lost after AOL is spun off from Time Warner next month.

Yahoo is expected to this week to begin showing a portion of its users search results that are ranked by their popularity with Internet users in real-time, under a deal with start-up OneRiot.

In the next few years, Yahoo wants to build a huge new campus in Santa Clara, California. Marketwatch broke the story yesterday. Since then, we've landed photos and video of the proposed project.

See the proposed campus →

Yahoo proposed the project at a May 5 Santa Clara city council meeting.

Internet giant Yahoo sees its third quarter profits more than treble - despite sales falling by about 12% - as it slashed costs.