According to a variety of sources, AOL plans to sell or close Bebo, the social network that it acquired two years ago for $850 million.

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On Monday, Nathania Johnson wrote about “The Unlikely Heroes of Search and Social Media” who used abso-freakin-lutely no SEO. Today, I’d like to highlight one who did.

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Quality copy is supposed to attract links, so why don’t you have any?

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If your NCAA March Madness brackets are as messed up as mine, you’ll need a distraction this weekend.

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It’s nicer, but not yet as comprehensive, as FriendFeed.

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Tim Armstrong and AOL employees rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange this morning, to signal the beginning of trading – including AOL stock as an independent company.

Wall Street responded by dropping their shares by a 36 cents.

That’s to be expected when the future of the company is so uncertain. But they’re doing their best to paint a bright picture of what’s to come:

“We have a clear strategy, a focused mission and a firm commitment to delivering value to our shareholders, consumers and partners,” said Armstrong.

Their main focus is content and advertising. AOL owns 80 niche content sites. 20 of them are ranked in the top 5 of their category in comScore’s Media Matrix.

They’re looking to local to help drive their content business. Christopher Heine went in-depth on the local focus over at our sister site, ClickZ. AOL is tackling the difficult problem of providing fresh local content, something that’s been a challenge for the space.

Their hyper-local platform is called Patch, and it’s expected to reach 30 US cities by year’s end. In 2010, they’ll launch hundreds more.

AOL is already a player in the web advertising biz. Advertising.com, which AOL acquired in 2004, reaches 9 out of 10 consumers online. They’ll need to stay vigilant as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! pursue AOL/Advertising.com’s #1 position in the display ad field (as ranked by comScore).

Noticeably missing from AOL’s plans for the future is search. They rely on Google to power their search and there’s no indication that’s changing anytime soon.

Last but not least, AOL’s new homepage went live today. If you refresh it a bunch of times, you’ll see a different image behind the new logo – or you can select one of your choosing from the row of images at the top.

As you can see, the homepage is 3 columns, something we see at Bing and Yahoo! – and that Google has been experimenting with. It’s clearly a portal and there’s social media integration.

Now, it’s just wait and see. Will a former Google executive take AOL to new glorious heights? Leave your predictions in the comments.

AOL is looking to cut 2,500 jobs. Before they go through the tough choice of choosing who to let go, they’re asking if anyone wants to volunteer to get the axe.

Oh, how I’ve been there and oh, how this sucks for AOL-ers. Goodbye, productivity. Hello, everyone trying to figure out if they’re safe.

At least the process seems to have a defined endpoint. AOL says they expect to incur $200 million in costs from “re-structuring” and that those costs will incur before the December 9 spinoff date.

Last spring, Time Warner announced that it would spin off AOL as an independent company. The announcement was made shortly after hiring Tim Armstrong away from Google as President. This fall, they’ve named members to the future Board of Directors and hired key financial executives needed to run the publicly traded company.

Now, we know that AOL’s independence day is December 9, 2009. All Time Warner stockholders as of 5pm on November 27, 2009 will receive 1 AOL share for every 11 shares of Time Warner.

AOL has openly talked about their focus on content, in ways reminiscent of Yahoo! after striking a deal with Microsoft. AOL currently relies on Google for their search, and there’s no sign of that changing anytime soon.

MapQuest has a couple of big announcements this week. First up, their new GeoRSS Embeddable Maps allow web publishers to add maps to their sites that feature locations they wish to share. Let’s say you have a blog about coffee. Perhaps you create a map sharing your favorite local coffee shops.

The GeoRSS Embeddable Maps work with online services that provide a feed of location data. Such services include sites like Flickr, Yelp, Brightkite or When.com.

Next up is a new iPhone app. The app features voice-guided, turn-by-turn directions. The app also optimizes routes, taking into account things like traffic and construction.

It’s not cheap compared to most apps, but compared to other navigation apps (or buying a GPS gadget), it’s a good deal. After a 14-day trial for 99 cents, you’ll have to shell out $3.99 a month, $9.99 for three months, or $29.99 for three months.

AOL has tapped Shashi Seth as Senior Vice President of Global Advertising Products. Seth was formerly with Cooliris and before that was at Google. Prior to leaving Google, he was charged with the difficult task of developing monetization strategies for YouTube. Seth previously was the Product Lead for Web Search at Google.

Seth also spent time at eBay, where he managed APIs & Platform. Before that, he launched Gap’s online stores. Seth began his career at NASA.

“Shashi is unmatched in the industry as an innovator with an outstanding track record of developing new and better ways to serve advertisers on the Web,” said Jeff Levick, President of Global Advertising and Strategy at AOL. “As we move forward on our strategy of becoming the world’s largest provider of display advertising, Shashi will play a critical role in creating the best products in the business for our advertising partners.”

Seth is the latest of the fresh talent to head to AOL. Earlier this year, Tim Armstrong left Google to head up the struggling internet company. A few weeks ago, news came that ex-Yahoo! Brad Garlinghouse of “Peanut Butter Manifesto” fame is joining AOL as well.