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Yahoo is expected soon to hire a new chief of its crucial Americas division from Internet rival AOL Inc., said a person familiar with the matter. Ned Brody, who was the top advertising-sales executive at AOL, has resigned from the post to pursue "other opportunities," AOL said on Thursday in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

AOL has been the sad sack of online media for so long now that it almost makes Yahoo look good. But at least the latest quarter showed the first year-over-year revenue growth in eight years–eight!–so it’s worth looking a little more closely at whether CEO Tim Armstrong has a handle on what can bring the Internet pioneer back from irrelevance.

Shares in AOL have jumped 14% after the US internet firm reported a sharp rise in advertising revenues. Advertising sales jumped 7% to $340m (£212m), boosting net profit for the third quarter to $20.8m, compared with a loss of $2.6m a year ago.

Kevin Systrom's smartest move was to sell Instagram to Facebook early, before having to deliver even an iota of revenue. My prediction is that we’ll look back on Facebook's acquisition of Instagram as a bust—much in the same way we now view News Corp.’s purchase of Myspace, AOL’s purchase of Bebo, and Excite@Home’s purchase of Blue Mountain Arts.

AOL promoted its chief financial officer, Artie Minson, Jr., to the newly created role of chief operating officer as part of a reorganization of the company's operations.

Institutional Shareholder Services, the influential shareholder advisory firm, has recommended that AOL stockholders vote for two of the three board nominees put forward by dissident shareholder Starboard Value.

AOL is considering the sale of TechCrunch, Engadget and other sites in its AOL Tech chanel, according to PandoDaily, which attributes the information to two independent sources. The story, by PandoDaily founder Sarah Lacy, a former writer for TechCrunch, says AOL is seeing $70 million to $100 million for the collection of AOL's tech sites ...

The good news for Arianna Huffington is that she gets to keep her share of the $315 million that AOL shelled out for her website. The bad news is her duties as editrix of the once-mighty Web conglomerate are being scaled back. Way back.

Faltering Internet icon AOL was able to squeeze out more than $1 billion from Microsoft for a trove of some 800 patents in an auction, the latest sign of just how valuable such portfolios can be for the world's biggest technology companies.

AOL Inc. defended its business strategy after an activist shareholder targeted the company for spending too much on its Web-content operations.