For better or worse, the top-level turnover at Twitter continues. According to TechCrunch, Chief Scientist Abdur Chowdhury is out. "Chowdhury actually confirmed his exit yesterday on Twitter, but everyone seemed to miss it," it writes. Along with Greg Pass, Chowdhury joined Twitter in 2008 upon its acquisition of search engine Summize. Pass, if you don't recall, left his CTO position at Twitter in May. "We're told that all of the original Summize team is now gone from Twitter," TechCrunch writes -- not to mention to recent exit of Biz Stone, "the firing of four key product guys, and …

Had enough Michael Arrington for the moment? (A lifetime?) If not, you'll be happy to know that the TechCrunch founder is talking with Digits about his recent stafu with AOL. What do we learn from the interview? Not much, other than Arrington's claim that he very nearly stayed on at AOL. (AOL officially terminated its relationship with Arrington earlier this week, though it remains an investor in his new VC fund, CrunchFund.) This past Saturday, "We got to a point where we agreed on the statement that I would stay with AOL and continue to write," he tells …

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion isn't too healthy. While no surprise to market watchers, the severity of RIM's illness is now gasp inducing. The Canadian tech company reported profits of $419 million, or 80 cents a share, for the three months ended Aug. 27, compared with $796.7 million, or $1.46, in the same period last year. "Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg had predicted a more modest drop to 88 cents," the Los Angeles Times reports. Worse still, RIM reported that revenue fell 10% to $4.2 billion, compared with $4.6 billion a year earlier. "Analysts say that the company is …

Datamation.com says Facebook is the new Yahoo. What's the meaning of this eye-catching claim? Essentially, Datamation says Facebook is slowly but surely falling into the reinvention trap that so many Web pioneers, including Yahoo, have failed to avoid. Because Web services and user behavior evolve so fast, no company can rest on yesterday's success tomorrow. And, while reinvention -- or at least rapid innovation -- isn't impossible, it's extremely difficult. Yahoo's been failing to reinvent itself for years, and now, according to Datamation, so is Facebook. "The only way for Facebook (or any online service for that matter) …

What does Barry Diller think of AOL dropping $30 million on TechCrunch, and then removing its founder and editor Michael Arrington? "What a good piece of business," the IAC chair and senior exec remarked during a conversation this week at the Paley Center for Media's International Council. (Diller, of course, was being entirely sarcastic.) Where, in Diller's opinion, did AOL go wrong? First and foremost, by considering TechCrunch a "journalistic enterprise," and all that that implies from an ethical standpoint. "It's not a journalistic enterprise, TechCrunch," Biller said this week. "And so to have treated it as such …

Though no guarantee of market success, chat-room platform Shaker just took top honors at this year's TechCrunch Disrupt. What makes Shaker so special? Out to "redefine the social network," the platform turns communities likes Facebook into avatar-driven, videogame-like chat rooms. Similar to Second Life and other virtual worlds, users can engage other users simply by "walking" up to their avatars. But, Shaker wasn't the only start-up recognized at Disrupt. Runner up Prism Skylabs, which taps into a company's video cameras for real-time footage and analysis. The Audience Choice award went to Vocre, a real-time translation app for the …

The wedding's back on! Er, the IPO, we mean. Despite postponing presentations to potential investors this month, Groupon still plans to go public by late October or early November, reports The New York Times, citing sources. "The restart on the I.P.O. process is being driven in part by a resolution between the company and the Securities and Exchange Commission over a memo from Groupon's chief executive to employees that promoted the company's business performance," reports NYT. "The memo soon became public, raising concerns that the company had violated S.E.C. rules restricting corporate information before an offering to its …

U.S. prosecutors have reportedly launched a criminal probe into whether eBay employees took confidential information from Craigslist at the same as eBay was trying to build a rival classified ad service. Citing a copy of a grand jury subpoena, Reuters reports: "The subpoena seeks information regarding several eBay personalities, including founder and Chairman Pierre Omidyar and Joshua Silverman, the former Skype chief executive who served as eBay's representative on Craigslist's board." As Reuters notes, the revelation follows years of feuding in civil court over allegations that eBay took a stake in Craigslist, and then misappropriated confidential information while …

With the threat of Google+ looming -- however so slightly -- Facebook debuted several improvements to its Friend Lists feature, which can be used to define privacy settings and filter the news feed. Members now have automatically created, populated and updated Smart Lists of their family, co-workers, classmates, and local friends. Also, users can now add friends to an "Acquaintances" list whose members will appear less frequently in the news feed -- "and a 'Close Friends' list of people who will appear more frequently in news feed and whose updates will trigger notifications," Insider Facebook adds. By building …

Amazon.com and Hearst Corp. this week entered into an expanded, consumer marketing, e-commerce and content relationship. In short, TechFlash see the deal as "a move likely to secure more content for a tablet" -- Amazon's forthcoming tablet, that is. "With the deal, Amazon customers will be able to access content from one of the world's largest publishers of monthly magazines," TechFlash writes. The deal also gives the publisher access to Amazon's growing and evolving e-commerce platform, Amazon said this week. Amazon, which makes the popular Kindle reader, has reportedly been in talks with magazine publishers to get content …