Reuters reports that once massive Internet service provider AOL is planning to cut a third of its workforce or 2,500 jobs.

The layoffs are part of a plan to cut down some $300 million in annual costs before its spin off from corporate owner Time Warner. The company has asked for volunteers but will make involuntary layoffs if necessary.

AOL expects to incur about $200 million in restructuring costs associated with the spin off from December 9, the date of the spin off, through the first half of 2010.

If you were anywhere but under a rock during the 90s you have probably heard of AOL and many people used to use it when dial-up was the only option for Internet. It was one of the most widely spread ISPs available in the days before broadband—if you didn’t have you at lest saw those free trial discs that were everywhere.

Then came AOL’s merger with Time Warner, which is lampooned by PC Mag as "one of the most disastrous corporate mergers in history." Nine years later AOL is spinning off and becoming independent once again.

The newly and once again independent AOL will focus primarily on advertiser-supported content.

If you haven’t noticed, people tend to die at the most inconvenient times. It’s a sad fact of life.

AOL found this out the hard way when the company’s AIM service went offline at around 5:00 PM EDT, right as the news of Michael Jackson’s death started passing around the Internet. The company had previously planned a routine software update that shouldn’t have interrupted users’ normal experience.

Instead, the surge in traffic as everyone was all atwitter over Michael Jackson’s death strained the company’s servers too far, and AIM went offline. Service was restored about forty minutes later.

We wouldn’t go as far as to say that the AIM outage forced users to use other communication platforms, but AIM was far from the only site used yesterday. Trendrr reported 250,000 tweets mentioning Michael Jackson and Google News found more than 3,000 articles written about him yesterday alone. Keynote Systems, a company who tracks website performance, noted that the average time to access a news website doubled from 4 to 9 seconds yesterday.

Michael Jackson’s passing is a sad event, but as the currently trending topics show, many are honoring him with their tweets, a trend certain to continue.

Electronic Arts announced Monday it was teaming up with AOL to create the free EA Sports GameShow.

“EA Sports GameShow is the only live-hosted, interactive online sports trivia game. Featuring programming that is updated daily, each trivia session is broadcast from the Ea Sports GameShow studio in Orlando, Fla.,” EA said in a statement Monday.

“After several months of Beta testing, we’re excited to move to the next phase of EA Sports GameShow,” said executive producer Roy Harvey. “This agreement with AOL provides an outstanding opportunity to introduce new sports fans from across the country to ‘live broadcast gaming’, a captivating, innovative form of entertainment.”

Every Monday through Friday from 12 p.m. through 1 p.m., fans can take part in the AOL “FanHouse Challenge Hour.”  The game lets players interact with the on-air personalities while competing against sports fans from around the country. Questions are presented through a variety of media, including text, audio and video.

We’re waiting to see how successful this one is, but if nothing else, it’s another example of how EA runs the interactive sports world.