About a month ago, we noted that LeWeb would be getting a bit more TechCrunch flavor this year. For the seventh iteration of the popular tech conference based in Paris, France, organizers Geraldine and Loic Le Meur decided to make their startup competition a bit more like a mini-TechCrunch Disrupt. That is, of the 16 startups launching, 3 will get time on the big stage to present in front of everyone and a winner will be chosen. And that won’t be the only TechCrunch influence felt.

As you can see on the just-released program for LeWeb ’10, TechCrunch names are all over the agenda. A group of us are slated to interview some of the big names in tech on stage during the two-day conference, which takes place on December 8 and 9 this year. And there seem to be a range of other interesting talks and panels as well.

A taste of the highlights:

• Leaders from Google, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Mozilla, Foursquare, WordPress, EA, MySpace, UStream, Evernote, Microsoft, PayPal, Nokia, RIM, and more on stage.
• You can learn about how to get your company acquired (with people from Microsoft and Twitter).
• You can learn about how to create a top mobile game (with the CEO behind the company responsible for Angry Birds).
• You can hear about innovation in other parts of the world, such as Japan (with the CEO of DeNA).
• You can hear about where the media is heading (with people from CNN and Techmeme).
• A partner at DST will talk about investing hundreds of millions in Zynga and Facebook.
• You can learn about the building of a solar pane plane.
• Howard Lindzon, Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo Laporte, Dave McClure, Yossi Vardi, Dave Morin, and more will all be on hand for talks.

And, of course, the Disrupt-like startup competition finals with be hosted by our own Michael Arrington and August Capital partner David Hornik.

For a longer intro, be sure to check out Loic and Geraldine’s full rundown in the video below. And if you’re interested in attending, use this link for a 200 euro discount for TechCrunch readers. Hopefully we’ll see some of you in Paris in a few weeks.

• YC-Funded Nowmov: Sit Back, Relax, And Watch An Endless Stream Of…
• Zynga CEO Mark Pincus: “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just…

We’ve had our fair share of outages around here, but we’re not nearly as big as the Gawker blogging empire is, so it’s worth noting that every site in the Gawker Media blog network is currently down and out.

From Gizmodo to Gawker.com, Kotaku, Jezebel and Lifehacker, every visitor to the sites operated by the new media company is being served a dry message that reads ‘Http/1.1 Service Unavailable’.

I’ve been checking out some of the Twitter feeds of said blogs, as well as that of founder Nick Denton (whose personal blog is also down), but it appears they’re either not yet aware of the issue – rather unlikely – or too busy getting things back up again to let their respective audiences know what’s up (or down, rather).

Update: and they’re all back – Gawker tech is holding the servers differently now

I’m not sure just how big Gawker Media is, but in terms of reach, it’s very big. The last report I can find on its traffic numbers date back to November 2009, when Denton said the company’s network was at nearly 400 million pageviews a month, with not a single blog getting under 20 million pageviews per month.

• Yahoo Media Chief Sounds Like AOL’s: “To Truly Scale, You Need…
• Who Needs iTunes? doubleTwist Partners With T-Mobile, Now Bundled On…

In case you still had any doubts that Yahoo and AOL are pursuing the same strategy when it comes to building a media brand online, all you have to do is listen to the two executives running the respective content businesses of each company. Yahoo Media VP James Pitaro and AOL Media president David Eun were both on a Future Of Media panel together in New York City today, but they sound like they work for the same company.

Mimicking the line his boss told us at Disrupt a couple weeks ago, Eun says, “Our strategy is to become the largest producer of high quality content” on the Internet. AOL is trying to achieve this goal by employing its own journalists (more than 500 on staff, thousands on contract), and filling in the rest with crowdsourced articles and videos through its Seed and Studio Now story assignment platforms. Eun says AOL must “find an equilibrium” between the professional journalism and the outsourced, high-volume variety.

Now listen to Pitaro as he explains how Yahoo’s recent acquisition of Associated Content, which crowdsources articles, photos, and videos from 380,000 contributors, fits into the company’s overall content strategy. “We are trying to strike a balance,” he says, between what is produced by Yahoo’s own growing salaried editorial team and the “pro-am” stuff from Associated Content. “To truly scale, you need content from the crowd,” he says.

But it’s all backfill to “round out the coverage,” says Pitaro, when Yahoo needs to assign topics like “lacrosse or local politics.” So are Yahoo and AOL becoming content farms like Demand Media? Eun doesn’t like that label. He prefers to think of it as “companies trying to produce content at scale” and using technology to do so. Both Yahoo and AOL want to create the best quality content they can, and as much as they can, using the tools at their disposal.

Pitaro explains how Yahoo got back into the original content game to begin with: “Yahoo traditionally was about content aggregation. We started building an editorial team with Yahoo Sports four years ago. Very quickly they started to break news and we saw the value of that. The leagues started taking us more seriously and started to want to license us their content. Then what we decided to do was extend into the blogging arena. So we started league specific blogs.” Yahoo began assigning articles “specifically in response to audience needs, whether it was identified through search data, clickthrough data,” or manually by editors. About 18 months ago, Pitaro expanded from sports to news, finance, and entertainment. But, “we can’t do all things,” he notes. Yahoo sales chief Hilary Schneider told the audience at the CMSummit yesterday she expects original content to go from 10 percent to 20 percent of what’s on Yahoo properties, not including the crowdsourced fare.

Arianna Huffington was also on the panel. She was asked about my story on Friday about Yahoo’s interest in the Huffington Post for a content deal and perhaps beyond that as a potential acquisition candidate. She confirmed the two companies are negotiating a new “deeper partnership,” but says there are no acquisition talks right now. (To be clear, that is consistent with my original post, which says the current talks are only about the partnership, but Yahoo’s intentions may go beyond that). Pitaro wouldn’t comment other than to say Yahoo and HuffPo have a “fantastic relationship” and “we are always looking at different opportunities with the Huffington Post.”

What was more interesting was the discussion around paywalls, which the Wall Street Journal has in place and the New York Times is planning. Huffington ripped into Rupert Murdoch, saying his complaints against Google News is all “bark with no bite.” Murdoch could have blocked Google’s access to the Wall Street Journal a long time ago (although he is blocking access to the Times of London). Nevertheless, Huffington ended the panel with a prediction: “Paywalls are not going to work.”

• NSFW: Content Is King! Rest In Peace, Content
• Yahoo Meme Extends To Indonesia

Yesterday we wrote about the imminent release of picplz, the new location-centric photo streaming service being being developed by imeem execs Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg.

The service is still in closed early testing, but early adopter types can now download it from the Android Marketplace and create an account. Once you have an account you’ll get access to the web version as well. Note that it’s only available for U.S. Android users right now though.

I’ve been testing it for a day now. There’s something compelling about it even in this rough stage. Fourquare fanatics are definitely going to want to try it out.

• Yahoo Media Chief Sounds Like AOL’s: “To Truly Scale, You Need…
• Who Needs iTunes? doubleTwist Partners With T-Mobile, Now Bundled On…