As we noted last week, part of AOL CEO Tim Armstrong’s plan to “make magic” as its new prized possession Huffington Post is integrated into the portal is to make a whole lotta jobs vanish. The magic number in the U.S. is over 200, and it’s not surprising that the majority of U.S. layoffs — 120 — are in editorial — HuffPo is bringing aboard an estimated 150 editorial staffers. Apparently SVP of News Jonathan Dube, who shifted from his spot as vice president of ABCNews.com in November, has already received his walking papers.

The U.S. cuts pale in comparison to the ones in AOL’s Bangalore office, where slideshow and article assemblers will be kicked to the curb in favor of new AOL Content Chief Arianna Hufffington’s hand-picked workhorses. Four hundred Indian employees are being laid off and 350 are being shifted to contract positions.

For Yahoo, musical chairs is being played in the ad division. New Head of U.S. Ad Sales Wayne Powers announced in a memo that Time Digital’s Liz Ritzcovan will be joining Yahoo! as vice president of Marketing Solutions and Andrea Morokutti has been promoted to vice president of Sales Operations and Strategy. Both will report to Powers.

In the last few months, Yahoo has had some of its ad sales talent poached by the red-hot group-discounters. New York advertising honcho Lee Brown took off for Groupon while Head of North American Field Sales Mitch Spolan ran in the other direction to LivingSocial. AOL veteran Mark Ellis took over the latter spot last week.

The personnel shifts are ahead of next week’s global ad sales conference takes place in San Antonio, TX, which BoomTown’s Kara Swisher has discovered is going to be less like past years’ pep rallies — with big-name guest speakers– and more like a boot camp on sales and ad ops. It’s going to be a real struggle of wills — apparently phones aren’t allowed. We’ll see who survives.

Bassett comes to Millennial Media from Community Connect Inc. having managed the revenue for social networking sites such as: MiGente.com, Blackplanet.com, Asianave.com, Faithbase.com and Glee.com. He has over 17 years of sales and marketing experience and holds a B.A. from St. Michael’s College, as well as having done work at the Wharton School of Business.

“Peter has tremendous experience working closely with advertisers and marketers, and developing digital media solutions that exceed their expectations,” said Paul Palmieri, CEO and president of Millennial Media. “We’re delighted to have him on board and look forward to the positive impact he will undoubtedly make on our company.”