We are hearing that AOL is planning on laying off hundreds of employees next week.

Some of the cuts will undoubtably come from the bloated Patch division, but not all, from what we hear. The conjecture by our source is that AOL may disappoint Wall Street this quarter, and the company wants to have a story around cost cutting already in place.

We only have one source on this one, but it's a pretty good one. We've put out many more calls and will update the story when we know more.

Leaving AOL has become fashionable of late. In addition to the TechCrunch turmoil, many executives have left in the last few months, including Tim Dierks, Alex Gounares, Tim Castelli, Brad Garlinghouse and Kiersten Hollars . Apparently those departures have not been enough to bring costs into line.