Are New York's established media companies entirely incapable of developing web properties? Barry Diller's IAC just fired the head of Ask.com after the search engine's obscure "algorithm" campaign failed to eat into Google's lead among web users. Now, word that Conde Nast is laying off staff on Flip.com, a social network for teen girls which was the magazine group's biggest greenfield web initiative. Flip.com attracts less than 20% of the audience it had last April. The new plan, we hear: let Flip scrapbooks be embedded in other more successful West Coast social networks such as Facebook and Myspace. This is what New York media is reduced to: a widget. (Anyone have the Flip.com layoff email? Forward it me!)

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