AOL is already looking ahead of the upcoming split from Time Warner and is making plans to spin-off some non-essential proprieties to allow it to focus more on its new direction, moving away from services and more towards content. The rumor now is that it's looking to shed its ICQ instant messaging service and has put a price tag of about $300 million on the property.

According to sources close to the matter, cited by BoomTown, AOL has put investment bankers Morgan Stanley and Allen & Co. to work on preparing the IM unit for sale and managing the perspective talks. It looks like AOL didn't have any immediate plans to sell ICQ, but interest from a couple of companies outside of the US, which probably sensed an opportunity, determined it to put things in motion.

ICQ has about 50 million unique monthly users and is the most popular IM services in several countries, though mostly in smaller markets. In the US, it is virtually unheard of, while the company's other IM service, AIM, is among the top three services along with Microsoft Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. The ICQ unit is profitable, although not exactly a big revenue earner, enough to raise the attention of several players with interest in the countries where the service is more popular.

AOL is about to become an independent company and will be listed on the stock markets as of December 10, 2009, severing all ties with parent company Time Warner. Spinning off from Time Warner is just the first step after which AOL is planning on shedding some weight and becoming more focused. The company has been seeing some rough times, but it is now on track to become a content company investing massively in that sector over the past year or so. At the same time, it's looking to ditch some of its interests as the company is incredibly spread out at the moment. It will also pull out of some international markets, AOL currently has properties in about 40 countries, so the massive layoffs coming soon to the company may very well affect international employees, as well.