Put it up and watch what happens — that’s the mantra of executives at leading Internet news and video sites as they try to keep tabs on how content is evolving in the era of YouTube and MySpace.

“Since you can’t predict it, you sort of have to just let it get out there,” Alan Citron, general manager of TMZ.com, said Tuesday during a panel discussion featuring Internet and creative executives at the Digital Hollywood conference in Santa Monica.

“There’s a huge appetite for this stuff,” he added, referring to the celebrity-driven news that TMZ features. “People want to see people as they actually are in public. This stuff bounces around the Internet like a boomerang.”

Citron also said that any content has value on the Web as long as it is interesting.

Joe Michaels, director business development at MSN Entertainment, emphasized the interactive nature of content in the digital realm and the prevalence of multitasking behavior.

Amazon.com Inc.’s A9 search engine has dropped some of its most widely touted features, including the ability to remember everything a user has ever searched for and a service that showed detailed, street-level images of major cities.

The Internet retailer removed the functions, along with several others, late Friday. Amazon.com spokesman Drew Herdener said the company is “shifting its priorities to areas where it can provide the greatest benefit for customers.”

A9 had put considerable effort into taking detailed, street-level photos of 20 U.S. cities, which people could use to map directions and find businesses. Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. also have invested heavily in such photographic search technologies.

Herdener said it was too early to say what Seattle-based Amazon will do with the technology and images now.

Tags: Amazon Search Engine, Google, Microsoft