Top Items:
Robert Scoble / Scobleizer:
Why Microsoft will buy Facebook and keep it closed — It no longer is about Data Portability or Social Graph Portability, if you will. — I'm hearing these rumors too that John Furrier (my ex-boss) is reporting. That Microsoft will buy Yahoo's search and then buy Facebook for $15 to $20 billion.
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John Furrier / Furrier.org:
Silicon Valley Rumor: Microsoft to Buy Yahoo Search and Then Facebook — My sources say that the Yahoo and Microsoft teams are bunkered down in a Palo Alto hotel hammering out the final stages of a transaction that will have Microsoft picking up the Yahoo search business. Word is that this deal will be done this week.
Discussion:
Between the Lines, Outside the Lines, Search Engine Land, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Techdirt, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, Valleywag, The Register, Electronista, WebProNews, I'm Not Actually a Geek, metarand, Los Angeles Times, Search Engine Journal, John Battelle's Searchblog, Mashable!, Silicon Alley Insider and paidContent.org
Microsoft:Microsoft Issues Statement Regarding Yahoo!
Discussion:
Search Engine Journal, Tech Trader Daily, Profy.Com, Smalltalk Tidbits …, BoomTown, Mashable!, Gear Diary, TechRadar.com, SEO and Tech Daily, Search Engine Land, Tech Beat, GigaOM, Tech Confidential, Web Worker Daily, Wall Street Journal, Between the Lines, Download Squad, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, WebGuild, CNET News.com, CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, The Inquisitr, Tech Tracks, Silicon Alley Insider, Coop's Corner, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Data Center Knowledge, BBC NEWS, Electronista, Windows-Now.com, The Blogging Times, Forbes, TechCrunch, Microsoft Subnet's blog and Tech Ticker
Saul Hansell / Bits:
Apple Wants More Mobile Music From Labels — As part of Apple's efforts to improve on the shortcomings of its popular iPhone, the company has approached some of the major music labels to try to expand the variety of ringtones and other musical features available on the device, several label executives said last week.
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Business Wire:
AOL Completes Acquisition Of Global Social Media Network Bebo — Company Announces New AOL People Networks Business Unit, Led by Joanna Shields — AOL Focused on Growth in Three Key Areas - Publishing, People Networks and Advertising — NEW YORK—(BUSINESS WIRE)—AOL announced …
Discussion:
GigaOM
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Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:AOL-Bebo: $850M Deal Closes; AOL Combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ Into …
Discussion:
Between the Lines, BoomTown, CNET News.com, The Inquisitr, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer, AppScout and MarketingShift
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped:
Will Gmail Get Themes? — A source is telling me that Gmail will get themes - custom layouts to personalize Google's web mail client. According to the source, the launch of this may happen within the next months. There will be 12 themes to pick from, according to this information …
Rajas Moonka / Official Google Blog:
Opening our content network to third parties — Today, we're announcing that Google is accepting third-party advertising tags on the Google content network in North America. This will empower advertisers to work with approved third parties to serve and track display ads, including rich media ads …
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Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land:
Google Enables Third Party Tracking For Content Network — Google has announced that they will now support the ability for advertisers to track their ads using third party advertising tags. This new feature is only available within Google's content network (aka AdSense) and only available for North America based advertisers.
InfoWorld:
Facebook CEO wants to talk with Google on Friend Connect — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants to sit down with Google and work out the privacy issues that caused Facebook to block Google's Friend Connect last week, he said Monday. — “We want to talk to Google about this and see if there's …
louisgray.com:
Blogging 2.0 Causing Friction With 1.0 Bloggers — Duncan Riley is on a roll. After a multitude of posts from around the Web this weekend once again debating whether comments away from the blog were a good thing, or if new Web services like Twitter and FriendFeed were useful or were instead creating …
Discussion:
Podcasting News, Mark Evans, Alexander van Elsas's Weblog …, Feedonomics, My Blog Posts and The Stalwart
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Mark Hendrickson / TechCrunch:
ClearContext's Stab At Making Email More Manageable — It might not be as sexy as Xobni, but Outlook users who find that plugin useful should check out ClearContext Personal. It too intends to make email more manageable, albeit with a greater focus on projects than people …
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Matthew Miller / The Mobile Gadgeteer:
Mobile software Monday: Opera Mobile 9.5 — One of the primary functions I perform on my mobile devices is web browsing, but until now there have always been limitations with these browsers. The iPhone had the best current browser for strictly browsing, but didn't allow you to do much else …
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
The Real News of Wetpaint's $25 Million Funding: Fidelity Kicked In — While Wetpaint's $25 million new round of funding was leaked to one and all under embargo until 12:01 am EST today-including BoomTown, so don't assume any of us report our little hearts out on all these bits of news …
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Scott Moritz / Techland:
Dell deepens executive bench — Dell (DELL) named former GE Plastics chief Brian Gladden as its new CFO replacing Don Carty. — The move makes Gladden the No.2 executive under CEO and founder Michael Dell and a likely successor to the top job should Dell vacate the position again.
Caroline McCarthy / Webware.com:
Joost: New hires, lots of video, still no Web-based version — Some critics declared video content service Joost kaput when big-network rival Hulu debuted, far exceeding expectations. — But Joost, founded by the team behind Skype and Kazaa, wants you to know it's still going strong.
Discussion:
Silicon Alley Insider
Eric A. Taub / New York Times:
Guessing the Online Customer's Next Want — Marketers have always tried to predict what people want, and then get them to buy it. — Among online retailers, pushing customers toward other products they might want is a common practice. Both Amazon and Netflix, two of the best-known practitioners …
