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.
Microsoft:
Microsoft Issues Statement Regarding Yahoo! — Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. — REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today issued the following statement:
Discussion:
Profy.Com, Smalltalk Tidbits …, Gear Diary, Mashable!, TechRadar.com, Search Engine Land, Tech Beat, SEO and Tech Daily, Tech Confidential, Web Worker Daily, Between the Lines, Search Engine Journal, Download Squad, Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog, CNET News.com, WebGuild, CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, The Inquisitr, Coop's Corner, Silicon Alley Insider, Alice Hill's Real Tech News, Data Center Knowledge, Windows-Now.com, Forbes, TechCrunch, The Blogging Times and Microsoft Subnet's blog
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:Microsoft to Buy Just Yahoo's Search Business?
Discussion:
CNET News.com, Tech Check with Jim Goldman, Tech Trader Daily, Techdirt, Valleywag, The Register, Electronista, I'm Not Actually a Geek, Reuters, Slashdot, BloggingStocks, Silicon Alley Insider, GigaOM, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Epicenter, Tech Tracks, John Battelle's Searchblog, BBC NEWS, Search Engine Journal, Mashable!, Tech Ticker and paidContent.org
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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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 …
Staci D. Kramer / paidContent.org:
AOL-Bebo: $850M Deal Closes; AOL Combines Bebo, AIM, ICQ Into People Networks Headed By Shields — It's official—AOL (NYSE: TWX) now owns Bebo, closing the $850 million acquisition roughly two months after making it public. The social media network will not stand on its own; instead …
Discussion:
Between the Lines, CNET News.com, BoomTown, The Inquisitr, MediaBytes with Shelly Palmer and MarketingShift
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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 …
Stacey Higginbotham / GigaOM:
Rohati Launches Security Appliance for Compliance — Today, a new data center appliance launches from San Jose, Calif. startup Rohati Systems. The appliance monitors the flow of traffic in the network and uses information gleaned from the data packets to enforce various entitlement …
Discussion:
Data Center Knowledge
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 …
GamesIndustry.biz:
EA: Activision, Vivendi ESA exit shows “lack of leadership” — As LucasArts last week became the latest publisher to quit the Entertainment Software Association, EA has criticised Activision and Vivendi's departure from the US trade body and withdrawal from this year's E3.
Discussion:
Kotaku
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
Microsoft on Yahoo: Internal Memo From Kevin Johnson — Just prior to Microsoft's annual advertising conference advance08, Kevin Johnson, president of the company's Platforms & Services division, sent the following strategy update to PSD employees: — From: Kevin Johnson — To: Platforms & Services Division
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