Techmeme
May 20, 2012, 10:50 PM

Top News

Reuters:
Alibaba buys back 20 percent stake held by Yahoo for $7.1 billion  —  (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said it is to sell up to half of its stake in Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma's Alibaba Group back to the Chinese company for $7.1 billion, and hand most of the sale proceeds to its shareholders.
Steven Musil / CNET:
Microsoft quietly launches So.cl social network  —  In the wake of social-networking giant Facebook's IPO, Microsoft has quietly launched So.cl, its own social networking foray.  However, So.cl isn't a designed to be a Facebook challenger.  The project, the details of which leaked out last year …
Danny Sullivan / Marketing Land:
Microsoft Launches Socl Social Network: A Look Inside  —  Congrats, Mark Zuckerberg.  You went public on Friday, got married on Saturday, and as a special present from part-owner and best partner Microsoft, now have a new social network to content with: Microsoft's So.cl.  But don't worry too much.
More: TechdowsTweets: @tmekjian
Henry Blodget / Business Insider:
Dan Levine / Reuters:
Apple, Samsung CEOs set for U.S. court talks  —  (Reuters) - The chief executives of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd are used to running the show at their global tech empires, but they will be in for a different experience when they arrive at a San Francisco federal courthouse on Monday.
Archibald Preuschat / Wall Street Journal:
TomTom Seeks New Direction  —  Navigation-Tool Maker is Trying to Reposition Itself as a Mapping-Software and Services Provider  —  Many drivers have used satellite-navigation devices from Dutch navigation-system maker TomTom NV to get where they're going with the minimum of fuss.
Tweets: @davezatz
James B. Stewart / New York Times:
The Undoing of Scott Thompson at Yahoo  —  When the activist shareholder Daniel Loeb confronted Yahoo's directors on May 3 with the possibility that Yahoo's recently hired chief executive, Scott Thompson, might have falsified his résumé by claiming to have a computer science degree, their initial reaction was disbelief.
More: Business InsiderTweets: @brocromanek
Marcus Wohlsen / Associated Press:
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg weds on day after IPO  —  A day after the historic Facebook IPO, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status Saturday to “married.”  Zuckerberg wed 27-year-old Priscilla Chan, his girlfriend of nearly a decade, according to a guest authorized to speak for the couple.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:
Report: Pakistan Blocks Twitter Over Blasphemous Content, Facebook Complies?  [Update: Back Up]  —  Another day, another example of a country making it harder for its people to use the web and some of its most effective channels of communication?  There are reports coming in from Pakistan …
Ina Fried / AllThingsD:
Voyager Mobile, a 22-Year-Old's Cellphone Start-Up, Launches After Delay  —  An attack on his Web site pushed things out a few days, but John Mardini says Voyager Mobile is now ready to take orders for cut-rate cellphone service.  —  Mardini, a 22-year-old entrepreneur and New York University student …
Nick Bilton / Bits:
Facebook vs. Twitter  —  The best way to compare Twitter and Facebook is to look at the old children's story The Tortoise and the Hare.  —  For those that don't remember curling up in bed as a child, listening to an adult narrate it, this is the old fable of an arrogant hare who loses a race to a slow tortoise.
Tweets: @om

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