Twitter Makes Big Acquisition, Buys Social TV Analytics Company Bluefin Labs  —  Twitter has acquired Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company that was founded in 2008, sources say.  Although we don't know the exact acquisition price, we were told this is Twitter's biggest acquisition to date.

Facebook Is Said to Create Mobile Location-Tracking App  —  Facebook Inc. (FB) is developing a smartphone application that will track the location of users, two people with knowledge of the matter said, bolstering efforts to benefit from growing use of social media on mobile computers.

Growing Numbers of Start-Ups Are Worth a Billion Dollars  —  SAN FRANCISCO — The number of privately held Silicon Valley start-ups that are worth more than $1 billion shocks even the executives running those companies.  —  “I thought we were special,” said Phil Libin, chief executive of Evernote …

Jawbone buys Visere & MassiveHealth to marry data & design with wearable computing  —  Updated: You can tell the influence of uber designer (and chief creative officer) Yves Behar on the San Francisco-based wearable computing products company Jawbone.  The company is buying two startups …

The Threat of Silence  —  Meet the groundbreaking new encryption app set to revolutionize privacy and freak out the feds.  —  For the past few months, some of the world's leading cryptographers have been keeping a closely guarded secret about a pioneering new invention.  Today, they've decided it's time to tell all.

Dell Board Said to Meet Tonight to Vote on Leveraged Buyout  —  Dell Inc. (DELL)'s board plans to meet tonight to vote on an offer to take the company private for about $24 billion, said people with knowledge of the matter.  —  The deal may be announced early tomorrow morning in the U.S. …

HTC M7 to ditch megapixels in favour of Ultrapixels  —  HTC is to use a new camera sensor on its much-rumoured HTC M7?smartphone, Pocket-lint can confirm, which will use what the company calls Ultrapixels.  —  Although rumours have suggested the new smartphone will use a 13-megapixel sensor …

128GB Retina iPads hit the Apple Store with 1-5 day ship times.  $799 for Wifi and $929 for LTE  —  As expected, Apple today added the 128GB iPad to the Apple Store and initiated a 1-3 business day shipping time on these high end tablets.  The Wifi models come in at a hefty $799 while the LTE models will be $929.

Huawei launches Windows phone in Africa  —  The customised Huawei Windows phone will only be available in Africa  —  Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has unveiled a bespoke Windows-run smartphone exclusively available in Africa.  —  The customised device is being launched today in partnership …

Brazil: The Social Media Capital of the Universe  —  SÃO PAULO—When Barbosa family members botched their cover of an old Brazilian gospel song last year on a family video, they thought it was pretty funny—funny enough to upload to YouTube.  —  But they didn't expect the rest of Brazil to laugh along with them.

Evolution of a Founder: Lessons I have learned  —  Being a startup founder is hard, tough, frustrating and rewarding - possibly all within the space of a nanosecond.  And yet, it is like a high none other.  I have experienced it in others.  And quietly, I have lived it for over six years.

Report: Qihoo's iOS Apps Under Special Investigation by Apple  —  Still banned by Apple: the 360 Browser HD for iPad.  —  At the start of last week, all the 20+ iOS apps made by Chinese software company and search engine Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) vanished from Apple's App Store - and they still haven't been restored.

Hailo closes $30.6m Series B round from Union Square Ventures, Richard Branson, KDDI and others  —  Hailo has scooped a whopping $30.6m Series B funding round led by Union Square Ventures (USV), with participation from a slew of high-profile investors including Richard Branson and Japanese telco KDDI.

ARM Q4 beats forecast, profit up by 16 percent  —  Summary: British chop designer ARM reported a hike in profits, due to the growth of chip shipments containing ARM technology and royalties.  The firm's outlook continues to look strong.  —  Charlie Osborne

Meet the Data Brains Behind the Rise of Facebook  —  Jay Parikh sits at a desk inside Building 16 at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California, and his administrative assistant, Genie Samuel, sits next to him.  Every so often, Parikh will hear her giggle, and that means she just tagged …

Men Who Took Silicon to Silicon Valley  —  “Silicon Valley” is a deceptively grand title for the new “American Experience” documentary Tuesday night on PBS.  “Fairchild Semiconductor” would be more accurate.  It could even be called “Robert Noyce” or, with a musical score and some dance numbers, “Noyce!”

How Monoprice Is Eating The Tech World From The Inside Out  —  An empire built on cheap HDMI cables stretches its reach.  Monoprice is angling to be the next huge electronics brand.  —  Five years ago, Monoprice was associated with two things: HDMI cables and nerds.

Hard Disk Drive Market Revenue Set for Double-Digit Decline This Year  —  Facing a relentless onslaught from tablets, smartphones and solid state drives (SSD), global hard disk drive (HDD) market revenue in 2013 will decline by about 12 percent this year, according to an IHS iSuppli Storage Space market brief …

AOL In Talks To Buy Gdgt, The Consumer Electronics Review Site Started By Former Engadget Founders  —  I'm hearing that gdgt (pronounced 'gadget'), the consumer electronics review site founded by Engadget co-founder Peter Rojas and former Engadget editor-in-chief Ryan Block, is in late-stage acquisition talks with AOL.

Wired switches leadership at Wired.com, underscoring the rise of digital media  —  Wired magazine has replaced its longtime website editor-in-chief, Evan Hansen, with a Wired magazine veteran, Mark McClusky.  —  The change is a signal of how rapidly the magazine is shifting to an integrated print and digital model.

Trade group wants U.S.-China action on cyber security threats  —  (Reuters) - U.S. companies want the U.S. and Chinese governments to work together to address the growing problem of cyber attacks that threaten to undermine trade between the world's two largest economies, a U.S. business leader said on Monday.