But don’t read too much into that.

The decision has everything to do with obeying Visa’s best practices and nothing to do with the accusations of security flaws raised last month by VeriFone, the 900-pound gorilla in the space.

Does it mean VeriFone’s concerns are just a teeny-weeny bit valid?

“Absolutely not,” said a Square spokesperson. “Of course, Square meets or exceeds all current industry standards. We are confident that Square already reduces the overall risk in the payments ecosystem….As Square is everywhere, we wanted to work with Visa to raise the bar on security for the next decade.”

The feather-ruffling started last month when VeriFone issued a fairly bold attack on Square, the San Francisco venture-based company founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. VeriFone wrote an open letter to the industry alleging security flaws in the product and also produced a video detailing how easy it would be to steal a cardholder’s information using a Square card reader.

Square’s response was that the claims were not fair or accurate and that they overlooked all of the protections already built into your credit card.

A lot of comments on this site and others felt the attack was unnecessarily harsh and pointed to VeriFone’s insecurity with their position in the market. While admittedly unconventional, VeriFone’s CEO Doug Bergeron explained his reasons in a lengthy interview. “We collectively need to create new technology to reduce fraud, whether you are a venture-backed business or a big business. We are both responsible for our own decisions and should be able to fend for ourselves,” he said.

Now, Square seems to be caving on the core issues of that debate. And VeriFone is claiming victory. Of course.

In a statement, Paul Rasori, VeriFone’s SVP of marketing, said: ”It appears that Visa’s investment in Square would not have happened without a commitment from Square to address the lack of security of their payment card readers. The industry heard our concern, and Square finally decided to take security into consideration by including encryption on their mobile payment device later this year.”

The security concerns were addressed yesterday in a blog post by Visa and another by Square’s COO Keith Rabois.

In Visa’s post, it announced that it had come up with its own best practices for the mobile industry for merchants, software developers and device manufacturers to follow. One of the many things it called for was encryption of cardholder data at the the card reader. “We are pleased that Square, the Jack Dorsey start-up that enables small businesses to accept card payments through mobile devices, has expressed its support of Visa’s best practices and its intent to adopt them.”

Rabois wrote: “The adoption of best practices will help increase trust in innovative payment solutions. Of course, Square complies with all current industry standards, and we are committed to meeting or exceeding industry guidelines as they evolve–all while keeping our card reader free.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. PopCap said it will develop four or five new Facebook games by the end of the year. The acquisition will also enable the company, which is hoping to file for an IPO this year, to have a presence in San Francisco.

PopCap, which is mostly focused on PC gaming, is already attracting nearly five million daily users on Facebook with titles such as Bejeweled Blitz and Zuma. Zynga, the category leader, attracts more than 55 million daily users and has been on an acquisition tear, acquiring at least one company every month.

The company also recently tried to expand beyond casual games by launching an experimental label called 4th & Battery. The label is an effort to give the company’s designers and developers the ability to create edgier games that wouldn’t normally fit under the company’s casual games reputation.

ZipZapPlay says it is a profitable, venture-backed company that was founded in 2007 by Curt Bererton and Mathilde Pignol. Today, it has 17 employees, including the two founders, and is known for making the Facebook title Baking Life. In the game, you bake items, hire your friends to sell them and try to be the most successful baker in town.

The San Francisco studio will be headed by Bererton and Pignol, who will report to PopCap VP of Social Games Development Jon David.

But it didn’t say how it would overcome technology barriers, such as finding a way for a smartphone to connect to the register without requiring a consumer to get a new phone with a near-field communication chip, or without making the retailer buy fancy new hardware.

Today, it announced an acquisition that may be one way it could solve this costly dilemma.

On the PayPal blog today, the company announced that PayPal has acquired Fig Card, which has developed a way for merchants to accept mobile payments by using a low-cost USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. Customers will have to install the Fig app on their smartphones.

“We loved their approach to point-of-sale, particularly because it was driven by the same vision that we have at PayPal–in the future, transactions can be as smart as a computer and not as dumb as paper. We won’t need our physical wallets. We’ll be able to pay any way we want, from any device, anywhere in the world with both flexibility and privacy,” said Peter Chu, PayPal Mobile’s senior director.

Fig Card was founded in early 2010 by Hasty Granbery and Max Metral, who will be joining the PayPal team. On the company’s Web site, it admits that the obvious challenge for the company is its small size, but that it was moving forward with trials among a handful of merchants in Boston’s south end.

Prior to founding Fig, Metral was co-founder and CTO of Firefly, which was bought by Microsoft. At Microsoft, he developed Microsoft Passport, one of the first single-sign-on systems. He then co-founded PeoplePC, where he met Granbery. PeoplePC was purchased by Earthlink.

If you spend any time with eBay at all, it’s clear that a lot of its emphasis is on PayPal. On Wednesday, it noted the division’s contribution to revenue growth in the first quarter and said in the first three months of the year, PayPal added one million accounts for the sixth quarter in a row. It now expects to achieve 100 million active accounts by the end of next quarter.

Additionally, PayPal was just shy of hitting its first billion-dollar quarter, and now represents 39 percent of the company’s overall revenues. To support its goals further, eBay recently acquired WHERE, a location-based mobile services and ad network.

While PayPal is one of the longest-standing online payment providers, it faces steep competition in the digital payment space from both incumbent providers and new entrants.

For instance, the Fig technology sounds similar to what Square is trying to accomplish by passing out dongles that can enable virtually any smartphone to accept payments. Square announced this week that it received an investment by Visa. Other giants like Google are getting into the space, and additionally, Facebook is becoming a big player in the space with the roll-out of Credits, a system used today to pay for virtual goods, digital items, and, increasingly, physical goods, like daily deals.

New York-based Ideeli, which operates a members-only flash sales site aimed at the affluent, has raised a hefty $41 million in a third round of capital.

Similar to Gilt Groupe, Ideeli offers limited-time sales to its members in apparel, accessories, home, shoes, kids, travel and lifestyle categories. Most sales start in the afternoon and last 40 hours before they expire or the inventory is gone.

The round was led by Next World Capital with Cue Ball Capital, StarVest Partners, Constellation Growth Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners also participating. In total, the company has raised $64.8 million.

The company, founded by CEO Paul Hurley four years ago, said the equity will be used to support growth and expansion plans, including new categories, partnerships, technology initiatives, marketing campaigns and hiring.

With four million members, it claims to be the fastest-growing members-only shopping company.

Gilt Groupe, also based in New York, has not disclosed how many members it has, but as of about a year ago it said it had 3.5 million members. Gilt has raised close to $50 million with the last round coming in December. However, it’s been reported that it could be close to raising a much larger round totaling $100 million.

Both companies fit squarely in the niche of finding new channels to reach shoppers, who are lured in by deep discounts on a small “curated” set of items that fit with their lifestyle.

Other companies riding this wave include GSI Commerce-owned Rue La La, HauteLook, which was purchased by Nordstrom for up to $270 million in February, and One Kings Lane, which is focused on home decor and recently raised $23 million.

The stock pushed higher despite yesterday’s mixed financial results, which included a huge plunge in profits.

Why so? Because it’s clear that investors are happy with the company’s top-line revenue increases and are salivating at Amazon’s growth story, which increasingly has to do with both physical and digital products.

A letter sent to shareholders from the company’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos today probably helped fuel the fire as well.

Instead of spicing up yesterday’s dry earnings call with a guest appearance, Bezos typed out his thoughts, revealing some of the company’s technical inner workings in a two-page missive filed with the SEC.

The gist of the Bezos letter–although he didn’t come out and say it–was that there were several justifications for the investments Amazon is making, which is what has been weighing down its bottom line.

Bezos essentially explained that since Amazon is doing something that has never been done before, there’s no off-the-shelf technology that can solve the problems the company is tackling.

Said the letter, in part:

While many of our systems are based on the latest in computer science research, this often hasn’t been sufficient: Our architects and engineers have had to advance research in directions that no academic had yet taken. Many of the problems we face have no textbook solutions, and so we–happily–invent new approaches.

Despite the dozens of warehouses that Amazon has and the nine-plus new distribution centers it’ll build this year, Bezos also argued that the company was a “services” business.

If that’s the case, you have to wonder what is Amazon building? Will they be bigger than Wal-Mart Stores? Will it snuff out eBay? Can it be the next big rival to Apple?

In fact, finding a company to compare Amazon to is increasingly difficult. After eBay announced its earnings today, it couldn’t be any more apparent: The Silicon Valley online auction site wants to connect the physical and online retail worlds together, and is focusing on its PayPal division, which now makes up 39 percent of the company’s revenues.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s new endeavors cross a wide range of categories, but definitely don’t mingle with physical retail presences. If anything, it is headed in the other direction by focusing on digital content–stuff you store in the cloud. Its recent launches, such as the Cloud music player and the Android Appstore, are only two examples.

Also in the letter, Bezos went on a tangent about how to build a specialized syncing technology that allows customers to seamlessly read the same books across multiple devices, before moving back to the key money quotes.

“I will awaken you by pointing out that, in my opinion, these techniques are not idly pursued,” he wrote. “They lead directly to free cash flow.”

Revenues jumped 16 percent to $2.5 billion, compared to the same period a year ago, and profits soared by 20 percent to total $475.9 million, or 36 cents a share.

The results were in line with its internal projections of revenues of up to $2.5 billion and earnings per share of up to 36 cents a share. The company also met or exceeded analysts expectations for the period.

PayPal continues to be an area where eBay sees the most aggressive growth. Net revenues from the company’s marketplaces service increased 12 percent in the first quarter compared to the year-ago quarter, whereas the company’s revenues from payments increased 23 percent in the same time period.

In the earnings call this afternoon, eBay’s President and CEO John Donahoe elaborated on PayPal’s accomplishments. In Q1, PayPal added one million active accounts for the sixth consecutive quarter. The company now expects to achieve 100 million active accounts over the next three months. Additionally, PayPal was just shy of hitting its first billion-dollar quarter, and now represents 39 percent of the company’s total revenues.

The company also confirmed that it is still on track to double eBay’s mobile gross merchandise revenues (excluding vehicles) to $4 billion in 2011 from $2 billion last year.

But consumers aren’t the only ones making purchases. EBay has also been out shopping to fuel its next stage of growth. Last month, eBay agreed to purchase publicly held GSI Commerce for $2.4 billion, the company’s second-largest acquisition ever behind Skype. It also purchased WHERE, a location-based mobile ad network.

In a statement, Donahoe, said: “In the first quarter, PayPal continued to drive strong growth globally, eBay sharply accelerated growth in the U.S. and we announced several acquisitions that we believe will enhance our leadership and innovation in commerce and payments. The year is off to a strong start.”

EBay is not the only one that is gearing up for the next stage of growth. While it’s looking externally for growth drivers, its competitor, Amazon, is growing organically.

Yesterday, Amazon announced its first quarter earnings. Revenues surged by 38 percent compared to the year-ago period, but its net income fell as the giant retailer invested heavily in all sorts of businesses.

EBay’s second-quarter outlook is also strong. The San Jose-based company expects net revenues in the range of $2.55 to $2.65 billion with GAAP earnings in the range of 36 to 37 cents per share. Non-GAAP earnings are forecasted to fall between 45 and 46 cents a share. EBay boosted its full-year guidance. Revenues are now expected to land between $10.6 and $10.9 billion. However, GAAP earnings per share have been revised downward to between $1.53 and $1.58.

The global payments provider has invested in Square, adding to a $27.5 million round led by Sequoia Capital earlier this year. At the time, Square was valued at $240 million.

Square said the investment will help expand credit card acceptance to millions of businesses and individuals taking only cash or checks today. A Visa executive will join Square’s advisory board.

Visa hinted that it might be interested in the technology after it wrote a blog post about the company’s technology, which uses a cellphone and a dongle to accept payments. The post was based on a profile of the company eMoney wrote in February. Last month, Square said it was processing more than $1 million in mobile payments a day.

In prepared statements, Square’s Jack Dorsey, said: “We’re thrilled to partner with Visa. This relationship will accelerate our vision of empowering businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs to succeed. The best way to grow your business is to accept credit cards. Together, we can ensure that all businesses of any size can pursue the American Dream.”

Dorsey is playing a dual role at Square and Twitter, where he has returned to lead product development.

John Partridge, the president of Visa, chimed in by saying: “Square’s early success suggests that using Square and a mobile device, new types of merchants will now be able to accept payment and help grow their business via Visa’s global network with the security, speed and reliability we provide.”

VeriFone, one of the largest providers of payment terminals in the industry, said last month that Square’s technology was flawed and full of security holes. Square said the statements were not fair or accurate.

Wonderland, known for the GodFinger game on iOS, will become Zynga Mobile UK. Terms of the deal were not disclosed; however, as is becoming increasingly common with Zynga’s acquisitions, it is acquiring the team at Wonderland and some intellectual property, but not the GodFinger game.

In all, nine people will be joining the San Francisco-based company, which is “acqhiring” more than one company every month. In March, it acquired six employees in Boston and earlier this month it acquired 16 employees in Austin, Texas.

Wonderland Software CEO Matthew Wiggins has been appointed to the position of General Manager, Zynga Mobile UK. He will report to the company’s mobile head, David Ko.

The mobile platform is increasingly important for Zynga as it tries to expand its very popular game franchises on Facebook, such as CityVille, Mafia Wars and Zynga Poker.

Founded in 2009, Wonderland Software’s founders include Matthew Wiggins, Mark Rose and Al Harding. Its GoldFinger application currently uses leaderboard and community features from Ngmoco.

The round was led by Keytone Ventures of China and DCM, and will be used for expanding in the U.S., Europe and Asia as it tries to build a hub where it connects both game-makers and players on the phone. The company, which is headquartered in Beijing and has offices in Menlo Park, Calif., has built a platform that can host mobile games on behalf of mobile developers who can tap into its social network.

So far, it has attracted 15 million users, and since launching the platform last year, has gained access to 350 applications. Games on the network include Paper Toss and a bunch of branded games, like Papaya Blackjack, Papaya Pet and Papaya Farm.

In a similar vein, Japanese-based Gree acquired San Francisco-based OpenFeint last week for $104 million, plus invested additional capital for growth of the OpenFeint platform. And, last year, Japanese-based DeNA purchased San Francisco-based Ngmoco, which is also working on a mobile social network on Android.

Originally, the new Kindle was supposed to be available on May 3, but Amazon’s SVP and CFO Tom Szkutak confirmed that it will start shipping tomorrow.

The device, called Kindle with Special Offers, comes at the lowest price yet at $114, which is $25 cheaper than the Wi-Fi-only version.

While the hardware on the new e-reader is identical, it’s cheaper because it is being subsidized by advertising. Initially, sponsors include General Motors, Proctor & Gamble and Visa.

“The team did a nice job of moving the dates up,” he said.

The e-reader will be available from Amazon, Target and Best Buy.

While the new price only represents a drop of $25 (and Amazon promises the device will never be free), it will likely drive additional sales of the already popular e-reader. Sticking with tradition, Amazon did not disclose how many had been sold to date. “We are incredibly excited with Kindle because we see that customers are buying a lot more books….We continue to invest in that business,” Szkutak said.

Also during the call, Amazon hinted at how fast its physical retail sales are growing. Szkutak said it may build more than the nine distribution centers it had been planning on building this year. Already, one has opened, and about five are expected to be based in North America with the remainder opening up internationally.

Analysts watch Amazon’s investments carefully because it affects the company’s profitability. Right now, it is investing heavily, leading first quarter profits to fall despite a 38 percent surge in revenues year over year.

Separately, the company said revenues were hurt internationally by the earthquake in Japan. Had it not been for the natural disaster, it said international revenues would have grown by 32 percent instead of 27 percent.

The Seattle-based company said revenues totaled $9.86 billion, compared with $7.13 billion in the year-ago period, and that net income decreased 33 percent to $201 million or 44 cents a share.

In a statement, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and CEO, said: “We love inventing on behalf of customers and have never been more excited about the long-term opportunities.”

But you have to wonder how much investors love it.

The company’s stock dropped $3.12, or 1.7 percent, in regular hours, and then slid another 90 cents in after-hours trading.

Besides investments, analysts questioned what impact the Japanese earthquake had on Amazon’s results, since the region is particularly strong for the company. Here’s updates from the call on that subject, as well as news from Amazon that it will start selling its ad-subsidized Kindle a week early.

In some regards the quarter demonstrates a return to the company’s frothy days when the motto was get big fast, and then later, that morphed into get bigger faster.

To be sure, the company is dipping its toes into a variety of pools, ranging from cloud computing to traditional e-commerce to digital commerce. It’s building hardware, such as the Kindle e-reader, announcing a new version recently that’s supported by advertising. It’s also just beginning to reveal where it’s mobile strategy is going with a promotion that crosses both its Android Appstore and its handset business.

To be sure, one of those growing pains was felt last week when when its cloud services crashed, leading to outages for nearly a week. The company did not comment on the crash in its earnings release, but it will likely have to answer analyst questions during this afternoon’s call.

Still, Amazon was able to meet its own sale forecasts, which predicted net sales of between $9.1 billion and $9.9 billion.

Sales also exceeded analyst expectations, who were hoping for revenues of $9.54 billion, representing a 34 percent increase from the same period last year, according to consensus forecasts from FactSet Research. However, Amazon fell way short of analyst’s earnings estimates of 61 cents a share. Amazon reported 44 cents a share for the quarter.

In the second quarter, Amazon is predicting software net sales ranging between $8.85 billion and $9.65 billion, representing year-over-year growth of 35 percent and 47 percent. Operating income is expected to be between $95 million and $245 million, declining by 9 percent to 65 percent.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Schappert is joining Zynga, the San Francisico start-up that is building a mini-empire based on games running on Facebook.

His departure was noted in a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. An EA spokesperson confirmed his resignation, but declined to comment on where he was headed.

It’s unclear what role Schappert will play at Zynga, although it is reportedly as COO. A Zynga spokesperson declined to comment.

Schappert’s hiring would be only the latest. Earlier this month, Kara Swisher’s BoomTown reported that Zynga hired Taylor Barada, Yahoo’s recently appointed head of M&A, for an unspecified role. On the same day, the start-up announced it hired former Cisco exec Debra Chrapaty as CIO.

Zynga, which has developed popular games like CityVille, FarmVille and Mafia Wars, is reportedly raising up to $250 million in new funding and could be beefing up its management team for a potential IPO.

In 2010, the three-year-old company reportedly earned $400 million on $850 million in revenues last year, making it a lot smaller than Electronic Arts. However, many have pointed out that the company’s valuation in its next financing could exceed EA’s current public market cap of $6.75 billion.

EA does not break out revenues of its Playfish subsidiary, which competes against Zynga, but it says it is on track to hit $750 million in digital revenues in 2011. Last year, its overall GAAP revenues totaled $3.7 billion.

Schappert’s departure is similar to the circumstances in which he joined EA 22 months ago. He replaced John Pleasants, who was leaving to become the CEO of Playdom, the social game developer that Disney eventually acquired. Schappert, who was working in Microsoft’s Xbox division at the time, had previously been the COO of EA’s worldwide studios.

We’ve obtained the letter that CEO John Riccitiello sent out to EA employees this morning regarding Schappert’s departure, which he did tersely:

All,

We’ve just started FY12 and the year promises to be one of the most exciting in EA’s history. Thank you for your hard work, commitment and success in FY11.  You will hear more on our FY11 results next week during our earnings call on May 4^th and at our global Town Hall meeting broadcast from EALA on May 5^th.

Today I would like to communicate some important organizational changes that I believe are beneficial for EA. Our focus is and must be on our IP, going digital and our great people. Effective immediately, Nancy Smith, Barry Cottle and David DeMartini will report directly to me. Nancy leads our global publishing organization and has been an industry icon and EA leader for over 25 years. Barry leads EA Interactive, and our Mobile, POGO and Social business and has proven to be one of the best digital leaders in our industry. Dave DeMartini is leading one of our most important strategic initiatives related to online infrastructure. I am proud to expand my team with these veteran EA leaders who are committed to and passionate about their teams, their roles and EA.

I’d also like to thank John Schappert for his contributions to EA.  John’s last day at EA was Monday of this week. We wish him well.

We have come a long way and EA could not have made it to where we are today without each of you. It is without question that the talented individuals and teams creating new ideas, products and services are what make EA a great company. The board, management team and I are very confident about where we are and where we’re going from here. I look forward to sharing more with all of you during our Town Hall meeting on May 5^th.

John

 

What is limited is the amount of time consumers have to sift through them all. To that end, three Yahoo veterans are trying to de-clutter your inbox and organize all of the offers you may qualify for and package them up in one central location.

The network, which is only available today in a private alpha, is called ChoozOn. A public beta will be available this summer.

The Bellevue, Wash.-based company is founded by Nick Weir, Usama Fayyad and Hunter Madsen, who all worked together at Yahoo.

Weir, who is ChoozOn’s CEO, was Yahoo’s VP of Data Strategy; Madsen, who is the company’s CMO, established Yahoo’s product marketing unit of worldwide sales; and Fayyad, who is ChoozOn’s chairman and CTO, became Yahoo’s Chief Data Officer and EVP of Research and Strategic Data Solutions after selling his last start-up, DMX Group, to the search giant.

The founders self-funded the business for the first six months, and more recently raised a round from a group of angels. Fayyad’s not sharing how much the company has raised and declined to name the company’s investors.

To illustrate the company’s mission, Fayyad said ChoozOn is building a network that connect brands with customers, similarly to how Facebook connects friends and LinkedIn connects professionals. Think of it as a commerce network.

Through an online portal, consumers will be able to connect to their favorite stores and brands and product categories. They can also connect the service to their various loyalty programs, including airlines and hotels, so it knows all the discounts you may qualify for.

“The Internet has become a very confusing places for consumers,” Fayyad said. “What’s happening is that the consumer is overloaded with the amount of choice available.”

He said in order to buy anything today, a consumer must spend a half an hour doing research to find the best deal, and if you don’t, you feel guilty. “We built something that shows everything you qualify for, and things that are available through your loyalty memberships.”

There are already other companies cropping up to solve this problem. For instance, Points.com tracks your balances from your various loyalty programs. ChoozOn goes a step further by aggregating more things in one place, and giving consumers the opportunity to search for offers immediately available, or set alerts for upcoming offers of interest, like a trip to the Caribbean, or a new pair of boots.

ChoozOn aspires to aggregate deals from third-parties, but eventually they could create opportunities for brands to target users directly on their platform.

Fayyad said they are hoping to be the trusted partner for consumers, who are constantly being tracked and measured by multiple players. “This is opt-in. We don’t share the information to the brand, but we enable the brand to target them with relevant offers.”

In China, the company is more recognized for its gigantic consumer-facing e-commerce site, Taobao.com, but internationally it’s more known as providing a marketplace to connect Chinese suppliers with retailers at the wholesale level.

Today, the company is expanding those wholesale services to include the Premier Channel on AliExpress.com, which aims to introduce up-and-coming Chinese brands–which are producing apparel, electronics, jewelry and items in other similar categories–to small-to-medium-sized retailers in the U.S. that are looking to differentiate. At launch, the company is showcasing more than 30 brands such as AKseries, DeereMarchi, Dilong, Etonian Kidd, Justmatch, Mbox, rip, and VANCL.

“We think that smaller retailers are especially in need of a differentiator and need unique products that they can make a margin on. Margins erode so quickly when tons of sellers sell the same thing,” said Annie Xu, general manager of Alibaba.com and AliExpress in the U.S.

For the Chinese manufacturers that have often done well on Taobao.com, it gives them the opportunity to expand internationally. ”There are lot of innovative designers and innovators in China. We want to help the people, who have capability to design authentic original products, move up in the value chain. That’s the thinking behind it.”

She said China’s often known for following trends, but increasingly, she said there are examples of more original work being done. “We want to transform ‘Made in China’ to ‘Designed in China,’” she said. “We can help with smaller emerging brands and designers, who don’t have the research and knowledge base to acquire customers.”

Xu said Alibaba has a number of strict policies in place in order to help retailers gain trust in the system. Manufacturers will have to provide 24-hour customer service and promise to ship items within 24 hours. There’s also free shipping on all returns. Additionally, manufacturers will have to put up a deposit with Alibaba in case there are any disputes and a customer demands a refund.

Those steps may be necessary to establish trust: the top management of Alibaba.com resigned earlier this year when an internal company investigation determined that thousands of fraudulent sales were taking place.

But despite the round’s petite figure, especially in today’s healthy venture market, make no mistake that the Los Angeles-based company has blockbuster-sized ambitions and a valuation to match.

The round was revealed in a regulatory document filed today, but from what we are hearing from people close to the situation, it will put the company’s valuation in the low hundreds of millions. A company spokesperson declined to comment.

The financing is from existing investors, Redpoint and MK Capital, and brings the company’s total to about $20 million, including a small line of credit. It will give the company the cash it needs to fuel additional growth without requiring the executive team to lose focus by kicking off a gigantic fundraising effort. From what we are hearing, the latest round is not a reflection of the company’s growth, but it will help it stay on track.

Its YouTube channel is quickly becoming the destination for hardcore game fans to watch videos. Trust us when we say the demographic is as far from those playing FarmVille as you can get. It’s often adrenaline-pumping action filled with violence and profanity. In other words, it’s the top shelf of entertainment for most males aged 18 to 34.

While the niche sounds small, it isn’t.

In 2010, Machinima’s YouTube channel attracted 2.3 billion page views. Last month alone, it attracted 575 million page views and 67 million unique visitors. It’s seeing between 15 and 20 percent growth every month. The funding will allow it to keep growing and to expand to other platforms.

The growth is not that hard to understand. In fact, it’s probably the same trend that propelled Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty: Black Ops to hit $1 billion in sales after slightly more than one month–the equivalent of a blockbuster movie release.

According to the company’s Web site, the word “Machinima” is basically a mash-up of the words “machine” and “cinema,” which is used to describe the process of “creating real-time animation by manipulating a videogame’s engine and assets.”

The company is essentially building a destination for videogame fans to watch a ton of its own editorial content, but also allows players to upload their own videos. Often, the video is a recording of someone playing a video game and providing their own play-by-play soundtrack as they achieve some great accomplishment.

By creating content and attracting fans, Machinima can generate buzz for videogames long after their initial launch dates. Users who continue to play games may buy additional downloadable content, which leads to incremental revenues for the game maker. In essence, Machinima is an advertising network, and it has worked on projects with all of the major gaming companies and film studios.

In a recent example, Machinima teamed up with Warner Bros. Digital Distribution to produce an original online series to promote Mortal Kombat. The nine-episode series, which has the quality of a feature-length film, debuted on April 12. In the first five days, the first episode got more than 5.5 million views.

Here’s that video [for mature audiences only!]:

The timing of the launch leaked out early when the New York Times accidentally published its story early and then promptly took it down.

In a cached version of the story, which is also available in RSS feeds with the words “embargo-till-midnight/” in the URL, explains that the test markets will be Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. UPDATE: The story now has been published officially.

A lot of details on how Facebook Deals planned to operate and how it anticipated rivaling others, like Groupon and LivingSocial–or even Google Offers, which launched last week–have been available for some time.

The one noticeable aspect that the unpublished article confirms is that users will be able to use Facebook Credits to pay for the offers.

Up until now, Credits have mostly been used for virtual goods inside of games, or for some movies. Facebook typically takes a 30 percent cut from those transactions, but it’s unclear whether that will continue to hold true for these deals as well. Users will also be able to pay by using a credit card.

So far, the economics of group-buying on other sites would in theory support Facebook taking a 30 percent cut. Typically, a merchant offers its services for 50 percent off, and then gives the company that generated the lead 25 percent of those revenues.

It was already announced that Facebook had signed up nine partners: Gilt City, HomeRun, OpenTable, PopSugar City, Tippr, KGB Deals, Plum District, ReachLocal and Zozi.

Facebook’s goal is to focus on group activities and to make it easier to share deals with friends when they see a friend purchase something.

Realtor.com, which is the largest in the highly fragmented market, has launched an iPad application catching up with two of its closest rivals, Trulia and Zillow. Update: The app will actually be live tomorrow.

The top-visited real estate website in March was Realtor.com; however, none of the companies enjoys a commanding lead.  In fact, a new source of traffic for any of them, whether it comes from a mobile phone or tablet, can turn into a first-mover advantage.

Last month, Realtor.com’s market share totaled 6.5 percent, followed by Yahoo! Real Estate and Zillow.com, with 6.04 percent and 5.36 percent respectively. Trulia was listed fourth with 4.63 percent market share, according to Hitwise.

Realtor.com was one of the first online destinations to publish housing listings, and today it is the only one that has a direct relationship with the National Association of REALTORS.

Because of its ties, it gets a direct feed of the information from the Multiple Listing Service and claims to have the most accurate collection of listings because more than 80 percent of all property listings are updated every 15 minutes.

Realtor.com’s parent company, Move Inc., went public in the late ’80s, and last year reported revenues of $197.5 million and a net loss of $20.9 million. Meanwhile, Zillow filed documents with the SEC last week announcing its intentions to go public. In 2010, it’s revenues totaled $30.5 million and it recorded a net loss of $6.8 million. Trulia is also preparing for a public offering.

“Mobile is such an important part of the way you look at real estate now,” said Steve Berkowitz, Move’s CEO. “It’s something we’ve seen grow exponentially year over year.”

The free iPad application is the latest push, joining Realtor.com’s presence on the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7. Berkowitz said they don’t break out traffic it receives from mobile devices, but that people are viewing about 10 properties a second from the various apps. So far, mobile traffic does not exceed the PC, but he says the audience is two to three times more engaged than on the Web. Additionally, Realtor.com mobile apps have been downloaded 3.6 million times and active users have increased by 79 percent in the past four months.

With the release of the iPad app, users will be able to use the large screen to search for homes for sale or properties to rent across the country. Users can hunt for homes or open houses based on location, the MLS number, or by city, state, or street name. Listings can be saved to be viewed later, and one feature lets you search a section on the map by circling that area with your fingertip.

As with Realtor.com’s other applications, users can also reach out to an agent to schedule a tour or ask questions. In the past year, Realtor.com mobile apps have contributed to a 240 percent increase in consumer outreach to local agents and in-app communication between agents and consumers has increased by 148 percent since December, Berkowitz said.

Of course, the one downside of the iPad application is that it only works when a user has Wi-Fi connectivity, or if they’ve opted to buy the 3G model.

Realtor.com makes money by charging agents a subscription fee to showcase various listings and make them stand out from the rest. Inclusion in the mobile apps is a part of those rates.

Madden, who shares no relation to EA’s top-selling NFL title, was most recently WildTangent’s EVP of sales and marketing. In his new role, he will head up advertising across all of EA’s properties, including console, online, mobile and social gaming.

“There’s a lot of free content being monetized through in-game transactions. That’s the perfect playground for advertisers to add value,” he said.

At EA, his focus will be on figuring out a way for advertisers to easily participate in a way that scales–across all the various platforms–and leverages their video and other Flash assets.

Madden, who continues to own stock in Redmond, Wash.-based WildTangent, said his decision to leave was the next logical move for his career. He will now be based in Los Angeles. The Global Marketing team has 50 employees.

In his absence, WildTangent, which operates a game platform on PCs, has promoted Bill Clifford to the position of SVP and general manager of WildTangent Media.

The New York-based company is a division of Gilt Groupe, a luxury flash-sales apparel site. Rather than sell items that can be shipped, Gilt City offers discounts to local businesses, such as spas, restaurants, beauty treatments and events, such as concerts. Gilt Groupe also has a travel division called JetSetter.

Gilt City’s offerings are similar in nature to Groupon and LivingSocial, except that it targets an affluent audience. It also doesn’t offer one deal a day, but rather presents dozens of offers at the same time all week long.

Gilt City’s VP of Engineering Brian Dhatt said starting today the Web site has been redesigned so that more deals can be displayed and can be broken down by neighborhood–for instance, narrowing deals in New York down to the Meatpacking District or Brooklyn or Battery Park.

The redesign of the months-old Web site represents a major transformation and highlights the company’s growing pains as the sales people are able to sell more deals than they are able to accommodate. ”We are really excited about it. We get a lot of inbound volume who want to work with us, but it’s so much more than we can do at the moment. This will put us in a good place,” he said. “You are really going to see us go through the roof.”

Gilt City will be able to double the number of deals over the next few months to 200 from 100 a week in its six U.S. markets and Tokyo. The first city launched in beta last May and the company officially launched across all of the markets–Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco–six months ago. It will also ramp up the number of cities it is in.

Examples of offers today include: In Midtown West, Hudson Hall will be offering 55 percent off cocktails and tapas for two, and $100 off tickets to the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. In Chelsea, Eleni’s is letting users save 40 percent off gourmet baked goods.

The redesign will also allow users to break down offers by category, such as food and drink; salon and spa; retail and services; and shows and events. Each individual offer page has also been revamped to offer more information about the deal, including a chef’s bio or restaurant review. While some of that information is written by the company’s editorial team, some of it has been aggregated through sources such as Yelp and Zagat.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Gilt Groupe was close to raising almost $100 million in a round that would value the company at nearly $1 billion. One of the investors was rumored to be Softbank. A spokesperson for Gilt Groupe declined to comment.

The first promotion–kicking off at midnight–will give customers who buy an Android device from Verizon Wireless $25 to spend on applications from the Amazon Appstore.

The offer ties together Amazon’s wireless store, which sells a variety of phones for all the major wireless carriers, and its brand new Appstore, which is an independent catalog of apps for Google’s Android operating system.

It also leans on tight relationships Amazon has formed with carriers, said David Camp of Amazon Wireless.

The promotion will continue for a week, and is only valid on Android phones purchased by Verizon, including the new HTC Thunderbolt, which runs on its speedy 4G network.

The promotion is designed to give Amazon’s Appstore, which just launched last month, a boost. But it also hints at the company’s interest in Android and a broader strategy it could be pursuing.

So far, it’s unclear how well the storefront, which is accessible on the computer and the handset, has been received–and Amazon is not sharing download figures. But it has almost doubled the number of apps available for sale from to 7,500 from 3,800 over the past few weeks.

That’s despite the fact that the International Game Developers Association cautioned game-makers about Amazon’s strict pricing conditions. Downloads could also be soft due to the fact that AT&T has blocked users from being able to download third-party apps, including from Amazon’s Appstore, to Android devices. The U.S. storefront is available to users from T-Mobile, Verizon and Sprint.

So far, Amazon’s interest in the wireless industry has seemed a little scattered. However, this promotion starts to bring it into focus, and hints at how Amazon could weave together its strategies to drive sales to its own properties.

It also shows how important the retailer could be to Google.

Today, Camp says that Android devices are the best sellers on its storefront (the big caveat is that it doesn’t sell the iPhone).

Beyond its cellphone store at AmazonWireless.com and the digital Appstore, Amazon has also released a bevy of applications, including shopping portals, barcode scanners, Kindle apps for virtually every device and an MP3 store. More recently, it rolled out a Cloud Player, which allows people to store their music and other digital content in the cloud, making it accessible from both Android devices and an Internet-connected computer.

Monday’s promotion is just the start. “We will continue to do things like this in the future,” Camp added.