Vox Media Spends Some of Its Giant Funding Round on Lockhart Steele’s Curbed Network

A blogging pioneer sells his company to a blogging powerhouse.

Booming Vox Media, the People Behind The Verge and SB Nation, Raises Another Huge Round

Investors aren’t supposed to go near content. But Jim Bankoff has now raised nearly $75 million for digital publishing.

Plainfield WI Charming 1BR House! Location!! $85 per Night.

There is definitely an intriguing connection between the decline of serial killers and the rise of this sharing culture. These startups reflect how much our anxieties have eased.

Harold Schecter, Queens College professor and true-crime writer, on what he believes is the correlation between the rise of the sharing economy and the decline of the serial killer

Just How Bad Are Ouya’s Paid Conversion Numbers?

Maybe not as bad as the headline writers seem to think.

Microsoft’s Anti-Google Campaign Gets a Boost, From Google

Google tells Microsoft to turn off a home-grown YouTube app. Microsoft couldn’t be happier.

Back Online

So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a “Facebook friend,” but I can tell you that a “Facebook friend” is better than nothing.

— Paul Miller, writing for The Verge, after being offline for a year

News Byte

Microsoft Will Unveil New Xbox May 21

Microsoft will show off its next-generation Xbox videogame console at its Redmond, Wash., campus on May 21, according to invitations sent to reporters today. The Verge previously reported that the new Xbox, code-named Durango, will interact with owners’ cable boxes. Microsoft’s Nancy Tellem and Yusuf Mehdi shared numbers about its current living room fixture, the seven-year-old Xbox 360, at D: Dive Into Media in February.

Valve Pledges to Enter Videogame Console Wars With “Steam Box”

Valve’s co-founder Gabe Newell tells The Verge in an interview that the box will run Linux and be able to connect to eight TVs and eight controllers.

Let the Games Begin: Vox Media Launches a New Site Covering Videogames

Meet Polygon, the newest member of the Vox Media family, which until today consisted of The Verge and SB Nation.

News Byte

Uber for Taxis Doesn’t Fly in New York City

Car dispatch app Uber’s charisma and bravado have been surprisingly helpful in pushing it past incumbents and regulators into new markets, having won policy reversals in places like Boston and Washington, D.C. But New York City seems to be an exception, as the company said today it is cutting its month-old yellow cab service (after previously denying it to The Verge, which broke the story).