FaceTagram? InstaBook? Whatever You Call It, All Your Mobile Photo Are Belong to Facebook (for $1 Billion)!

Actually, it’s pretty simple: Photos. Photos. And, oh yes, mobile photos — lots and lots and lots of them.
newall

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Yahoo Chief Trust Officer Quits in Style on Facebook

Don’t say that this is the end!

Google+ Exec Is Now Really Plus One

Usually, I don’t fall for this kind of stuff, but a posting tonight on Google+ about a marriage proposal in Paris by one of the key execs involved in its recent launch, Bradley Horowitz, is too adorkable to resist. Better still: It’s not complicated.

Pretty Flipboard Fundraising at an Even Prettier $200 Million Valuation

Flipboard, the high-profile and highly designed social media reading app for the Apple iPad, is out raising another round of funding at an eye-popping $200 million valuation, according to numerous sources close to the situation. The Palo Alto, CA, company declined to comment on its new funding efforts, which sources said had recently accelerated.

Seesmic Raises $4 Million in Funding From Salesforce.com

In an interesting social enterprise move, popular social networking collaboration tool Seesmic is taking a $4 million investment from Salesforce.com, as well as from Softbank. The San Francisco-based Seesmic has one of the top desktop and mobile applications for monitoring a consumer’s various feeds from Twitter, Facebook and more.

Liveblogging the Bing-Facebook Bromance: "Underdog" Search With a Little Help From Your Friends

BoomTown motored on down to the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley on a fabulously sunny day to liveblog the latest Bing event. The software giant is updating its search service, announcing deep integration–part of a deal announced last year–with Facebook. The theme, according to Microsoft SVP Yusuf Mehdi, quoting the Beatles, search with "a little help from your friends."

Exclusive: Facebook and Microsoft Deep in Talks About Deepening Search Ties

Facebook and Microsoft are discussing an agreement that would expand the search relationship the pair have shared for many years, said several people with knowledge of the situation. According to those sources, that includes the possibility for the software giant’s Bing search service to mine anonimized data from consumer usage of the social networking site’s recently introduced Like buttons.

News Byte

If You Can't Beat ‘Em, Synch With ‘Em

MySpace appears to have come to terms with the reality that it will be looking at Facebook’s taillights for the foreseeable future, and it is now taking steps to secure at least a complementary relationship with its larger rival. Today, MySpace started letting its users synch their status updates to their Facebook profile or page and share content with their friends over on that other site.

Exclusive: Yahoo Social Platforms Head Neal Sample Departs for eBay

In yet another major departure from Yahoo in recent days, Yahoo VP for Social Platforms Neal Sample has left the company for eBay, where he will be the chief of the e-commerce giant’s architecture. After being contacted by me after I’d heard about his departure from several Yahoo staffers, Sample confirmed the move, as did a company spokesperson, but did not provide other details. It was less than a week ago that Yahoo Communications Products Head Jason Titus also left the company.

Viral Video: Nobody Is Listening

There’s been a bit of bloggery agonizing of late about the possibility that no one is listening to the endless stream of sharing via social updates and other social networking tools. As in, if a check-in falls in the forest, does it make a sound? Here is one answer.

Pre-Gaming Facebook F8

Gmail Goes Social With Google Buzz