Gossip

Twitter rebuffs a Facebook poke?

Maybe it wasn't just egregious Valley gossip-baiting when Federated Media CEO John Battelle asked Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg earlier this month if his company was going to buy Twitter.

Kara Swisher of AllThingsD reported early Monday morning that actual acquisition talks held between the two companies have fallen through.

The deal would have been for $500 million in Facebook stock, Swisher wrote.

Facebook's not big on acquisitions. The only sizable purchase the company has made was of a start-up called Parakey, and that was really just a way to bring on board founder Blake Ross.

Twitter's a … Read more

Layoffs hit Al Gore's Current Media

There have been layoffs at Current Media, the cable network co-founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.

A statement from Current put the number of layoffs at about 60 positions, with 30 more to be refilled, the company said in a statement. That's less of a hard hit than the 20 percent cuts that a source close to Current hinted to CNET News on Tuesday. The statement read: "Approximately 60 positions have been eliminated in the company's three U.S. offices, and approximately 30 new positions created," the statement read. "Many of those … Read more

Oh, dear, here come the 'Facebook to buy Twitter' rumors

SAN FRANCISCO--John Battelle, CEO of Federated Media, decided to have a little bit of speculative fun onstage Thursday with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit. It's the sort of "speculative fun" that could give tech bloggers a gossip-overload headache for weeks to come: Battelle decided to throw some fuel on the "Facebook might buy Twitter" fire. Which, as far as I can tell, is a relatively new addition to the rumor-roasting pit.

"Is Twitter just a feature of Facebook?" Battelle prodded. Facebook, after all, has its own "status&… Read more

Twitter's Evan Williams: Making money through corporate accounts?

SAN FRANCISCO--In a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit, Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams wouldn't concretely answer one of Silicon Valley's biggest unanswered questions: how the company plans to make money.

But he gave some strong indications. Hint: it's not advertising.

He spoke obliquely of a possible business model that we've heard whispers about before, corporate accounts for businesses that want to use Twitter. Twitter is a communication channel, he said, and what it can do is "charge the people who want to use that communication channel commercially."

He named companies like … Read more

Source: MTV exec Holt offered MySpace Music job

MySpace Music has offered its vacant CEO position to Courtney Holt, MTV Networks' executive vice president of digital music and media, according to a music industry source with knowledge of the negotiations.

The source said that Holt, previously an executive at Interscope Records, may be close to agreeing to the deal but that there are several sticking points.

The News Corp.-owned MySpace launched its music service last month, featuring streaming-music deals from all four major record labels and a retail affiliate partnership with the Amazon MP3 store.

In September, shortly before MySpace Music launched, reports indicated that the CEO … Read more

Rick Astley to perform at MTV Europe awards ceremony?

Pop singer Rick Astley had a huge hit with "Never Gonna Give You Up" 20 years ago. Now he's had a second wave of fame--and according to a fan site, it will culminate in a performance at MTV Europe's "EMA" ceremony, which takes place on November 6.

The campy, hip-wiggling video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" enjoyed newfound popularity when it became the center of the "Rickrolling" phenomenon--the sharing of a link that purported to be something else but was actually a link to the Astley video as hosted … Read more

MySpace pulling out of the Netherlands?

MySpace is closing its office in the Netherlands after failing to adequately compete with homegrown rival Hyves, two Dutch news outlets reported.

Hyves is huge in the Netherlands. According to the Webwereld article published late last week, MySpace considered acquiring Hyves, but the plan fell through. MySpace said that this is untrue and that no acquisition talks went on.

Derek Fehmers, who handled MySpace's Dutch operations, told Entertainment Business that the News Corp.-owned company knew the Netherlands would be a difficult market. The decision to close the office came despite MySpace's 650,000 Dutch members, 250,000 … Read more

Imeem jumping on the layoff bandwagon

An executive from social-music site Imeem told CNET News just days ago that the company would not be going through a round of layoffs.

Well, not quite.

Imeem's vice president of marketing, Matt Graves, said the question was actually "whether we had done layoffs, not whether we were going to," and that he answered accordingly. Sneaky! He proceeded to confirm a report from PaidContent that a quarter of the company has been laid off.

"There's not as much money floating around the market, and we had to cut our costs to accommodate," Graves said. … Read more

Layoffs at Jimmy Wales' Wikia?

It's not surprising, considering that everybody else is doing it.

Valleywag reports that Wikia, the for-profit wiki software and search start-up created by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, has laid off about a third of its 43-person workforce--or 12 to 13 employees.

A Wikia representative was not immediately available to confirm.

The company, formerly known as Wikicities, has big-name investor backing, but it doesn't appear to have pulled in any funding for nearly two years. It raised a Series B round of an undisclosed size from Amazon.com in December 2006; previously, the company had taken a $4 million … Read more