Gossip

A financial news and research outlet called VCExperts posted an article today claiming that on December 17, daily-deals broker Groupon "filed a certificate to authorize a $950 million Series G round of preferred stock." The exact amount that the company raised in the monster funding round should be available next week (which means it could be quite a bit less), the report continued, adding that the company's valuation is likely $6.4 billion.

The dollar amount sounds like something out of Dr. Evil's machinations in the "Austin Powers" spoof film series, but Groupon isn'… Read more

The high degree of investor interest in shares of hot Silicon Valley companies that aren't yet publicly traded--like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Zynga--may be leading to scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a report late Monday on The New York Times' Dealbook blog.

Companies like SharesPost and SecondMarket offer exchanges for privately traded stock, and there's been no shortage of supply thanks to early employees and investors of companies like Facebook and Twitter who are looking to take some cash off the table. Much of the interest in the exchanges has been … Read more

When a former Yahoo employee leaked a list of products that the troubled company plans to shut down, many people were up in arms over the fact that one of the items on the list was Delicious--a social-bookmarking company Yahoo acquired in 2005 that still has a handful of loyal users.

But Delicious says it plans to find an exit strategy from Yahoo, not shut down.

"We are not shutting down Delicious," a post on the Delicious blog read. "While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo, we believe there is [an] … Read more

Taiwan-based news outlet DigiTimes cited "industry sources" Friday in a report that claims cell phone manufacturer HTC will ship 60 million handsets in 2011, triple 2010's number. It's unclear as to whether this refers solely to smartphones or whether this also involves yet-to-be-released tablet devices.

As one of the biggest hardware manufacturers producing Android phones (from the successful Droid line to the discontinued Nexus One), this is a promising sign for the Google-built mobile operating system. HTC is also a big manufacturer of Windows Phone 7 devices, with the Surround on AT&T and the HD7 on T-Mobile.… Read more

Previously sealed court documents leaked to gossip site Radar Online reveal that Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who became famous through their portrayal in the film "The Social Network," are continuing their legal action against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and that Facebook unsurprisingly continues to denounce the claims.

To clarify: This isn't actually a new lawsuit, as a handful of media outlets reported yesterday following a report in the Daily Mail about the Winklevosses suing Facebook again. The U.K. outlet subsequently took down its story.

The partially redacted documents, which surfaced on Radar Online … Read more

In the entertainment press, reporters love to speculate over whether Brad and Angelina will finally get hitched. In the tech world, it's the decidedly unsexier AOL and Yahoo.

There's been a long parade of rumors suggesting that AOL may be looking to either ditch its not-dead-yet dial-up access business or merge with fellow attempting-a-turnaround tech conglomerate Yahoo; now, a report today from Reuters suggests it's attempting to do both. According to Reuters, AOL is exploring a "complicated series of transactions" in which it would sell off its access business to a prospective buyer and then … Read more

Multiple media outlets reported earlier this month that Yahoo was on the verge of major layoffs, perhaps as high as 20 percent (but more likely 10 percent) of the struggling technology company. On Tuesday, TechCrunch reported that tipsters were contacting them to say the layoffs had begun. The company's Yahoo Groups and Flickr divisions were named specifically.

Yahoo's official statement doesn't say much: "Yahoo is always evaluating expenses to align with the company's financial goals. Beyond that, we don't comment on rumors or speculation."

If true, the layoffs are yet another blow to … Read more

What happens when you throw a bunch of Chicago comedians into a complex of Silicon Valley engineers? Hilarity, maybe. Or one of the more unusual M&A gossip yarns of the past few years.

There's loads of talk right now about whether group-buying coupon service Groupon will sell to a big buyer or will hold out as an independent company in the hopes that it may become the world's leading name in local-business advertising. The barrage of rumors over Groupon is an interesting one--Yahoo wants it! Yahoo loses it! Google may be willing to fork over $4 … Read more

There's a lot of chatter right now about Instagram, an iPhone app for adding artsy filters to photos and sharing them across various social-media networks, which has taken the early-adopter crowd by storm and courted heavy investor interest in the mobile photo-sharing niche.

A Thursday New York Times story revealed that investment firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has a stake in Instagram, just led a $5 million funding round for the parent company of competitor Picplz--which in turn caused a blogger at Business Insider to wonder whether the apparent conflict of interest indicates that Instagram has been sold.

CNET … Read more