Top Stories

  Groupon Refuses Buyout
Just as Yelp opted to walk away from an offer of $500 from Yelp, Groupon is the latest company to refuse to sell out to Google. After purportedly being offered $5.3 billion with a $700 million earnout, the creators of the whole group buying phenomenon walked away from the offer. Although they recently spruced up their product with expand ed services in hopes of a higher valuation, who knows whether Groupon will hold out for a better offer or instead make an IPO in 2011.

  Gowalla integrates… Foursquare?
In their latest product update, Gowalla made an unlikely move with a heavy Foursquare integration (among other services) within the app itself. While Gowalla has always struggled to grow its user base against Foursquare, this might actually be a smart move in getting people to try out the service. Gowalla’s design is much fresher than Foursquare’s, and  the ability to cure check-in fatigue by integrating other services directly into the application is tempting for anyone who uses check-in services on a regular basis.

  Facebook Co-Founder Launches Social Network
Last week Facebook co-founder and  director of online organizing for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign Chris Hughes publicly launched a new social network, Jumo. Similar to Facebook’s causes platform, Jumo hopes to connect people with non-profits they care about and  is heavily integrated within the Facebook platform. While many non-profits already have an online and  social media presence, Hughes hopes Jumo will help serve the small and  medium size organization who don’t have a huge staff but need take advantage of the resources the Internet can offer.

Killer Stats

1.   Online ad spending for 2011 sees double digit growth again.
2.   Instagram seeing 2-3 uploads per seconds.
3.   Shazam adds 100 millionth user.
4.   Chrome approaches 10% of browser marketshare.

Cool Reads

  EBay Shows Where Mobile Shopping is Hot
  Gawker Hopes to Transform the Blog