Also: Facebook's expansion | Seattle epaper trails | Motorola on Everest | Wireless radiation
It's got legs, and it knows how to use them.
Well not quite, but the reason people fall for these crazy acquisition rumours is that every now and again, one of them turns out to be true.
This time round, the Sunday Telegraph had the tech blogs pumping on a Sunday after reporting "Silicon Valley gossip" - Yahoo is in negotiations with Bebo over a $1bn acquisition.
The story was noticeably light on fact and heavy on background. Mike TechCrunch Arrington - who rather feels he has the monopoly in this area - was scathing, saying the Telegraph "isn't exactly known for breaking tech M and A stories" and that it was probably something the correspondent overheard after a few cocktails. Ouch.
I'll see what tech gossip I can eavesdrop on at tonight's Internet People...
I contacted Bebo last night, and their Sunday-sacrificing comms director dismissed the story as unfounded rumour and gossip.
Yahoo, for its part, has been courting Facebook for an age with founder Mark Zuckerberg famously holding out for $2bn. Yahoo peaked with over $1.6bn, details of which were leaked a few months later.
There's a waft of new comment about this today, mostly commenting on how little there is to comment on. Sam Sethi on Vecosys - who appears to have been blogging at 4am - said this is the obligatory six-monthly Bebo acquisition story. Bebo's co-founder Michael Birch told Sethi at an Internet People event in March that he valued the company between $1-3bn, but still isn't interested in selling.
Om Malik is taking bets on which of the three current M&A rumours will turn out to be true: Yahoo/Bebo, CBS buying the financial video site Wallstrip or Google acquiring Feedburner.
And here's the biggest clue about who planted the seed of that rumour: Yahoo's shares rose 3.7%, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook's expansion
Facebook is exploring how to maximise its growth by letting companies and organisation build pages for their own services within the social net site. Zuckerberg told the wall Street Journal that the site couldn't' build everything in-house, and that the site's strategy is to let other people build their services inside the site. That could include a web retailer with a tool that let people recommend music or books to a friend, so the retailer gets a presence among Facebook's rapidly expanding audience and Facebook gets more traffic. The WSJ reminds us here that Harvard drop-out Zuckerberg is a mere whippersnapper at just 23. (Wall Street Journal)
Seattle paper to run epaper version
The Seattle Post Intelligencer has announced that it will publish on epaper but don't hold your breath - this piece says the paper will do so within two years. The trails will use LG Philips flexible, colour LCD displays at A3 size which can be rolled up. Page-turning is done by a pressure-sensitive control on the edge of the page. (vnunet)
The world's highest publicity stunt
The Chinese government has installed a mobile phone mast somewhere near the Himalayas, which has conveniently allowed Motorola to send someone up to the top with their latest handset so they can claim the world's highest mobile phone call. (Motorola)
Is wireless radiation dangerous?
Wireless is bad for us. Great.
Panorama has been taking readings in school classrooms, and says the radiation levels from wireless networks are three times stronger than from mobile phone networks. More on Panorama tonight. (BBC)
