It looks like some investors still believe the market is big enough for more than one social network. San Francisco-based Hi5 said Tuesday that it raised $14 million in a second round of funding. Last fall, Hi5 hired gaming pioneer Alex St. John as its president, and continues to focus more on social games and virtual goods. The company is now making games that users can play for free, but then pay real money for virtual goods such as decorations. "Hi5 doesn't have much of a chance of unseating Facebook in social games, but it might have a …

Steve Rubel, the consummate e-enthusiast, warns that the Web is becoming a lot less "interesting" to consumers. The culprit is mobile, which -- while you might assume is just giving the Web wings -- is actually compartmentalizing the life out of serendipitous Web surfing, Rubel suggests. "Mobile devices, by their nature, force users to become more mission-oriented," writes the blogger and senior VP-director of insights at Edelman Digital. "As more internet consumption shifts to gadgets, it's increasingly becoming an app world and we just live in it." Without questioning the inevitability of this development, Rubel then advises …

Mobile ad network InMobi has raised another $8 million in funding led by existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byer Sherpalo Ventures. All told, InMobi -- which TechCrunch calls the "the largest mobile ad network that hasn't been acquired" -- has now raised $15.6 million. TechCrunch estimates that the company did around $35 million in revenue in 2009, and may hit $75 million for all of 2010. Launched in 2007, the network now does roughly 17 billion monthly impressions combined on mobile apps and mobile Web sites -- second only to AdMob's 18 billion impressions a month. …

So, what excuses is AT&T making these days for its less-than-exceptional service? "It's a little bit of everything," says Mobile Beat, paraphrasing comments made by AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan. "With a flood of new chipsets, phones, and applications, the traditional device testing and rollout methods have 'broken down.'" Also, AT&T recently faced a shortage of some components needed to improve its network. "I'll tell you the things it's not been," Donovan said. "It's not been capital, it's not been conviction and commitment." AT&T "will move heaven and Earth" to meet its customers' growing data needs, …

The New York Times christens Techmeme as king of all tech news aggregators. The site relies on software algorithms to collect news in real time into what The Times calls "essentially the front page of an ever-changing industry newspaper." Behind the scenes, however, the site does rely on a number of real-life humans to oversee story placement. According to The Times, "Techmeme could become a model for other industries as a useful way to harness the increasingly unwieldy Web and arm readers who are preparing for business meetings or cocktail parties." Techmeme itself already publishes aggregation sites …

For those of you keeping count, Foursquare appears to have just crossed the 2 million user threshold. "The location based social network has been growing fast, adding 100,000 users per week," reports TechCrunch. "Only three months ago, Foursquare passed one million users after taking a year to accumulate one million members." Foursquare also "seems to be growing faster than its main competitor, Gowalla." From the stage at OMMA Social last month, Eric Friedman, Foursquare's Director of Client Services said the network had grown to 1.6 million members, and was growing 40% month-over-month. Back in April, top …

During Allen & Co.'s Sun Valley mogul fest last week, Eric Schmidt was just giddy about the promise of "interactive video ads," reports The Wall Street Journal. "Such ads, which could appear anywhere on a Web page, not just inside a video, would be like mini-Web pages," The Journal reports. "That means they could allow Web users to watch a video, leave a comment and see real-time updates within the ads that are more customized to their interests." Furthermore, Schmidt tells The Journal he has pushed Google's ad team teams to think about the potential for …

Over the weekend, The New York Times revealed that Google is bringing Android software development to regular folks. Alpha tested among sixth graders, high school girls, and nursing students, the Google App Inventor for Android software is designed to make it easy for the least computer-savvy among us to write applications for Android smartphones. "The project is a further sign that Google is betting that its strategy of opening up its technology to all kinds of developers will eventually give it the upper hand in the smartphone software market," suggests The Times. By contrast, …

The Wellsville Daily Reporter says that New York resident Paul Ceglia might own up to 85% of Facebook. Ceglia quietly filed suit last month in state court in Allegany County State Supreme Court alleging that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg broke a contract that he had entered with Ceglia in 2003. A state judge in New York is taking the case seriously enough that he reportedly entered a temporary restraining order banning Facebook from transferring assets. The judge also transferred the matter to federal court in Buffalo. Just in time for the …

The problem leaving many iPhone 4 users without reception has prevented Consumer Reports' engineers from giving Apple's latest device a recommendation rating. Engineers completed testing the iPhone 4 and confirmed Monday a problem with signal loss. "When your finger or hand touches a spot on the phone's lower left side-an easy thing, especially for lefties-the signal can significantly degrade enough to cause you to lose your connection altogether if you're in an area with a weak signal," according to the report. "Due to this problem, we can't recommend the iPhone 4." Consumer Reports says its findings …