Spotify -- the U.K.-based music streaming service with U.S. ambitions -- is selling a stake to Silicon Valley investor Kleiner Perkins at a valuation of over $1 billion, Sky News is reporting. "Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers ... is paying $50m for a shareholding of just under 5 percent in Spotify," according to Sky News' Mark Kleinman. "I'm told that the firm Kleiner Perkins is investing alongside Digital Sky Technologies Global (DST), the high-profile Russian investor that has also put money into Facebook and Groupon among other leading Internet companies." All told, Spotify could raise $100 million within the week. …

Seeking to expedite the new media investment process, CapLinked just announcing a $900,000 round of funding led by a group of former PayPal execs known as the "PayPal Mafia," reports TechCrunch. Co-founded by PayPal marketing exec Eric Jackson, CapLinked is offering a collaborative platform for entrepreneurs, private investors and advisors to find each other, build relationships, and transact business on a single platform. Already, "there a few platforms that aim to connect investors and startups on the web, including AngelList, and Kickstarter, but for the most part investment transactions and venture funding is done face-to-face, many times with a hand …

Overlooking Facebook, Russian officials are accusing Google of instigating the ouster of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc in an interview published on Tuesday for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak," Reuters reports, citing a paywall-blocked story in The Wall Street Journal. "Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Journal. Google executive Wael Ghonim did in fact help lead the uprising in Egypt …

Don't mess with Twitter. Over the weekend, the top micro-blogging served briefly blocked BlackBerry and Android apps, UberSocial and Twidroyd, for a number of "serious-looking" policy violations affecting "a large number of users," The Guardian reports. According to Twitter: "These violations include, but aren't limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users' tweets in order to make money." Despite having his app reinstated on Sunday night, UberMedia-funder Bill Gross is fuming about how Twitter handled the issue. Gross insists the ban "completely took us by surprise" …

Alibaba.com, China's biggest e-commerce site, said Monday that its two most senior executives were stepping down after an internal investigation found more than 2,000 fraudulent virtual storefronts had been set up with the help of company salespeople. In a statement, Alibaba.com said Chief Executive David Wei and Chief Operating Officer Elvis Lee were not involved in the scams but wanted to shoulder responsibility for the "systemic break-down" in Alibaba.com's "culture of integrity," The Los Angeles Times reports. Wei is being replaced by Jonathan Lu, chief executive of sister company Taobao.com. Alibaba Group is about 40% owned by Yahoo. As …

Ecommerce company Gilt Groupe, is in the process of raising $80 million -$100 million at a $1 billion valuation, sources tell Business Insider. The news comes on the heels of rival HauteLook's $270 million sale to Nordstrom last week. To date, Gilt has already raised more than $80 million of capital in several rounds from Matrix General Atlantic, and others. Notes Business Insider: "Gilt booked about $270 million in revenue in the fiscal year ending June 2010, and its revenue should approach $500 million this fiscal year." The valuation for this latest financing will be about 2-times revenue, which …

ReadWriteWeb believes Facebook has the ability to blow location-based social -- or LBS -- media wide open. Citing an announcement by microformats community leader Tantek Çelik, the tech resource notes that Facebook now publishes its millions of user-generated event listings according to the standardized microformats hCalendar and hCard. Translation? "That means that the venues where all these events are being held are now described in a universally standardized way," according to ReadWriteWeb. According to RWW, all Facebook has to do is allow sites other than the big three search engines to index its events listings, which would inevitably …

Social gaming company Zynga is about to complete a new funding round worth $500 million, and at a valuation of $10 billion, sources tell BoomTown. "The round includes big institutional investors Morgan Stanley, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Investments, as well as a token investment from existing venture investor Kleiner Perkins, in order to establish the huge valuation," BoomTown reports. "The big funding is essentially a precursor to an initial public offering." To date, Zynga has already raised over $500 million from a host of investors as its explosive growth in social gaming has proven irresistible. However, Zynga's long …

Delicious users rejoice! Following Yahoo's recent decision to "sunset" the bookmarking service, an opportunistic Google has debuted a tool to import Delicious users' bookmarks to Google Bookmarks. What Mashable calls a "simple importer" takes users Delicious log-in credentials and imports all their bookmarks, while preserving their labels and tags. According to Mashable, Google likely sees the demise of Delicious as the perfect opportunity to take Bookmarks to the next level. "Bookmarks was launched in 2005, but it's never been a huge hit -- or a money maker -- for the company," it writes. "Last year, Google launched Lists for …

Since its dramatic redesign earlier this month, Gawker's U.S. daily unique visitors have nosedived from a high of 561,000 to 257,000, according to TechCrunch, citing Quantcast data. Other Gawker Media properties that underwent a similar redesign seem to be suffering similar drop-offs. Gizmodo's numbers declined from 746,000 to 420,000 in the U.S., while Jezebel and Deadspin are also hurting. The new design features a single top story in the main column, a few other featured stories just below it, along with additional headlines in a thinner column along the side. "It is a bit disorienting because when you …