Think we've reached a point where there's no such thing as over sharing? Then consider the case of Blippy, a site that let users share information about their "favorite purchases" with friends, which quietly shifted strategies after failing to scale with consumers. According to CEO Ashvin Kumar, Blippy traffic would spike whenever press would cover it and then subsequently die down to levels that showed no signs of steady growth. Last April, Google Search results revealed that credit card numbers of a few Blippy users. Along the way, Blippy raised almost $13 million in funding and, …

At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference on Monday, Union Square Venture's Fred Wilson would neither confirm nor deny that his firm has sold some of its Twitter stock via secondary markets. "When asked by TechCrunch's Erick Schonfeld, Wilson said that he wouldn't comment, but he also 'wouldn't argue' with news reports that USV and other investors have sold some of their Twitter stock," VentureBeat reports. Wilson was an early investor in Twitter, which has recently faced increasing criticism for its management structure, lack of vision, and inability to profit from its vast popularity. According VentureBeat, Wilson clearly believes that …

Question-and-answer video platform VYou just secured $3 million in Series A funding, reports TechCrunch. VYou lets users converse through brief snippets of video. "Gunning for a media play, the New York-based VYou recently partnered up with Hearst Newspapers, MTV/VH1, Simon and Schuster and the Newark Peace Summit in order to help these brands better connect with their audiences," TechCrunch writes. Since its launch this past November, VYou says it has attracted over 20 million views and 30,000 user sign ups. Founder Steve Spurgat tells TechCrunch that he doesn't liken the company to a Quora or Formspring for video. …

With some help from Salesforce.com, Toyota is launching its own social networking service. "Toyota Friend" will be offered first on Toyota's Electric Vehicles (EV) and plug-in hybrid cars (PHV), due in 2012, reports The Next Web. "Toyota Friend provides a platform for the car to relay key information to the owner. This could be general maintenance tips or notifications that that the car is running low on power. In this instance, the driver would receive an alert on their mobile, similar to a Tweet." Toyota Friend will be powered by Salesforce Chatter, which is an enterprise social network. …

Potentially helping Groupon break free of email inboxes, the deal giant is reportedly in partnership talks with location-based leader Foursquare. "The arrangement is likely to see Groupon deals targeted to Foursquare users' check-ins," writes All Things D, citing multiple sources. "Mobile app users who tell their friends that they're in the vicinity of a venue offering a discount are obviously prime customers."Only last week, Groupon announced a deal to distribute its new Groupon Now real-time offers with Foursquare competitor Loopt. Loopt users now receive alerts when they're close to a local deal, without even opening the app. "The …

Things are looking badly for the world's largest handset maker. Fresh off of rumors that Nokia would be selling off its handset division to Microsoft, new numbers from Gartner reveal that Nokia's current market share is the lowest its been since 1997. Nokia's market share has dropped to 25% over the last couple of years. Between Q1 2010 and Q1 2011, Nokia's share fell 5.5 percentage points. Ironically, while Nokia's share was falling, worldwide mobile devices sales jumped 19% year-over-year. Google's Android grabs a 36%-size slice of the pie, while Apple doubled the number of iPhones it sold last …

Apple is close to locking up a deal with every major music label in advance of launching its own cloud music service, according to Bloomberg. CNET reported previously that EMI Music and Warner Music Group are now on board The Mac-maker has reportedly signed on Sony Music, leaving just Universal Music Group as the last of the four major labels with no agreement in place. Google and Amazon have both already launched cloud music offerings without the support of record labels, after negotiations between labels and the two companies reportedly failed to reach an acceptable agreement prior to …

Social media is being used more in newsrooms as a tool for newsgathering and verification, according to the fourth annual Digital Journalism Study, published by the Oriella PR network. It polled 478 journalists from 15 countries and found that 47% used Twitter as a source, up from 33% last year. The use of Facebook as a source went up to 35% this year from 25% in 2010. The report also suggests an increasing number of journalists are turning to social media for verification, with one-third using Twitter and one-quarter employing Facebook. Only 4% of respondents cited Twitter, Facebook or …

The New York Public Library just released an app called Biblion that's one of the slickest media consumption experiences Silicon Valley watcher Tom Foremski says he's seen for the iPad. "Combining essays, photos and documents from the library's archives, the whole experience feels more like an exhibit than a publication ... but maybe that's precisely where magazine apps should be aiming," he notes. The first edition of Biblion focuses on the 1939-1940 World Fair. It allows you to experience what it's like to tool around behind the scenes at a museum or in an archive. The impression is spatial. …

Google told partners in its News Archive project that it would cease accepting, scanning and indexing microfilm and other archival material from newspapers. Instead, it was focusing its energies on "newer projects that help the industry, such as Google One Pass, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites." The 5-year-old News Archive project was Google's attempt to do for old newspapers what Google Books has been attempting to do for the world's libraries. Newspapers opened their morgues to Google, which promised to scan, index, and host the digital files it made …