The subtext being online privacy, Gizmodo's Mat Honan admits to failing a "social media background check." What is a social media background check? Well, as Honan reminds us, the FTC recently gave a company named Social Intelligence the right to run background checks of individuals' Internet and social media history. Contrary to initial reports, however, Social Intelligence doesn't store seven years worth of your social data. "Rather it looks at up to seven years of your history, and stores nothing," Honan notes. What's more, rather than scouring the Web for you in compromising, drunken states, the company actually …

Music streaming service Spotify has reportedly been telling record companies that it finally plans to make its U.S. debut next week. "Or maybe later!" suggests All Things D's Peter Kafka. "Spotify is Spotify, so anyone who has paid any attention to this story will be reflexively skeptical that Spotify will show up in the U.S. until Spotify shows up in the U.S." (If you haven't been following Spotify's story, the UK-based company has made multiple failed attempts to enter the U.S. market.) "While the service has agreements in place with three of the four big (U.S.) music labels, …

With the recent arrival of Google+, the battle for Web dominance is reaching new heights between Google and Facebook. "They both want to be the center of the Internet -- but there can be only one center," writes TechCrunch. "While it's still far from clear what the actual impact of G+ will be on the Internet at large, it's pretty clear already that it's something Facebook is going to have to take seriously. And they are." As such, Facebook just launched a video chat feature a week after Google did in G+. Last summer, Facebook rushed to get …

Social music service Turntable.fm is closing in on $5 milllion-to-$10 million in additional funding at a $40 million valuation, reports Observer.com's Betabeat, citing multiple sources. The hot start-up, which previously pursued an entirely different strategy under the name Stickybits, seems to have executed what Betabeat calls the perfect "pivot" -- whereby start-ups shift direction to varying degrees. Betabeat describes the pivot process as integral to the success -- and, in some instances, the failure - of many a tech start-up. "Investors are looking to cut the company fat checks, and Facebook is sweating about the platform's viral …

Competing with sites like Apartments.com, Padmapper.com and Hotpads.com, a start-up named Nestio just raised $750,000 in seed funding to organize apartment hunting online. "The start-up plans to use its recent funding to build out its development team and is currently working on adding a number of features that will provide deeper context and transparency to apartment listings," TechCrunch reports. The round was led by Quotidian Ventures, along with participation from angel investors, including Joanne Wilson, Rick Webb, Josh Auerbach and David Tisch. While the service currently only offers Web and mobile support to New York City, Nestio plans …

Earlier this year, Apple sued Amazon on the claim that the online retailer was improperly using Apple's "App Store" trademark for a mobile software developer program. Now, however, a U.S. judge has denied the computer maker's attempt to stop Amazon from using the name, reports Reuters, citing a court document. In a complaint filed on March 18 in California, Apple accused Amazon of trademark infringement and unfair competition and asked for a court order to prevent the company from using the "App Store" name, as well as for unspecified damages. Amazon, for its part, argued that the term is …

EBay just got into the mobile payments game with the acquisition of Zong for about $240 million in cash. "Zong enables consumers to post payments to their mobile phone bills, mostly to pay for virtual goods inside of games," explains All Things D. "EBay said Zong will strengthen PayPal's payment platform, which in the past has focused on microtransactions [sic] and digital goods, but did not enable payments to be posted to the mobile phone bill." Founded in 2008, Zong was spun off from Echovox, and had raised about $30 million from investors including Matrix Partners, Advent Venture …

What does Mark Zuckerberg think of Google's latest and boldest foray into the world of social networking? Mashable was curious, so it asked Facebook's head honcho during a video chat this week. In response, without referring to Google+ specifically, Zuck said he viewed the rise of social "as validation as to how the next five years are going to play out." Meanwhile, in light of Google+'s group video chat feature, Mashable asked Zuck about the possibility of Facebook offering a similar service. His answer? The young mogul said he "wouldn't rule out anything," but, according to Mashable, argued …

In addition to the push notifications for check-ins that Foursquare already offers mobile app users, the company just debuted new notifications for "beyond the check-in" activities. As TechCrunch explains, "That means things like comments on check-ins and photos, alerts when friends sign up, alerts about tips, alerts when you're ousted as mayor, swarming alerts, etc." Perhaps more interesting, Foursquare chose to debut its latest feature on Android, while it has historically launched apps on the iPhone. "People in the Android-iverse, you're first to play with this," Foursquare writes. To date, as TechCrunch notes, many app makers have given …

While Web darlings like Groupon and Zynga file their IPOs, Twitter is reportedly planning to raise another round of private funding. "The round could yield hundreds of millions and value Twitter as high as $7 billion," The Wall Street Journal reveals, citing a single source. As yet, it remains unclear which investors are participating in this latest new round. The talks come just seven months after Twitter raised $200 million in a financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which valued the company at $3.7 billion. "Twitter's new valuation underscores the soaring price tags for some Web …