Heads up all you social-gaming startups. In search of its next “FarmVille,” Zynga is prepared to drop hundreds of millions of dollars, according to its merger chief Barry Cottle, and CEO Mark Pincus. Not that spending big in M&A is anything new for the gaming powerhouse. Just last month, Zynga paid $180 million for OMGPop, while in 2010 and 2011 the company spent a combined $147.2 million on 22 companies. Not anywhere near satisfied, however, Pincus says he expects to do “a few” deals the size of OMGPop or larger in the next three to five years. “In its first …

While still very much a niche service, Foursquare says it surpassed 20 million users, and 2 billion check-ins. “In 2010, foursquare fans declared April 16 4sqDay,” the location-based network notes, explaining the date is literally four squared. “Two years and 2 billion check-ins later, you’re still why we get out of bed each day. Thanks to all 20 million of you for making us part of your lives. Happy 4sqDay!” How fast is Foursquare growing? Well, as Venture Beat notes, it surpassed 15 million users back in December, and in March founder Dennis Crowley said it was close to 20 …

Using his Facebook page of all things, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings blasted Comcast this weekend for its treatment of streaming content. In his post, Hastings cites his experiences through four apps running on Xbox 360, including Hulu, HBO Go, Xfinity, and, of coarse, Netflix. “It's safe to say Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is not a big fan of Comcast,” USA Today jokes. “According to Hastings, video streaming through the [apps] counted against the monthly data consumed under his cable Internet plan. However, the Comcast-owned app does not apply to data usage.” As Hastings himself writes: "For example, if I watch …

Thriving in perhaps the hottest segment of digital media, mobile social network Path has reportedly raised $40 million at a valuation $250 million. Not an instant hit, however, “It was rejuvenated after a successful redesign late last year to become a personal journaling app with ways to share travel, sleep, photos, locations and workouts through a Nike partnership,” reports AllThingsD. In February, Path CEO Dave Morin said the app had two million registered users. To date, not even Facebook has successfully cracked the mobile social media code, leaving the space wide open for upstarts like Path to stake their claim. …

As part of a broader shakeup, Groupon is bringing in a new chief to oversee operations of its international business. Marc Samwer -- who got the gig after Groupon bought his family’s daily-deal clone Citydeal in 2010 -- is out. In is Austrian Veit Dengler, an executive who, as GigaOm reports, has done time at Dell, T-Mobile, McKinsey and Procter & Gamble. Austria-born Dengler is now expected to run Groupon’s overseas business from its international headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Why the change? “Perhaps it was just time to move on: after all, two years after an acquisition is not unusual …

Seemingly giving its streaming service an edge over Netflix and Hulu Plus, Amazon claims to have "more than 17,000 movies and television shows" on Amazon Prime Instant Video. After a little investigation, however, Fast Company reports that the total number of movies and TV shows available to Prime subscribers is actually far lower. “Only 1,745 movies are available to stream on the company's Prime service, and just roughly 150 TV series,” it finds. What’s more, “The ‘17,000’ figure is not only misleading to consumers, but a faulty indicator of Amazon's streaming library's strength versus competitors and traditional entertainment offerings.” How …

Largely seen as an effort to promote its email service, Facebook is debuting a service where the name a member uses in their Facebook Timeline will be the same as the one on their Facebook email account. It’s “a move for more consistency, but also another route to getting people to use more email in Facebook, and secure its place as the center of your web life,” TechCrunch’s Ingrid Lunden surmises. That said, “Anyone who already selected an email address will not be affected,” the social network assured in an official announcement, this week. Meanwhile, “It’s not clear how many …

Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), officially opened the naming convention so that anyone with $180,000 and a dream could buy their own their own top-level domain (TLD). For the foreseeable future, however, today is the deadline to file the application. Top-level domains refer to the very top of the Web’s naming system, and presently include the 22 generic TLDs such as .com, .org and .net., along with the 250 or so country code TLDs (such as .fr for France, .de for Germany or .ru for Russia). Now, however, “the most dramatic shake-up of the …

If Placeme is any indication, mobile apps are quickly heading in the most invasive of directions. The free software uses every sensor in a smartphone users’ handset to track his or her activities, location and environment. Unlike Foursquare and other location-based services, there’s no checking in or other user action needed to engage with the app. As such, Placeme “may be both the scariest and amazingly futuristic smartphone app I’ve seen yet,” writes GigaOm’s Kevin Tofel. Built by Alohar Mobile, the service simply records everything in the background. “That creates the fullest set of personalized data I can think of: Placeme is …

Within the boundaries of U.S. antitrust law, not everyone is buying the Justice Department's legal pursuit of Apple for alleged e-book price fixing. Similar to what happened in 1982 -- when the DOJ admitted its antitrust lawsuit against IBM was "without merit," and abandoned the case -- this latest effort is “likely to end in defeat,” contends CNet. More recently, in 2001, a federal appeals court shot down the Justice Department's attempt to, in CNet’s words, “rewrite antitrust law,” by breaking Microsoft into two separate entities. Apple’s publishing partners, however, might have a harder to avoiding prosecution. "It's a harder …