Threatening the app boom, could consumers be reaching their usage limits? Speaking from personal experience, NYT’s Jenna Wortham thinks so. “I just don’t have the time to use more [apps] than I’m already using,” she writes in NYT’s Bits blog. Supporting her case, Wortham cites Nielsen data, which finds that, while the average number of apps per phone is rising, the amount of time people spend using apps has changed little. 

Yahoo is presently taking in about $30 million a quarter in direct mobile revenue, most of which came from search revenue on mobile devices. So several sources tell AllThingsD, which reminds us how little the figure is relative to what rivals are making. Facebook, for one, is currently making about $300 million in mobile revenue.  

Consolidating the mobile browser market, Norway’s Opera Software just announced the acquisition of Mountain View-based Skyfire Labs in a deal that could be worth up to $155 million. “Much like Opera, [Skyfire] helps mobile operators boost their capacity by reducing the size of video and multimedia by up to 60 percent,” The Next Web reports. “That technology is an ideal fit for Opera.” 

According to a court of appeal ruling in London, Google may have to take a harsher stance on potentially libelous posts that appear on its Blogger platform. “The court ruled that a gap of five weeks between a complaint being made and the removal of allegedly defamatory comments on a blogpost [sic] could leave it open to a libel action, overturning a finding in the high court last year,” The Guardian reports.  

Who really founded Huffington Post? That question is at the heart of a court case, which, for the second time, a New York judge has decided not to dismiss at the request of Arianna Huffington and Ken Lerer. “The new ruling also expands the scope of the case to include claims of fraud and unjust enrichment,” paidContent reports. Political operatives Peter Daou and James Boyce claim to have come up with the idea for HuffPo.   

Protecting the privacy of minors is a top priority, Facebook said Thursday. The declaration comes as the social network continues to roll out Graph Search, which lets users search out others by using common interests or other personal information. “Details including birthday, school, hometown and current city will only be available about users under 18 to their friends and friends of friends,” CNN reports. 

Blogger and Microsoft engineer Scott Hanselman has a beef with Quora over its near insistence that iOS readers download its app in order to access the question and answer site’s full service. “This is bold, even for Quora,” Hanselman blogs. “This implementation goes against everything on the Web. You're not just actively preventing me from visiting your site by forcing me to log in, but you're also actively forcing me to download your app to access your server … I don't want your app.” 

Despite what Reuters calls its “limited success so far,” Microsoft has no “Plan B” for catching up to Apple and Google in the critical arena of mobile computing. As Reuters reports, Microsoft's CFO Peter Klein admitted as much at Goldman Sachs’ Technology and Internet Conference, this week. "It's less 'Plan B' than how you execute on the current plan," said Klein.  

Marketing analytics and campaign management firm Marin Software on Wednesday filed for a $75 million IPO. Founded in 2006, Marin is perhaps best known “for being a resource for gaining insight into Google’s search business,” AllThingsD reports. The company has yet to report a profitable year, despite taking in $42.5 million in the first nine months of 2012. 

News magazine app Pulse is getting into the social aggregation game with Highlights -- a new feature with which users can create a tab of news based on what’s popular among those in their social circles. “Basically, any news story that your friends have shared or saved excessively will pop up within the new Highlights tab, which you can access from the ‘save stories’ tab in the left sidebar,” VentureBeat reports.