As part of President Barack Obama's plan to promote entrepreneurship, AOL co-founder Steve Case will lead an administration-sanctioned campaign to support private sector investments in startup companies and small businesses. "In his Jan. 25 State of the Union address Obama said part of his plan to 'out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world' includes more investments in education, technology and infrastructure," Bloomberg reports. The initiative includes pledges from companies including Facebook Inc., Intel Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and International Business Machines Corp. to increase their investments in startup companies. Carl Schramm, the president and CEO of the Kauffman …

To some degree, question and answer platform Quora owes its early success to the heavy involvement of influential tech blogger Robert Scoble. Calling Quora "the biggest blogging innovation in 10 years" didn't hurt either. Over the weekend, however, Scoble decided he was no longer a fan because, among other reasons, he believes the Quora community is turning on him. "It might seem as though this dustup is of interest only to Scoble fans and other Silicon Valley insiders, but it has focused another spotlight on some important hurdles that Quora has to face as it tries to grow," writes

KIT digital has acquired three social software and video companies, TechCrunch is reporting. All told, the cloud-based video asset management company just dropped about $77 million on New York City-based KickApps, Paris-based Kewego, and San Francisco-based Kyte. Per the deals, KickApps CEO Alex Blum has been named Global COO of KIT digital, while KickApps CFO David Lapter will now serve as SVP Finance and Administration within KIT digital. Blum will be responsible for the overall business operations of the company, including product management, R&D, client operations, and business administration. “So why KickApps, Kewego and Kyte -- apart from the …

Google may now have the most popular mobile software on the market, but Apple is still seen to have the edge on apps. Likely as a result, Google reportedly plans to hire dozens of software developers to create apps for smartphones and other mobile devices. As sources tell The Wall Street Journal, the hiring binge is part of a "new strategy aimed partly at helping Google counter Apple Inc. in one of high tech's hottest sectors." Hires include software engineers, product managers, user-interface experts and other mobile app-focused experts. Meanwhile, some existing Google employees are now shifting their attention …

I met Joel Ewanick, now global marketing chief at GM, and Chris Perry who now oversees the automaker's four brands in the U.S. at the Hilton on 42nd Street in NYC this morning. They are in town to reveal their Super Bowl ad buy. But I got the chance to talk to Ewanick about his new role. More on that later this week. Ewanick and Perry have brought a strategy they used at Hyundai Motor Americica -- owning big broadcast events -- to Detroit. Chevrolet is going to all but own the Super Bowl automotive sector this year with …

After I suggested to my privacy panel that the new industry opt-out icon should maybe carry a tagline like, say, "We do no evil," privacy panelist and Ad.ly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh suggested that may not be such a good idea, depending on how that tagline is actually spelled out. "Is it, 'We do know evil,'" Gullov-Singh quipped. That made me wonder with Google knows evil.

Barbara Lippert, the long-time ad critic at Adweek magazine, has joined San Francisco agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as curator of popular culture.

Marla Aaron, the long-time communications chief at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, has landed as senior vice president-corporate communications at MRM Worldwide, Interpublic's global digital agency network.

Visa is partnering with Twitter and the NFL to sponsor the first official online Super Bowl XLV destination featuring Twitter content. The social media initiative provides fans a new way to engage with each other and discuss Super Bowl XLV. "Go Inside Super Bowl XLV with Visa," collects tweets about Super Bowl XLV from a variety of sources at www.nfl.com/visa.   It will include Tweets from reporters covering Super Bowl XLV and will pull in Tweets about the game, the NFL (@nfl), the Green Bay Packers (@packers) and Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers). It also will feature Tweets from NFL …

LinkedIn has filed with the SEC for an initial public offering to raise up to $175 million, but that figure could go higher based on investor demand for the offering. For the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2010, the company's net revenue was $161 million, up from $80.8 million in the year-earlier period. Net income was $10 million compared to a loss of $3.4 million a year ago. The professional networking site, which has 90 million members, said about a third (32%) of its revenue came from display and text advertising and its self-serve ad system. The bulk of …