Some of the stories people are talking about this morning:»  The Washington Post Co. (NYSE: WPO) is desperate to unload Newsweek magazine—but not desperate enough sell to Avenue Capital Group because of worries related to the hedge fund’s plans to partner with the publisher of the National Enquirer. [WSJ] » …

As expected, Forbes is shuttering the True/Slant site this weekend, according to the posts of several contributors. As Fishbowl NY noted, all of the reader farewells penned by T/S contributors say that they hope to working on a new “undisclosed” project. The not-too-well-veiled hint is that it will be on…

MTV has reorganized the heads of its Integrated Marketing Group with the return of MySpace (NSDQ: NWS) sales executive Angela Courtin to the Viacom (NYSE: VIA) company. Courtin will serve as SVP, MTV Integrated Marketing. In conjunction with the new hire, MTV also promoted Jeannie Scalzo to SVP, MTV Integrated…

If you’ve ever tried to upload a video to YouTube and found it rejected for being more than 10 minutes long, you may be pleased to learn YouTube is giving you five more minutes of video time. Why, after years of complaints, is YouTube extending the length of uploaded videos…

Zynga is confirming this evening that it has indeed raised $150 million in funding from Japanese internet and telecom firm Softbank. Reports that the social gaming giant had raised the cash first surfaced several months ago, although Zynga would not comment then.

Will Facebook backer Digital Sky Technologies go public before Facebook? The Russian internet investment group, which has accumulated a five percent stake in the social network, has hired Goldman Sachs, along with two other investment firms, to explore an IPO next year, according to a report in the WSJ. If…

Facebook, which has been testing a new feature that lets users pose questions to the entire Facebook community and answer others, is finally launching the product, which it is calling Facebook Questions. The company says it will be including “ask question” as an option in the status box at the…

IGN, the News Corp.-owned video game site, is launching a gamer-focused social network called My IGN. On the social network, which launched in beta today, users can “follow” games in order to see the latest news about them in a Facebook-like news feed. They can also communicate with other My…

Digital investor and former Reuters (NYSE: TRI) innovation head Azeem Azhar has shuttered his recently-launched Viewsflow site for identifying the most insightful news commentary, but fed the learnings in to PeerIndex, a service which attempts to rank people according to their authority on subjects.

Maybe IAC (NSDQ: IACI) isn’t so crazy to think that its Ask.com search business can compete in a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) world. Higher search ad dollars as well as help from dating site Match.com helped send revenues higher in Q2 for the company. Profits were impacted negatively by the sale…

		EPS*	Rev. vs Q209	Net Inc. vs Q209
IAC	Release		19%	67%

* vs. Analysts' Estimates: Beat Met Missed

»  Steve McPherson has resigned as president of ABC (NYSE: DIS) Entertainment Group to concentrate on his wine business and a “new media venture”; he’s being replaced by Paul Lee, who is promoted from ABC Family. [Deadline Hollywood] »  Just as the ink dries on Disney’s Playdom acquisition, Google (NSDQ:…

So, why did Disney (NYSE: DIS) decide to buy Playdom? Disney Interactive Media Group President Steve Wadsworth told paidContent in a joint interview with Playdom CEO (and now Disney EVP) John Pleasants that Disney is on a “fairly aggressive mission to build a high-growth interactive media business.” He said the…

Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) is making a big move into social games, with the purchase of fast-growing social game developer Playdom for up to $763.2 million. The deal includes a “total consideration” of $563.2 million, in addition to a performance-linked earn-out of up to $200 million. In a release, which…

Retail chain GameStop is acquiring Kongregate, the San Francisco, CA-based game community, as the company looks for ways to expand its online presence. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close next week, were not disclosed.

Marketers still don’t get Twitter, a report from interactive shop 360i shows. Not only are advertisers hardly being mentioned by Twitter users, but the categories of those brands who do prompt discussions on the microblogging service are fairly limited to social nets, entertainment and technology companies.

»  What does it mean that Wikileaks is the world’s first stateless news organization? [Pressthink, CJR] »  Gawker’s Nick Denton is getting profiled in The New Yorker. [Village Voice] »  A bankruptcy investigator finds that The Tribune Company may be too weak to survive, creating another hurdle to the publisher’s…

Triangulate, a startup trying to build an online dating business on Facebook, has raised $750,000 from Trinity Ventures and Playdom Chairman Rick Thompson. Triangulate is the latest so-called “social dating” site to attract interest from investors; Zoosk, the most established player in the market, has raised more than $40 million,…

IAC’s search site Ask.com has tried numerous incarnations to capture some of the traffic and advertising gold possessed by Google (NSDQ: GOOG). Last year, it tried coupons. Before that, it promised more relevance, more engagement and less clicks. This time, it’s going back to its “Ask Jeeves” roots, with answers…

Community forums publisher CrowdGather has bought forum host provider Lefora, its fourth acquisition in less than a year. The acquisition is for San Francisco, CA-based Lefora’s technical assets. The details of the transaction weren’t disclosed, but Crowdgather did say the deal involved an all-stock purchase.