Connie Loizos

Yesterday, Dan reported that the Silver Spring Networks has delayed its much-anticipated IPO until Q4 of this year. The smart grid company had been expected to file its S-1 last month and to price sometime this summer. If, as widely believed, Silver Spring postponed its plans owing to PG&E, which has encountered various sets of troubles during its wide-scale deployment of smart metering technologies, the delay looks smart, particularly considering the recent woes of A123 Systems. The lithium-ion battery maker enjoyed a splashy IPO last September, when its shares, offered at $13.50, jumped 50% in their stock market debut to close at roughly $20 a piece. But the news wasn’t so rosy last week, when A123 disclosed that it had missed analysts’ first-quarter expectations, which sent its share price price down $9.60. Today, the company’s $1.04 billion market cap is roughly half what it was back in September.

There are so many reasons to love the humor site The Onion. Here is the latest, hot from its breaking news desk: NEW YORK—While millions of young, tech-savvy professionals already use services like Facebook and Twitter to keep in constant touch with friends, a new social networking platform called Foursquare has recently taken the oh, fucking hell, can't some other desperate news outlet cover this crap instead? Hip city-dwellers nationwide are embracing the new, come to think of it, haven't we used this photo for some other tech piece?

Israeli furniture designer Ronan Kadushin has created a tool so simple that it rivals in elegance was it was created to crush: iPhones. Better yet, the CAD design, involving 3.5 lbs. of laser-cut steel and a wood ax handle, is open source and downloadable at Kadushin's Website. Ah, if only Gizmodo's Jason Chen had had one of these. (HT: Dezeen)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter, the rapidly expanding microblogging service, plans to have hundreds of advertisers using its new ad system in the fourth quarter as the company ramps up plans to become a self-sustaining, profitable business. Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo said the company’s newly-launched advertising system would provide a key pillar in Twitter’s […]

You win some, you lose some. The question is how many Tim Armstrong is willing to lose before saying sayonara to AOL. Yahoo today will announce that it has acquired VC-backed “open content” platform Associated Content for what reports are pegging at around $100 million. It had raised $21 million from Armstrong, Softbank Capital and Canaan Partners. Associated Content, which pays an enormous army freelancers to generate search-engine optimized content on the cheap, has held talks with various acquirers for years -- including with Armstrong on behalf of AOL. But, according to Silicon Alley Insider, in which Armstrong is also an investor, he was shut down by Time Warner when talk of buying Associated Content picked up late last year.

After a highly publicized spat that had many questioning the future value of social gaming giant Zynga in particular, Zynga and Facebook are announcing a five-year-long strategic partnership, wherein both keep their mouths shut and presumably continue to rake in many hundreds of millions of dollars together.

With a new site, OpenBook, reminding people that privacy on Facebook is largely imaginary, another service may soon be attracting renewed attention: four-year-old ReputationDefender. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, which charges customers a monthly subscription to monitor their names across the Web, has already raised $12 million from Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners, European Founders […]

Readers of this column know we’ve delighted in chronicling the sexcapades of Ali Fedotowsky, an advertising account manager for Facebook who appeared as a contestant on last season’s “The Bachelor.” Ali made news when she quit the show for fear that she might be fired from Facebook. She begged Bachelor Jake Pavelka to take her […]

Earlier this year, we began shining a light on some of the unknown stars who are major value to some of Silicon Valley’s most promising companies. One of those stars is Chris Waterson, senior software architect at Pixazza, which turns static images into profit centers for publishers. Last year, the company raised $5.75 million from Google Ventures, Ron Conway, August Capital and CMEA Capital. A visitor to OK Magazine’s website, for example, might hover a mouse over a photo of Brad Pitt wearing shades, prompting the appearance of a little window. Within it, the visitor is presented with similar, less-expensive sunglass options from a list of vendors with which Pixazza works. If the fan buys a pair, Pixazza and the publisher receive a commission from the vendor. If a sale doesn’t occur, the two still share advertising revenue. Waterson helped launched Pixazza just two years ago, but the 40-year-old is no stranger to Silicon Valley startups. Waterson was also one of the earliest engineers at LiveOps, where he architected much of the crowdsourcing system; before that, he was a chief scientist at Netscape and a primary architect of the Mozilla browser.

Benchmark’s Bill Gurley is an exceedingly busy guy. He’s a dad, he’s a sought-after speaker, and he’s on the boards of 11 companies, including Zillow, Nanosolar and online video guide startup Clicker. Gurley also still posts a thought piece at least once a month at his widely read blog, Above the Crowd. In short, it's hard to get Gurley on the phone. But today, as he drove to the airport for yet another meeting, he made time to talk about Facebook's direction, Digital Sky Technologies, and angel investors among other things. Get a transcript after the jump...