What you need to know – 03/15/11

Following its acquisition of the Huffington Post and the subsequent laying off of 900 employees, AOL announced that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone will now be serving as the company’s Strategic Adviser for Social Impact. 

“We would not be surprised to see Apple sell closer to one million iPad2s in the opening weekend,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Scott Sutherland. By comparison, the original iPad took one full month to reach one million units sold, and in its first week, it sold approximately 450-500,000.  

Ad platform BoostCTR closed a $1.64 million seed funding round led by a group of institutional investors and angels, including Javelin Venture Partners, Metamorphic Ventures, Founder Collective, WGI Group, and 500 Startups.

Android and Samsung are big winners in the mobile world during the three month period ending at the end of January 2011, according to comScore.

Facebook confirmed rumors that Google director of corporate development Amin Zoufonoun has moved to Facebook, where he will report to FB director of corporate development Vaghan Smith

Foursquare announced Monday the launch of the Foursquare Venues Project, an API and mapping combination that gives third parties access to the more than fifteen million venues in Foursquare’s database.

Continuing company efforts to stream music to every Internet-connected device, MOG announced Monday three new expansions for the music subscription service: an app for RIM BlackBerry devices and integration into Boxee boxes and MINI USA cars.

Neomobile, a mobile media company, acquired Onebip, a mobile payments service provider for game publishers, social networks, and Internet merchants. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Pricelock, a company offering online fuel hedging and price protection for businesses across the U.S. that rely on fuel, raised over $12 million in Series B financing from Barclays, Renaissance Holdings Ltd., and others.

Two months after first launching in beta, Zynga RewardVille has gone live for everyone, allowing users to earn points and coins that can be used to unlock exclusive and limited edition virtual goods.

Social media and technology company Adgent Digital acquired ad platform ShortTail Media. Terms were not disclosed.

Spigit, provider of collaborative innovation management software for the enterprise, raised an equity investment of $10 million from Warburg Pincus, resulting in $26 million in funding overall since inception.

Sponto, a mobile party discovery app for college students, closed a $200,000 initial equity financing led by McLean, VA based Amplifier Ventures.

StumbleUpon, the Web’s top social discovery engine, launched Paid Discovery, a way for businesses to harness the power of social media to promote their products.

In honor of its fifth birthday, Twitter posted a bunch of interesting numbers and factoids about the service. (3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.)

3D mapping startup UpNext raised a new $500,000 from investors including Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, David Cohen of TechStars, David Tisch and Oleg Tscheltzoff.

Vator Splash is holding its popular evening startup event on May 26 in LA for the first time, with Shawn Colo of Demand Media and Zorik Gordon of ReachLocal.