What you need to know - Thursday 10/14/10

ChaCha raised $20M; 7 Degrees raised $6.8M; StoredIQ raised $10M; AOL wants Yahoo

AOL is looking to buy Yahoo. While no solid offer has been made yet, several private equity firms have been talking to AOL about teaming up to buy the search giant. According to the sources, Yahoo has not yet been included in the talks.

Facebook announced that it's expanding its credits program. A deal with PlaySpan will add 20 more ways to use the credits according to the release. The specific new uses for credits were not released.

Klout, a social influence metrics company, has announced that it will now begin to collect data from Facebook and Twitter. Information about how much data, and what data will be collected was not mentioned in the release.


Facebook and Bing have announced a partnership. The deal will allow users to see friends' recommendations in the online search. This feature should be rolled out by the end of next week.

NASA is creating virtual items for Gowalla.This will lead to a a mobile-based scavenger hunt, with items like virtual moon rocks, a NASA patch, a spacesuit and a space shuttle. The items will be swappable among users.

ChaCha raised $20 million. The round was led by Rho Ventures and VantagePoint. This round brings the companies total funding to raised to nearly $72 million.

Facebook teams up with Glaad to prevent anit-gay bullying online. The agreement will involved heavier policing, and better response,  of the terms of service when hate speech is involved. Other efforts are also in the works, but no specifics have been mentioned.

7 Degrees raised $6.8 million. This is the second round of funding. Investors include Rho Ventures, vSpring Capital and Parkview Ventures.

StoredIQ raised $10 million. The  round was led by PerformanceEdge Partners and S3 Ventures. The Austin, Texas-based company helps corporations manage their data.