What you need to know - 08/30/11

Zynga may be delaying its IPO, AOL may be for sale; Roost reveals new social media analytics

AOL, which a couple weeks ago reported poor second quarter financials, is ready to be raised to the auction block and sold to the highest bidder, say numerous unnamed insiders.

Thank you, Steve Jobs (How Steve Jobs touched our digital and entrepreneurial lives.)

DoubleVerify, provider of online media verification and compliance, received $33 million in financing led by JMI Equity and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP).

E la Carte, the maker of a customer-facing tableside tablet for restaurant and related hospitality industries, closed a $4 million outside venture capital round from Lightbank.

Video ad engagement company Innovid on Tuesday raised a $9.5 million round of funding led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from existing investors Genesis Partners and T-Venture (Deutsche Telecom).

Social marketing platform Roost revealed a rich social media analytics offering for its clients, which assigns engagement scores to individual social interactions.

Samsung is taking a cue from RIM and Apple’s iMessage service and unveiled  a better, cheaper texting experience for its users in the form of ChatON, a new instant messaging service that lets users scribble texts, send animated texts, add music, create images, and more.

TripIt, the travel organization service that was acquired by Concur in January for $120 million, on Tuesday announced its latest feature: the Company Calendar.  As one might expect, TripIt’s Company Calendar is a calendar that displays employees’ business trip itineraries so that others in the office can see who’s in the office and who’s out.

Twitter hired telecommunications expert Colin Crowell as the company’s head of global public policy.

There are quite a few players in the running for the lead digital movie service, but when it comes to actual digital downloads (purchases, not streaming rentals, a la Netflix), an interesting newcomer has snagged the spot for third place: none other than Walmart’s Vudu.

Woozworld, a massive multiplayer user-generated social game for tweens (ages nine - 14), raised $6 million in new funding.

Gaming/education platform Zeebo raised $17 million in equity financing, according to an SEC filing.

Social gaming giant Zynga, which first filed to go public at the start of July, may be delaying its public debut until market conditions improve.