What you need to know - 04/08/11

StumbleUpon seeing one billion stumbles monthly; Is Kno raising a $30 million round from Intel?

Chirply, a community of artists and designers, raised $1.1 million from several investors, including Keith Rabois, Warren Hellman, Dave McClure, Mitch Kapor, Charles River Ventures, and Ignition Partners.

Expedia is spinning off TripAdvisor into its own publicly-traded company. TripAdvisor will go public with its flagship brand and 18 other travel media and advertising brands

Google agreed to invest €3.5 million, or $5 million, in a solar photovoltaic plant in Germany.

Kno is raising a $30 million round from Intel Capital and Advance Publications, according to anonymous sources.

Market research and consulting company Parks Associates is forecasting revenues for online social gaming to increase five-fold by 2015 to become a $5 billion industry.

Rocket Fuel, the company "bringing rocket science to digital advertising," secured a $6.6 million Series C funding round led by Northgate Capital.

SocialFlow, a social media optimization platform, raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Softbank, with RRE, Betaworks, Highline Venture Partners, AOL Venture Partners, SV Angel and several high profile angel investors participating.

Stardoll Media, the network of sites for young women and girls, is celebrating its fifth birthday and now serves 100 million members worldwide.

Hot on the heels of a nicely-sized second funding round and the launch of Paid Discovery, StumbleUpon has some more big news to boast: the service now sees over one billion stumbles every month.

The Department of Homleand security revealed that it has plans to tweet and post to Facebook about changes to the threat level.