Here’s a really interesting session from the World Economic Forum in Davos. The rich dialog featured here, including Eric Schmidt’s comments about Google’s plans for mobile advertising makes this a must-watch video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjjoJjyIngg&rel=1]
Amanda Mooney, i5invest Boston

1. TechCrunch reports on a possible deal between Nokia and Facebook. Duncan Riley says, “The investment side isn’t that surprising given how many companies have now bought into the Facebook phenomenon. The remarkable part is how many companies are willing to invest in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation.”
2. A guest-written post on GigaOM by [...]

BusinessWeek has an interesting report asserting that US tech companies with a strong international presence will weather the recession much better than US-centric companies.
As BW’s Olga Kharif, Spencer E. Ante and Roger O. Crockett report:
One key factor in how these companies perform will be geography. While tech spending in the U.S. is expected to slow [...]

While popular Web personalities like iJustine organically win a large following on the Web, London-based Badoo has an interesting proposition for the average Web user out to increase his or her following. Badoo has monetized its site by offering users the ability to pay for popularity in its network. As Ad Age reports, Badoo [...]

comScore has released its findings from a study of the most trafficed sites in December 2007. It’s interesting to see which retail and non-retail sites garnered the largest audience of US Web users during the peak holiday shopping season. Here are the top 50 trafficked sites:

Amanda Mooney, i5invest Boston
Social Bookmarking

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-95aLkMcjn4&rel=1]

TechCrunch, along with co-producers GigaOM, ReadWriteWeb and VentureBeat, held the first Crunchies last night in San Francisco to celebrate this year’s best technology and startups.
Here are this year’s winners:
Best Overall: Facebook
Best technology innovation / achievement: Earthmine
Best Clean Tech Startup: Tesla Motors
Best video startup: Hulu
Best user-generated content site: Digg
Best mobile start-up: Twitter
Best International startup: [...]

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As BusinessWeek reports, PayPal founder Max Levchin has successfully garnered huge interest and VC funding for his latest venture, Slide. Slide, which offers users the ability to create slide shows for their sites, blogs and profiles on social networks, has raised $50 million in a round funding and a valuation in excess of $500 [...]

comScore has released its findings from a November 2007 Video Metrix study. With the obvious popularity of video sharing sites like YouTube, it comes as no surprise that “more than 75% of U.S. Internet users watched a video… averaging 3.2 hours of video per person during the month.”
It should also come as no surprise [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o26bOMKOCOc&rel=1]
Germany telecom has struggled with setbacks in recent years. Now, as N24 and Reuters reports, Nokia faces harsh criticism today after the German finance minister accused the company of “caravan capitalism.” Nokia, with plans underway to close its Bochum plant, will eliminate an additional 2.300 jobs for workers in this sector.
Nokia plans to move production [...]

alarm:clock euro has served up a list of the hottest M&A sectors in tech.
Icon, the British corporate finance advisory firm, identified sectors that were “particularly hot” in 2007.
Security: Altiris, Iron Port, Protect Data AB, CyberTrust, SurfControl Postini,
Online Marketing: Double Click, Trade Doubler, Aquantive, Right Media, Blue Lithium, Hitwise 24/7 Real Media. It notes that all [...]