Liberal-focused The Huffington Post and social network Facebook.com have partnered on a new website called the HuffPost Social News.  HuffPost Social News aggregates Huffington Post news stories that are being discussed through Facebook.

These stories include links on The Huffington Post that is being commented on in Facebook.  Stories that are shared by users are also mentioned on the HuffPost Social News website. This concept is similar to TimesPeople, a social network that The New York Times launched last year.

“Our goal is to make HuffPost Social News the go-to place for Facebook users to share news–both the stories they love and the stories they hate–with friends,” stated Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau. “It should also appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends.”

Rest in peace, Thomas Murphy.  Over the weekend Sprint Nextel Corporation’s Vice President of Corporate Brand Marketing Thomas Murphy was killed when driving with his wife Jennifer and three kids.  A boulder slammed through the car’s windshield when his family was driving in Snowmass Canyon, Colorado.

Murphy was driving a Cheavy Tahoe and they were driving downvalley on highway 82 when the rock hit.  Jennifer took control of the vehicle by putting it in neutral causing the car to stop between a nursery and a gas station at the right hand side of the road. The red sandstone rock was the size of a briefcase.

A similar incident took place a couple of weeks before on Frying Pan Road in Colorado.  During that incident, a boulder hit a couple’s Land Rover Discovery SUV.  The SUV was knocked down a 30 ft. embankment and into the river. Fortunately that couple made it out just in time without injury.

[via UPI/AspenTimes]

Popular magazine publication Reader’s Digest has filed for a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Reader’s Digest “reached an agreement with its lenders on a restructuring plan that it will likely complete under a prepackaged bankruptcy filing in order to reduce its debt.”

Like many other print publications, Reader’s Digest suffers from low profit margins and high operation costs.  The company may inevitably go fully digital sometime in the future if they are not able to improve their operations.

But in the meantime, the company will “continue to operate normally throughout the restructuring process.”

Reader’s Digest was co-founded in 1922 by Lila Bell Wallace and DeWitt Wallace.  The magazine has a circulation of about 8.1 million copies in the U.S. and has about 38 million readers.

x+1 is an advertising firm that is based in New York.  An SEC filing has revealed that they have raised $2 million in funding.  x+1 sells a service that bundles behavioral targeting and advertising analytics for marketing companies and for media buyers. Last year x+1 raised $16 million in funding, led by Advanced Technology Ventures.

[via paidContent]

Rumor has it that iLike is currently in talks with MySpace about an acquisition deal.  MySpace is planning to acquire iLike at a price of $20 million.  This would be MySpace’s first acquisition since Owen Van Natta joined as CEO.

iLike has a sidebar that can be added to iTunes in order to discover new music and artists.  iLike also has an iPhone application that detects where you are located and tells you about upcoming concerts.  And iLike has a very popular Facebook application.  In total, the company has about 50 million registered users.

The company raised $16.5 million in funding from Ticketmaster, Scott Banister, Bob Pittman, and Vinod Khosla.  The company was valuated at $53.2 million based on the term sheets on their last round of funding.

EveryBlock is a local news website that aggregates content news from various local sources.  For example, in the Detroit section of EveryBlock, the website has links to content created by The Detroit News, local news blogs, WXYZ-TV, MyFOX Detroit, etc.

EveryBlock has been acquired by MSNBC.com today, but will continue to operate as an independent brand.  The financial details were undisclosed.

“EveryBlock’s talented team has a track record of innovation in the industry, and we’re excited to add them to the msnbc.com brand family,” stated MSNBC.com President Charlie Tillinghast. “They’ve broken new ground with their unique approach to collecting, organizing and presenting news down to the block level. Their impact and importance in the community space is extremely valuable and carries promise for journalism and new business models.”

Some of the cities that EveryBlock has covered includes Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Dallas, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle and Washington, D.C.  The website also is in the process of adding news by zip codes.

EveryBlock was started about two years ago in Chicago, Illinois.  The company has been funded by the Knight Foundation.  This past June, their grant with the Knight Foundation expired and so the five employees have been talking to investors ever since.

[via NYT]

Yahoo!’s VP of West Coast Sales David Dickman has decided to leave the company and join Time Warner.  Dickman will be working in digital sales at Time Warner.  The reason why Dickman left Yahoo! was because he was not happy with organization changes happening at Yahoo!

Dickman worked at Yahoo! for 3 years and was in charge for the premium display advertising sales.  Before Dickman stepped down from his position, he was reporting to Mitch Spolan.

[via AllThingsD]

OurStage is a music discovery website that plugs itself as an “online American Idol.”  The company has raised about $3 million out of a planned $6 million round of funding.  Thus far the company raised $20 million total.

OurStage CEO Ben Campbell said that the company should be profitable by 2010.  And former Sony Music CEO and Chairman Don Ienner recently joined the OurStage Board of Directors.

OurStage allows indie artists to upload music in order to build fans, similar to MySpace.  OurStage users can also set up clubs and venue information.  Fans can also rate the music uploaded by artists.

OurStage shares revenue from the tracks with the artists.  Another revenue stream OurStage has going is display advertisements.  AOL’s Platform-A division is responsible for OurStage’s display advertising.  AOL Music also has a deal in place with OurStage.

[via paidContent]