If history is any guide, tech companies should absolutely not try and become media companies. But the 25-year-old CEO of precious New York blog platform Tumblr has the fearlessness of youth. Which is why he's recruiting his own writer and editor types.

Hundreds of bloggers were bribed to write posts promoting Google Chrome in recent weeks. The scandal is only worsened by Google's excuse: The whole scheme was dreamed up by the company it hired to help make things popular on the web.

Newspapers, magazines, TV networks and online conglomerates are laying off journalists left and right, but even the sad crumbling world of professional news delivery has a fortunate one percent. This elite group now includes Ben Parr, whose employer Mashable, the tech blog, paid him a $250,000 retention bonus only to…

Ugh, Tumblr. The exasperating microblogging site's execs were content to rent luxury cars, ignore emails, party in the Hamptons and take expensive pictures of their Vespas amid mass unemployment, economic collapse, banker bailouts, epic government privacy violations, fraudulent home foreclosures, and the beating of…

AOL shares closed down 26 percent today, despite posting its first ad sales increase since the company was spun out from Time Warner. The problem? The disastrous AOL-HuffPo merger seems to be catching up to the internet conglomerate.

More than 175 million people have registered for Twitter accounts. Which sounds very impressive. Sadly for the microblogging startup's multi billion dollar valuation, at least 68 percent of those registrations are considered dormant.

Tumblr not only has an official fashion director, but the oh-so-hip blogging platform is sending 20 of its users to New York Fashion Week. If coolness was legal tender, Tumblr would be wiping the floor with Google right now. [Pic]

CBS picked up mommy blogger Kelly Oxford's sitcom in at least the third Twitter-to-TV deal at the network in the last year. Microblogging may feed on life's most banal moments, but that only makes TV executives love it more.

Somewhere on the way to the ultimate Silicon Valley jackpot, Evan Williams lost his grip on Twitter, the microblogging startup he co-founded. He's now out as CEO. What went wrong? So many things.

Arianna Huffington's web venture is finally in the black. It only took five years, thousands of volunteer bloggers and the most clever search engine optimization that money can buy.

Mike Arrington is close to selling his influential TechCrunch blog to AOL, GigaOm reports. An announcement is said likely at TechCrunch's ongoing Disrupt conference – from which Arrington has been notably absent this afternoon.

The Federal Trade Commission said it investigated Ann Taylor for trying to influence bloggers with gifts. The FTC took no action, its announcement publicized questions about blogger payola. Namely: Since when does a big-name retailer offer such crappy bribes?

We hear YouTube is preparing a new blog, and the video-sharing site is apparently seeking one or more professional journalists to write it. Google doesn't need to wait for bloggers to take videos viral when it start the process directly.

Steve Jobs is so powerful, you can get rich just imitating the computer mogul. That seems to be the theory behind the premium cable network show under development with Fake Steve Jobs blogger Dan Lyons and noted director Larry Charles.

Bloomberg TV proclaims that, just as Amazon.com reinvented itself as a megamart, former Amazon.com bull Henry Blodget has reinvented himself as Blogger King. Hey, if Blodget's blogs do as well as his Amazon.com call, Perez Hilton should watch his tiara.

Responding to rumors he might sell his tech blog to AOL, Mashable CEO/babe magnet Pete Cashmore says he's gone to first or second base with some company, and flirted with others, but isn't about to close a deal.

Blogging her poops. Deflating Scarlet Johansson. And now, apparently, taking blog bribes that are federal crimes for the rest of us. These are but a few of Gwyneth Paltrow's transgressions, and the FTC will continue to let them happen.

AOL is interested in buying the world's largest tech blog, Mashable, we hear from a source at the internet conglomerate. And in fact the two sides have been talking, people outside AOL have whispered to one another, and to us.

Today Nikki Finke put out a press release claiming that her Hollywood gossip site Deadline.com attracts a bigger audience than Variety and The Hollywood Reporter combined. We're dubious but were going to stay quiet. But nothing about Finke's ever simple.