In an unusually robust collaboration using Facebook Connect, the Huffington Post is launching a feature on Monday called “HuffPost Social News,” which lets readers create a personalized social networking-like news page on the Huffington Post itself.

While the Huffington Post had already been using Facebook Connect since January–which allows readers of the site to log in using their Facebook identity to interact, which is mostly used to leave comments–this essentially takes Facebook Connect and puts it on steroids.

While the use of “social news” will be seen by some as simply a clever PR term, it is an interesting development for both the popular online news site and for the social networking giant.

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Yes, that’s Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in shorts, knees and all, in a picture taken right “after signing the papers” to acquire FriendFeed for $50 million. The deal was announced today.

One of FriendFeed’s founders, Paul Buchheit, posted them on his account at the online content-sharing site.

They look like they were taken at night in someone’s driveway in Silicon Valley (nice fence!).

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MicroHoo. Check! FaceFeed. Check!

And Twoogle? Let’s check!

Yahoo and Microsoft have finally partnered. Microsoft is already a big investor in Facebook. And today, the huge social networking site just picked up online content-sharing site FriendFeed, which is chock-a-block full of ex-Google execs.

Now, one has to wonder if wouldn’t it be easier if Google finally ponied up and bought the most recent star of Web 2.0?

That would be, of course, Twitter.

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After Facebook announced today that it had acquired online content-sharing site FriendFeed, BoomTown had a chit-chat with Facebook’s Director of Product, Chris Cox, and FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.

Although neither budged on telling me the purchase price, which various Silicon Valley venture capitalists I spoke to estimated to be about $50 million in cash and stock, the pair came together after several months of casual conversation, probably sometime after Twitter spurned Facebook’s $500 million offer last year.

But, as in failed love affairs, moving on is the next best thing to do!

No word on who got to break the news to No. 1 FriendFeed Fanboy Robert Scoble.

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It’s certainly acquisition fever in Silicon Valley today. After it was announced that Facebook had bought FriendFeed, now comes the news that VMware has purchased SpringSource, a privately held enterprise and Web application development and management cloud computing start-up.

The price? That would be $420 million in cash and stock.

With the purchase of Spring Source, Palo Alto-based VMware–which is a top player in the virtualization space–is adding to its cloud-computing application-management strength and also its ties to the open-source community.

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Facebook said today it is acquiring FriendFeed, the online content sharing site.

It is a logical fit for the social networking site, which has lagged behind microblogging kingpin, Twitter, in the real-time search and status game of perception in Silicon Valley. FriendFeed has also trailed well behind Twitter.

Terms were not disclosed, but it is likely be well under the $500 million Facebook once offered Twitter. In fact, sources estimate to me that the price was about $50 million in cash and stock.

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Like grandmother, like grandson.

Yesterday, I told my No. 1 son, Louie, that Twitter was down, after a denial-of-service attack.

He was–shall we say–not very sympathetic, as you will see in the video following the jump.

Interestingly, Louie’s response was similar to my mother’s, who mocked the microblogging service at a gas station on the way to my interview with its founders at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference.

As it turns out, though, data actually back them up.

(Plus, see their videos too.)

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Following on his last book, “Never Eat Alone,” author Keith Ferrazzi has veered in a different direction from the one now in vogue–being social-networked up the ying-yang–with another, titled “Who’s Got Your Back.”

That means trying to hyperactively build a Twitter empire of thousands and connecting yourself to a Facebook Potemkin Village of “friends,” thinking this is what’s going to make your life fabulous.

According to Ferrazzi, though, you pretty much only need about three folks to help you succeed.

Here’s a video interview.

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Well, this unusual video by Demand Media is certainly a unique effort to get freelancers to consider doing work for its Demand Studios.

In it, staffers at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based network of social networking sites and apps maker went full Van Halen–with a celebrity assist by a leather-clad Brooke Burke, who runs the ModernMom site on Demand.

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What’s next for AOL?

Reviving the “You’ve Got Mail!” motto?

Or: “The Future. Now Available.”–set to music from “The Jetsons”?

What about: “So easy to use, no wonder it’s #1!”

Or maybe, it should just use a nice loooooooong busy signal as its calling card again?

Well, it could happen, now that new CEO Tim Armstrong has fallen prey to the siren call of the AOL brand name, after years of seeing the company wander in the anything-but-the-AOL wilderness.

Thus, he’s decided to try to welcome the prodigal brand back home, even as he prepares to spin it off in November from Time Warner.

Uh-oh.

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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone took the stage at Fortune magazine’s Brainstorm Tech conference late this afternoon and was greeted by that old chestnut:

When is Twitter going to make some simoleons?

Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky posted a poll about that and a few other topics, and then asked a question he said was on the minds of many in Silicon Valley:

“Why the hell aren’t you guys making money?”

Here’s what Stone had to say.

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It did not start out too well for AOL CEO and Chairman Tim Armstrong, with a poll on the screen showing most of the attendees in the ballroom at Fortune Brainstorm Tech voting that the Time Warner online unit was either out of juice or irrelevant.

Armstrong did not break any news in the interview with Fortune’s lively interviewer, David Kirkpatrick, relying more on projecting an I’m-in-charge-here attitude and saying confident things like “a challenge is also an opportunity.”

In general, Armstrong tried to be upbeat about the prospects for AOL, which has for too long been the Web’s sad sack of an Internet company.

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Yahoo confirmed the news–first reported by BoomTown and in The Wall Street Journal last night–that it was buying Xoopit, the San Francisco social email company.

And it did so in both a blog post and on Twitter, as you can see here:

@karaswisher @jvascellaro Your scoops confirmed http://bit.ly/gpOT2.

Well, thanks! But we are already onto new scoops, so try to keep up!

The price for the acquisition, which Yahoo did not reveal, was about $20 million, according to sources.

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Yahoo plans on announcing Thursday that it has bought Xoopit for a price in the $20 million range, according to several sources, one of its first acquisitions in a long while.

Reached late this afternoon by BoomTown, a Yahoo spokeswoman declined to comment about the purchase. Xoopit did not respond to emails earlier today.

But sources said it was a done deal to buy the San Francisco-based social email start-up that finds photos, videos, links and other files in email so that users can surface and then share them.

Xoopit’s investors–Accel Partners and Foundation Capital, along with several angel investors–have pumped about $6.5 million into the company since 2006.

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In a quiet fund-raising effort, Ning has raised $15 million more, a round that is valuing the social networking start-up at an eye-popping $750 million.

The money for this fifth Series E round comes from Silicon Valley’s Lightspeed Venture Partners.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ning, founded by well-known entrepreneur and Ning Chairman Marc Andreessen and CEO Gina Bianchini, confirmed the funding when contacted by BoomTown. It was not actively searching for funding.

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