In today’s look at stock news and rumors in the social media business, from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn and all things between. The big headline is that Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) and its Turner media subsidiary is getting into social games via TeePee. Elsewhere, Twitter bolsters its BlackBerry presence and the Facebook ownership lawsuit drama continues with new emails.
Turner Invests in TeePee Games: Search and review aggregator TeePee Games has gotten a fresh in flux of capital from Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) Turner Broadcasting Europe subsidiary. While the CNN and TNT operator’s investment in the business has not been disclosed, it gives the company a substantial stake in TeePee’s Geronimo web portal. Opened in 2010, Geronimo is a search tool pointing users to games on the web, on smartphones, and more specifically on social networks. TeePee’s technology also collects browsing and buying habits to better target gamers. Though still in beta testing, Geronimo already has a base of 25,000 users.
Facebook Ownership Lawsuit Sees New Email Revelations: In July 2010, Paul D. Ceglia of New York filed a lawsuit against Facebook Inc. and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claiming that he had been cheated out of partial ownership of the world’s most trafficked social network. Ceglia pointed to a contract signed by Zuckerberg in 2003 that guaranteed him 50% ownership of the still in-development project “the face book” in exchange for $1,000 and granting him an additional 1% interest in the business for every day it remained unfinished past Jan. 1, 2004. The lawsuit re-emerged in the news on Tuesday with Ceglia producing a series of emails between him and Zuckerberg laying out the terms of their agreement. According to Wall Street Journal blog Digits, Ceglia’s representation of law firm DLA Piper lends his argument a significant amount of credibility.
Twitter Releases 1.1 Update for BlackBerry: Social networking tools on Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) BlackBerry operating system got a bolster from Twitter today with the release of version 1.1 of the social network’s BlackBerry app. New features include the ability to add locations to tweets, pushed mentions of the user on Twitter and other notifications.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
