Microsoft is reported to be in talks to acquire business social network Yammer for in excess of $1 billion.

Bloomberg reports that a deal is close at hand and could be signed as early as tomorrow.

Acquiring Yammer would give Microsoft some much needed social networking to offer its business customers and would allow it to build Yammer into its other products. Read More »

Twitter is making a play to keep users on Twitter for longer with the introduction of new expanded tweets that give more interactive experiences on Twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com.

Beginning with a select group of news partners, that includes The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Wall Street Journal, expanded tweets will deliver rich content inside tweets. This will include a preview with the headline, the introduction and sometimes the Twitter accounts of the publisher and writer.

It builds on Twitter’s existing expanded tweets where users have been able to play videos from YouTube or see photos from Instagram.

It also strikes me of recognition that in some cases tweets need to contain more than 140 characters, as I wrote recently. Read More »