The Wall Street Journal, citing those all-knowing “people familiar with the matter,” said the DOJ might approve the deal as early as next week. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has pledged to operate Motorola as a standalone company, and so the government’s main focus on Google has been whether or not it will use the patents acquired from Motorola in an offensive fashion.

Mobile rivals are already complaining that Google plans to uphold Motorola’s patent-licensing strategies on what have been deemed “essential” patents by asking for a royalty rate above what they consider fair as well as its willingness to leave the threat of an injunction on the table, which other companies have pledged not to employ for standards-essential patents. The report said regulators will watch closely to see how Google uses the Motorola patents post-acquisition.

And in related news, the DOJ plans to approve the $4.5 billion purchase of Nortel’s patent portfolio by a group of mobile companies that included Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and Research in Motion (NSDQ: RIMM), denying Google a chance to solidify its patent holdings for far less money than it will pay for Motorola. That event prompted Google to open talks with Motorola and to lash out at its rivals for playing the patent game more effectively than Google.

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The Dublin- and Rome-based company is buying Cidade Internet, a Brazilian portal which publishes 10 popular websites and other blogs inluding Fofocando, Automovel and Das Marias.

Formerly known as GoAdv, Populis operates the Nanopublishing and Blogosfere blog networks, has built up through acquiring Italy’s Blogo.it network from Dada, Germany’s Mokono network. It also owns Excite Europe, the Better Deals repository of user-created consumer guides and the Koego blog platform. In all, the company sels ads against the thousands of articles contributed by its hundreds of users each month across what is now a portfolio of several hundred websites.

Brazil’s consumer internet economy is taking off, with online ad spend surpassing that in the UK in 2011 (source and more data: IAB Brasil).

Cidade’s properties will be fully integrated under the Populis banner. Populis is gaining Cidade’s Rio and Sao Paulo offices, intends to open another this year and add 30 staff.

By trying to operate so strongly in non-English languages, Populis claims to avoid the “Demand Media clone” tag - complementarity that could ultimately make for an exit to such a group.

Briefing Media, a budding B2B start-up founded by former Incisive and Nexus executives, is buying the assets, including Farmers Guardian and Pulse, for £10 million, funded by the GCP private equity fund.

• Medical division (London): 33 staff, Pulse, Practical Commissioning, websites, the NAPC conference and the Mental Health Forum.
• Agriculture division (Preston): 57 staff, Farmers Guardian, Dairy Farmer, websites.

The two divisions made £12.1 million in 2011 revenue, UBM said, without disclosing their profitability or otherwise.

In a number of verticals, Briefing Media has ambitions to aggregate online stories from around the web using an automated semantic publishing platform, topped by a few analytical articles of its own. So far, it operates in one vertical, with a rough ‘n ready-looking site about B2B media themselves, and is operating its own conferences and the new British Media Awards.

Briefing Media regards the acquisitions as “a new chapter” for it, but it’s one UBM is glad to be shutting the book on. Together with the recent sales of its French medical publishing business, its UK titles for the pub industry and others, it has now off-loaded much of its classic B2B portfolio for £25 million since January 2011, leaving it focused on data-driven products, large conferences and marketing support services.

Briefing Media’s Rory Brown: “We see great opportunity in specialist business media markets but recognise that our world is evolving & we need to adapt with it.”

Briefing Media’s Neil Thackray: “This acquisition gives us both the scale and market opportunity to accelerate that ambition ... This will be the first but not the last acquisition we plan to make.”

The pair - France-Economie-Regions and web group Hi-Media - will axe 115 of 165 staff, play up the paper’s website and revert to a weekly, journal-style print run.

It is the second closure of a French daily in two months. In December, France-Soir’s owner Alexander Pugachyov, said he would end that title’s print edition and publish only online, with the loss of 89 out of 127 jobs.

La Tribune describes it as “the symptom of a sickness” “a tragic epilogue, which comes after 27 years of turbulent and complex history”.

France’s news publishers have long been crippled by, for example, unions’ resistance to change, and partly dependent on state subsidies, including a programme which gives a free newspaper subscription to every 18 year-old. Even the conservative Le Monde was forced to sell to a trio of tycoons in 2010 to avoid bankruptcy.

In the case of each, radical change for the digital age has now been foist upon them. “This is a new beginning,” France-Economie-Regions’ owner Jean-Chistophe Tortora tells AFP. “Tribune.fr has two million unique visitors who are faithful. We are targeting three million in 2013.

Last summer, LaTribine.fre began trialling micropayments for some of its opinion articles, with plans to charge for more sections of the site, including through a day pass.

Hi-Media operates a large online advertising network and a micropayments platform. La Tribune’s new joint owners plan to invest €7 million in the title, AFP reports.

In addition to the new sell-side technology—it’s getting a boatload of “signal”, i.e. pixels, in the process.  And that’s nothing to scoff at.

Tynt had raised nearly $12 million in venture funding (Crunchbase) up through a Series B round. 33across has raised $11 million.  Tynt didn’t have a significant, revenue-generating business model, but the sense is, and 33across no doubt hopes, that the solution Tynt has created could be valuable to a company looking to leverage website user data.

What’s the next move for 33across? For now, 33across CEO Eric Wheeler says it’s about continuing to build analytics tools for publishers to help them sell direct—especially the top tier, where direct sales is critical to maximizing yield. And, data drives the media for 33across, as Wheeler told AdExchanger.com:

“So I think there are two sides to this. One is to be more on a private exchange basis for the top tier guys. Everything we purchase today is dynamic - via private exchange, RTB and exchanges. That’s how we source today and those are the vehicles [through which] the mid- and long tail are sourcing today. We don’t have a desire or need to be a new exchange.  I think we’ll create a lot of value for those premium publishers with those combined services.  For the mid- to long-tail, we’re going to be making them smarter. We’re going to be giving them the tools, access and insights that think like that. That’s incredibly powerful.”

The benefit on the demand-side is that this data can start to flow into the company’s proprietary “Brand Graph” technology which marketers can then use to target consumers on brand buys through 33across’ media buying capabilities - including media from some of Tynt’s larger publishers.  “Big”-ger data from Tynt and its analysis presumably makes for better targeting algos for 33across’ buy-side clients. 

So, from here, this is about a few things for 33across: data that feeds targeting; and publisher relationships which potentially provide “first look” to media at-scale.  (Google (NSDQ: GOOG) bought Admeld for publisher relationships, too - and for the tech, and for the team.).  And Tynt needed a place to land its trove of data. 

33across also gets 17 people who are versed in the tech side of web data.  As recruiting wars continue to rage for capable and experienced technologists, acqui-hiring is no small matter, either.  Though teams are in Salt Lake and Calgary, location won’t matter nearly as much to New York City-based 33across as skill set.

Another possible, but more remote angle to this acquisition has to do with the 500,000 websites that 33across says uses Tynt technology. The company could end up echoing the strategy of a Lijit (acquired by Federated Media), for example. Lijit provides a search engine to long tail publishers as well as an ad network.  33across could provide its Tynt tools and then start an ad network business where publishers could install media placements sold through 33across.  But, the company isn’t going there quite yet - at least publicly.

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In the latest, WPP is buying a majority of 41?29! Media Internet, a 48-person Istanbul-based digital communications agency whose clients include Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Unliever.

Turkey’s internet population has grown fast and has become one of the European area’s most engaged.

Already this month…

• WPP’s Kantar acquired a majority of Oasis Insight
• Kantar acquired Chinese social research group CIC
• Ogilvy & Mather acquired a majority of Australia’s DTDigital
• Burson-Marsteller acquired a majority of Finland’s Pohjoisranta
• Hill & Knowlton Strategies merged with The PBN Company

Since last fall, WPP subsidiaries have also acquired or invested in Global Market insight, Russia’s Promo Digital, Arcay Communications, Sri Lanka’s LMRB, China’s A4A, Chinese ad measurer Leading Smart, China’s InGameAd, mobile researcher Lumi, Glover Park Group, Impactasia, video ad tech’s Panache, Mind Resource, XPR, Qais Consulting and Nanjing Yindu.

29 percent of WPP Q3 revenue came from digital and interactive. The company wants to hit 35-40 percent in three to four years.

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell has targeted digital and emerging markets - and, ideally, the nexus of each - as WPP’s prime growth drivers.

At this rate of gobbling up, WPP will be well stacked to exploit both.

WPP’s Kantar Media is buying China’s big social media consumer research firm CIC.

“CIC will enrich our global digital expertise in capturing millions of online conversations and “making sense of the buzz” in order to provide interpretation that informs strategic decisions and leads to action,” says Kantar CEO Jean-Michel Portier, via announcement.

China now has 513 million people online, according to new government data just out, and many of them are flocking to social media services like the weibo microblog services operated by companies including Sina (NSDQ: SINA) and Tencent.

CIC mines those arenas to gather consumer opinion in areas including retail, health and brand perception.

CIC got revenue of 29.9 million RMD ($4.7 million) in 2011, WPP said, without disclosing the acquisition price.

Future, which is aiming to reduce its exposure in the US after the division slumped to a $5.6m loss last year, has sold the New York operation to NewBay Media.

NewBay, which is headquartered in New York and owned by private equity firm the Wicks Group, owns dozens of magazines, websites and several national events serving the music and broadcast industry.

NewBay has acquired Future’s assets, referred to by Future as its New York music division, which also includes a licence to operate the Golden Gods Awards show.

Future said that the division made a pre-tax loss of £3.8m and revenue of £8.5m in the year to 30 September.

The company has acquired the business for an initial payment of $2.6m in cash on completion of the deal. This is followed by $150,000 in cash on 30 September, and $250,000 cash in the third quarter this year “based on the achievement of certain operational targets”.

Future said it will use the cash from the sale to continue to restucture of its remaining US operation – which includes about nine further magazines, an office in San Francisco and profitable digital businesses such as the Techradar website – which employs about 200 staff.

Once the sale is completed Future said it will then sell its New York property.

“The sale represents a big step forward in our strategy to streamline our US business and return it to profitability by 2013,” said Mark Wood, the chief executive of Future Publishing.

“The merger of our mainstream US operations and our UK business is on track, and we are making good progress in reducing costs.”

The embattled publisher, which dramatically axed its chief executive Stevie Spring and finance chief John Bowman late last year to save almost £1m a year, saw a total £5.5m profit in 2010 turn into a £19.3m loss.

In the year to 30 September, Future’s total US operation made $62.4m in revenues. The San Francisco operation is the primary hub, employing 165 people.

The Seattle tech blog Geek Wire, which reported that price, was the first to report the acquisition on December 30, although it was only officially confirmed by Ubermind today.

The deal is being pitched as Deloitte’s next and logical step in the business consulting and professional services that it already offers to enterprise clients across different verticals—although in reality it appears to be the larger company’s first step to buying in strong mobile product expertise.

“We are focused on maintaining what was working,” notes Ubermind in its statement.

But it will be interesting to see how, and if, the new partnership changes what kind of work Ubermind produces, and if it can keep its startup mindset while becoming part of a behemoth. Until now Ubermedia was a relatively small business, with about 200 people working for it across Seattle and Denver. Deloitte, the second-largest consultancy around after PwC, is a global multi-national with more than 180,000 employees. Not exactly fleet of foot.

Still Ubermind has already racked up experience working for at least one of the biggest companies around in terms of market cap, and one of the biggest tech juggernauts of the decade. Among clients like Target and REI, for whom it develops mobile apps and interactive websites, the company has worked for more than 10 years with Apple: its engineers, the company says, “worked on the very first Apple Online Store” and it has also worked on iTunes, Apple’s print services, Apple’s online store and the company’s own iPhone app.

Ubermind says it will become part of Deloitte’s tech practice, leading in strategy, creative, mobile apps and web development for enterprise clients.

Assanka launched the HTML5 web app with the paper’s in-house product team in June 2011, declaring “the craze for native apps is a short one and we are already seeing it on the wane”.

Previous Assanka clients include Twickenham’s Town Centre Management Board and the Chartered Institute for Public Relations. An acquisition price is not disclosed.

CEO’s staff memo:

“Dear all,

“I’m very pleased to announce that the Financial Times has acquired Assanka, the London-based web and application developer.

“This acquisition supports our strategy to deliver our world class journalism anywhere, anytime on any device, delivering new digital products and services that engage our busy readers.

“Assanka has played an important part in the FT’s recent digital and mobile successes, including the launch of the FT Web App which has now achieved over 1m users and which has helped drive digital subscriptions to beyond 250,000.  Assanka has also contributed towards our recently launched Android App and supported our blog platforms, including FT Alphaville.

“This is a unique opportunity to bring talented and very creative software engineers with proven skills in emerging web technologies into our team. It will further boost our momentum in digital journalism, help us improve our development processes and allow us to maintain our edge in this strategically important area.

“Assanka will become a part of the FT Technology Group while retaining its independence and the culture that has made them so successful to date. They will also help develop mobile and app expertise across Pearson, acting as a centre of innovation for technologies of increasing relevance and importance across the overall business.

“This is an exciting time for the FT and we will need all of our technology teams to continue to innovate and deliver the cutting edge digital products and services needed to support our continued success as a digital publisher.

“Best wishes,

“John”

The FT launched a native iOS web app alongside iPad’s April 2010 launch, processing customer transactions independently inside the app. The new device has proved a revelation, causing customers for the publisher’s cross-platform access to accelerate from previous years.

But the paper pulled its iPad and iPhone apps out of iTunes Store in August 2011 after failing to win concessions from Apple’s new stipulation that all in-app payments must go through iTunes Store.

Since then, new FT subscriptions have nevertheless continued at a consistent rate. Mobile devices account for 20 percent of all page views and 15 percent of new subscriptions.

Bullish, the FT - under online MD Rob Grimshaw and mobile product lead Steve Pinches - has decided to simplify product development in a multi-device world by using the web app as the basis for all its apps across platforms. But few publishing peers have chosen to eschew iTunes in this way.

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Communicator handles email marketing, newsletters and SMS engagement for clients including Phones4U, Birmingham City Football Club and Trinity Mirror itself. The company clocked a £1 ($1.55) million annual profit on £3.5 ($5.45) million revenue in 2010/11.

Trinity Mirror in 2008 bought Liverpool web design agency Rippleeffect for £5.8 ($9.04) million.

CEO Sly Bailey, via release: “Increasingly we’re seeing that, in addition to print and website advertising, clients want help in areas such as website design, search engine optimisation, e-mail marketing, social media and web analytics. The addition of Communicator Corp to our stable of digital assets will enhance our offering and complement the digital marketing services currently offered by Rippleffect.

“Personalisation and targeted content are increasingly sought after by marketers in a multi-channel world and Communicator Corp is recognised in the industry for its ability to meet this demand.

“This investment is another demonstration of our strategic intent to drive more diversified revenue streams across multiple media channels and accelerate our growth into a multimedia business.”

Digital revenue growth is a mixed bag inside Trinity Mirror. In the 17 weeks to October 30, regional digital revenue grew just three percent from last year. In the nationals division, digital sales grew only one percent after disappearing MirrorBingo customers wiped out advertising growth of 33 percent.

Trinity Mirror is buying Communicator from shareholders Paul Callaghan, Gerard Callaghan, John Bernard Callaghan, Steven Nelson, Christopher Wilds and James Bunting. MD Wilds will stay aboard.

Cotendo should make it easier for Akamai to operate its own services, as the companies had become something of competitors over recent years, according to AllThingsD. Both operate networks based around similar ideas: that you can access content much faster when it sits on a server that is closer to your actual location than one that might be halfway across the world.

But Cotendo is focused on mobile, which is of course driving much of the growth in Internet services these days. The company has 100 employees, half of whom are located in Israel, and had developed a reputation for moving faster than older companies like Akamai to embrace new trends. That speed led to some patent disputes between Akamai and Cotendo.

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The newspaper said Anobit’s management was in the process of gathering its staff to formally announce the acquisition by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). There was no announcement at the time of writing on either company’s website. The purchase is the first by Apple of an Israel-based company.

Flash storage is used in mobile phones and some computers to store data: it gives high-speed access but because it has no moving parts, unlike a magnetic hard drive, it is immune from knocks and magnetic fields. But such SSDs – solid state drives – are pricier and are a comparatively young technology.

Anobit has developed a chip that enhances flash drive performance through signal processing. The chip is already incorporated in Apple devices such as the iPhone, iPad and the MacBook Air, where some models use SSDs rather than spinning hard drives. Last week, Calcalist said Apple was interested in Anobit’s technology to increase and enhance the memory volume and performance of its devices. The chip may double the memory volume in the new iPads and MacBooks.

At ZDnet, Robin Haris – who has previously spoken to Anobit’s chief executive Avraham Meir – said the company has developed systems which improve the stability of flash memory.

“Anobit designs controller chips that make flash behave”, Harris wrote. It adds reliability, accuracy, endurance and power consumption improvements to standard flash systems through its proprietary controller chip.

Calling the Anobit acquisition “Apple’s biggest hardware bet ever – and it is a good bet”, Harris said it would give Apple “a powerful competitive weapon that can be used to both reduce costs and/or increase performance, while increasing product quality in terms of reliability and battery life”.

Apple in 2008 bought a chip design company, PA Semi, and integrated its staff’s expertise to help design the A4 and A5 chips that run its iPhone and iPad.

Anobit holds or has applied for more than 60 patents which would be applicable to future technologies, he said.

Last week Calcalist reported that Apple was in advanced talks to buy Anobit for $400m-$500m.

In addition to the acquisition, Apple will also open a research and development centre in Israel, its first outside the US, Calcalist said.

Anobit and Apple were not available for comment.

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Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition will bring together the company behind the PC-based Dragon speech-recognition software and Vlingo, which has been increasing dubbed “the Siri of Android,” in reference to the speech-driven personal assistant found in Apple’s new iPhone 4S. Vlingo has been hitting back at comparisons to Siri on its corporate blog, but from a very basic standpoint the services are similar: both allow you to use voice commands to look up information and operate the core parts of a smartphone.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) acquired Siri a year and a half ago for its speech expertise, and this is also an area that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has spent years and millions in hopes of gaining an edge. Speech technology has been promised for years by computer scientists as a universal input system that nearly anyone can understand, but the user experience is often still a work in progress as software can struggle to interpret slang, dialects, and background noise.

It sounds like Nuance wants to build an answer to Siri, the centerpiece of Apple’s marketing campaign for the iPhone 4S. While Siri uses some of Nuance’s technology at the heart of the software, Siri co-founder Norman Winarsky told 9to5Mac.com that the Nuance technology is really just a small part of the overall Siri experience.

Notably, Nuance and Vlingo have tussled for years over patents, which means the combined entity will likely possess a strong portfolio in this patent-mad age of the mobile industry.

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This outcome seemed inevitable after the Federal Communications Commission referred the matter to a hearing, taking the further step of releasing its report on the merger in which it claimed that AT&T did not prove that the merger would either create jobs or not lead to an unprecedented concentration of market power in the wireless industry. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom (NYSE: DT), which owns T-Mobile, attempted to find ways around the deal, such as offloading spectrum on other companies, but it would appear that AT&T’s primary interest was in T-Mobile’s customer base all along.

AT&T argued its case right up until the end in a statement:

The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage.  In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.

The merger would have created the largest wireless company in the U.S. by a strong margin, combining the second-largest company with the fourth-largest company. Opposition was heavy from consumer groups and from Sprint (NYSE: S), the third-largest carrier in the U.S., over what they felt would be incredible pricing power for wireless phones as well as the ability to lock in exclusive smartphone handset deals unavailable or unaffordable for smaller carriers.

AT&T argued it needed the deal because a spectrum crunch would have left it unable to build out a truly national network that could reach 97 percent of Americans, a goal it cited frequently as in line with President Obama’s goals for wireless broadband adoption. It also argued that T-Mobile would not be able to follow the rest of the industry’s lead in adopting LTE wireless technology, which is now on the road map of every other wireless carrier but T-Mobile. That means smartphone companies are much more likely to design their handsets around that standard, which could have made it much harder for T-Mobile to obtain cutting-edge smartphones.

But opposition was fierce almost from the day AT&T shocked a wireless industry headed to the CTIA conference in March with news of the deal. The mostly likely immediate outcome of the deal would have been to force Verizon to purchase Sprint, which is also struggling, in a bid to match AT&T’s scale. That would have left a huge percentage of the U.S. wireless industry in the hands of two companies who are not necessarily known for low prices or customer service.

And the deal would have also forced handset makers to do almost all their business with two major carriers instead of four. Sprint and T-Mobile may not be as wealthy or healthy as their bigger competitors, but Sprint now sells the iPhone and T-Mobile has done well for itself as an important Android partner on several launches.

AT&T will have to pay Deutsche Telekom a $4 billion break-up fee as a result of the deal not coming to fruition, but the companies did announce a joint roaming agreement, the details of which were not provided.

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Perform, which listed on the stock exchange earlier this year and counts US billionaire Leonard Blavatnik as its largest shareholder, has exercised its option to buy the 49% of Global Sport Media it does not already own.

Sports statistics company GSM, which was founded in 2000, owns the Soccerway.com football information website and live score portal Scoresway.com.

Perform, which is perhaps best known for delivering the online-only broadcast of the England v Ukraine football World Cup qualifier in 2009, has paid €4.3 ($5.62/£3.61)m (£3.6 ($5.59)m) in cash to acquire GSM. Perform acquired a 51% interest in GSM in January 2009 for €500,000. ($653,200/£420,275)

Perform also struck a deal worth up to £5.85 ($9.09)m to buy the 40% stake in WatchandTrade, which delivers live sports video content to sportsbooks, that it does not already control. The company took a 60% stake in January 2010 for £60,000. ($93253.22)

Perform will pay an initial cash payment of £550,000 ($854821.25) with a maximum payout of £5.85 ($9.09)m “based on an agreed multiple calculation of the full-year ebitda [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation] results of the business for the years ending 31 December 2011, 2012 and 2013”.

Analysts Credit Suisse noted that Perform contols 67% in Sportal Australia with a contractual obligation to acquire the last 22% in two 11% tranches this year and in 2012.

Credit Suisse has forecast that Perform will have £70 ($108.8)m in cash after the two deals were announced on Friday and believes investors were “waiting for them to put the cash to work”.

“Today’s announcements will be a minor relief that this is beginning to happen (albeit relatively small as already acknowledged) but we believe larger-scale acquisitions will likely take place in 2012 given the group’s statement at IPO that they had highlighted multiple potential targets,” it said in an analyst note.

Frommer will continue to write SplatF, he says.

@BradMcCarty Don’t worry, SplatF isn’t going anywhere.

— Dan Frommer (@fromedome) December 14, 2011

SAY reportedly paid $5 million for ReadWriteWeb, which has annual revenues of around $1.2 million and had 766,000 unique U.S. visitors in November, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR). ReadWriteWeb hasn’t taken any venture funding.

The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) will no longer syndicate ReadWriteWeb content, SAY Media spokeswoman Kristin Mitchell told me. “In fact, syndication on the NYT ended recently for all blogs,” she said.

SAY Media was created last year when online ad network VideoEgg acquired blog network Six Apart.

Release:

SAY Media Acquires ReadWriteWeb

SAN FRANCISCO – Dec. 14, 2011 - SAY Media today announced it has acquired ReadWriteWeb, one of the most popular and influential technology publications in the world, to anchor itsgrowing Technology channel that reaches more than 75 million global consumers each month. Founder and editor-in-chief Richard MacManus will continue to lead ReadWriteWeb as part of SAY Media’s rapidly expanding editorial team. In addition to ReadWriteWeb’s current staff, new star writers will contribute to the renowned technology publication, starting with Dan Frommer, founder andeditor-in-chief of SplatF, who will serve as editor-at-large.

“ReadWriteWeb has established itself as a leading news and analysis source for the tech community, reaching high-level business influencers and decision makers. Its editorial team is frequently sourced and considered to be one of the best in the business,” said Matt Sanchez, CEO, SAY Media. “As we looked to acquire a property that would further strengthen our technology channel, ReadWriteWebnaturally rose to the top of the list. Richard and his team are extremely passionate about the content they create and have worked very hard to develop a deeply engaged and informed community of tech enthusiasts.”

As part of SAY Media’s portfolio of owned and operated media properties,ReadWriteWeb will take advantage of the company’s proprietary technology platform, experienced ad sales team, and world-class design expertise to scale its business to reach more technology enthusiasts and decision-makers. Under SAY’s guidance, the site will continue to evolve through design and user experience innovations that align with SAY’s Clean Campaign vision, and also expand its editorial scope to appeal to a wider array of technology consumers.

“We’re incredibly excited to be joining SAY Media and believe this partnership will help us better serve our community of readers,” said Richard MacManus, founder and editor-in-chief, ReadWriteWeb. “With SAY’s technology and services we’ll be able to scale ReadWriteWeb in ways previously unavailable to us. We’ll now be able to expand our editorial scope into relevant areas of interest and redesign the site to create a more premium experience for both our readers and advertisers.”

This acquisition will strengthen SAY’s Tech channel offering by giving brands an assortment of custom advertising opportunities that leverage the influence and authority of voices like Richard MacManus and Dan Frommer and the reach of SAY’s broader network of technology properties to connect brands with engaged audiences. Current sites in SAY Media’s Tech channel include: Android and Me, Gear Patrol, gdgt, SplatF, TechDirt and more.

“ReadWriteWeb covers the tech industry with a high level of integrity and intellectual curiosity. I can’t wait to add my voice to the site, as I report on technology trends around the world,” said Dan Frommer, founder and editor-in-chief, SplatF and editor-at-large, ReadWriteWeb.

As SAY continues on its path to become the undisputed home of passion-based, vertical media properties, the company will continue to partner with, build and acquire sites that create quality content with a point-of-view and maintainvibrant, engaged communities.

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After 15 years, the publisher switched off Teletext‘s content operation on both analogue and digital TVs in December 2009, since when it has operated only commercial services - holidays, racing, dating, car ads, gaming and SMS alerts.

A&N, which also publishes Mail Online, says Teletext made a small loss in the year ending October 2, on £11 million revenue.

It did not disclose the sale price nor size of the stake sold. paidContent has reached out to the company.

DMGT was fined £225,000 by Ofcom for shutting Teletext before its license was due to expire in 2014. Losses have since improved.

In a sign of where DMGT’s priorities lay nowadays, it announced at the same time that Hobsons, inside its DMG:Information, its education unit, is buying a higher education relationship management provider, Intelliworks, for $13 million.

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The company, owner of the Financial Times and book publisher Penguin, said the sale was part of a shift away from financial data and towards news and analysis.

“FTSE is a bellwether of global financial markets and a world-class business,” said Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson. “We have enjoyed supporting the company’s excellent and highly professional team to build the business. Proud as we are of that long association, FTSE’s strategy is different from our own. We wish it every success as we continue to build our digital business information services around the Financial Times.”

Pearson said that the deal will enable it to continue to make targeted acquisitions and expand further into non-English language markets.

“For Pearson, the transaction further strengthens our financial position at a time of significant macroeconomic turbulenc,” said Scardino. “We are freeing up capital for continued investment in a proven strategy: becoming more digital, more international and more service-oriented in education, business information and consumer publishing.”

Pearson has made a series of acquisitions in the learning market in recent months, including the English-language test company Global Education and Technology Group (GETG) for $294m (£188m) in November.

The publishing group has gradually withdrawn its stake in financial data firms, most notably its 61% stake in Interactive Data Corporation for $2bn in May last year.

In 2010, FTSE reported total revenues of almost £100m and total core earnings of £40m. At 31 December 2010, it had gross assets of £100.8m.

Pearson and London Stock Exchange Group currently own 50% each of FTSE. The transaction is expected to close by the first quarter of 2012.

Xavier Rolet, chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, said: “Fully aligning FTSE with one of the world’s most liquid and most international trading groups is an exciting opportunity.

“Immediately earnings enhancing, we expect this transaction to create long-term value and growth for our customers and shareholders.”

Neither Facebook nor Gowalla have confirmed this news directly at this point. We have reached out to both companies and will update this post as we learn more.

Update: A spokesperson from Gowalla has told us that the company does not comment on rumors or speculation, and would not confirm one way or the other the truth of the CNN report.

Update 2: AllThingsD has obtained a note from Josh Williams, the founder of the company, telling investors that the “ink on the deal is not dry” and that the situation is in a holding pattern. But not a denial of the actual deal taking place.

[original post continues below]

The deal comes on the same day that we learned of another bit of Facebook mobile news: the company has hired a new head of mobile developer relations, James Pearce, who had been in a similar role at Sencha.

CNN is reporting that the deal (value undisclosed) is of the “acqhire” nature: most of Gowalla’s employees, who are currently based in Austin, will join Facebook in Palo Alto to work on Facebook’s Timeline feature, launched earlier this year at its f8 conference.

However, if this deal is actually happening, there could be more to this than just a talent acquisition. Given Gowalla’s emphasis on photos for its check-ins, and its growing database of city-specific information about venues that its users visit, you can see how some of that could form the backbone for further mobile services launched (or integrated) by Facebook into its own network. That would omplement what Facebook already offers users (check-in places, local deals) and making more stickiness for its site for mobile users, and for those on PCs checking up on what their more mobile friends are doing.

However, it is not clear whether Gowalla would remain as a standalone service after a would-be acquisition from Facebook. The company has a strong track record of closing down startups, and ingesting what it needs and wants from them for its own projects.

Gowalla held a lot of promise when it first launched in 2009 by Josh Williams (pictured), who remains head of the company, but ultimately it lost some steam among a sea of location-sharing apps. So what started as more of a check-in service that competed with Foursquare was relaunched in August 2011 with a pared-down set of features based around the idea of location sharing and travel guides.

As for revenue drivers, there have been some deals for “badges” to promote certain places—for example a deal with Disney (NYSE: DIS) for its amusement parks—but it’s unclear whether Gowalla has had enough people using these services to make that marketing angle work as a business. A deal with Facebook, if it is true, could give the basic concept behind Gowalla a significantly bigger audience—or let the engineers who created it add some of that sparkle to Facebook. And then, who knows, it might just pop.

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