Los Angeles - BitTorrent, the company founded by BitTorrent protocol inventor Bram Cohen to distribute legal entertainment content, has laid off 12 of 55 employees, or about 20% of its staff, ValleyWag reports. The cuts comprise the company's sales and marketing department. ValleyWag cited the failure of the company to sell its Torrent Entertainment Network online store to Best Buy for a rumored $15 million as the immediate cause of the layoffs.

Mexico City - Latin American wireless carrier America Movil (NYSE: AMX) announced on Thursday that it plans to launch Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPhone 3G in 10 more countries in the region on Aug. 22. The company said it will launch the iPhone 3G in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. America Movil counts 165.3 million wireless subscribers.

London - Mobile network operator Vodafone UK (NYSE: VOD) has announced the launch of a new mobile music store, Vodafone Music, which allows users to download songs a la carte over-the-air to their phones. The service lets users add songs from the Vodafone live! Music Shop, which is powered by RealNetworks. Vodafone also still operates MusicStation, a subscription service powered by Omnifone that it is pre-loading on its customers' phones.

London - Telefonica's (NYSE: TEF) O2 wireless network in the U.K. on Thursday announced the launch of My Play, a mobile music store joint venture with major label Sony BMG. The store, powered by Momac's GoMedia publishing platform, will offer videos, full-track downloads and ringtones. In addition to being available from the O2 Active portal, consumers will also be able to access the My Play store by clicking on artist micro-sites.

Littleton, Mass. - LiveWire Mobile, a unit of NMS Communications (NASD: NMSS), announced that it has partnered with Virgin Mobile USA to offer subscribers the ability to purchase packs of ringback tones that play in rotation, rather than the same tone each time a call is placed. The companies are offering 12 programmed playlists, organized by genre, and charging $3.50 per month in addition to a $1.50 per month service fee.

Santa Monica, Calif. - Pure Play Music on Thursday introduced its service that helps independent artists license their music for use in movies, commercials, video games and other opportunities. The company, which also has six retail radio stations serving 20,000 retailers across Europe, plans to launch its platform on Aug. 20. Pure Play said it is currently promoting over 6,000 artists on its network.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Metacafe, a video site focused exclusively on short-form entertainment, said on Thursday that it has signed 12 new partnership deals with content creators. New content partners include 60 Frames, Aniboom, CelebTV.com, Collegiate Images, Comedy.com, Comedy Time, Diagonal View, GamePro Media, Howcast, SXM, Wannahaves and YoungHollywood.com.

San Mateo, Calif. - Wize has announced the beta launch of its new search platform for consumer products. The site asks users to enter the product they are looking for and how they plan to use it, then uses semantic technology to produce a personalized list of the most relevant products. "As consumers, we think in terms of 'I want a new digital camera for my vacation,' but a retail database doesn't think in terms of uses or needs. It only knows how to generate facts like product specs and pricing," said Tom Patterson, the company's president and CEO. The company raised $4 million in January 2007.

Los Angeles - German video game developer 10tacle Studios has declared insolvency, GameDaily reports, a move that sent shares of the company tumbling more than 73% on the Frankfurt stock exchange. The company, which published titles such as the "GT" racing series, "Panzer Tactics" and "Totems," did not indicate whether it would attempt a restructuring. 10tacle had also partnered with Viacom's German unit to develop and launch an MTV-branded multi-user 3D online world.

Los Angeles - French video game publisher Ubisoft has filed suit against the company it hired for disc duplication of its "Assassin's Creed" PC game, alleging someone at the firm leaked an unfinished, purposefully buggy version of the game online and cost it sales and harm to its reputation, GameSpot reported.

Boston - Tufts University is challenging a judge's order that it turn over the identities behind the IP addresses the record industry charges were used for illicit file-sharing on its campus network, arguing that two of the IP addresses could belong to up to 40 different students, Ars Technica reported.

New York - The chief executive of Time Warner Cable (NYSE: TWC) has said that his company will deploy a network-based digital video recorder, should rival Cablevision fare successfully against the studios and networks challenging the technology in court, Multichannel News reported.

New York - Media conglomerate Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) disclosed in its quarterly report that it now plans to sell off Turner Broadcasting's GameTap broadband video games service, a decision the company said in the report will cost it $18 million.

Here are this month’s lists of the top 20 band / artist searches sending traffic to social networking sites (e.g. MySpace, YouTube, Last.fm, etc.) and the most popular music blogs for the 4 weeks ending August 2nd. First up social networks, and the top 2 entries, Basshunter and Biffy Clyro, have both had successful summers in the charts and have been in our top 20 for a number of months. The release of High School Musical 3 has led to a surge on interest in the Disney film / stage show, while Mamma Mia has also helped Abba enter the list at number 19. More evidence of the benefit of cross media promotion is the appearance of Hamfatter, the band that recently secured funding on the BBC show Dragons’ Den, at number 20.

New York - Major record label Warner Music Group (NYSE: WMG) reports that third quarter revenue was up 5% from the same period a year ago, to $848 million, while digital revenues climbed 39%, to $166 million. Warner Music's digital revenues were up 1% from the first quarter of the year, and now account for about 20% of the company's total revenues; in the U.S., digital revenues made up 31.7% of total revenues.

Lanham, Md. - Radio One, a radio broadcasting company primarily targeting African-American listeners, said on Thursday that its digital division has launched three new websites, creating what the company termed "the largest online media entity for African-Americans."

San Francisco - YouNoodle, the developer of an online platform for the entrepreneurial community, said on Thursday that it has launched its new "Startup Predictor" tool, which the company said analyzes data on early-stage startups and generates a scientific prediction of their future outcomes.

San Francisco - TokBox, a Web-based video communication service, announced on Thursday that it has closed a $10 million second round of venture capital financing, led by Bain Capital Ventures.