Los Angeles - Following two days of federal mediation with movie and TV producers that failed to produce new contract terms, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) plans to launch an educational campaign for its 120,000 members that will urge them to support a referendum authorizing the guild to call a strike, according to The Hollywood Reporter. [more..]

Los Angeles - Facebook recently ended serious negotiations to acquire the Twitter microblogging service for $500 million in stock, All Things D reports. [more..]

McLean, Va. - USA Today, the national newspaper published by McLean-based Gannett, plans to cut around 20 newsroom positions -- nearly 5% of its total -- next month, the Associated Press reported on Monday, citing an internal memo. [more..]

Burbank, Calif. - The National Football League (NFL) announced on Monday that it will provide the first live, digital 3D broadcast of a pro football game on Dec. 4 to audiences at theaters in three cities. [more..]

Los Angeles - The U.S. Army plans to invest $50 million in video game development across a five-year span beginning in 2010, GamesIndustry.biz reported, citing an article on Stripes.com. [more..]

Los Angeles - The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) recently threatened legal action against Fanedit.org, a site where movie aficionados post their own painstakingly-edited versions of their favorite movies and trade them with others, TorrentFreak reported. [more..]

New York - Publisher Random House announced on Monday that it will expand its catalog of digital books by nearly 7,000 over the next several months, eventually offering a total of around 15,000 titles, the Associated Press reported. [more..]

Belmont, Calif. - Sezmi, the developer of a TV set-top box that will also access Web video, has raised around $28 million of an expected $50 million third round of venture capital financing, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

New York - Nabbr.com, a digital marketing firm focused on social networks, has raised $2.57 million in new funding, PEHub.com reported, citing a regulatory filing. [more..]

Brookline, Mass. - Worlds.com, the developer of a technology platform for 3D virtual communities, has completed a private placement of equity in which raised about $480,000 at a purchase price of $0.30 per share. [more..]

Lazy Sunday was indeed an early video that propelled YouTube to the fore. I looked at our clickstream data and found that in the early months (until February 2007) visits to YouTube came mostly from Social Networks (MySpace) and email services, reminding us of the viral nature of YouTube's early growth, blogs Heather Hopkins. [more..]

San Bruno, Calif. - The first live-streaming event offered by Google's YouTube over the weekend -- YouTube Live -- was watched by about 700,000 concurrent viewers at its peak, TechCrunch reported, citing Akamai data. [more..]

Los Angeles - Microsoft has agreed to sponsor a 12-episode second season of the online series "The Guild," which stars and is written and produced by Felicia Day ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), according to The Hollywood Reporter. [more..]

Hamburg, Germany - European business-focused social network Xing announced that founder and CEO Lars Hinrichs has stepped down, and will be replaced in the chief executive role by Dr. Stefan Gross-Selbeck. [more..]

San Francisco - Music-focused social network Imeem on Monday announced the launch of a mobile advertising platform for Android, Google's mobile device operating system. [more..]

New York - Microsoft's Massive Inc. in-game advertising business announced on Monday a multi-year deal to provide in-game ads for game publisher THQ. [more..]

Los Angeles - Video game publisher NCsoft will shut down the servers on its "Tabula Rasa" massively multiplayer online game in February, because "the game never achieved the player population we had hoped for," according to a note on its website. [more..]