Congratulations, Andrew Conru: Danni Ashe is now your coworker. As the porn-magazine business quietly biodegrades in the ashbin of history, the founder of Adult FriendFinder has sold his company, Various Inc., to Penthouse for $500 million. This despite his earlier denials. The price actually seems low, considering Various's projected revenues this year of $340 million. But the porn business has always suffered from a market discount, as distaste thins the ranks of willing investors. FriendFinder's troubles with the Federal Trade Commission, settled one day before the sale was closed last Friday, can't have helped. What's next for Adult FriendFinder's new owner?

In January, professional job hunter Robert Scoble will leave PodTech, the Web-video network he made semi-famous, then thoroughly infamous, a tipster tells us. Where's he headed? TechCrunch says Fast Company, which makes sense, since he already writes a column for the magazine. But Scoble denies the rumor. Sort of.

As we previously reported, Neil Budde, the founding editor of WSJ.com recruited to run Yahoo News three years ago, plans to leave the company. This from PaidContent, the same source which had earlier scoffed at the rumor. Reportedly, new Yahoo media chief Scott Moore never made room for Budde in his new organizational chart. What, Scott Moore pushing out a highly respected underling? Never heard that one before.

Don't like what you see in your Facebook news feed? You can now vote on it. As we first reported two weeks ago, Facebook is letting users vote items up or down. The final interface, a choice of "thumbs-up" or "X" icons, differs from the "plus" and "minus" design Facebook had been testing internally. While a user's voting will initially just change what he sees in his own news feed, Facebook could easily turn the vote results into a Digg-like discussion board. The new thumb icon just makes the potential rivalrly more obvious. After the jump, a full example from my own news feed.

A code-savvy tipster tells us we had it right: The hated "is" in Facebook's status update is going away. This is according to a jargon-ridden post in Facebook's developers news feed. The post is a confirmation that the "is" will soon join "thefacebook.com," the Facebook guy and user privacy in Facebook's graveyard of cute inconveniences buried on its way to world domination.

This week on Valleywag was a first-class tour of Narcissistan. It began when Tinkerbell called in sick and sent us a half million pageviews. Then TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington went Tori Amos nuclear, claiming "I'm watching as the blogging world crucifies me." Finally, TheFunded.com founder Adeo Ressi complained his splash outing in Wired wasn't enough — he wanted the magazine's cover (and we gave it to him.) It all calls for a bulldog chaser. After the jump, a pic so cute it's NSFW. Can you handle it?

A tipster sent us the most comprehensive incident report to date on the downtime at Rackspace's Grapevine, Texas datacenter. Things happened pretty much as we reported. Though this was the third outage in two days, from what we can tell, it was unrelated to the others. The first two outages were caused by failing bits of Rackspace's internal power distribution network. The third, much larger outage was caused by a traffic accident. A summary of the report's findings, after the jump.

AOL has confirmed it will buy Quigo, an Israeli startup which targets ads based on the content of websites. Earlier this week, we reported Yahoo had its eyes on Quigo too, but failed to acquire the company because Quigo CEO Mike Yavo and Yahoo exec Chris Bolte couldn't get over differences rooted in their time together at search engine AltaVista. But some of you told us Yahoo got lucky losing out. Reports put Quigo's price at around $300 million. Tell us, did AOL overpay?

Google has announced a sweeping alliance with 33 companies in the wireless business — but no Googlephone:

In response to my Web 2.0 for Idiots PowerPoint slide, commentarian nealsid writes: "How about the part where 'you help make it' but 'they make the money?'"

We called it: Facebook is launching an ad network that will reach far beyond its website, much like Google's AdSense. Now others are confirming it. A source told AllFacebook the SocialAds ad network Facebook will announce in New York on November 6 will work by installing cookies on members' browsers. Then, when these members visit publishers in the SocialAds network, Facebook will serve ads, targeted by the personal information it has on those users. The skeptics' take? Some in tech aren't convinced the information a Facebook user puts in the profile indicates any useful information, such as an intent to buy. But then again, the advertising industry plans to fund Sex and the City reruns for the next 40 years with tampon commercials. Just getting basic demographics right will count for a lot.

Newsweek confirms the earlier reports that MySpace founder Tom Anderson is lying about his age ... on MySpace. He'll turn 37 in two weeks, not the 33 that his profile suggests. Newsweek quotes one MySpace user: "Tom was my first friend. It's kind of messed up that he lied to me." Wait until someone tells him about all those "girls" who added him as a friend. [Newsweek]

Oh, Facebook has a deal to announce? Really? Don't rely on rumors. For confirmation of Facebook's as-yet unannounced deal with Microsoft, look no further than ... Facebook. Brandee Barker, the charmingly indiscreet head of Facebook PR, has just added Adam Sohn, who heads up global sales and marketing PR at Microsoft, as a friend. Just buddies? I think not. But I'm sure writing up the press release announcing Microsoft's investment and ad deal will make them fast friends, indeed.

NewTeeVee confirms Valleywag's report from the weekend that NBC has pulled its YouTube channel. The reason, as we suggested, is the incipient launch of Hulu, NBC's unfortunately named joint venture with News Corp. A YouTube flack, almost a day after we posted our story, emailed this tired statement that she's graciously allowing us to attribute to spokesman Ricardo Reyes, even though we doubt he had anything to do with this limp piece of prose:

I've been saying it for ages: There is no Googlephone. Last week, at the Web 2.0 Summit conference, I finally got confirmation that Google's not getting into the cell-phone business. How? I overheard a rep from Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer, chatting up a vice president at Google. Now, I know this particular executive is utterly guileless; she wouldn't lie. And when the Foxconn rep tried to pitch her on getting a contract to make the Googlephone, she replied, flat-out, "We're not making a Googlephone."

ComScore says Facebook traffic dropped in September. We didn't think that was accurate. It turns out that traffic was only "down" because ComScore's measurement panel (along with Nielsen and others) only measures traffic from home. As students return to school, they are removed from the panel and traffic "drops." Facebook says that active monthly users is still rising at 3 percent a week, as it has since January 2007. [GigaOm]

Former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner confirms our scoop that MySpace will not announce a software platform for third-party apps next week. According to Quittner's source, MySpace will instead reveal a "directory of apps" — what Quittner calls a "PR move" to show off internal MySpace programs. The main takeaway: TechCrunch was wrong — to the dismay of application developers, who are clearly enthusiastic for an alternative to Facebook. [Netly News]

"Some writers were put on hold and some were let go as part of standard site growth." — an anonymous CrunchGear staffer pathetically tries to spin the cutbacks at Michael Arrington's flailing gadget site as a symptom of success. [News.com]

The New York Times confirms the news, first reported on Valleywag last week, that Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt are buying a Boeing 757 to add to their growing fleet of jetliners. [Bits]

I've said it for months: There is no Googlephone. At last, the "industry analysts" so often consulted by reporters at newspapers have come around to sharing my point of view, according to a story in the New York Times. Google is, indeed, working on cell-phone software, including an operating system. But all this software, I believe, is a sideshow. Before you get all excited about the prospects of a Google phone OS, remember: Google is all about advertising. Always has been, always will be.