Digg is close to announcing its sale to a major media player for $300 million to $400 million, according to sources close to the company, I hear. When I floated this Digg rumor past some knowledgeable friends, several scoffed: "When isn't Digg up for sale?" It's true: The news-discussion site is perpetually in talks — but we hear the price tag always sinks potential deals before they're consummated. CBS, for example, backed off, with effervescent dealmaker Quincy Smith citing the media company's bubbly $280 million purchase of Last.fm as the reason it couldn't bid a high price for Digg. Things are different now, though.

What did Madison Avenue's admongers make of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's big pitch? Here's a hint: "They're going to give Google a run for their money," one attendee told me. And you thought the hype machine was already in full gear?

Facebook's privacy scandal is deepening as we learn more details. And it's worse than we thought. Not only can Facebook employees track which profiles you had viewed, but it's possible, and very easy, for Facebook employees to control any profile in the network. Once they control the profile, they can make any changes they want to and see any private data, like messages in the Facebook inbox. And all they had to do to get this access?

Time has named Apple's iPhone its invention of the year. The iPhone is a big deal, but not for any of the reasons Time cites. The nonrelease of the Googlephone just highlights what Apple gets about consumers, and what Google doesn't. Apple knows how to design not just gadgets, but the businesses that go around them. And as a result, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple is worth more than Google within two years.

Now that we all understand that there will be no Googlephone, what are we to make of the laughable "industry initiative" Google has come up with in its place? The most notable thing about it is not who's in the Open Handset Alliance group, but who's out: Microsoft and Nokia. And why are they out? Because they already make cell-phone operating systems. Much has been made of the notion that Google will license its new cell-phone OS, Android, for free. And much has been made of the possibility that Google will introduce compelling new mobile apps. But will either promise amount to much?

There's a site for making post-its and a site for buying other people's drinks; there are over 50 sites to share videos in a safe place where no one will watch. But there aren't sites for the little things I really need, day to day.

Remember Hakia? It's the here-today, likely-gone-tomorrow search engine which allows users to meet other users searching for the same topic. A frightening feature, to be sure. But it'd be worse if Hakia members actually had to meet each other in person. Starting with the obvious, here is a list of queries whose searchers you don't want to meet. (Or maybe you do. Pervert.)

Federal Trade Commission commissioner Jon Leibowitz is concerned. And not just about his obnoxiously redundant job title. In a "town hall" meeting held yesterday in Washington on the topic of online advertising and behavioral targeting, Leibowitz hinted that the agency might soon require users opt into behavioral targeting. Reportedly, executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo were there to talk Leibowitz down from the ledge. This could be bad news for all them, but especially Facebook.

A reader emails in response to our Web 2.0 to English series, "I fail to see the problem with Tim O'Reilly's primer. Anyone who's not an idiot needs no further explanation." As a Reader's Digest contributor, here's the condensed version of your email: Fail. For the rest of us idiots, I've whipped up a chart.

Affairs of the heart are never easy for outsiders to understand. But when they stray into the office, they, alas, become everyone's business. Which is why we asked, a while back, which Googler had put his marriage at risk over an affair with a coworker. As commenter notelling correctly guessed after we ran a blind item, it's Omid Kordestani, Google's top sales executive. Kordestani's no mere sales guy, however. For one, he's worth $2.2 billion, thanks to his Google shares. And inside the Googleplex, he's referred to as the company's "business founder," responsible for the fabulously successful money machine that is AdWords. With his stunningly beautiful and intelligent wife, Bita, shown above to the left, Kordestani might seem to have it all. But all was not enough.

Googler Brad Fitzpatrick has dressed up as Facebook for Halloween. Ironic, since he might easily have been a Facebooker dressing up in Google's primary colors right now. Before jumping from Six Apart, he interviewed at both Facebook and Google.

Which is mightier, the pen or the search engine? On October 19, Fortune editor Andy Serwer blogged a short-lived rumor that Google cofounder Larry Page will marry girlfriend Lucy Southworth on December 7. Short-lived, because the passage about the smooch-prone couple's happy news quickly disappeared from the page:

For two years running, Meebo has allowed you to skip the software download and log onto instant messenger using your Web browser. Never mind that you can already do this! The startup celebrated its second anniversary of AIMlessness at Pier 38 last night with a cake, open bar and a giant game of Guitar Hero. (Pictured above, tech consultant gadabout Dave Matthews — no, really, that's his name — jams on the imaginary Fender.) And really, though no one at Meebo will quite say it this way, they've figured out they need more of a purpose in life. That's supposedly coming from the new Meebo platform, which will allow third-party developers to create applications for integration into Meebo's service.

One of the chief justifications for Facebook's $15 billion valuation is that it traffics in real identities. To prove that you belong to a college or workplace, you must give the social network a matching email address. Unless, that is, you're an early employee and major shareholder. Sean Parker reportedly never even made it to college. But on Facebook, he lives out the fantasy of having simultaneously graduated from Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Pepperdine, USC, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, and Stanford. All this in 2002, when he was also working on Plaxo. He's also the member of several regional networks; Facebook allows most users to only join one. So why would Parker, of all people, need so many fake IDs?

What happens when you put twentysomethings in charge of a company with vast amounts of private information? Sheer madcap chaos, of course. Not to mention abuses of power. And that's what seems to be happening at Facebook. Valleywag kept hearing reports that Facebook employees had violated their users' privacy in a number of ways. The claimed abuses varied: Looking at restricted profiles to check out dates. Seeing which profiles a user had viewed. And, in one case, allegedly logging onto a user's account, changing her profile picture to a graphic image, and sending faked messages. Oh, and don't dare ask a Facebooker about any claims of misbehavior — they'll report you to customer service for "harassment." Facebook may have sophisticated privacy controls. But they don't appear to be deployed at headquarters.

"My friend got a call from her friend at Facebook, asking why she kept looking at his profile," says a privacy-conscious source at a major tech company. Turns out Facebook employees can (and do) check out anyone's profile. Not only that, but they also see which profiles a user has viewed — a major privacy violation. If you've been obsessed with a workmate or classmate, Facebook employees know. If Barack Obama's intern has been using the campaign account to troll for hotties, Facebook employees know. Within the company, it's considered a job perk, and employees check this data for fun.

Would someone please shut down the Valley and lock the doors? I don't know if I can take another week like this. Seriously, can you remember another week filled with such drama? Microsoft showers Facebook with cash, making Mark Zuckerberg a paper billionaire — and turning Facebooker Dave Morin's relationship with a Googler into forbidden fruit. Meanwhile, venture capitalist David Hornik attempts to have an off-the-record conference in Hawaii and completely fails — because gossip will out. Gossip like BusinessWeek's Sarah Lacy throwing a drink at TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington, while his CEO, Heather Harde, stays up suspiciously late with WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg. Yahoo loses a devoted cheerleader and its top marketer. Larry Ellison tries to reel in BEA. Special correspondent Nick Douglas, meanwhile, demands I stop reading all of my favorite sites. I need something. Not a unicorn chaser. How about ....

Is the Onion still funny, or have you just gotten used to reading it so you haven't seen it decline from its '90s heyday to the pool of mediocrity it is today? How about Boing Boing, McSweeney's, CNN.com, or Perez Hilton? It's time to feel bad about what you like, for that is the path to enlightenment, or at least to not being that dink who IMs me month-old jokes about Bush.

Google's Sergey Brin is bummed. MySpace slackers-in-chief Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe probably couldn't taste their breakfast this morning either. It's the day after Microsoft and Facebook's announcement and while we know for the pair it was a salesman's win-win-win, somebody's got to be the lose-lose-loser. But cheer up, Google and MySpace, the verdict is in and it ain't you.

I'll be sad if Techcrunch editor Michael Arrington ever figures out what all those tedious journalism-school terms like off the record and deep background actually mean. Because I hate the way tech people act as if Arrington and other established writers work for them. They see journalists as outsourced copywriters, under specific orders what and what not to write. Yesterday Arrington blogged, "We got a senior person at MySpace to talk to us about it off record .. . this person confirmed that [MySpace cofounder Tom Anderson] is really '36 or 37' and that MySpace has been trying to keep this quiet." He was promptly chewed out by a member of the Valley's most know-it-all caste: a software engineer.