Twitter's founders are waging a behind-the-scenes war with Blaine Cook, the blogging service's former chief architect. The subject: Who's responsible for the service's perpetual outages. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington ran a series of leading questions about Twitter's infrastructure, attributing them to "people who say they’ve seen Twitter’s architecture." I don't think that's true, if only because I received a similar set of questions, before Arrington's post went up, from a source who identified himself as a "friend of Blaine." In their official response, Twitter cofounders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone — they're the two one always forgets about, because they're not as interesting as Evan Williams — go out of their way to avoid naming names.

eBay plans require its Australian buyers and sellers to complete all their transactions through its PayPal payments service. The only holdup? A 38-page, anonymous filing to an Australian regulatory agency, claiming the real purpose of eBay's rule change "is to substantially lessen competition in the Market for Online Payment Processing Services." The fighting-words filing isn't so anonymous anymore. An AuctionBytes reader discovered the 38-page PDF filing was created by Google.

CARLSBAD, CA — How rarely can one give one's enemies an in-your-face comeuppance? For Yahoo's Scott Moore, the chance came during Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes's interview at D6. Bewkes claimed that AOL was No. 1 in news, finance, and a host of other categories. "Where are you getting your numbers?" asked Moore during the session's open-mic portion, pointing out that AOL led Yahoo in all the areas Bewkes mentioned. Bewkes offered a feeble parry, suggesting that the numbers were close. Not even, Moore replied, rattling off how many millions of users the Yahoo sites he leads beat AOL. A satisfying moment, but shouldn't Moore be keeping his career options open at a time like this? (Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com)

CARLSBAD, CA — I'll be unabashed about it: Part of the fun of a conference like D6 are the casual mogul sightings. Look! Barry Diller in a schlumpy brown sweater! Say, isn't that Jeff Bezos chatting up a Googler? But my favorite happenstances are the reunions of frenemies. Take, for example, this chance encounter between Marcy Simon, the former girlfriend of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and Elliot Schrage, the head of Facebook PR. (Sandwiched awkwardly in the middle is Google VP Susan Wojcicki.) Simon and Schrage's back story, and more pictures from the hotel lobby at D6, after the jump.

CARLSBAD, CA — A rumor sweeping the press corps here at the D6 conference: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington was set to stream Bill Gates's presentation live, but organizer Kara Swisher, who wanted to keep video restricted to her AllThingsD.com website, put the kibosh on it. Arrington abandoned the effort, but cited "bandwidth issues," not Swisher's strongarming, as the reason. Update: In the comments, Swisher denies she personally asked Arrington to stop streaming and says it's "the first she's heard of this." But, as commenter Mr. E. notes, Arrington associate Loic Le Meur confirms via Twitter that a man who "wasn't nice" asked Arrington to stop recording. In a subsequent email, Swisher says Arrington should have known better:

Apparently Capazoo isn't the only Montreal startup with delusional, coke-addled, co-founders in the family. MediaScrape's Tyler Cavell went ballistic in the TechCrunch comments, casting aspersions on an anonymous detractor he figures was his substance-challenged cousin whom Cavell saved from "skid row." All I can think is that the success of Vice Magazine can not have set a good example for wantrepreneurs in Quebec. [TechCrunch]

"@#$% Salesforce.com — it's easy!" reads a new ad from Serena Software. What does that mean, exactly? Serena isn't exactly a competitor to Salesforce.com; it makes enterprise software tools that help companies manage their enterprise software. Boring upon boring — until you realize who signed off on the ad. That would be René Bonvanie, left. He's now Serena's head of marketing, formerly a top executive at Salesforce.com. Is Bonvanie funding a dig at ex-boss Marc Benioff through his advertising budget? Bad marketing, excellent theater.

Don't call Ariel Waldman a "whore" where Google can hear you. That's the only firm conclusion we can draw from a confusing fracas that left even Twitter cofounder Biz Stone unsure who can call whom a whore on the service. Waldman, a blogger and community manager at quasi-rival messaging site Pownce, called out Twitter for allegedly failing to uphold its own terms of service, setting off an online firestorm.

Why is tech podcaster Leo LaPorte picking a fight with Digg's Kevin Rose? He's jealous of Rose's Twitter following, and is making it a requirement that his Twit.tv listeners drop Rose and add him on Twitter to be eligible for a giveaway. LaPorte later regretted the call for a Rose ban, saying he was "drunk and out of control." Isn't that a prerequisite for listening to a podcast, let alone producing one?

Due to "PR concerns" — or rather, new COO Sheryl Sandberg's excessively grownup attitude — Facebook bailed on a scheduled game of beer pong against CollegeHumor. The people at CollegeHumor, an IAC subsidiary, were certainly nonplussed. But Facebook is flush with cash. Sure, it's supposed to go toward server upgrades, but sometimes bribery through food is a better investment.

Reading the latest in the spat between Wired's Epicenter blog and Michael Arrington over the Washington Post's deal to syndicate TechCrunch articles and the ethical propriety of the TechCrunch editor's investments in startups his blog covers, I noticed that the post was in the category "ButtMunch." The latest post states that "We have nothing against Arrington," but the tag originated last week in a post that accused TechCrunch of pilfering a story angle related to Steve Ballmer's continued tenure at Microsoft in the wake of the Yahoo deal.

Craigslist has filed suit against eBay in San Francisco County Superior Court, alleging trademark infringement, breach of fiduciary duty, anti-competitve trade practices and deceptive advertising. Why California? Because the state has some of the strictest antitrust and competition trade laws in the country. Craigslist is asking the court to award damages and force eBay to divest from the online classifieds site. Also alleged? That eBay was a big meanie. The best parts:

Even when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tries to sound polite, he manages to be rude. His thank-you-very-much letter to Yahoo's Jerry Yang declining to make an offer for Yahoo is no exception. In particular, Ballmer rails against Yang for considering outsourcing search advertising to Google, saying it will cause Yahoo's engineers to flee and raise prices for advertisers. "By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders have left significant value on the table," Ballmer concludes. If I were Yang, I would read this and wonder why I ever even contemplated getting into business with this guy. The full letter:

Having made her name on a cover story about Digg's Kevin Rose and a $60 million fortune he has yet to make, tech columnist Sarah Lacy has paused to sniff dismissively at (questionably accurate) reports that Twitter has raised $20 million in venture capital. Lacy has a point: It should not surprise anyone that Twitter is raising venture capital; there are few obvious companies which can use the money, and Twitter, whose microblogging service is growing in popularity but not, measurably, in revenues, is one of them.

Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, recently stopped speaking to him. This has made things awkward at Facebook's Palo Alto campus, as Moskovitz is the last reminder walking around that Zuckerberg was not Facebook's sole founder. The two have resumed talking, but Moskovitz, seeking to dissociate himself from his college chum's creation, had dropped the title of vice president and asked for his bio and photograph to be taken off the company's PR website. He's now taken the title of "technical lead," and is working behind the scenes on Facebook's infrastructure. (Moskovitz was not always so publicity-shy: He gladly spoke about Facebook's wireless initiatives at the CTIA conference last fall, and, in a comment left after this post was published, denies a rift and blames Valleywag for his lowered profile.) Why the reported split, after they've worked together so long?

Shortly after posting an item suggesting that Sierra Ventures' Jeff Loomans is a lying, greedy venture capitalist (and receiving comments to the effect of "what do you expect from a creative capitalist?") we received a number of emails outing the founder of local search specialist Grayboxx, Bob Chandra, as the author of the missive. Granted, discretion isn't one of Chandra's strengths — he posted nearly the exact same message from his own account on LinkedIn. That said, a friend of Valleywag who's worked at several successful venture-backed startups nearly gave us a high-five for calling to light the errors of Loomans's ways. While Loomans rules from a well-funded throne, Chandra can at least count on the entrepreneur mob who seem to have his back in this now very public tiff.

Newly softhearted Gawker Media head Nick Denton offers some kindly advice for TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: "@Michael Arrington: Hey, everybody has been expecting the grand roll-up ever since you hired Heather. I don't see it happening. Certainly don't see it sticking. And, without a roll-up, you have a niche Valley site with some 3% of the traffic of Gawker or Weblogs Inc. Good luck with that when the tech bubble bursts!"

At last night's PopSugar-TechCrunch party, I hadn't hoped to become part of the story, but LA Times reporter David Sarno suggested Arrington's 86ing of my date inspired Mashable's Pete Cashmore to invent a story about his own ouster. I don't know whether there's anything to Sarno's theory. But I do know this: Cashmore and Arrington are full of it if they think either of their operations are "top 10 blogs." (Photo by Robert Scoble)

While Google, Microsoft, News Corp., and AOL fight to get a piece of Yahoo, the target's internal turf wars are turning ever more vicious. It's a lovely side effect — for us, at any rate. The latest slagfest hit Yahoo VP David Pann, whom our tipster describes as having been in charge of "Panama marketplace optimization" — tweaking the sale and placement of ads to make them more profitable. But no longer. Our tipster says Pann has been "shunted off to a quiet corner" and replaced by "his archrival," VP Mark Morrissey, pictured. Pann's already had his revenge, however.

"Flickr knocked off my player design," departed Connected Ventures cofounder and Vimeo designer Zach Klein writes on his blog. "I hope I at least get a free brunch out of this." Not likely. Though a quick look at the stats suggest someone's going to eat Vimeo's lunch.