Roundup: Facebook a major news company, Google’s latest, Imbee and more

Here’s the latest action:

Facebook to be biggest news publisher — Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of social networking site Facebook, suggests Facebook may soon become one of the largest news publishers around — thanks to Facebook’s newsfeed feature, which essentially creates mini articles about members based on their latest activities. He tells the WSJ:

Twenty to 30 snippets of information or stories a day, that’s like 300 million stories a day. It gets to a point where we are publishing more in a day than most other publications have in the history of their whole existence.

China bubble finally here? — For years, folks have been seeing an economic bubble in China, but its economy keeps surging forward. China’s stock markets have coming to life too (large Chinese companies have often preferred foreign exchanges until recently, including in Hong Kong or the U.S). After an eight percent sell-off a few weeks ago sparked a plunge in global stock markets, China’s benchmark Shanghai composite market rebounded to a record high last week. It was the best performing stock market last year, rising 130 percent; it is already up 14 percent this year. (See NYT.)

Google is testing new home page look — Apparently, it will put links at the top of the page, in a pull-down menu, thereby giving you easier access to applications like its spreadsheet and word processor (which are unrelated to search, and so would look odd as links atop its search bar)

For the record, Google is not building a mobile phone — At least, not the hardware, according to a clear statement by a Google executive.

Disney invests in Imbee — Disney’s venture arm, Steamboat Ventures, has invested $2.5 million in Industrious Kid, which owns Imbee, the social networking site built for kids aged between 8 and 14. Industrious Kid has signed a partnership with Disney unit Hollywood Records, so kids can download songs. We reported on Industrious Kid after it raised $6 million in private funding from co-founder Jeannette Symons and others. (See CNET story).

Kaboodle’s CTO loses arm paragliding, but persists — A remarkable story in the SF Chron about Kaboodle’s chief technology officer, Keiron McCammon, who hit a powerline a year ago while paragliding, had his arm amputated, but insisted on sitting in on key meetings to help raise $3.5 million in venture capital.