Roundup: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft, Tweeting a plane crash, music video fighting and more

Here’s the latest action:

The layoff bug about to hit Microsoft? — The software giant has thus far avoided the layoffs that some of its competitors have had to succumb to in the rough economic climate, but that’s about to change, according to the blog Mini-Microsoft. They’re hearing January 15 could be the day it goes down, and we have a seperate source hearing the same thing. On that day the bottom “10 percent-ers” (presumably, those performing the worst) could be gone — as many as 5,000 to 10,000 employees. Damn.

Tweeting after a plane crash — Over the weekend, a Continental flight in Denver slid off the runway and caught on fire. Luckily no one was killed, but several people were hurt and one passenger, Mike Wilson, used Twitter to talk through the ordeal as it was happening. Needless to say, the press is all over him now.

Warner and YouTube are music video fighting — Warner Music Group is pulling its music videos from the video site after negotiations between the two sides broke down. Humorously, both sides are saying the decision to remove the content was their own, as MediaMemo points out.

Is Facebook being gamed? — Yes, according to a blog post on SquaredPeg. The whole web debate is here.

Digg losing millions of dollars a year — The social voting site is on its way to over $5 million in losses this year, according to BusinessWeek. And remember, that loss is after the advertising deal with Microsoft. Digg’s current valuation is $167 million according to a BusinessWeek source, which is right in line with what we said last month.

Google Maps is highlighting top contributors — Users have had a profile for a while on Google Maps, but most don’t realize it. Maybe they will now that they’re pictures are being plastered on Maps that they’ve helped add stuff to. Google Operating System has more.

SynthaSite acquires Clickpass — The San Francisco-based web publishing platform has bought the company that offers OpenID authentication gateway solutions, according to peHUB. SynthaSite had raised $5 million in funding while Clickpass came out of Ycombinator.

The Korean Twitter gets bought — me2DAY, dubbed “Korea’s Twitter” has been bought by Naver, the most popular search portal in South Korea. The deal was sealed for about $2 million, according to Web 2.0 Asia.