In the spirit of Google’s “Let’s make the web faster” code campaign, there has been a ton of renewed interest around making web and mobile apps faster and more reliable. Really, this is for the simple reason that improved performance of applications means more visitors , higher search rankings, and lower operational costs . As a result, a growing number of app developers and site owners are spending time and money on performance and speed

With reports of social network Myspace about to sell for ~$30 million, the tech world eagerly awaits the HBS study for why the service, which was bought in 2006 by Newscorp for $580 million and was at some point valued at $1.5 billion (a quote in a Business Week article referred to it as “one of the best acquisitions ever”) ultimately failed.

Ifeelgoods, a company that lets businesses offer Facebook Credits as rewards for purchases and signups, today announced the closing of a $6.5 million Series A funding round led by Idinvest. As Facebook Credits become the sole payment option on the Facebook Platform this Friday, and more types of digital goods including video and music are sold for Credits, the demand for the virtual currency will increase, and more companies will seek to incentivize sales and actions through ifeelgoods. For these reasons, ifeelgoods has good potential

Oh, so you thought Google was done after it rolled out Google+, Circles, Sparks, Huddle, and Hangouts ? No, no, no.

The story of WakeMate could be viewed as a warning to all tech-savvy entrepreneurs out there: building a hardware device is much more difficult than most web applications.

Storage startup Dropbox has hired Ramsey Homsany as it’s General Counsel. Homsany is a long time Google lawyer. He joined the company in 2003 and was most recently the deputy general counsel of the commercial group.

Now that we’ve finally caught our breath from  Disrupt in New York City , it’s time to to bring Disrupt back home to San Francisco.  (We like to keep things moving around here)

Will people pay for online privacy? Yes, they will – at least according to Michael Fertik, the founder and CEO of Reputation.com, one of the early leaders in the new online privacy ecosystem

Managed correctly, your Facebook Page can quickly become your company’s second home on the web, both in how well it ranks on Google and the frequency with which it is visited by your customers and audience. Because your customers are already on Facebook (spending on average  25-30 minutes each day on the site), they have a significantly higher chance of seeing your brand’s messages within their News Feed than they do of frequently re-visiting your website or any other medium on their own initiative

DoNanza , which operates a platform for freelancers from all over the world (see our earlier coverage ), has raised $1 million in funding from Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors fund, AfterDox and other investors. Founded in 2008 by Ami Dudu, Liran Kotzer and Gil Pal, DoNanza consolidates freelance jobs published across the Web, and matches them with freelancers in their database based on their individual skill sets and expectations. The startup says its platform is used by hundreds of thousands of freelancers from all over the globe on a monthly basis.