Done Deal : Twitter buys TweetDeck for $40 million

Multiple sources Monday night confirmed that Twitter has bought TweetDeck. The deal is worth $40 million in a combination of cash and shares. Twitter had yet to confirm the move but is expected to do so within the next day.

The acquisition follows the buyout of Atebits a year ago and reflects a mounting attempt from Twitter to control the interface experience of its official clients. Along with creating a much more consistent look in its apps across Android, BlackBerry, iOS, and now the web, Twitter has been trying to rein in the development of third party clients. The San Francisco firm has been recommending that application developers avoid writing their own clients unless they can clearly differentiate their work from the official software.

Microsoft close to buying Skype for nearly $8 billion

Following rumors of Facebook and Google eyeing on a deal to acquire Skype, we now have a new contender who is none other than the beast from Redmond, Microsoft. According to the Wall Street Journal's sources, Team Ballmer and the VoIP company are finalizing a negotiation that's worth more than a whooping $7 billion, and they could be making an announcement as soon as Tuesday. Given that this figure will be a new record for Microsoft in recent years, it's clear that Ballmer's very keen on securing this popular voice calling service for his own amusement -- perhaps Windows Phone will eventually come with integrated Skype features? Or maybe he just wants to slot in some ads between our calls? Only time will tell, and for the sake of Redmond, hopefully nothing turns sour between now and tomorrow.