According to multiple outlets, investing giant BlackRock has agreed to buy an $80 million stake in Twitter in a deal apparently designed to give liquidity to early employees and in turn, provide the microblogging service some breathing room before it's more-or-less inevitable IPO.

If that sounds familiar, it's because about two years back, Facebook struck a deal with Goldman Sachs in which Zuck & Co. raised $500 million from the Wall Street bank formerly compared to face-sucking mollusk, providing the social media giant cash for acquisitions and hires, and a means to paying out early employees who might have otherwise lobbied for an IPO.

It's not apples to apples—Twitter's BlackRock deal doesn't raise cash for the company—but appears to buy Twitter time before an IPO. Per Dan Primack, who reports that the ability to sell shares is only open to about two dozen employees:

From Twitter’s perspective, the goal is to forestall employee agitation for an IPO. This is a particularly salient problem at the micro-messaging service, because it has taken a much harder line on secondary stock sales than did companies like Facebook.

Meanwhile, BlackRock's interest in Twitter seems to indicate that investment firms weren't so scarred by the Facebook fiasco that they're not willing to take another ride with a social media company. If the valuation in the deal—a reported $9 billion, up from more than $8 billion at the end of 2011—sounds more sober than the numbers tossed around in the run-up to the Facebook offering, maybe that's evidence that some lessons were learned after all.

And for those of you who keep track of such things, BlackRock is among the Wall Street firms to maintain a Twitter presence, though sadly, has yet to tweet any news of the deal.

So close to this, you guys. (Photo: Pinterest, duh)

Actually, being in the billion dollar startup club kind of sucks. [New York Times]

Any person with children who purchases a computer in the U.K. will be forced to apply anti-porn safety controls to it, because there's absolutely no way kids who want to look at porn will be able to get around that. [Daily Mail]

Cisco balls so hard they just dished out $1.2 billion in cash for Meraki, a wifi startup. [TechCrunch]

How did nerds impact the election? Turns out 30,000 Redditors registered to vote after President Obama linked to a voter registration page in his AMA. [The Atlantic]

According to U.S. search results, Americans care more about Twinkies than the Israel/Gaza conflict. We are all the worst. [Virtus Machina]

Mark Zuckerberg ringing Nasdaq's opening bell on the day of Facebook's IPO. (Photo: CBS)

The total number of Facebook shares available is about to increase by almost double, and the market seems to like it. The stock price is up nearly 6 percent in the first minutes since the market opened, defying conventional wisdom that prices should fall when a lockup ends.

What gives? It may be that investors have already accounted for the influx of new shares.

When companies IPO, they typically prevent current and former employees and other company insiders from selling shares in the months after the deal. When shares unlock, the new supply tends to knock prices down. In the case of Facebook, there are a lot of new shares coming on line: 804 million, compared to the existing float of 921 million shares.

But not only has the move in Facebook stock been tame in the walk-up to the unlocking of shares, options traders are making bullish bets on that the stock will rise even as more shares become available for trading. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook call options—bets that the stock will rise—are currently in vogue:

Among the most-active options contracts Monday were November $20 and $21 call options, which grant the right to buy shares at those prices by Nov. 17. With an average cost of 30 cents and 17 cents a share, respectively, those contracts look for Facebook to rise more than 2.3% and 6.6% by Friday to profit.

A top trade in the options market Tuesday was an outright bullish bet that Facebook shares will move higher in the weeks after the lockup expiration, trading back above the $20 level.

And at NetNet, John Carney talked to an options trader who thinks that the end of this particular lockup could actually lead shares to rise. The twisted logic: If former employees don't rush to sell their newly unlocked shares, and the stock doesn't fall as a result, short sellers will buy shares to cover their positions, creating positive momentum that could push the share price up as much as 50 percent.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time that Facebook stock moved against expectations. Investors piled into the stock at IPO hoping for a pop, only to watch share prices plummet in the first days of trading. Now, it seems that shares in the closely followed company are defying expectations again.

Why are you jogging in a polo, Mitt? (Photo: flickr.com/marcn)

As anyone who's paid any attention over the last six months will undoubtedly already know, Mitt Romney has about five dollars more than God. Consequently, the man does things like set up trust funds for his children and grandchildren, which has enabled the Romney clan, as a whole, to sidestep paying quite a lot of taxes. And that's why there are little Romneys scampering about who probably did better at Bubble 1.0 than many of you.

According to Bloomberg News:

"In January 1999, a trust set up by Mitt Romney for his children and grandchildren reaped a 1,000 percent return on the sale of shares in Internet advertising firm DoubleClick Inc."

Known as an "I Dig It" trust--proving that even accountants are not immune from cutesy dot-com-style naming practices--the structure allowed Mr. Romney to skip paying a gift tax rate as high as 55 percent. That adds up to quite a lot of money:

"Romney or his trust received shares in DoubleClick eight months before the company went public in 1998. The trust sold them less than a year after the IPO. The trust’s sale of the DoubleClick stake made it possible to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate and gift taxes."

And that is why you do not get to go to Tahoe.

(Photo: The D Networks)

It's been almost four months since Facebook's alarmingly botched IPO, and yet its specter still haunts the markets. On Friday, $FB stock closed at $18.06 a share, dropping a sharp 5.40 percent in a single day--the worst drop a tech company experienced that day. (Comparatively, Zynga--which has been widely panned for its parachuting stock--only dropped 3.11 percent.) To date, Facebook has lost $50 billion in market value since its IPO.

And yet, despite much talk of banks and underwriters and Facebook's nascent leadership team, we've yet to pin down a real target for our IPO ire. Luckily, Dealbook's Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks he's found the likely culprit: Facebook CFO David Ebersman, whom you've probably never even heard of:

And yet if there is one single individual more responsible than any other for the staggering mispricing of Facebook’s I.P.O., it is Mr. Ebersman. He signed off on the ever-increasing offer price, which ended up at $38 after the company had originally planned a price range of $29 to $34.

He — almost alone — pushed to flood the market with 25 percent more shares than originally planned in the final days before the offering. And since then, as the point person for investors, he has done little to articulate how or why the company’s strategy will lift the stock price any time soon.

According to Dealbook, Mr. Ebersman is ultimately guilty of buying into his own hype about the price of Facebook's stock. Following a roadshow, it's typical for investors to indicate that they're interested in purchasing two or even three times more stock than they end up actually getting. Mr. Ebersman, writes Dealbook, "did not seem to appreciate what was happening. They seem to have believed their own hype and took those orders as real, giving them the misplaced confidence to push the I.P.O. to the highest possible price and issue more shares."

So what will happen to Mr. Ebersman? Nothing, so far. As Dealbook points out, Zuck told employees following the IPO: “So, you’ve heard we’re firing David?”

He was just joking. Heh.

(Photo: Network World)

Microsoft Outlook now operates in-browser and is apparently a legitimate Gmail competitor? No flipping desks for Steve Ballmer today. [Wired]

Things are not looking good in iPad mag land. The Daily has laid off a 1/3rd of its staff. [AllThingsD]

Kevin Rose did an AMA, just in time for the release of the new Digg. It got less than 1,000 upvotes and apparently he didn't actually answer any questions. [Reddit]

Two online poker sites are paying millions in damages following fraud and money laundering charges. Guess the government called their bluff. [New York Times]

Times Square will broadcast the Mars landing on one of those gigantic screens. The space geek in us is currently fighting with the person in us who fucking hates Times Square. [NASA]

UBS lost $356 million in the Facebook IPO. Yikes. [The New York Times]

Mr. Taylor (Photo: Google+)

Looks like we're gonna have to add another name to our Facebook Mafia list. Chief technology officer Bret Taylor told Kara Swisher at AllThingsD that he will be leaving the company for an "undetermined startup." Shortly after, he acknowledged his departure on his Facebook page. (A parting traffic gift, perhaps?) 

"I'm excited to be starting a company with my friend Kevin Gibbs," Mr. Taylor wrote, thanking Mark Zuckerberg as a mentor and friend.

Considering that Mr. Taylor has been in charge of Facebook's mobile and platform initiatives, this doesn't look good for the social network, which is currently embroiled in an SEC investigation and facing fresh scrutiny today about how a shift to mobile could affect revenue.

Get in line, SEC! That's the $100 billion question.

(facebook.com)

Twitter aired its first ever TV commercial yesterday--during a NASCAR race. [AllThingsD]

Everything you wanted to know about the @Sweden Twitter account: "I wanted to show that I’m often kind of immature and often kind of stupid and so is this country, and I bet you are, too, and so are a lot of people around the world." Think Mayor Bloomberg would let us do something like this? [New York Times]

There is now a Silicon Valley Bank in the U.K. for just technology investments. Discuss bubble implications as you wish. [BBC]

Google is shutting down Meebo messenger: be still my 8th grade heart. [meebo.com]

Facebook's user growth is slowing, which cannot be good for the company's already-battered stock. [Wall Street Journal]

No one wants to IPO now that Facebook's went so terribly. [Wall Street Journal]

For your morning rage blackout: Ellen Pao is obviously lying because her husband has sued people before. [New York Post]

Mr. Parker (Photo: CNN)

CNN's Laurie Segall managed to sneak in a question about Facebook's IPO debacle by Sean Parker during a promotional tour for his new startup Airtime. "Somehow I knew I was going to get this question," Mr. Parker winced, holding his head in his hands. But the former Facebook president quickly rebounded, blaming the hype and then the media for the stock's volatile performance.

"It was sort of a relief in a way," he said. "We knew that that speculative interest was not going to go in a good direction. It never ends well. whenever there's something that's so hotly anticipated and so speculative. The thing that was unexpected was how quickly the media turned on it and therefore short circuited the retail investor and their speculation."

It seems more than a little disingenuous for Mr. Parker to scapegoat speculators when Facebook decided to both price shares higher than expected and increase the number of shares offered by more than 25 percent.

But Mr. Parker framed the outcome as a good thing. "Ultimately we want institutional investors who take a long view in the company who understand all these market opportunities," he added. "I'm just happy to see the vitality decreasing and the stock stabilizing and I'm waiting it out because I have a sort of deep belief in the company's positioning in the market."

It's worth noting that Mr. Parker still has a $2.27 billion stake remaining--of course that was at the $38 share price and it's currently trading at around $27.

Part of the reason he's long on Facebook, Mr. Parker added, is because, "We've just scratched the surface in terms of what's possible," highlighting opportunities in terms of the social graph.

"Identity is so important in terms of trust, reputation, transactions, it permeates everything we do and there are so many markets where Facebook is relevant where they haven't even turned on the spigot. Facebook has not announced like a reputation based marketplace strategy. They haven't talked about how the trust that's intrinsic in the social graph can actually be used . . . How many other massive scale opportunities can be built on top of the social graph where FB can employ sort of tax and toll kind of strategy."

Considering the trouble they've had monetizing mobile, one has to wonder what they're waiting for. You can watch the full Sean Parker interview at CNN.

Look at this freaking guy.

Head for your bunkers: Facebook fallout is upon us. (Maybe.) Bloomberg reports that--according to one source, anyway--Kayak plans to delay its IPO, in the wake of Facebook's less-than-stellar debut. Says Bloomberg:

The Norwalk, Connecticut-based online travel service has postponed the roadshow for the offering, which was scheduled to start last week, said the person, who declined to be identified because the information is private. Morgan Stanley, the lead bank on Facebook’s initial share sale, also was hired to lead Kayak’s IPO.

Facebook's stock is currently at $28.19, well under its $38 debut. Given that it was the highest-profile technology IPO in years (seriously, "frenzy" doesn't even do it justice), there was no way that wasn't going to have some sort of impact. One researcher told Bloomberg: "After Facebook’s tumble, investors are not willing to buy pie in the sky." Ouch. 

Still, two other tech companies with IPOs in the works--ServiceNow and Palo Alto Networks--are said to be on track. So maybe it's just the ultra-high-profile offerings that're affected by this latest disruption. It's also worth noting that Kayak originally filed to go public in November 2010, then delayed due to "market conditions." So it's not like it's been entirely smooth sailing for Kayak thus far.

Meanwhile, Italy hates Zuck for his poor tipping, and everyone thinks he cheaped out on Priscilla's engagement ring. We're almost starting to feel sorry for the poor besieged billionaire.