Twitter has acquired TweetDeck, an application for organizing the display of tweets, for more than $40 million in a mix of cash and stock, according to sources close to the deal.

TweetDeck has been the subject of speculation about deals for months. TechCrunch surfaced reports, citing a $40 million-$50 million acquisition. The deal has yet to be announced, but papers finalizing the deal were signed Monday.

Although Twitter reps weren’t available for comment, the company’s PR account tweeted, “For all those who might be curious, we continue to not comment on rumors.” Betaworks, a key investor in TweetDeck, was not immediately available for comment.

Twitter has been known to either downplay third-party apps or acquire them. In the past, Twitter has scooped up popular Twitter iPhone app Tweetie, and partnered with photo add-on TwitPic as it launched its new interface.

After a management shakeup, with co-founder Ev Williams out and Jack Dorsey back as head of product, the company is focusing on building and owning Twitter’s most compelling features and interfaces.

In February, reports surfaced that UberMedia, the leading developer of apps and Web-based services for Twitter users and other social media platforms, was in talks to purchase Tweetdeck.

But the deal never closed.

Around times of the talks with UberMedia, Twitter suspended UberMedia’s UberTwitter and twidroyd, two popular apps used for mobile Twitter access, citing policy violations

In a tight market, every job seeker needs to find a way to stand out from the crowd. What separates the great from the good and makes a particular candidate too irresistible to pass up? Often, it is one of these three things:

1. Ability to prove worth

It is one thing to call yourself an outstanding communicator or an effective leader. It is another to back those claims with proof. Employers want to know what you’d bring to the table if hired.

“Candidates who can provide real, tangible examples of successes at their current and past jobs certainly stand out,” say Western Union’s Chris Brabec, director of leadership talent acquisition, and Laura Hopkins, vice president of talent acquisition.

Alan Guinn, managing director and CEO of The Guinn Consultancy Group in Bristol, Tennessee, agrees.

“More and more of my clients simply aren’t interested in questions like, ‘If you were an animal, what would you be?’ They are exponentially more interested in seeing if the candidate for a position understands the value that he or she brings to the employer when hired.”

Guinn says that most applicants for commission-driven jobs know they can demonstrate competency and quantify value by discussing how they met quotas, exceeded sales objectives or searched out new clients.

Candidates in other fields who are not accustomed to thinking this way may have more difficulty, but trying to do so may ultimately land them a job.

To come up with examples, it might help to examine your résumé and performance reviews.

What have you accomplished that sets you apart from others? How can those achievements be applied to this job? Is there a way to quantify or explain results in terms of time or money saved, output or improvement?

It can be especially effective to search for instances that would be noteworthy for the specific position or employer. For example, since Western Union is a global company, a candidate who highlights his international experience would grab the attention of Brabec and Hopkins.

Examining the job ad for keywords can offer clues as to what might be most significant.

2. More than a simple knowledge of the company

An acceptable candidate looks at the company’s website before heading to the interview. An irresistible one learns more.

“To stand out, you need to show that your research was a mile deep and not an inch deep like most candidates,” says Jim Langan, partner and manager of the investment and financial services division for Winter, Wyman — one of the largest staffing firms in the Northeast. “You need to go above and beyond in your efforts to show that you understand this company inside and out.”

Annual reports and financial statements can help. Likewise, check for any recent news events or press releases. Langan says these things also might be helpful to know about a company:

• Its motto or vision.

• Its products and what makes them stand out in the market.

• Its competitors.

• Its stock price.

• Its senior management and their history with the company.

(Bonus points: If any of them have written a book or been quoted in a publication, see if you can mention that in the interview.)

3. Enthusiasm

If you’ve taken the time to demonstrate your worth and to do homework on the company, chances are you’re well on your way to becoming the final thing an employer can’t resist: an enthusiastic candidate.

How does enthusiasm shine through? “First and foremost, I believe, is the candidate’s interest in the interview itself,” Guinn says. “It’s directly in proportion, I think, to how excited the candidate might be to be offered the job.”

He says the questions that enthusiastic candidates ask are not only about the job they would be doing but also about the job in the future.

“They ask the interviewer how they may expand positional responsibilities. They demonstrate interest in upward mobility. They want to know who has moved up and why the position they are being interviewed for is vacant. They also are interested in how they will fit in with the group to which they are assigned.”

Let a potential employer know that you have spent time learning about this particular job and reflecting on how you’d be the perfect person for it. Chances are your genuine excitement could be contagious.

As Langan says, “Companies love to hire people who have passion and enthusiasm for a position rather than a candidate who sees this as just another job.”

There’s been a lot of media-driven furor this year around the issue of humongous corporations weaseling their way out of paying taxes, with GE taking a brunt of the public assault. While with each passing month we hear of some new offender, one wonders how it is that these companies are actually able to do it. This infographic from Online MBA breaks down the factory-line process by which corporations ingeniously – and, most say, unethically – minimize their taxes.

Facebook slowly becoming known as the do anything for money internet business attempts to hit Google below the belt but gets caught.

It seems like the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Google has taken a turn for the subversive. Last night, a spokesman for the social network confirmed to the Daily Beast that Facebook paid a top PR firm to spread anti-Google stories across the media and to encourage various outlets to examine allegations that the Mountain View company was violating user privacy. The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, even offered to help blogger Chris Soghoian write a critical op-ed piece about Social Circle — a service that allows Gmail users to access information on so-called “secondary connections,” or friends of their friends. Social Circle, in fact, seems to have been at the epicenter of Facebook’s smear campaign. In a pitch to journalists, Burson described the tool in borderline apocalyptic terms:

“The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission.”

Soghoian thought that Burson’s representatives were “making a mountain out of a molehill,” so he decided to prod them about which company they might be working for. When Burson refused to spill the beans, Soghoian went public and published all of the e-mails sent between him and the firm. USA Today picked up on the story, before concluding that any claims of a smear campaign were unfounded. The Daily Beast’s Dan Lyons, however, apparently forced Facebook’s hand after confronting the company with “evidence” of its involvement. A Facebook spokesman said the social network hired Burson to do its Nixonian dirty work for two primary reasons: it genuinely believes that Google is violating consumer privacy and it also suspects that its rival “may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users.” In other words, their actions were motivated by both “altruistic” and self-serving agendas, though we’d be willing to bet that the latter slightly outweighed the former. Google, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the story, saying that it still needs more time to wrap its head around everything — which might just be the most appropriate “no comment” we’ve ever heard.

Facebook Buying Out Skype? $4 Billion Deal Was Being Talked About. Now the hammer has been dropped and the winner is Microsoft at 8.5 Billion (yes billion). We just hope Microsoft doesn’t screw things up, skype is near perfect.

After rumors that first Facebook and then Microsoft were in talks to acquire Skype, the latter announced that it has acquired the VoIP giant for $8.5 billion in cash.

Skype will be integrated into Microsoft devices and systems such as Xbox and Kinect, Xbox Live, the Windows Phone, Lync and Outlook, Microsoft said in a statement. The company has pledged to continue supporting and developing Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms as well.

The deal, which was spearheaded by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer with assistance from Charles Songhurst, the company’s head of corporate strategy, was completed Monday evening, AllThingsD reported earlier.

The acquisition is an expensive one for Microsoft. Not only is it the largest price Microsoft has paid for a company in decades, Skype is not yet profitable. Despite revenues totaling $860 million last year and operating profits of $264 million, the company lost $6.9 million overall, according to documents filed with the SEC. And the company carries $686 million in debt.

Much of the company’s appeal rests in its largest user base of 663 million, 145 million of which use Skype monthly (Update: Microsoft says Skype has 170 million regular users), and 8.8 million of which are paying customers.

There is one clear set of winners here: Skype’s investors. A group including Silver Lake, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board purchased the company from eBay for $2.75 billion in September 2009.

In August, Skype filed for an IPO but put plans on hold after Tony Bates joined the company as CEO in October. Bates will take on the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division and report directly to Ballmer.

Successful entrepreneurs often donate generously to their favorite causes, but here’s a new twist: Amar Bose is essentially donating his company to his alma mater.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Friday that Bose, the 81-year-old founder of the sound system company that bears his name, has donated the majority of Bose Corp.’s stock to the school.

The donation is in the form of non-voting shares, MIT said. The monetary value of the shares were not disclosed, and MIT cannot sell its Bose shares. The school will not participate in the management or governance of the company, but it will receive annual cash dividends on its shares when Bose pays them out.

A spokeswoman for Bose said the company will remain privately held and “operate as it always has.” She declined to comment further on the gift.

“Dr. Bose has always been more concerned about the next two decades than about the next two quarters,” MIT president Susan Hockfield said in a prepared statement. “[He] has asked us not to shine too bright a spotlight on him today. So to honor that wish, let us simply celebrate Dr. Bose’s profound belief in the transformative power of an MIT education.”
Tech’s $100 million philanthropists

Bose received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and Ph.D in electrical engineering from MIT. He also taught undergraduate electrical engineering at MIT from 1956 to 2001, maintaining a faculty role at MIT long after his 1964 foundation of founded Bose Corp.

Bose currently employs about 9,000 staffers and is a major economic force in its hometown of Framingham, Mass. The company is known for its high-end speaker systems and headphones.