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  Major executive shakedown over at Chinese business-to-business service Alibaba.com. CEO David Wei and COO Elvis Lee took responsibility and resigned over fraudulent company activity that they were reportedly not involved in. An internal probe found that 2,000-plus vendors on the e-commerce site submitted fake business registration papers, a situation which some 100 employees knew about. (Wall Street Journal and TechCrunch)
• Is blogging already on the wane? That’s what The New York Times is saying. Apparently, blogging from 12 to 17-year-olds dropped by half from 2006 to 2009 — instead, they’re taking to Facebook and Twitter. But the situation may not be as dire as the publication makes it out to be. According to entrepreneur Matt Mullenweg, all the major blog services, including WordPress and Blogger, are still growing.
• Apple is expected to announce a new high-speed connection technology that would be faster even than USB 3.0, a technology offered on PCs but has yet to find its way into the Cupertino company’s Macs. “Light Peak,” as it’s currently been dubbed, as originally touted by Intel as the holy grail of connector technology: a single replacement for the myriad cables that connect to monitors, external drives, scanners, printers, and anything else that plugs into a computer. Sony is also expected to be an early adopter. (CNET)
• Notice the 3-5 day shipment delay for MacBook Pros across the board? That’s because Apple will also probably unveil new MacBook Pros later this week. Expect the 13-inchers to likely ditch those ancient, if trusty, Intel Core 2 Duo chips and for the 15-inchers to adopt the second generation of Sandy Bridge processors for faster performance and potentially improved battery life. (9 to 5 Mac)
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  Gilt Groupe is raising between $80 million and $100 million in funding from private investors, which would give the leading private sales company a valuation of around $1 billion. (Business Insider)
• European streaming music startup Spotify is in the process of wrapping up another round of funding led by Russian venture firm DST for $100 million-plus. Spotify plans to roll out in the U.S. some time this year, but no firm date has been given. (TechCrunch)
• Can Groupon replicate its near-runaway success in China? It’ll certainly try, as according to reports, it’s poised to expand its operations there. The daily deals site scene in the country is already huge, with estimates of transactions from such web sites expected to pass $2.4 billion this year alone. (Wall Street Journal)
• Meanwhile, Renren.com, one of China’s most popular social networking sites, is planning an initial public offering in the U.S. that could raise up to $500 million, potentially making it the first social-networking site to go public. (Wall Street Journal)
• According to Verizon’s product page, the Motorola Xoom tablet with Honeycomb 3.0 will probably launch sans Adobe Flash support. Expect some sort of update some time this spring.

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