Stop me if you've heard this one before: a company that makes virtually no money at all might get a massive, billion dollar price tag out of thin air (but at least people use Tumblr!). According to TechCrunch tipsters, the small and shady social network's spam blitz might've worked.

AllThingsD's Kara Swisher says Zynga is on the verge of massive layoffs, as a bad year gets worse for the bleeding FarmVille firm. Maybe selling virtual castles is no longer a $7 billion business. Update: Zynga confirms layoffs.

Yahoo has a problem: it has no idea what it's doing, or how it's going to do it (outside of teenage dream hires). Some people who claim intimate knowledge say the company is going to do it by throwing a serious Hail Mary in its quest for cool: buying Tumblr for $1,000,000,000. That's one billion.

AllThingsD's Liz Gannes says Google, frustrated by the fact that no one really cares about NFC or wireless payments yet, was preparing to just throw up its hands and make a plastic card. Like all of the other plastic cards we've been using since the advent of the plastic card. Now that plan's over with.

Mike Arrington's jowls and brash questions have been a staple of TechCrunch's annual green-tinted festival of self-congratulation. But a well-informed source tells us the former main act won't be attending this year.