Yahoo! is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion! On Sunday, Yahoo!'s board approved the deal for the microblogging network popular with animated GIF lovers and celebrities like Beyoncé. There are more than 108 million blogs on the social network, and the acquisition is yet another bold move by Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, who is attempting to revitalize the Internet giant and appeal to a younger demographic. The deal, which is even bigger than Facebook's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram, is expected to be finalized as soon as Monday. Tumblr's 26-year-old founder David Karp dropped out of high school at age 15 to work as a programmer.

A new Facebook app wants to set men up in long distance relationships with women who live in "the cloud." The service, Cloud Girlfriend, plans to help users create fake girlfriends, who will then write on their walls or interact with them online for all to see.

There are four simple steps to sign up. "Step 1: Define your perfect girlfriend. Step 2: We bring her into existence. Step 3: Connect and interact with her publicly on your favorite social network. Step 4: Enjoy a public long distance relationship with your perfect girl." Where was Cloud Boyfriend when Jan Brady invented her fake boyfriend George Glass?

The company takes cues from Japan, where you can rent actors to play your made-up friends, relatives, best men, or spouses. Like the Japanese offline versions, the app could help its clients save face in public by filling a gap in their personal lives.

As our public personas become increasingly defined by our social network presence, an imaginary girlfriend who pops up on your profile could provide similar social benefits a real girlfriend would. But unfortunately for lonely guys, Cloud Girlfriend might not get approved by Facebook — computer-generated accounts are against the rules.

The Internet can help you find your mate, either on a dating site, through your online social network, or by allowing you to offer a $10,000 award to anyone on the web who will introduce you to your future wife. Once you're paired up though, technology seems to make love more complicated — you must consider the realities of flirtexting (yes, that means flirty texting), navigate the awkward subject of changing your Facebook status, and if you end up changing that status to "married," hope you don't succumb to the fate of 1 in 5 divorced couples who say Facebook played a role in their breakup.

After meeting on OKCupid like many twenty-something couples today, Becky Cruze and MIT-grad Pius Uzamere decided to create a product that would make relationships easier for "couples with epic social lives." So they quit their jobs and started working together full-time on BeCouply, a mobile and web app that will launch in a couple of weeks (you can sign up for an invite). The app is part date idea generator, part online scrapbook. Founder Becky Cruze explained the concept to me:

"You'll have a date idea feed similar to Twitter or the status updates on Facebook with date ideas from other couples in your network. You'll see ideas they're planning or things they've already done. Or, you can enter ideas that you have and see if any of your friends want to join. There will also be suggestions coming in from us at BeCouply, like events going on in your city, concerts, anything related to holidays, or any deals that might be going on."

As for the scrapbook component, it's actually how some of the date ideas get generated. Find out more when you keep reading.

First there was Unfriend Finder, an app that helps social masochists keep track of the people who unfriend them on Facebook. Now there's the Breakup Notifier app, which helps singles use Facebook relationship statuses to their dating advantage.

You pick the friends you want to stalk, and the app will send you an email every time they change relationship status. The idea is that you'll know when a crush becomes available so you can then make your move. If you're in a relationship when you sign up, the site will gently reprimand you, saying: "P.S. You're in a relationship! Naughty naughty . . ."

But Breakup Notifier serves purposes beyond helping you score a date. With the tool, the dedicated stalker can streamline the process for finding out when a Facebook friend goes from in a relationship to engaged, engaged to married, and, as more time goes on perhaps, from married to single. More reason to hide your status!