Snip.it has been acquired by Yahoo! Snip.it is a social news start-up that allows news consumers to clip, organize and share articles.

Yahoo’s Jacqueline D. Reses has joined e-commerce company Alibaba Group’s board of directors. Reses joins Jack Ma, Masayoshi Son and Joe Tsai as one of four directors on the Alibaba board.

Yahoo has acquired a five-person video chat company on Tuesday, the second deal by new Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to bolster Yahoo’s mobile capabilities, writes Reuters. Yahoo did not disclose the financial terms of its acquisition of OnTheAir, but said the team would be joining Yahoo’s mobile group.

This morning first Read highlights links to those five start-ups you should follow; whether PE ownership is good for corporate health; the inflation of the ed tech bubble and mulls the question on everyone’s lips – what if the Royal Baby is a girl?

TechStars, the popular accelerator program, is now accepting applications for its spring 2013 program in New York City; the program will be headed for now by Interim Managing Director Nicole Glaros, who has run five TechStars programs since 2009. In Glaros’s absence, the organization has promoted Luke Beatty, a mentor to its Boulder-based TechStars program, to managing director. Beatty was formerly VP of Communities and Local at Yahoo after his company, Associated Content, was acquired by Yahoo in 2010.

In this post election First Read, peHUB brings you four more years of challenges ahead for Obama; Benchmark’s minimalist online approach, Yahoo and Samsung getting into TV and the latest on European secondary buyouts.

This morning peHUB brings you the latest on US venture financings, a link to Europe’s top tech hubs and reveals just how much the new Yahoo COO has been enticed away from Google for.

Yahoo! said late Monday that Henrique de Castro was hired as COO. He will report directly to Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer and be responsible for strategic and operational management of Yahoo!’s sales, operations, media and business development worldwide. Most recently, de Castro was VP of Google’s worldwide Partner Business Solutions group. Yahoo! says de Castro will join the company on or before January 22, 2013, or as soon as he has satisfied his obligations to his current employer.

Click on this morning’s top news links to find out about OVP winding down operations, the new rules for green tech investing, where the value is in Singapore buyouts and who is drinking all the beer?

Take five minutes with this morning’s First Read to find out about David Rubenstein’s panda joy, Apollo’s CLO market and what ten states are consuming the most of our energy resources.