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Americans watched 12 billion online videos in May — That’s up 45 percent compared to the same period in 2007. While Google’s sites — especially YouTube — remained dominant, accounting for 34.8 percent of videos watched, Fox Interactive Media (owner of MySpace) climbed to 6.4 percent, up 1.3 percent from the month before.

Tesla breaks production “logjam” — Chief executive Ze’ev Drori acknowledges that the electric car maker has been putting the old adage that “good things are worth waiting for” to the test, but he says nine Roadsters have already arrived in California (as of Saturday), with more due soon.

Forbes: San Francisco is the number one city for yuppies – Great, now my New York friends have something else to gloat about.

EBay wins case against Tiffany — The outcome of the four-year-old suit means that jewelery maker Tiffany & Co. and other trademark holders are responsible for policing online marketplaces for violations. That takes the responsibility off eBay and similar sites.

Enterprise social networking becomes a battleground — InfoWorld looks at the competition and concludes — surprise, surprise — that consumer-focused startups like Facebook and LinkedIn may beat out established software vendors like IBM.

Veoh takes ad program out of testing mode — The video site shows ads based on a user’s past viewing patterns. The ads are targeted at nine groups, including fans of action, cars, pop culture, anime, science fiction and family fare.

Ad agency Method launches venture program with boxee – Method’s venture effort, dubbed Method Ventures, wants to team up with startups that have just raised seed funding to help them fine tune their ideas. The first partner is boxee, a startup that integrates media content with social networking.

Solar company Greenvolts plans to raise significant funding — Chief executive Bob Cart says he hopes to raise a second round of funding at the end of the year, although at “less than $100 million,” the amount would be smaller than that raised by some other solar startups recently. Greenvolts raised $10 million last year.

Google still testing Digg-style search results? — Google has been experimenting with ways to let users vote on search results, and a TechCrunch reader spotted what may be the latest version of that test.

There seems to be a bit of tension lingering after the appointment of Ze’ev Drori (pictured left, bottom) as the new CEO of Tesla Motors, the high profile Silicon valley electric car company.

Tesla released a statement last Friday at 6pm, apparently in an effort to avoid news attention, that Martin Eberhard (pictured top), co-founder of Tesla Motors, has transitioned from the board of directors to the advisory board. This came after Eberhard had already been replaced by interim CEO Michael Marks in August.

In an online post attributed to Eberhard on TeslaMotorsClub, Eberhard said: “I am not at all happy with the way I was treated, and I do not think this was the very best way to handle a transition — not the best for Tesla Motors, not the best for Tesla’s customers (to whom I still feel a strong sense of responsibility), and not for Tesla’s investors.”

It’s tough when you’ve founded a company to be suddenly booted out, looking at it from the outside after putting in some much work.

Greentech Media reports that Eberhard still wanted to be part of Tesla, and that it was purely the decision of Elon Musk, Chairman of Tesla, and Drori to have him out of the way. Tesla’s VP of marketing, Darryl Siry, however, told VentureBeat that it was a full board decision to have Eberhard out of the company in a formal manner. Aside from Musk, there are five other people on the board, mostly investors in the company.

There has been some tension between Musk and Eberhard over technical issues dealing with the car (most notably its transmission). Now it’s clear that these differences have resulted in Eberhard’s departure from the company. The company has delayed its first car offering a couple of times, but says it is still on track to deliver its first high-performance quarter next quarter.

It’s not clear how much of a role Eberhard will play in the future of Tesla given his significant equity stake in the company and advisory position. It will come down to how much advice Drori will seek from Eberhard’s experience with Tesla. Eberhard says now he is a free man and is going to take the next six months to reflect on his next venture. He is still concerned about global warming and hopes to help solve the problem with his next company, he says.

Tesla Motors, the high-profile Silicon Valley electric car company, announced it has appointed Ze’ev Drori, an experienced entrepreneur and car enthusiast, as its new chief executive officer.

This completes an arduous search process that spanned several months.

Drori (pictured left) replaces interim CEO Michael Marks, who took the helm in August. The shuffle comes after the company announced a couple of delays to its first car’s release.

Tesla is first building an ambitious sports car that will go zero to 60 mph in 4 seconds. It has received $105 million in investment from a variety investors including Jeff Skoll, eBay’s original president, Elon Musk, a PayPal co-founder and Google’s co-founders.

Drori has joined the company at a critical stage: The company plans to release its first vehicles in the first quarter of 2008. The company is working on transmission durability with a new supplier, which could affect the speed with which subsequent cars will hit the market.

In an interview with VentureBeat, Drori said Tesla can be a leader in efficient electric vehicles, and that help with the important goal of transitioning the industry away from dependence on foreign oil.Drori has more than 30 years of experience running companies. The first company Drori founded was Monolithic Memories, a Silicon Valley semiconductor firm that pioneered fundamental advances in memory and logic technology, before being acquired by AMD in 1987. After the sale of Monolithic Memories, Drori purchased a controlling interest in Clifford Electronics, then a small start-up in auto security systems, and joined as its chairman and CEO. In 1999, Drori sold Clifford Electronics to Allstate Insurance.

The two-seat roadster will be released at a base price of $98,000. Tesla says it then plans to expand its vehicle fleet to include affordable electric compact and family cars, which may do more to reduce carbon emissions. Tesla says the price for its vehicles will drop in the near future.

Some critics, including well-known technology investor Vinod Khosla say electric cars will have little to no effect on slowing rising carbon emissions.