Zune users can now download their friends’ nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites. If you are amongst the 4% of Americans that own Zunes, this is awesome news!

The upgrade takes the community element a bit further by letting Zune users download each other’s nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites. The playlists are updated each time a person connects their Zune to the PC.

In order for people to trade tunes, they have to subscribe to Microsoft’s mobile music service called Zune Pass. The service costs $14.99 a month and lets subscribers download onto their Zunes any of the 3.5 million songs in Microsoft’s library.
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In other Zune news, Microsoft on Tuesday added television shows from Comedy Central, NBC Universal, Turner Broadcasting, and others to the Zune online store. Microsoft added a total of 800 episodes, including those from the popular South Park and Heroes programs. Each show costs $1.99 each. [Information Week]

Related Story: And should you ever find another Zune owner, sharing is now even easier

In an effort to shore up it’s world wide dominance and fight the unevil empire called Google, Microsoft has made an unsolicited takeover bid to acquire rival search engine/portal Yahoo.

Microsoft Corp. on Friday offered to buy search-engine operator Yahoo Inc. for $31 a share, or $44.6 billion, in an effort to better compete with online-advertising juggernaut Google Inc. [Marketwatch]