From Current.TV, a new Supernews cartoon about a guy struggling with his addiction to social networking. Myspace, Facebook, Friendster and Second Life mustn’t be ignored!

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Think you exert an influence on your Facebook or MySpace friends? Then you could find yourself being used by advertisers to get people to pay more for products, according to US researchers.

Using economic models they predict new tactics to exploit the personal information that online social-networking sites provide.

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ARS Technica Reviews Flock - The Social Web Browser
http://flock.com

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When you start up a brand new blog, unless you are already well known in the industry, it can be hard to gain a large following of subscribers very quickly.  And since many people judge a blog’s success based on those crucial subscriber numbers, it makes sense to start off with a bang to get your blog lots of attention.

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Ranked by Technorati, according to the number of sites/blogs linking to each, this is week #109 as posted by The Viral Garden blog. The number you see after the blog name is how many sites/blogs that Technorati claims have linked to the blog in the last 6 months.

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Below you’ll find my (Darren Rowse - ProBlogger.net) latest update on how I make money blogging (this is something I post about every few months - although it’s been a over six months since I last did it ).

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What impact will these little “plus signs” have on your advertising strategy?

Google’s Marissa Mayer, VP of search products and user experience, informed the NY Times last month about Google’s latest SERP feature and testing began the same day. Andy Beal (MarketingPilgrim.com ) and others at SERoundtable were among the first to spot the new video ads today.

The NY Times article also quoted Mayer as saying that…

…text ads are not as effective on pages with search results that include images and video. The eyes of users automatically gravitate to the images more than the text, she said. Now that Google’s main search results pages include more images, video links and other elements, it is more appropriate, she argued, to have corresponding advertising formats.

Rather than “appropriate”, Andy Beal described Google’s latest move of implementing video ads into search results as “Google Getting Greedy…There’s really no other way to dress this up.” Beal suggested that Google’s implementation strategy of “taking a delicate approach” is indeed mandatory.

…walking the fine line between “monetizing its success” and “getting too greedy and alienating its users.” It’s a very fine line - one that the likes of Alta Vista and Excite over-stepped and ended up withering in the shadow of a search engine that had a clean interface.

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Early signs of new things to come from Google. Videos showing up in the search results have a way yet to evolve, but now that it has started, it should be interesting to see how things progress and how far they take it.
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AOL has acquired social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. AOL CEO Randy Falco (left in picture) sent an email to all AOL employees this morning. Allen Stern’s press call notes are here. (TechCrunch) read more

Apparently, the unresolved question of AOL’s ability to effectively monetize Bebo’s audience via customized ads (based on behavioral data) centers around patented technology purportedly owned by Modavox Inc.  With over a billion dollars spent on their new business model, AOL seems to still not be in control of this vital element. Stay tuned.

… is one of the many responses to Yahoo’s “Most Emailed Photos” taken 2/27/08 by Reuters’ Shannon Stapleton at a St. Clairsville, OH campaign rally.  No doubt, Republicans are having a field day with this one and will be added to The Ultimate Online Archive of Unflattering Hillary Clinton Photos. as just another reason “…Why Hillary is Losing“. Taking a slightly different slant on the value of a picture…this one is “priceless”.

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Yahoo! is moving in the right direction, and a very exciting one for all parties involved, and here’s why.

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