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Hydra Networks has announced that with immediate effect it has terminated the accounts of over 15,000 publishers. The news comes as part of a new push by Hydra to attract mainstream brand advertisers and set themselves apart from “ad networks peddling nutraceutical diet remedies, cash grant opportunities, tooth whiteners and other non-branded campaigns of low consumer value.”

After a year in which the performance marketing industry had to deal with controversies ranging from Oprah to the FTC, many of the larger, smarter networks are trying to move to higher ground. They’re seeking to attract more quality, brand advertisers, but that means selling performance marketing as a solution to Chief Marketing Officers who may have no experience of it.

As Facebook pushes to Win The Internet, its dazzling growth in usage is still to be reflected in profits, or even revenues. Accurate estimates of exactly what Facebook is bringing in are hard to come by but the best yet now comes from the Inside Facebook blog.

On Wednesday Spanish authorities announced the arrest of three alleged ringleaders behind the Mariposa botnet. Mariposa is possibly the largest botnet yet discovered and consisted of an estimated 12.7 million computers.

Twitter reasserted itself this week with the publication of two pieces of data designed to blow people's minds and a rumor that should send a little quiver of excitement up your leg (if you like that sort of thing).

YouTube celebrated its fifth birthday on Valentine's Day. The youtube.com domain name was first registered on 2/15/2005 and the site was bought by Google 20 months later for $1.65 billion.

After the jump check out the top five YouTube videos of all time, including a terrorist, a baby and a history lesson. Have you seen them all?

It has become crystal clear over the last week that Google rushed the introduction of Google Buzz, did little or no external user-testing, and as a result is scrambling to mitigate a massive PR failure.

Google killed Twitter today. With the launch of Google Buzz they ruthlessly attacked Twitter’s weaknesses and quietly set the scene for subsequent creeping infiltration into Microsoft’s stronghold in the enterprise market. Buzz is a big deal.

ValueClick this week announced the divestiture of their lead-gen business unit, Web Clients. The stated reason is that ValueClick wants to stay focused on their online marketing services and technology businesses. That’s fair enough, but a look at the history of ValueClick and Web Clients raises questions in the minds of the curious.