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).

With over 400 ad networks, segmentation has become a big part of successful performance marketing campaigns.

Katrina Toft loves sushi. So it’s only natural that the designer, a recent college graduate, started a blog about the Seattle sushi restaurants she haunts. Already, she’s making enough from BestSeattleSushi.com to feed her fish habit. Now, she’s working on a site for gamers.

You can maximize the performance of your marketing campaigns by consolidating all of them under a single ad platform. This will save time on administrative tasks, offer comprehensive analytics on campaigns across multiple channels and help you optimize them accordingly. Affiliate software is in a unique position to consolidate campaigns from across different channels because it monitors the entire acquisition process. By supporting and tracking different marketing models and offering comparative reports, the right software will provide the intelligence you need to maximize your return.

With the economic downturn, many of us are tightening our belts. What does that mean for travel marketers? Are people still traveling? Should we downgrade our revenue expectations?

Here’s some good news. According to a PhoCusWright report, the U.S. online travel market continues to grow at a pace that far exceeds the overall travel market. Travel is the No. 1 sector in the affiliate industry, and affiliate shoppers tend to buy more than the average shopper. So there are still many opportunities for affiliates in travel – especially when you focus on the trends.

Whether it is for spring to begin, for Godot or for a commission check, no one likes waiting.

The 30 to 90 days that affiliates – especially those outside the U.S. – must wait for commission checks to arrive can seem like a lifetime, and waiting in line at the bank to cash it is so 20th century.

Japan's had it hard. After nearly a decade of stock market doldrums and an economy on the brink of disaster - just as the rest of Asia struggled too - Japan bounced back. Growth happened. Its economy is still a tad slow, but there are many industries looking way up. Online marketing is one of them.

If asked to identify the characteristics of an ideal product to market, most would likely put at the top of the list broad appeal, the ability to evoke strong emotion, a venerable brand - and something very, very, sexy.

If this sounds a lot like the Olympic Games, then it's easy to understand why TV advertisers line up from Beijing to Burbank with large checks in hand to get a piece of the action.

Vinny Lingham's career as a marketer started early. In kindergarten, he made money buying Thundercat stickers and selling the popular ones. In his early teens, he switched to cricket cards and then Magic The Gathering cards. In college, he partially financed his undergraduate studies by playing pool and managing and booking bands.