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.

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.

Let’s face it. 2009 is a year that many of us are pleased to put behind us. We want to look to the future. 2010 beckons. New mobile phones and tablet computers are appearing every week. We are seeing crazy-fast take-up of social media like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Add those developments to a rebounding economy and it all indicates an infl ection point: one of those moments in history when everything comes together to enable massive change and opportunity.

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.

Protecting Consumer Privacy

Legislators, online marketers and consumer privacy groups still struggle over the creation of mutually acceptable online privacy laws – although all see the need for some level of protection. A coalition of 10 consumer advocates and privacy groups called on Congress to limit companies’ ability to track Web users and serve them targeted ads. Two key proposals under debate are to establish a Do-Not-Track registry similar to the Do-Not-Call registry, and imposing a 24-hour limit to holding consumer data.

The cofounder of the web’s fourth-largest site tells what’s wrong with our notions of performance-based advertising and user-generated content. 

It’s hard to say which is more surprising: that the fourth-largest website has only two dozen employees or that it doesn’t make any money. But one thing that almost never raises an eyebrow about Wikipedia.org is that it’s outrageously popular.

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.

It was a cold night in Pennsylvania when Leila Crooks was on Digg.com, the community-based popularity site, and came across a story about a "slanket" - a fleece blanket with sleeves that offers the freedom of arm movement so people can play video games or surf computers while snuggling under a blanket.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus proved that the world was round. In 2006, Thomas Friedman reversed that thinking by writing in his book, The World Is Flat, that the Internet, technology and diminishing trade barriers have created a global marketplace. We can now work and trade with people all over the world with an ease that would have been unimaginable even one ago.

Prepare the obituary: The era of the daily newspaper as the news source is over. The Daily Tribune, Inquirer and Journals of the world have been recycled, replaced by multi-platform (online and off-line) entities that engage readers and operate around the clock. This rebirth is good news for advertisers big and small who will be able to more effectively target a growing audience.