First whispers, then murmurs, then hushed conversations and finally, talking out loud.

That's how the insiders, investors and pundits make a bubble burst, and its happening just before our eyes. Web 2.0, we hardly knew ye.

When we look back, Microsoft's investment in Facebook will be the transaction that popped the bubble. It's ridiculous over inflation of Facebook's worth has gotten even the optimistic to say that the emperor has no clothes. Social networking and widgets are cool, but they aren't going to change the dynamics of commerce and advertising.

Blame the ongoing war, the lead-tainted toys, the housing and mortgage collapse, and volatile days on Wall Street. Uncertainty across the board is about to investments Web 2.0 companies hard. If I were a doctor, I'd be calling for the time of death and filling out the paperwork.

TiVo is maturing as a company thanks to the hard lessons of operating in the world of Big Media. Advertising revenue, not subscription fees, will determine the companyh's survival.

NBC will sell interactive ads that will run on TiVo's platform. While TiVo has been trying to generate ad revenue for some time, allowing NBC to sell the tags is an important shift in the company's thinking. NBC will be able to leverage its relationships with advertisers in the digital realm, and TiVo will settle for a smaller share of the ad dollars.

Interactive ads enable consumers to make impulse purchases or obtain more information immediately, and TiVo's platform enables that interaction without sacrificing the viewing experience.

TiVo's early fights were with cable companies over access to consumers, and they've learned to play nice there. Now they are realizing that the TV Networks have to lead the conversation with advertisers to maximize profits. TiVo has come a long way from being a box maker, but the next year will be pivotal if the company is to ever live up to its potential.

Via MediaPost

The Performancing blog has great tips for content creators on how to increase traffic by mining search results.

Links from bloggers and news sites are the greatest method of driving traffic, but don't forget keywords. There is often a disconnect between what you think your mission is and who your audience is and how people actually find your site. Looking through the keywords and referrals from the search engines that are driving traffic growth is equally humbling and useful.

This can also give valuable insight into the products that are of most interest, and where the holes are in your content mix. The web equivalent about trees falling is, if you post a blog and Google or Yahoo, then did you really write something?

Coupons will be the classifieds of the next half decade. Just as Craigslist led online classifieds to steal away much of the print business, so will coupons usurp much of the direct mail and newspaper coupons of today.

The question is, will it be Google or someone else that is the fulcrum upon which the market pivots?

Coupons.com and other have been around for some time, but online coupons are still tiny compared with print business. Google is taking a major stride forward in slowly and stealthily integrating coupons into search, according to Mike Blumenthal.

If you subscribe to the coupons feature of Google Co-op, you can have coupon search results mixed into primary search results. This also works in Google Maps, but the delivery of search results is less than elegant.

I'm guessing that Google is testing the waters here for fear of agitating its primary advertisers. This makes sense until Google has enough coupon advertisers to merit more real estate on the results page. I expect Google and others to be pushing local coupons in a big way in the next year, which could eventually save a few trees in the process.

My favorite whipping boy, er amphibian, published its earnings report for its first quarter of being a publicly available site, and the numbers look like a biology class dissection gone horribly wrong.

The company spent more than $3 million and generated a piddling 20K of revenue.

Sure, they didn't publicly launch until a few weeks before the quarter ended, but the company is burning cash at a rate exceeded only by the national debt. With only $2 million left in the bank from its previous rounds of fooling, I mean fund raising, SpiralFrog is on its last leg (which may have to be sold off to French restaurant to stay afloat).

As I say again ad-supported music downloads is a bad idea, and 75 percent of the major labels figured that out long ago (sorry EMI).

We needed a Pets.com for the 21st century, and SpiralFrog is our winner.

Google continues to own the search market, and its lead is widening. An informal survey shows that while Google still delivers the best results for general search, Yahoo and Ask are better and product and local search results.

So can anything be done to change users behaviors to explore more search options, or will Google always be the dominant search player?

We are creatures of habit, and I clearly fall into that category. I use Google search about 95 percent of the time for general, news and product information searches. Occasionally I look at Yahoo, and MSN or AOL on a rare occasions just for blogging purposes. If I don't read about some amazing new engine, I'm a Google guy not because of loyalty, but because I generally find what I want. It's too much of a hassle to switch engines for vertical searches, right?

The new generation of web users probably search more using their social networking tools than I do, but often those searches are powered by Google too. So maybe things will remain the same.

If you've switched search allegiance lately, I'd love to hear why.

For all of the media coverage of Cyber Monday, like the turkey that's still sitting in your fridge, their ain't much meat on the bones.

Cyber Monday is supposed to be one of the biggest shopping days of the year, a virtual equivalent to the black friday madness that has people who never rise before 8 up in the middle of the night to save on video games or gadgets.

But Cyber Monday pales in comparison as marketers are offering very few "today online" deals, and the marketing efforts are minimal.

I'm really shocked that for all of the online shopping I do, I haven't heard a peep about Cyber Monday in my inbox. Amazon, which according to Revenue magazine (for whom I also write), rules online shopping buzz, didn't email me about special offers. Nor did Target, Wal-Mart, are any of the other half dozen stores that I've given my email address.

Of the top 3 paid search campaigns for Cyber Monday, only NBC has a customized landing page with Cyber Monday offers. Dumping you into generic shopping page is unacceptable.

If Cyber Monday is ever going to mean anything, it should be heavily marketed ahead of time with special offers redeemable only on one day. Before black friday, the email assault should go out, convincing people that order by keyboard can be competitive with elbowing grannies to get an electronic toy at 4 a.m.

It looks as though behavioral marketers are walking around with a bullseye on their backs. The European Union is investigating behavioral targeting techniques such as Facebook's new Beacon program. Also, a Facebook group started by political action group MoveOn.org is protesting the practice of sharing purchase information among Facebook users.

The EU, which tends to more closely scrutinize advertising techniques and online marketing, could write new rules that would influence actions here in the States. It will probably take some time, but new rules are likely to come in the future.

MoveOn.org, which seems to be protesting just about everything these days, is right for wanting tighter rules on Facebook. Existing users shouldn't be dumped into the program unless they are alerted before hand. You can't change the end user license agreement and volunteer to share personal information without prior notice without risking consumer ire or a lawsuit. Facebook should make this policy absolutely clear when new members join, including a separate opt-in check box for Beacon. While in the end it does benefit consumers with more appropriate ads, participation should be voluntary. I'm happy to share more information, but ask first.

Source: MediaPost