Real estate has been a more frequent topic recently on Marketing Pilgrim and I promised to write about recent stats on what real estate related terms people are typing in search engines . According to HitWise, the most popular web search volume for real estate sites goes to realtor.com. That's based on data collected for the four weeks ending Jan. 26, 2008. Hitwise is a subsidiary of Experian,

Social networking site ConnectU sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea. They allege he used the source code they hired him to create for their site. Now four years later Facebook is celebrating their four year anniversary, and that the lawsuit against them is finally settled - in Facebook's favor. Facebook asked that the case be dismissed, for lack of evidence, and that happened. ConnectU then filed another lawsuit against Facebook in March,

Last month I posted about patterns between men and women and their patterns of making friends on social networking sites. Rapleaf has another study that gives more insights into which sites are popular between the sexes and across age groups. People on social media sites are usually in the age range of 14 to 24 years old. Rapleaf's study focused on 49.3 million people in their database who are aged 14-74.

Real estate is on my mind - I could easily do a linky goodness edition on the theme today. Overstock.com Inc. is getting into real estate search ) realestate.overstock.com ( for bargain hunters who are already on their site to get overstock items. So now you can not only find the house, but you can buy the sheets, silverware, and curtains for it. You can also get a car for the driveway! Overstock has more than 3 million classified, foreclosure, and auction listings.

Just what we want to hear - bad news about the housing market, but this time online. Turns out online searches didn't have as significant impact on homebuying or renting decisions as we may have hoped. That doesn't necessarily mean real estate sites should pull back their budgets though. The Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey,

In a global world we have easy access to news that happens anywhere in the world within minutes or hours. I've noticed more people my age )in their 30s( say they simply don't watch the news. Rather than a constant reminder of problems that are so large and remote that it overwhelms them, they tune it out. Or, like me, I get most of it from Yahoo news or from blogs. What about the younger crowd, how do they view the news?

A study by Borrell Associates found that almost all newspaper web sites are profitable - thanks to online advertising . Advertising revenue accounts for over half of revenues locally, and 57.3 percent, goes to online advertising like Google. They studied 3,100 sites owned by newspapers, radio stations, TV stations and independents to find out where they are making the most ad revenues. According to Borrell, there are some important "firsts" in the newspaper industry.

Affiliate marketers in New York have reason to follow politics - and it's not the presidential race. Instead it's a new law ) pdf of law ( that has retailers collect taxes for sales through affiliate marketers based in New York. The law applies to all online transactions for companies that have no physical presence in New York. It starts June 1, 2008. The bad idea started with Governor Spitzer, and was recently signed into law by New York's new governor David Paterson.

What blogs or sites do journalists visit most often? A study from Brodeur and Marketwire sought to find the most popular and credible sites . They measured the influence of social media on these topics: politics, healthcare, lifestyle, technology, and travel. Here are some basic findings of the study: If you're a technology reporter, you're most likely to blog as part of your job description.

I spend a good part of my day thinking about and advising clients about how to increase their search engine rankings. InternetRetailer reported on ways to optimize your web site . These tips come from speakers at the ACCM direct-marketing industry conference and trade show in Orlando, FL. I've also added my commentary and extra detail. Update your web site with good, new content. Search engine web crawlers constantly check for new content on your web site.

If you're on a social networking site, chances are you have less than 100 friends. If you have thousands, you're not only in the minority, but you're probably male. According to a large study of people with at least one friend on a social networking site, men have more friends than women . Men and women also seem to be motivated by different values. That's the conclusion of a study by Rapleaf of 30.74 million social networkers.

Online advertising in general is fairing well in a slow economy. However, display advertising revenue, especially for bigger websites, is not doing as well . )Marketing Pilgrim runs display ads - Andy how are they doing - notice any downturn?(. Web sites, newspaper publishers, and news media companies like CBS make money by selling display ads. Remember all the new ad networks that have popped up in the last few years?

Today's tech news is full of Microsoft, Yahoo " and now Facebook. Microsoft keeps coming up with ways to buy some part of Yahoo. And now the rumor )reported by Robert Scoble( is that Microsoft may also buy Facebook for $15 to $20 billion . All of this in an effort to compete against Google - or as others suggest - perhaps just to survive. Here's the argument: One of the advantages Facebook has is that they do not allow Google to index their internal pages.

Facebook was onboard with Google's new Friend Connect - until they looked a little closer at how the technology works. Then they suspended Google's access to Facebook. On the Facebook Developer's blog post " Thoughts on Privacy " it says: We've found that it [ Google Friend Connect] redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge,

Facebook was onboard with Google's new Friend Connect - until they looked a little closer at how the technology works. Then they suspended Google's access to Facebook. On the Facebook Developer's blog post "Thoughts on Privacy" it says: "We've found that it [ Google Friend Connect] redistributes user information from Facebook to other developers without users' knowledge,

Sanford Wallace, aka "Spam King," or "Spamford" - a notorious spam king - is finally paying for all that spam. Wallace is president of Cyber Promotions and now he and his partner have the distinction of getting one of largest anti-spam judgments. The court has ruled that they owe MySpace about $230 million in damages. U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles ruled in MySpace's favor Monday.

First MySpace announced data portability , then Facebook announced Connect , and now Google has Friend Connect. Each is making it easier to share profile information from one social networking site to other web sites )and hoping to be place you go to do that(. Google's Friend Connect was announced today. To add social networking features to any web site, you can get code from Google )although, unfortunately,

Facebook is borrowing $100 million to accommodate growth on the site. The money, from venture loan firm TriplePoint, brings the amount raised to around $350 million. The site has grown quickly and needs around 50,000 more servers to handle the load. Facebook has over 70 million active users and around 109 million monthly visitors. According to Business Week, Google and Microsoft need a lot of server space. Google has at least a million servers and adds 500,000 per year.

Yesterday MySpace announced that you can use your MySpace profile on other sites . Not to be outdone, today Facebook announced their version. It's called Facebook Connect and it's a good sign that data portability is catching on. Especially because Facebook usually doesn't follow suit when it comes to sharing data )unless it's for advertising(. Facebook Connect was announced on the company's developer blog.

Each time you sign up for a new site you create a profile which is unique to that site. You've got to upload a picture and fill everything out. It's a pain to keep up with it all, which is why I haven't yet added my picture to my Digg or LinkedIn profile. MySpace has launched the Data Availability initiative which can make MySpace your home base for profiles.