Here's for an original name - SocialMedia Networks - which is a new ad network for - yes, social media sites. People spend a lot of time on social networks and they tend to be younger and quite Internet savvy. However, they are a fickle group who don't like overt marketing messages. SocialMedia Networks says they're the first ad network to focus 100 percent on social media. They have over three billion ad impressions to more than 15 million unique visitors per month.

It started with Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron putting his Twitter account up for auction on eBay . He had 1,500 followers then and at last check he's at 1,757. The auction was bid up to over $1200 before he ended the auction ) about as many followers as our own Andy Beal has (. eBay called him to ask him to delete the auction, but later said it wasn't against their terms of service. Didn't matter anyway - he deleted the auction before it ended.

Two years ago Google acquired Urchin web analytics and made it free. They renamed it Google Analytics and it's now the most popular hosted analytics. Google Analytics is hosted by Google and you access your account online. Today at ad:tech in San Francisco, Google Analytics announced a free download of Urchin software. The software is a standalone version that you can host on your own server )and if you're paranoid about Google having access to your data,

Last week they were suing each other, this week they're signing a big advertising deal. Time Warner owned AOL has signed an exclusive online advertising deal with Verizon . AOL will manage the account through their advertising subsidiary, Platform-A Advertising. Verizon will use Platform-A's sales force and for the bulk of their online and mobile phone advertising. The deal includes managing Verizon's display and mobile advertising network.

At the end of February Yahoo! Search Marketing announced that minimum bid prices for ads would not be set . Instead the minimum price you pay for each click would be based on value and quality. The change was phased in gradually but as early as next week it will be permanent for all US advertisers. That means the automatic 10¢ minimum bid will be discontinued. Minimum bids will vary rather than be set. Instead higher quality ads will start paying less per click.

Multiple platform instant messaging web service Meebo has hired Carter Brokaw as their Chief Revenue Officer. Meebo launched in September 2005 with investment from Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Meebo has been popular because it can let people chat online, in most cases even if a firewall would block IM. Translation - you might be able IM on your college network or at work. Meebo has focused on raising revenues and capital. First, they looked for a buyer,

comScore reports that more people are searching for auto insurance quotes online . It also looks like people are more influenced by paid search than natural search results. The queries for auto insurance quotes were up more than 35% in 2007. There were nearly 9 million search-referred auto insurance quotes made in 2007. More than one-quarter of were made through a search engine. The overall growth for online auto insurance queries increased only 15%.

Web directories, especially high quality ones, are coveted links for search engine marketers. The holy grail is a link on DMOZ , but it's pretty much unreachable. I know of someone who took great lengths to become an editor so he could get his site included. A few months later he resigned in frustration. DMOZ is known to be backlogged and highly political. You stand more chance of getting a link on Wikipedia. Now web directory Best of the Web )BOTW.

Facebook's 67 million users can now instant message each other - or at least some of us can. The new feature is being integrated gradually. The IM service is an in-browser client, and you can chat with your Facebook friends that are logged in. So far it doesn't support external IM services, like Yahoo or MSN Messenger. The way the launched IM reminds me of how my college grounds department cut down trees on campus - on the weekend. Why?

The Internet is about speed and innovation and it feeds a culture of impatience. We don't like to wait. Not for a page to load or even for another page of search results . What makes Google unique then, is their insistence on looking long term in such an uncertain and dynamic online world. First start with the founders - who've each pledged to be at Google at least 20 years .

Real estate site Zillow is empowering people once again. They've added a news service to complement their property valuations - mortgage rate quotes. Their Mortgage Marketplace connects lenders and people shopping for a mortgage or refinance. Here's how Zillow 's Mortgage Marketplace works: You anonymously submit a request for a loan, along with other details like your credit, amount needed, value of property, etc.

When Google decided to buy DoubleClick, it sent some shock through the search marketing industry. DoubleClick has owned Performics , the third largest affiliate network, since 2004. Performics not only provided affiliate marketing services, but also search-engine marketing )SEM( and search-engine optimization )SEO( services. Suddenly it looked like agencies would be competing against Google - a serious conflict of interest.

Amazon.com has a new service - you can compare prices and buy things by text message . It's called TextBuyIt. You text the name of a product, its description, its UPC or ISBN to the number 262966, which spells "Amazon." You can compare prices while you're in a store and if you like what you see, you enter your email address tied to your Amazon account, and the zip code you want it sent to. You'll get a call that takes you through the rest of the transaction.

Yesterday was Mozilla's 10th birthday . Ten years ago Mozilla was launched and they made their source code available to the public. Mozilla is most popular for their web browser Firefox, which is favored by most internet marketers for their excellent plugins. They also offer the email program Thunderbird and bug tracking program Bugzilla. Mozilla started out as a codename for the Netscape Navigator web browser.

There's Glam Media, iVillage, DivineCaroline, and now Shine. It's Yahoo's new site, newly launched today. They are trying to reach women ages 25 to 54. Yahoo says already 40 million women in that age range visiting Yahoo! each month. Though they pass it off as trying to help women navigate their careers and life , it's probably more about advertising. This is a group that advertisers are clamoring to reach. This is Yahoo's first site for a single demographic.

More bad news news about the economy and the newspaper industry. This is a particularly disturbing headline, especially if you're in the newspaper industry. Plus, it's an industry I'm fond of. Yes, that's right - newspapers have had the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years . The Newspaper Association of America )NAA(, shows that total print advertising revenue fell 9.4% in 2007 compared to 2006. It now stands at $42 billion.

Want to learn more about your YouTube videos? Like who's watching, where they live, and how many people are watching your videos? YouTube released YouTube Insight, a free video analytics tool . You can learn: how many people have viewed your video what day of the week you get the most views where people live who are watching your video insight into popularity of your video This is a long-awaited and welcomed addition to YouTube.

Google beta tested AdWords based on demographics this January, and now they've added demographic bidding as a feature for all advertisers. You can bid by age group, gender, or combinations of those groups. It will work on contextual or placement targeting and with both CPC and CPM bidding. With the feature you can reach specific groups on sites like MySpace and Friendster. You can also restrict who sees your ads so you can exclude groups that don't convert well.

Two related stories today - one that Yahoo has joined Google's OpenSocial . Yahoo seems to be in a collaborative mood lately ) except with Microsoft (. Yahoo has also joined the OpenSocial Foundation )links to Yahoo's press release(. The foundation includes Google, Yahoo, and MySpace.com. OpenSocial Foundation is a nonprofit organization to promote a universal standard for applications on social-networking sites.

The World Wildlife Fund )WWF( has a program called NEWtrees . You can donate a tree and watch it grow on Google Earth. When you buy a tree for $5.50, it will be planted in a rainforest in Sebangau National Forest in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. They not only plant the tree for you but you get to watch it grow. You'll also get a Google Earth KML with the coordinates of your tree. As Google Earth gets update with higher resolution satellite and aerial images,