The week in review

Those who might assume that Gmail is the e-mail leader would be wrong – Hotmail remains in the lead with 343 million users. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t in need of some major upgrades. Well, Microsoft finally answered with some solid new features for Hotmail. (Mashable, NYTimes.com)

How Does Facebook Make Money?

Facebook is making serious dough, but how? Self-service ads, engagement ads and Facebook Gifts have a lot to do with it. (Business Insider)

Black to White

Black hat SEO is terrible, but there are white-hat approaches to those techniques. For instance, instead of making massive content submissions, focus on churning out high-quality articles about relevant topics and disseminate them via solid outlets. (Search Engine Journal)

Yahoo! Slaps AOL With Associated Content

Yahoo! responded to AOL’s acquisition of Seed.com by scooping up Associated Content for about $90 million. “This is really about our commitment to providing high-quality content that is relevant to users and also advertisers,” said a Yahoo! official. (AllThingsD.com)

Simpler Privacy Settings for Facebook?

Facebook might actually be lending an ear to the masses that are upset about its convoluted privacy settings. The company’s new public privacy official said that the company will “work on that.” (VentureBeat)

Facebook ‘0’

Facebook is eyeing further world domination with 0 (“zero”), which will be unveiled in various countries across the globe. The low-bandwidth mobile site will be free of carrier charges (so long as users don’t look at photos) and will enable users to access the basic functionalities of the social network. (VentureBeat)

E-Mail Marketers Must Help Lead the Recovery

E-mail marketers will need some innovation if they want to help fuel the recovery this year. They’ll need to give customers control, rely on more advanced metrics and renew their focus on acquisition, among other things. (MediaPost)

YouTube Turns 5

Here’s a nice look at how YouTube has matured in its five years of existence. Chad Hurley also shares a few words about Chatroulette. (NYTimes.com)

New York Times to Go Paywall

The Gray Lady is set to put up a paywall “toward the latter part of the year.” The paywall will kick in once non-print subscribers hit a certain number of page views, starting in January 2011. (Business Insider)

$400,000 a Month = Lame

Making $400,000 per month in sales is sweet, right? Well, not if you’re paying $395,000 in advertising to achieve that figure. This is where the typical affiliate mentality falls way short. Yes, flashy sales figures might get you to the Playboy Mansion, but it might not even get you out of your parents’ home. Here’s a quick economics lesson to help clarify this notion. (Mr. Green)

What Matters When Buying a Gaming Console?

According to a recent survey conducted by The Nielsen Company, the majority of those interested in buying a PlayStation 3 pointed to Blu-ray capabilities, recent price reductions, the library of available games and a desire to upgrade from a PS2 as motivating factors. Near the bottom of the list were intentions to buy a specific game and offers that bundle PS3 with an HDTV. (Nielsen)

Reclaim Your Privacy

There’s been a good deal of buzz lately about ReclaimPrivacy.org, which “allows users to view and revise key privacy settings from a streamlined dashboard on their Facebook home pages.” The question is, why isn’t this being made available by Facebook? (MediaPost)

Mobile Payments: $633 Billion by 2014

According to a recent report, the global market for mobile payments will balloon to $633.4 billion by 2014. In 2009, this figure was $68.7 billion. The number of mobile-payment users will grow 600 percent from 81.3 million last year to 490 million in 2014. A managing director at an early entrant into the realm of mobile payments says the next stop will be big reductions in carrier fees, which are around 40-50 percent today. (GigaOM)

LimeWire is Finished

Thanks to a recent legal victory for the RIAA, LimeWire’s days are numbered. This isn’t bad news just for LimeWire – it’s a dark cloud that hovers over distribution technologies as a whole, which are weighed down by these premature shutdowns. “When these technologies are in their infancy you see a lot more infringement, but as they mature they may be able to be put to good use.” (CNET)

Startups Shouldn’t Hire PR Agencies

Too many startups waste money with PR agencies, especially if they’re in the early stages of development. For those that think that buzz is required to raise capital: “I do know that I’m not sure I would want money from someone who could not see through the ruse of manufactured buzz.” (Business Insider)

Diaspora Has a Major Flaw

While the sentiment behind Diaspora is commended, there’s a fundamental flaw in its plan, which is far too complex. “Disapora* has the right drive, but the wrong vision.” (The Next Web)

Google’s New Privacy Issue

Google admitted to its latest privacy mishap, which involved Street View’s software picking up snippets of data that was transferred over nonpassword protected Wi-Fi networks that were passed by. (NYTimes.com)

Facebook: The New Google for Display Ads?

Facebook seems to be making serious progress in the display-ad arena. Many expect the social network to soon unveil an off-property ad network for display ads, much like AdSense is for text ads. Facebook’s Like button is part of this grand scheme. (Business Insider)

Diaspora Project and Crowdsourced Microfunding

The Diaspora Project is getting a good deal of buzz lately, but Kickstarter, the platform that enabled the initiative to get crowdsourced funding, probably deserves more attention. (ReadWriteWeb)

Internet Advertising: $5.9 Billion in Q1

According to the IAB, Internet advertising revenues reached $5.9 billion in the first quarter of 2010, up 7.5 percent from the same period last year. (IAB.net)

Consumers Want a Tablet/E-Reader – But Only if it’s $200

According to a survey, 49 percent of consumers around the world who know about tablets and e-readers plan on buying one in the next three years. However, American consumers said they’d only spend $200 on whatever they purchased. (VentureBeat)

Mike Arrington vs. Fortune

Mike Arrington’s latest public spat is an entertaining one. It involves a book about Facebook, a PR department that can’t spell and differing views on the value of links. (TechCrunch)

Facebook Bolsters Login Security

Well, it’s a start. Facebook made life a little more difficult for phishers, hackers and scammers by bulking up its login security features. (ReadWriteWeb)

Dear Mark Zuckerberg…

Robert Scoble has written an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, which includes some things he would do in the young man’s position. Among the suggestions is using video to clarify what Facebook is. (Scobleizer)

Adieu, Ask Blogsearch

Here’s one man’s formal farewell to his favorite blog search engine: Ask Blogsearch. While not many others might even blink an eye at this event, they should, because it was a great product. Ask pulled the plug on it because of low usage and preparation efforts for the search engine’s Q-and-A strategy this fall. (ReadWriteWeb)

Should Entrepreneurs Have MBAs?

Armed with a nice little diagram, this post discusses a question that pokes at more than a few minds. The key here is the shift in needed skills during the shift from scalable startup, to transition, to company. Instead of asking if one should get an MBA, maybe the better question is “Which part of a company’s lifecycle do you think you want to spend the rest of your career in?” (VentureBeat)

6 Tactics to Get Important People to Reply to Your E-Mails

Important people tend to get tons of e-mail, so it takes some skill to get them to respond to you. Opening with a compelling subject line, introducing yourself in one sentence and doing your homework is a good start. (Copyblogger)

AOL’s New Homepage

Here’s a look at AOL’s new homepage. “Pretty handsome,” says this writer. (Business Insider)

E-Mail is Toxic

E-mail is a necessary pain. Here are six issues with e-mail that are difficult to deal with. It may be time to echo this writer’s sentiments that we’ll never be black belts in e-mail. (Both Sides of the Table)

Chatroulette Marketing Works

Travelocity and its traveling gnome seems to have had some pretty successful results from its marketing adventure on Chatroulette, including 350,000 impressions and 400 conversations with chat specialists. Of course, this begs the question of whether or not Chatroulette can be a viable marketing option for others. (ReadWriteWeb)

Facebook to Discuss Privacy

In light of all the public heat it’s taken over its privacy misdeeds, Facebook has called for an all-hands meeting on Thursday at 4 p.m. PDT. (All Facebook)

Google vs. Microsoft: The Office 2010 Edition

This post offers a neat little overview of the Google vs. Microsoft battle, which, despite other topics of keen interest, remains one of the more interesting scuffles on the Web and desktops across the globe. It takes one some new sparkle in the afterglow of Microsoft’s announcement of Office 2010. (NYTimes.com)