AOL's gaffe--releasing 660,000 of its users search data--overshadows the facts. The company was bringing that data to researchers so they could disseminate more information about users online activity to help advertisers reach them effectively. But now, that data is "sitting there, in cold storage," says Professor Jon Kleinberg, a professor of computer science at Cornell. "The number of things it reveals about individual people seems much too much. In general, you don't want to do research on tainted data." It would have been one of the few times user data has been released to academic researchers, as opposed to corporate …

AOL's massive privacy leak begs the question: what do Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN know about you? The San Jose Mercury News scans the privacy policies of the big four, revealing "as much exposure as protection" for their respective users. All the information these companies collect comes from three main sources: IP address, registration and cookies. Information collected can and would be used against you if legal adversaries or government investigators needed it. However, the risk that an AOL-like data spill would happen again is small. Even so, the Silicon Valley paper had many questions, like: how long is the …

Sony Pictures Entertainment is the latest traditional media company to make the crossover to new media. And it's about time. The production studio just completed a $65 million takeover of Grouper, a Web startup that specializes in user-generated video. Grouper has about 8 million users, up from 1 million in March. Its video-sharing technology allows users to post Grouper-created videos on social networking sites, like MySpace or Friendster. Sony Pictures execs say the video-sharing technology will help the studio distribute and promote its films and TV programs over the Web. But Grouper is no YouTube. It has only a fraction …

After losing out to Google in its bid to land a partnership with News Corp.'s MySpace, Microsoft is announcing a deal today with Facebook Inc., owners of the No. 2 social network on the Web. Under the deal, Microsoft will use adCenter to sell and deliver ads for Facebook. The three-year agreement sees Microsoft first providing banner ads on the site, then adding ads tied to Microsoft's Internet search service. The deal could help Microsoft regain ground it's been losing to Google. Google beat out Microsoft earlier this year for both AOL and News Corp.'s signature in search distribution. Its …

YouTube throws ad packages at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. The viral video site's latest move is to sell advertiser videos on the home page and special advertiser-created pages. Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. records will be the first to roll out the ad pages with a video promotion for Paris Hilton's new music album, released today. In a bizarre twist, the Warner Bros. page also contains advertising real estate, as Time Warner competitor News Corp. will pay to advertise its "Prison Break" TV series on Hilton's page. YouTube and Warner Bros. will share ad revenue. …

We've been talking about the massive marketing opportunity that blogs and RSS feeds provide. Yet two years in, both remain on the fringes of high-tech usage. According to JupiterResearch, just 7 percent of Americans write blogs, while 22 percent read them. Meanwhile, a separate study from WorkPlace Print Media says that 88 percent of Americans have no idea what RSS is. These formats were supposed to change the way consumers hold conversations about brands, but recent data from word-of-mouth specialists Keller Fay reminds us that the vast majority of brand conversations take place offline--92 percent, in fact, more than the …

Business travelers have probably had the experience of logging into their email or checking sensitive company information at an airport before casually wondering, "Is this safe?" Good question. The meandering world of Wi-Fi hotspots is replete with potential security hazards, especially in public places like airports. Then again, the whole world is filled with potential security hazards; you could (and some do) drive yourself crazy trying avoid them. Analysts who spoke with The New York Times urge employers and business travelers to consider a few things when in transit. Here's the worst-case scenario: "Someone may have some software on their …

Somehow, someway, Friendster, the Web's one-time dominant social network, has secured additional funding to keep it going. Three years ago, Friendster was at the forefront of the exciting new online revolution in networking, and now it ranks 34th among social networks, according to traffic measurement firm Hitwise. It has been succeeded by MySpace, the undisputed leader in the space; Facebook, the yearbook-like high school and college social network; and London-based Bebo. MySpace commands 51 percent of the traffic among social networks, according to Hitwise, 10 times more than No. 2-ranked Facebook, which has recorded 4.7 percent of recent visits to …

Gawker Media is famous for irreverent celebrity humor, "snarky" social commentary and perpetuating New York City elitism, among other things. But the new redesign of its properties' layouts is the stuff that "should be taught in business school," writes BusinessWeek. Why? Because the move should help their advertisers receive more attention. Banner ads that were once on the right have been moved to the left, which surveys will tell you is the first place the eyes pour over when checking out a Web page for the first time. There are four positions from which to view Gawker. Essentially, these boil …

A new report says pharmaceutical companies, more in tune with the power of the Internet than marketers in other categories, will increase online spending by about 25 percentthis year, to $780 million. The report, from eMarketer, says that online spending will rise to $1.3 billion by 2008. The gain is being attributed to marketers' shift from consumer mass marketing to more targeted opportunities online and by federal regulatory crackdowns on drug ads. Plus, 31.6 million Americans now turn to the Web first for health-care information. "The result is a shift in focus from direct-to-consumer to direct-to-patient, from mass marketing to …