High-powered Web media executives have a tendency to jump around like mosquitoes, moving from one Next Best Thing to another. For Google's YouTube, CFO Gideon Yu's decision to crossover to Facebook, may be a sign of the times. Facebook is where the Web's best minds want to be, not YouTube or News Corp.'s MySpace--yesterday's Web 2.0 darlings. Yu will take the place of Mike Sheridan, the company's current CFO, who did not disclose his reasons for leaving. Yu's appointment underscores social network's emergence as a major player in the Web industry. In many ways, Facebook has expanded the …

After laying in rival Sony's shadow for more than a decade, Nintendo has officially gotten its groove back: The Japanese video game giant posted a fivefold increase in second-quarter earnings yesterday, thanks to strong sales from its Wii console and portable DS gaming systems. Net income was $667 million for the quarter on total sales of $2.83 billion; the company also raised its profit forecast for the year to $2.04 billion. After just eight months, Nintendo's Wii, with its innovative motion-sensitive controller, is surging to the top of the next-generation video game sales charts. It will soon surpass Microsoft's …

Apple shares fell 6 percent Tuesday after partner AT&T reported fewer iPhone activations than some Wall Street analysts anticipated. In the wake of the media frenzy surrounding the high-priced smart phone, some analysts predicted between 500,000 and 700,000 activations in the day and a half between the quarter's end and the iPhone's introduction. Instead, Apple and AT&T delivered 146,000. That report sent Apple shares down $8.81 to $134.89, while shares of iPhone carrier AT&T fell 35 cents to close at $39.68. That's right folks, Apple's second-quarter fortunes have already taken on a day and a half worth of iPhone …

MediaPost is blogging the Behavioral Marketing Forum. Check back all day for continued coverage of the AOL/Tacoda deal and other behavioral marketing issues from MediaPost's Behavioral Marketing Forum in New York.

The so-called YouTube election firmly stamped its place in history Monday night as Democratic presidential hopefuls answered users' questions in the first YouTube Video Debate, moderated by CNN's Anderson Cooper. Many reports say that the biggest winner last night was the Internet; CNET in particular said "the video questions posed in Monday's Democratic debate were more personal and more direct than the circumlocutions that political journalists tend to prefer..." Which isn't to say the politicians' answers were any better than usual: Each of the candidates managed to issue sweeping pronouncements without answering questions they either had no answer for, …

Another one bites the dust: Amp'd, the mobile virtual network operator aimed at teens and 20somethings, is expected to shut down its wireless phone service in the U.S. at the end of the month, despite receiving a one-week reprieve by creditor Verizon Wireless to sell off its remaining assets in Japan and Canada. The Walt Disney Company's MVNO, ESPN Mobile, met a similar fate last year. It's a tough business: MVNOs target niche audiences by offering premium content through media partnerships. However, Amp'd and others don't own wireless spectrum, requiring them to license from Verizon and AT&T. When …

Here's a piece of big news that just about everyone missed: Facebook is on the block, and they want just $10 billion. Any takers? Google, Microsoft (it's too expensive now for Yahoo)? The hint came from a report in The Deal last week where PayPal co-founder and Facebook director/major investor ($500K) Peter Thiel discussed the possibility of a merger. Thiel basically said that neither an acquisition or an IPO were in the immediate cards: "If we have a fully developed revenue model, it would be much easier to value [Facebook ... but we're very, very far from that …

Time Warner's AOL, conspicuous by its lack of participation in the recent ad network feeding frenzy among the Internet's giants, has acquired New York-based Tacoda. The move follows Google's $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick, Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive for $6 billion, Yahoo's purchase of the rest of Right Media for $680 million, and WPP Group's addition of 24/7 Real Media for $649 million. Tacoda, which operates a network selling behavior-based audience segments, will reportedly go to AOL for between $200 million and $300 million. This could be a very significant move for the behavioral targeting industry as privacy concerns …

New year-over-year video game figures revealed that the industry continues to follow a cycle of rejuvenation every five years as hardware makers introduce new consoles and software. Industry sales, boosted by the introduction of two new systems from Sony and Nintendo, rose 31% from last June, according to researcher NPD Group. Sales were expected to climb, but some analysts were concerned about the demand for consoles, given the resurgence of PC software and the surging popularity online gaming. However, console sales drove the industry's year-to-year rise, which is expected to continue as game makers unveil new software and online …

It's been two years since Apple added podcasts to its list of offerings through its iTunes Music Store, yet "podcasting" still receives quotations in media reports. That's because the practice, which refers to the distribution of audio, video or other files through an XML feed (thus making it easily transmittable to an iPod or other portable media device), hasn't caught on with mainstream Web users. It follows that most podcasters don't make much money from the Web syndication format, and since consumers have shown an unwillingness to pay, advertising has become the de facto moneymaking scheme. Part of …