It's no secret that Yahoo's flagging display business could use a shot in the arm, and SmartAds, introduced a month ago, could be the ticket. The tactic, introduced a month ago, offers advertisers a combination of personalized and behaviorally targeted ads. Because finely targeted ads command a higher premium from advertisers, the new format could be a boon for Yahoo. But the the tactic could be an even greater success for the company's other display ventures, the newly acquired ad exchange Right Media, and its partnership sites like eBay. David Karnstedt, Yahoo's head of North American ad sales, confirmed …

If you watch stocks, then you've probably heard a lot about the initial public offering of VMware, the most hyped tech IPO since Google in 2004. The virtualization software company went public at $29 per share, but opened Tuesday at $52 before closing Wednesday at $57.71--a near 100 percent surge. Expenses aside, VMware walked away with $957 million from its first day of trading, the largest opening for a technology stock since Google raised $1.2 billion in '04. What's so special about this company? VMware is a leader in the breakthrough market known as virtualization software, programs …

In the second quarter, the Web's big four, Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN-eMarketer expects to make up more than two-thirds of online advertising in 2007, which saw a collective ad revenue increase of $1.3 billion or 42 percent in the second quarter of this year. Meanwhile, ad revenue at the 15 biggest traditional media companies shrank 3 percent over the same time period, a loss of $280 million. The result: among the 19 companies, online's share of the total pie grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion, or from 23 to 30 percent, while the traditional companies saw …

Traditional media firms have gone Web hunting again. In the past month, Hearst purchased the social shopping site Kaboodle and The New York Times Co. reeled in bookmarking startup Clipmarks and the Freakonomics blog. Earlier in the year, Discovery Communications bought the eco-blog TreeHugger, and CBS Interactive added Last.fm and the finance video blog Wallstrip. Indeed, to his surprise, Manish Chandra, the founder of Kaboodle, said, "We were in discussions with multiple media companies and not really that much with tech companies for some reason." Does that mean Chandra doesn't have faith in his site's new owners? Hearst, …

The Wall Street Journal asks two experts -- Professor Thomas Eisenmann, a Harvard Business School Associate, and Gary Hamel, a management consultant -- to assess one of the great Google debates: "Is Google rewriting the rules of good management? Or is it just enjoying the rewards of a single well-timed breakthrough?" Hamel has published a book on this subject, while Eisenmann debates the issue on a regular basis in class. For Hamel, Google's innovations go beyond its ingenuous search algorithm; he says its general management principle of decentralized, self-managing teams fosters the kind of innovation that's helped …

Municipal Wi-Fi, once hyped as the coolest new way to get Internet access on the cheap, is in trouble. Hundreds of citywide projects have been announced in the last few years, but the one with the highest profile, the one San Francisco operated by Google and EarthLink, is in limbo. Contractual disputes, the high cost of building the networks, and the potentially low margins, have caused many operators to halt the building of municipal Wi-Fi networks in other areas, too, like Milwaukee and Philadelphia. In all, 415 U.S. cities and counties have jumped on the city Wi-Fi bandwagon, which …

"Everybody's doing it!" is oft-cited reason for why U.S. kids follow their peers. It also happens to be one of the big reasons so many European kids engage in Web piracy. A European Commission study surveyed two sets of young kids, 9-10 year-olds and 12-14 year-olds from each of the 27 EU member countries plus Norway (a hot bed of Web piracy) and Iceland. The vast majority of respondents said they knew downloading movies and video games from the Web for free is illegal, but are willing to justify it. The older group was found to be more …

Facebook has released a new iPhone-specific mobile site. Mashable calls it "stunning." The Facebook mobile site can be viewed at iphone.facebook.com, but if you aren't experiencing it on an iPhone, it really isn't much to look at. On the iPhone, however, critics unanimously agree the site is pretty amazing. Like the NetVibes iPhone site that launched on Tuesday, the site uses javascript, and owing to a defect in the iPhone, there's some lag in moving around the site. But this is the only black mark the site received; otherwise, navigation is seamless and the design is a perfect fit …

Stories about the Web's clogging infrastructure have always been around, but network operators have been able to avoid the problem by adding routers and other hardware, keeping the Web's backend running in line with demand. But once again, rumors of a clogging Internet are mounting. The latest concern stems from the proliferation of Web 2.0 sites and services. One minute of video, for example, can require 10 times the bandwidth of audio, or more. According to Cisco Systems, which manufactures networking hardware, American Web video sites transmit more data per month than the entire Web in 2000. …

Remember that cute someone you became fast Facebook friends with? Well, a new study says you should never underestimate a crook's capacity to upload fake photos and a fake profile to get a hold of your personal information. Sophos PLC says an astonishing 41% of Facebook users said they were willing to divulge phone numbers, email and home addresses to Facebook friends who were otherwise total strangers to them. The Sophos study is more of a case study in that the research group created a fake Facebook profile, "Freddi Staur", and invited 200 random users to become a …