Zuckerberg has said that social advertising will evolve significantly over the next 10-20 years. Beacon "was our first cut at a protocol to [evolve social advertising]." People communicate and stay connected over a social network by sharing information, he says, which means, "the business model should be around people sharing information and staying connected." He seems to be saying that people should be advertising to one another, because recommending products is something they do naturally, anyway. While that's true, word-of-mouth marketing is something consumers pass around on their volition. Beacon didn't allow for that. …

Hulu, the online video venture from News Corp. and NBC Universal, is finally ready to come out of beta. Just in time for its Wednesday launch, Hulu today is announcing the addition of Warner Bros. and Lionsgate. CEO Jason Kilar says 5 million people have viewed Hulu videos in the past month, an impressive figure given that the service has been in a closed beta test. Impressive figure, impressive product, but Hulu is still "screwed." Why? Hulu looks great and all-and it's also easy to use, but it's still too dependent on a handful of content …

Bulldogs on skateboards, kittens falling asleep, the lip-synching masses, it's all so very 2006--at least, as far as Silicon Valley VCs are concerned. The Cult of the Amatuer is losing steam, as the same entrepreneurs that once funded Web 2.0 startups are now shifting their focus back to the expert. Why? The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. Sites like Wikipedia and Craigsist are still brought to task for the stuff they get wrong: the inaccuracies, the scams and fraud. For example, ever wonder who edits Wikipedia pages? Last summer, researchers in …

A new study from comScore and The New York Times attempts for the first time to estimate how much consumer data is transmitted to Internet companies. It finds that the five largest Web firms -- Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, AOL and MySpace -- record at least 336 billion transmission events in a month, not counting their ad networks. "When you start to get into the details, it's scarier than you might suspect," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of privacy group the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "We're recording preferences, hopes, worries and fears." But that's almost exactly the …

Phorm wants to use your clickstream data to serve you ads. The company plans to track everything users do on the Web by striking deals with their ISP. Its technology then segments users into "channels" interpreted by the Web sites they visit, the content of the pages they consume, and the search terms they use. These channels would be sold to advertisers that need targeting informatiion. Users might not be so grateful. Phorm, which has secured deals with British ISPs BT, Talk Talk and Virgin Media, claims there's a win-win involved for everyone: ISPs can add ad …

Microsoft is fighting on three fronts: consumer, enterprise and developer. On the consumer front, blogger Alistair Croll says Microsoft is "struggling", facing intense competition from Apple's desktops and devices, Google's advertising prowess and Nintendo and Sony's video game consoles. On the whole, the company's response to these threats has been disappointing: says Croll: "Windows Mobile isn't a consumer handset like the iPhone. Live hasn't really taken off. Vista flopped, with the company embroiled in claims that it overstated the number of machines on which it would run. And the Xbox, despite its success, has an alarmingly high recall …

BoomTown's Kara Swisher talks to incoming Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who just left her job as Google's vice president of global online sales and pperations. After coming back from maternity at the end of last year, Sandberg saw that David Fischer had been doing a great job managing the online sales team in her stead, prompting her decision. "I was seeking a new challenge either internally or externally after six years at Google building the online sales team," she said. That was when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met Sandberg. "Philosophical discussions" soon gave way to dinners, which soon …

Later this month, Google will begin weighing new factors in determining its search Quality Scores, which influence the placement and pricing of ads on across Google's vast network. Excessively large Web pages, or Web pages served by slow servers will cost more to advertise. Also, ads leading to landing pages that take a long time to load will perform worse than ads linked to easier-to-load pages. In a blog post, a Google AdWords team member explained the changes. "Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers and other things that can increase load times only keep users …