Facebook "could not be doing better financially," COO Sheryl Sandberg asserts in an interview with Bloomberg News, and the social networking giant does not need to raise money, either. "We absolutely do not need to take money," she said. "We might take money -- but it doesn't mean we need to." Facebook might not be reeling financially, but it is trying to expand amid the worst market for Internet advertising since the dot com bust, notes Bloomberg's Brian Womack. Sandberg admits that Facebook was "nervous" following the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year, but now she says the company is …

Twitter's phenomenal growth has been well documented, but its month-over-month audience retention rate is a mere 40%, says Nielsen Online, meaning that more than 60% of its users fail to return the following month. By comparison, Facebook and MySpace have retention rates of nearly 70%. "Twitter has enjoyed a nice ride over the last few months, but it will not be able to sustain its meteoric rise without establishing a higher level of user loyalty," David Martin, Nielsen Online's vice president for primary research, said in a blog post. "Let there be no doubt: Twitter has grown exponentially in the …

Will MySpace's management restructuring work? More pointedly, "with no buzz factor, low scores for 'user trust' in online surveys and a reputation as a hangout for disaffected teenagers, is MySpace still viable as a broad-based, come-one-come-all social network?" asks The Wrap's Maria Russo. Several bloggers are already writing dirges for the News Corp. site. "The more cynical among us are already comparing MySpace to soon-to-disappear GeoCities," VentureBeat's Eric Eldon said last week, following the news that Yahoo would scrap GeoCities, which it bought for around $3 billion in 1999. The appointment of former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta as …

In an interview at the 4A's annual leadership conference, Tim Armstrong discussed the many challenges he faces as the new CEO of AOL. Since taking over as CEO, Armstrong has launched a review of the company's vast array of brands, making no promises about the long-term survival of any of AOL's current offerings, including its MediaGlow publishing division and Platform A advertising platform. "The understanding of the value of brands at AOL has gotten a little gray over time," Armstrong said. "There are cases where we have tens of millions of people touching a brand every day," but people inside …

Ad revenue at AOL fell a "startling" 20% in the first quarter, notes Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget, although operating profit of $255 million was "impressive considering the wrenching changes AOL has gone through in the past five years." Blodget added that it's especially impressive considering how much money Microsoft is still losing in its Internet division. Even so, $255 million is only about half of what AOL was earning a few years ago. Of course, the advertising collapse is most of the reason why former President Randy Falco and COO Ron Grant were replaced by new Chairman and CEO …

Bad news for Google: the video advertising market isn't going to grow as fast as previously forecast, and most of the growth will be fueled by traditional players like ESPN.com, Hulu, and CNN.com, according to a new report from Magna, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies Inc.'s Mediabrands division. Advertisers are expected to spend $699 million on online video in 2009, up 32% from the $531 million spent last year, as reported in Online Media Daily. Brian Wieser, Magna's global director of forecasting, said that while video advertising will likely outpace growth rates for other online ad formats, …

Time Warner may be preparing to tell investors as early as tomorrow that it's close to spinning off AOL, enabling the media giant to focus on its films and cable TV assets. As recently as February, CEO Jeffrey Bewkes said spinning off all or part of the Web unit was one option. AOL's fate will certainly be a focus of Time Warner's earnings call Tuesday. Michael Morris, an analyst at UBS AG believes AOL could be a separate company as soon as six months from now. "A very important piece of the investment thesis is the ability to excel …

Facebook on Monday opened up massive parts of its site to third party developers, a move that effectively allows other sites to let users post updates, share pictures and links, and interact with Facebook without ever visiting Facebook.com. "Apparently, the company is prepared to lose gobs of traffic and, in turn, revenue from display ads on the site," notes BusinessWeek's Douglas MacMillan. Software developers are now likely to build thousands of different Web sites, desktop clients and mobile apps using the new Facebook Open Stream API. "You're going to see people creating a lot of different means of interacting with …