We often talk about "the bar" when we talk about barriers to entry into a certain space. For example, you might say "Google has set the bar very high for any new search engine competitors." I'm mostly interested in how low the bar is to get online in the sense of publishing.

A curtain has been ripped away - and everyone wants a peek. The day Facebook opened its social graph to marketers, unveiling Facebook Ads, it sent a longed-for invitation to view and use its signature high-contrast, ultra-detailed online grid of interlocking social networks.

Last June, mysterious posts began appearing on forums frequented by gamers. They seemed to come from an artificial intelligence, and each was accompanied by a logo of unknown origin.

The M&A game looked like an especially manic round of Hungry, Hungry Hippos in 2007. A good deal of time and money was spent shoring up digital core competencies. More than 141 digital properties were acquired in the first three-quarters last year.

If the idea of eco-friendly home décor conjures images of hemp macramé wall hangings, it's time to refresh your browser. Stylish furniture, home accents and appliances that are environmentally sound are being marketed online to consumers who want to create inviting homes while minimizing their carbon footprints. 

Remember back in the day when people had pagers? If the thing kept beeping every two minutes, friends would say, "You're blowing up." Maybe that went out with bottle service and Paris Hilton's chastity, but, in the parlance of those times, mobile is about to blow up.

A round the Yahoo cubicle farm, Reggie Davis is known as a gentle giant - he's over six feet tall and 200-plus pounds - because when he's not battling bad actors on the Yahoo networks, he's known to be a pretty nice guy.

How do you engage your audience and make them feel like they have to watch your TV series because they've got something at stake? Let them step into the shoes of your main character. That's the strategy that media marketing agency Fanscape of Los Angeles employed when it came up with the idea of the Bionic Assessment Test, bat-test.com, to promote NBC's updated version of "Bionic Woman."

Writing about social networking feels so last year. Millions of people spend millions of hours connecting online. The leading sites are now worth billions and are open to advertisers. This social graph tsunami destroys current online advertising models as consumers spend more time socializing or creating their own content and less time on content sites with traditional brand advertising.

There are easier ways to test a free ad-supported Wi-Fi service than lighting up 20 city blocks of midtown Manhattan. "The population density is immense and the challenge of the skyscrapers is very large," admits Cyriac Roeding, executive vice president of CBS Mobile. But in late November, CBS' billboards and New York City Transit signage at subway entrances in midtown started transmitting free Wi-Fi signals. In a six-month pilot project, CBS will test a range of content and marketing ideas to see if the model might scale to transform a massive worldwide billboard presence into a sponsored hot-zone business. "The …