Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) plans to introduce an online privacy bill that would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to promulgate do-not-track regulations. The Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011 would give the FTC the ability to enforce a do-not-track system with monetary penalties, audits and other measures. Additionally, the bill allows the FTC to create exceptions for "commonly accepted commercial practices."

Pushing into the virtual goods space, payments giant Visa has acquired Playspan, which powers e-commerce for hundreds of online games and virtual worlds, for $190 million. The move will give Visa a bigger piece of the digital goods market, which will grow from $1.6 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion in 2011, according to the Inside Virtual Goods report. Playspan's platform enables developers to offer in-app purchasing on Facebook and other sites using 85 global payment methods in 180 countries. Read more here.

Bubbli, a startup that's trying to change the way we use photos on mobile devices, has raised about $2 million, according to TechCrunch. Led by August Capital, Bubbli plans to use the investment to build out its technology platform before its debut at the famous TED conference in March. "It wants to use camera phones to create a new kind of photograph," according to TechCrunch. The startup says it wants to "bring the real world to the flat web," by capturing places instead of just a rectangular image. "It sounds like it could be a sort of panoramic photo, …

Determined to fend off threats from Google and Apple, eBay is reportedly ready to layout a comprehensive plan for the future of PayPal. On Thursday, "At a meeting with analysts, EBay will unveil its strategy for the mobile version of PayPal, the BillMeLater service and its open-platform effort, which lets outside programmers work with its software," reports Bloomberg Businessweek. EBay CEO John Donahoe is expected to discuss plans for the entire company, but focus mainly on the company's fastest growing business -- PayPal. According to eBay, the popular payment service is on track to eventually generate more revenue than …

For Ace Hardware, customer satisfaction isn't just a nice idea, it's the whole point. The secret, which results in its winning its category again in the 15th annual Brand Keys Loyalty Index, is knowing what makes it different than its competitors. While both Home Depot and Lowe's are much larger players in the DIY category, "we're very clear that our mission is home maintenance and repair, while they're about home improvement," Rich Neal, who is Ace's One-to-One Manager and oversees Ace Rewards (Ace's consumer loyalty program), tells Marketing Daily. "That's the real difference." The Oak Brook, Ill.-company, which …

Macy's says its 2010 Thanks For Sharing and Believe holiday campaigns raised a record $16.25 million for its national and local charities. Thanks For Sharing, now eight years old, charges a $25 one-time enrollment fee, which gives the cardholder the chance to earn up to 10% off purchases, raised $15 million, which it distributed to such groups as the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women movement, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and The Breast Cancer Research Foundation. And the Christmas-themed Believe effort, now in its third year, collected more than 1 million letters to Santa, raising $1.45 million.

Facebook is now letting self-serve advertisers publish a new sponsored stories ad format. There are two types of sponsored stories for Facebook page administrators: "Like Stories" and "Page Post Stories." "Both are definitely interesting and I'm sure page administrators will be split testing these types of ads for campaigns beginning immediately in an effort to decrease their fan acquisition costs," writes All Facebook's Nick O'Neill. The top social network is also now giving page administrators the ability to select which tab they'd like visitors to land on when they click on the ads. Incredibly, Facebook is charging advertisers to …

As it has vowed, can Google really curb "content farms" and the increasing amounts of useless content flooding the Web? Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis thinks so. "The one rule of working with Google is don't make them look stupid," he said during an "Ending The Content Arms Race" talk this week as reported by Search Engine Land. "If you make 'The Google' look stupid, they'll f- you up." Indeed, the head of Google's Web spam team Matt Cutts said last month that Google was looking at ways to prevent "shallow or low-quality content" from doing well in its search …

Total Web email usage was down 8% over the past year, with a staggering 59% decline in use among people between the ages of 12-17, according to a new comScore report. "Cue Matt Drudge-style alarm," writes TechCrunch. Usage was also down 1% among 18-24 year olds; 18% among 25-35 year olds; 8% among 35-44 year olds; and 12% among the 45-54 demographic. "Because oldsters are continuing to migrate online in droves, Web email use actually saw an uptick in the AARP-eligible sector, with 22% gains among 55-64 year olds and 28% among those 65 and older." Young people are …

From free dinners to weekends in Vegas, marketers are increasingly courting social media influencers and relying on tech companies like Klout to track them down. "A new generation of VIPs is cultivating coolness through the world of social media," reports The Wall Sreet Journal. "Klout ranks people based on their influence in social-media circles." Along with rivals like PeerIndex and Twitalyzer, Klout feeds public social media data into what the newspaper calls "secret formulas," and then generates scores that gauge users' influence. "Think of it as the credit score of friendship or, as PeerIndex calls it, the S&P of …