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 …

Mark Zuckerberg says a stalker is using Facebook to send him creepy messages and threaten his personal safety. According to TMZ, the young Facebook CEO recently filed legal papers claiming that 31-year-old Pradeep Manukonda has tried to "follow, surveil and contact Mr. Zuckerberg using language threatening his personal safety," along with the safety of his girlfriend and sister. Meanwhile, law enforcement sources tell TMZ that Manukonda has gone to several Facebook offices in Palo Alto attempting to contact Zuckerberg to ask for money. It's all too common for public personalities to attract overzealous followers, but the success of Zuckerberg's …

Social content sharing platform Meebo is buying online ad measurement and targeting firm Mindset Media. No word on the price tag, but the deal was no doubt made possible by Meebo's recent $25 million funding round. "As an online branding specialist that has a particular focus on consumer packaged goods marketers, Mindset is expected to enhance Meebo's existing work with brand advertisers without sacrificing its direct response business," paidContent reports. Meebo has recently been working on new features for its ad-supported toolbars, which can be seen on such sites such as TVGuide.com, Mediaweek.com and Maxim.com. The bars stay in …

Stripes Convenience Stores knows customers love its take-out tacos. So when it went looking for a way to share that enthusiasm with a wider audience, it chose a novel approach: Using digital billboards, streaming their Twitter comments for all to see. "Stripes really wanted to push the envelope," Ian Dallimore, digital strategist at Lamar Advertising in Baton Rouge, tells Marketing Daily. "It wanted to communicate with consumers and let them know that the company is listening to them. They said, 'Let's have our customers write the digital copy through tweets.'" The campaign, created by Firehouse Agency in Dallas, …

Fresh off its $500 million investment and $50 billion valuation, Facebook today announced it's moving to larger quarters in Silicon Valley. Starting in June, the company will begin shifting the 1,400 employees in its Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters to a 57-acre campus formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems in nearby Menlo Park. The property contains nine buildings totaling about 1 million square feet. Facebook has also purchased an adjacent 22-acre tract at 312 and 314 Constitution Drive connected to the campus by a tunnel, underneath the Bayfront Expressway, for possible future development as a subsequent expansion phase. Facebook will maintain …

Walmart Foundation says it is giving $2.5 million to Goodwill, to create a "Beyond Jobs" program for single moms in Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles County, Detroit, and New York City, through 2012.

iCrossing just unveiled plans for a new initiative to bring brands, agencies and media companies together to explore future content. Dubbed the "The Content Lab," the initiative will live online at http://thecontentlab.icrossing.com, or can be followed on Twitter a @TheContentLab, and will feature a series of forums developed by iCrossing and parent Hearst Corp., which acquired iCrossing last year. In support of the initiative, Hearst and iCrossing today released the white paper Building a Connected Brand: How Brands Become Publishers in a Real-time Marketing World: http://icrsng.com/brandsaspublishers.

New data from comScore shows Android increased its U.S. market share to 28% in December from 25% the prior month, narrowing the gap with RIM's market-leading BlackBerry platform, which dropped from 33.5% to 31.6%. Apple's iOS held steady in the No. 3 slot, with 25% share. For the three months ending in December, Android has picked up 7.3 percentage points in market share compared to 0.7 for Apple and a decline of 5.7 points for BlackBerry. In terms of mobile data use, 68% of mobile subscribers were text messaging, 36.4% used a mobile browser, 34.4% downloaded an app, 27.4% …