Sugar operates a network of celebrity photo blogs, all bearing the sweet moniker. PopSugar focuses on gossip; BellaSugar tracks beauty trends; DearSugar looks at love and sex; GeekSugar updates readers on tech; and on and on. That puts the Sugar kingdom in competition with the likes of such sites as TMZ, Defamer, Perez Hilton, Jossip, Nerve, and tech blogs of CNET.

The goal of the ShopStyle acquisition is to combine the ability to buy and promote products with editorial content across the Sugar sites. The acquisition “gives us the opportunity to merge content, community, and commerce,”  Sugar founder and CEO Brian Sugar said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Wednesday’s acquisition follows an also undisclosed sum paid in June to Sequoia Capital-backed Sugar by NBC for a minority investment in the company. That deal gave NBC control over Sugar’s ad sales, which bring in 5 million unique visitors each month, according to Sugar. The NBC investment also included a content-sharing deal between Sugar and NBC-owned iVillage.

Los Altos, California-based startup ShopStyle offers features now de rigueur for social-shopping sites. ShopStyle users can browse images of clothing and accessories and create personalized stylebooks, which they can embed as widgets on third-party sites. From the company’s web site or through the widgets, users can click on product images to make purchases directly from Banana Republic, Bluefly, or Nordstrom, for example.

Social-shopping sites have been growing in popularity across the web in the past year. Sites such as StyleHive and Kaboodle include features similar to ShopStyle.

Early last month San Francisco-based StyleMob hopped on the trend when it built a social network around so-called street fashion, which brings together a variety of unexpected and eclectic styles in a single outfit. Unlike most of the other fashion sites that focus on specific products and e-commerce, StyleMob works on an ad-based and affiliate relationship model.

The first step of the Sugar-ShopStyle partnership will focus on the distribution of the ShopStyle widgets. Already on Wednesday several of the Sugar sites had begun advertising the embeddable tools.

The move comes after the New York AG's office had been testing Facebook’s safety controls over the past several weeks, according to a statement.

A preliminary review of the site revealed significant defects in the safety measures Facebook has in place for protecting underage users, despite the Palo Alto, California, company’s tendency to position itself as a safer alternative to more popular social network MySpace.

“My office is concerned that Facebook’s promise of a safe web site is not consistent with its performance in policing its site and responding to complaints,” Mr. Cuomo said in the statement.

To test the site, the attorney general’s office set up fake Facebook accounts for investigators who pretended to be between the ages of 12 and 14. Soon after setting up their profile pages, Mr. Cuomo said several of the profiles received sexual solicitations from adults including one that read “u look too hot....... can I c u online (webcam)? im avl at ...”

The investigators then pretended to be concerned parents of the fake users and contacted Facebook to gauge whether the company would adequately respond by acting against the reported predators. Mr. Cuomo said the company often ignored the complaints and failed to act.

The attorney general’s team also contacted Facebook to complain about pornography in user groups and elsewhere on the site. The team determined that Facebook was inconsistent in its response to these complaints.

In a letter accompanying the subpoena, Mr. Cuomo wrote to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg detailing his concerns that Facebook’s security measures have not kept pace with the site’s growth after it opened to non-university students late last year and to third-party application developers in late May. Between August 2006 and August 2007, Facebook’s unique audience in the United States has increased by 117 percent, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

In a statement on Monday, Facebook said it takes Mr. Cuomo’s concerns “very seriously.”

“As our service continues to grow so does our responsibility to our users to empower them with the tools necessary to communicate efficiently and safely. We …are constantly working on processes and technologies that will further improve safety and user control on the site,” the company said in the statement.

Facebook is not the first social network to draw attention from state attorneys general. Earlier this year the attorneys general from 52 U.S. states and territories demanded that MySpace turn over the names of thousands of sex offenders believed to use the site. In May, MySpace said it would comply. The action against MySpace was part of an effort begun by the attorneys general in 2006 to force social networks to better protect children from predators and inappropriate content.

Mr. Cuomo said he served the subpoena to force Facebook to turn over complaints it has received about potential threats to underage users as well as the company’s response to those complaints. The attorney general has also asked for Facebook’s official user safety policies and documentation of claims about those policies that were made to consumers.

Think that video of you tormenting your cat with a stuffed mouse isn’t worth anything? Think again.

Video-sharing service Revver on Thursday said that in its first year of operation the company doled out $1 million to people who create and share videos through the site. The company earns revenue for itself and its users through in-video advertising.

The news comes at a time when Revver and rival sites YouTube and Metacafe are scrambling to find the best way to make money from popular user-generated content.

“It’s a competitive space,” Revver CEO Kevin Wells said.

YouTube has gone the route of now including overlay ads in video produced by its professional content partners. Google-owned YouTube chooses the partners who can get in on the deal. For now, it’s leaving ads off the user-generated content that makes up the bulk of the videos on the site.

Palo Alto, California-based Metacafe, pays the producers of the site’s highest-rated and most-viewed videos $5 for every thousand views after it reaches a threshold of 20,000 views. Metacafe leads all independent online video sites in viewership, with a self-reported audience of 25 million unique viewers per month. The site uses banners, pre- and post-roll ads, inscreen overlays, and branded partnerships to advertise through its videos.

Revver is unique in that it shares revenue with all of the amateur video producers who contribute to the site. Publishers, such as bloggers, who embed Revver videos on their sites take a 20 percent cut of the ad dollars and Revver splits the remaining amount with the producers.

Mr. Wells said the company sometimes varies that arrangement with different creators. The idea behind Revver is that there’s enough money to go around for everyone to take a slice of the profit pie.

“Smart advertisers are financing an online economy that supports these creators, and the top talent will build fortunes,” Revver founder and chairman Steven Starr said in a statement.

But to date, no extravagant bonanzas have been made on the site. Revver’s top-earning video has brought in just over $50,000. You may know it. It’s known as “The Diet Coke & Mentos Experiment.”

But the Coke-Mentos explosion is a standout in more than one way, and only a handful of videos have broken the $10,000 mark. The company said it pays approximately 1,000 creators and video sharers each month. Overall it’s paid a total of 25,000 individuals.

It also remains to be to determined whether the Revver model can continue to scale. Currently, the company manages to keep offensive content, copyright infringing material, and pornography off the site through human vetting of each video.

Right now that results in a delay of minutes to approximately an hour between when a user uploads a video and users can access it, but if the site achieves the success it’s seeking, either the time lag or Revver’s staff size will have to grow.

Still, the ability of a company to reliably vouch for the content on its site is something rare in the world of user-generated content. And it’s likely to prove a plus for advertisers who remain wary of diluting their brands by having their ads run against potentially objectionable material.

But who—besides maybe Coca-Cola—would object to a carbonation-induced explosion?

]]>Leah MessingerInternethttp://www.redherring.com/Home/22802#0Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:25:24 GMThttp://www.redherring.com/Home/22802http://www.redherring.com/Home/22773To some it’s a dream come true. To others it’s truly a nightmare. It’s the ability—the curse?—of being tracked by your friends anywhere, at any time.  

For GeoSentric, the Amsterdam-based company behind location-based social-networking platform GyPSii, the task of bringing to market the tools that will let friends pester you 24-7 just got a lot easier. The company, formerly known as Benefon, on Monday announced a $13.1 million round of private equity funding.

“Our original target was to raise $5.5 million, but given the considerable investor interest that GeoSentric is attracting together with the potential size of the market (it) meant that we were compelled to increase the size of the round,” Chairman Dan Harple said in a statement. The round was led by Horizon Group and Schroders Private Bank.

GeoSentric, founded in 2006, offers location-based social-networking via mobile devices. GyPSii software customers can use their mobile phones do all of the typical social-networking activities—upload photos or make changes to a profile, for example—as well as use GPS tools to locate and navigate to nearby friends.

People can access the GyPSii application either by downloading it to their phones or by purchasing a mobile device from a wireless carrier with the software preinstalled. Shane Lennon, a vice president with GeoSentric, said his company expects to announce a partnership with a carrier in the next few weeks.

The company is also set to launch a public beta of its own social network by the end of the month. That network will be available in English for users in the Americas, Asia, and Europe.

GeoSentric’s move in mobile social networking comes amid a broader push by both social networks and wireless carriers to make social networking and the ability to publish user-generated content available to consumers at all times in all places.

GeoSentric isn’t alone. More than two years ago Google acquired location-based service Dodgeball. And just this summer Nokia purchased media sharing service Twango. Industry experts also say Apple’s iPhone is expected to lead to more sophisticated social-networking services.

Through these deals and tools, social networks hope to become a more constant communication service for the average consumer. Carriers could see dollar signs:  by signing up more users for more expensive data plans that offer web access and the ability to upload and download content.

GeoSentric’s Mr. Lennon said his company is pursuing a business model in which GeoSentric profits from both a subscription fee shared with carriers plus revenue from mobile advertising.

Though industry trackers such as ABI Research have predicted a 13-fold increase in mobile advertising between 2006 and 2011, many social-networking players remain fairly skeptical. At a recent conference Jeremy Verba, CEO of teen-oriented social network Piczo, said the building of a successful business based on mobile advertising is still a long way off. Advertisers “haven’t even mentioned mobile. They’re still trying to figure out the web,” Mr. Verba said.

The company on Thursday revealed plans for T-Works, an online world where consumers can watch cartoons, create avatars, and act as a captive audience for the company’s marketing campaigns.

The entertainment giant’s new venture follows the concerted efforts by several large brands to enter the social media space this year. Over the summer NBC launched MyNBC.com and earlier this year Coca-Cola launched Sprite Yard, a mobile-only social network, though neither effort appears ready to threaten MySpace or Facebook.

So it may be for good reason that analysts are describing T-Works as a “high-risk venture” for Warner. But they’re also predicting that Warner may fare better than its competitors with its new online world since the company is planning to combine the tried-and-true components of popular social networks with the ability to view hundreds of hours of classic cartoons, play games, and create avatars and navigate virtual worlds using the company’s key animated characters.

“There haven’t been all that many attempts by major media companies to create these immersive characters. I’m not that aware of too much else to compare this one to,” said Gartner analystAndrew Frank.

T-Works will enter private beta in December and will be released to a general audience in the second quarter 2008. Warner will also use T-Works, which will be advertiser-supported, as a platform for launching original web-only content. Warner Animation President Lisa Judson said the company will start with two projects: a short form Batman series and a Wizard of Oz animation.

Where T-Works will depart from its predecessors is with its plan to make its avatars available for consumers to use across the web, including on sites such as MySpace.

Advertising industry experts have long bemoaned unwillingness on the part of trademark owners to put their brands into the hands of consumers who can use them next to content that might not reflect well on the company. (Think: Tweetie Bird on a MySpace profile page plastered with photos of underage drinkers.)

But Ms. Judson said many knockoff versions of Warner images and videos are already widely available on the Web, so the company might as well offer users the real thing. “We know that people are using our things and so we think we’re just best served by making the legitimate and authentic resources and assets out there and trusting our fan base,” she said.

Gartner’s Mr. Frank put it a different way. “It’s showing that a major media company has a willingness to try new things,” he said.

This week, Orbitz may have found a way around that. The Chicago-based online travel company announced a service that lets users help each other. The Traveler Update system collects and posts user-generated tips on a range of topics, including security lines and the best places to get a snack, at more than 40 major U.S. airports. Consumers don’t have to buy tickets through Orbitz to use the service, and they can access the Traveler Update through the Orbitz site or its mobile web browser.

Orbitz Chief Marketing Officer Randy Wagner said the idea for the service “sprang from our customer insight that people value information from others in the same situation and our business insight that, at any point in time, Orbitz has thousands of customers moving through major airports and travel destinations.”

Traveler Update also includes information from the Federal Aviation Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, and Weather.com, and Orbitz adds some of its own info, including lists of airport Wi-Fi hubs.

Travel analyst Kate Rice described the concept as “not a bad little experiment in viral marketing,” because the tool likely will drive traffic to the Orbitz site.

Ms. Rice said Orbitz is the first of the major online travel sites to introduce such a service and added that Orbitz has long targeted the infrequent traveler with email updates and mobile features.

Though the newbie traveler is seen as the company’s intended audience, Ms. Rice said it’s actually the frequent business traveler who is most likely to take advantage of the new service. Business travelers tend to have more leeway to change their routes or flight schedules to minimize the number of hours they’ll need to wile away in an overcrowded terminal.

As for the infrequent travelers, she said, “If security lines are long at an airport what are you going to do? Go to another airport?”

This week Lulu, a company that helps users self-publish books and multimedia content, filed a complaint in North Carolina District Court against Hulu, the NBC-News Corp.-backed professional video site still under development. In a statement, Lulu accuses Hulu of trademark infringement, unfair and deceptive trade practices, and cyberpiracy.

“It is clear we are required to move quickly to protect our intellectual property and defend ourselves against this infringement before it significantly damages our business,” said Lulu CEO Bob Young in a statement.

Mr. Young founded Lulu in Raleigh, North Carolina in 2002 and prior to that he co-founded open source software company Red Hat. Now he’s concerned that that Hulu is trying to capitalize on Lulu’s audience by creating confusion in the marketplace. (A reporter trying to keep the companies straight as she reports this story can see his point.)

Though Hulu won’t enter private beta until October, the site received its official name last week. Previously it had been referred to only as “Newsite.” Once it launches it will offer up shows from NBC and Fox, including Heroes, 24, and Bones, to Internet viewers.

And that’s a concern for Mr. Young’s Lulu.tv, which lets users sell their digital media creations through the site. Although Lulu.tv offers an outlet for the sale of user-generated video content, Mr. Young seems to be concerned that Hulu’s studio-produced offerings will steal some of the online video spotlight he’s worked hard to capture. In the statement Lulu points to a concern that Hulu’s products and services “are related to, and even identical to, the services that Lulu provides under its Lulu marks.” To the lay viewer, however, the sites appear to have little overlap.

Hulu spokesperson Christina Lee declined to comment on current litigation.

Despite the fact that the two sites appear to offer vastly different services, it’s no wonder Hulu’s $100 million private equity investment for a valuation reportedly worth $1 billion has Mr. Young worried about confusion in the marketplace.

“We have spent more than five years and tens of millions of dollars in investment successfully building the Lulu brand and website into a place for millions of creators and consumers to publish, buy, sell and manage digital content,” said Mr. Young.

For his part, when Hulu CEO Jason Kilar announced his venture’s new name last week his tone made it seem as if the word “Hulu” had been chosen practically on a whim.

“Objectively, Hulu is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself,” Mr. Kilar wrote in a blog post.

In the North Carolina courts, however, rhyming may not prove to be such a good thing.

In two separate resolutions on Tuesday the commission announced that online media publications, including blogs, should receive the same protection from FEC jurisdiction as traditional media and that volunteers who maintain political blogs should also be protected. The decisions fall in line with a move by the FEC in March of last year to extend greater freedoms to publishers of online media.

Tuesday’s decisions involved popular liberal blog Daily Kos and a satirical Web site created to help defeat Congresswoman Mary Bono last November.

The complaint against Daily Kos accused the site’s parent company and its operator Markos Moulitsas Zuniga of encouraging the election of Democratic candidates and offering free advertising for candidates through political speech. The author of the complaint, Internet security expert and conservative blogger John C. A. Bambenek, asserted that by engaging in these activities, Mr. Zuniga operates a political committee, which should be registered and subject to FEC rules.

In response to the complaint, the FEC applied a two-part test to Daily Kos. The commission ruled that because the site is a media entity and is not “owned or controlled by a political party, committee, or candidate,” it acts as a “press entity” and is therefore exempt from FEC oversight.

Adam Bonin, the attorney who represented Mr. Zuniga against the complaint, said Tuesday’s decision was the first test of the so-called “media exemption” since the March 2006 amendments to the commission’s rules.

The complaint filed on behalf of Congresswoman Bono argued that because the satirical “Bono blog” was developed by author Michael Grace in consultation with Congresswoman Bono’s electoral opponent, the site could not be considered “independent” of political affiliation. That complaint also asserted that the purchase of a domain name and the operation of blogs on MySpace and Google’s Blogspot were in-kind political contributions.

The FEC in that case ruled that because Blogspot and MySpace are both free services hosted on public-domain sites, Mr. Grace did not make any expenditures. The commission added that even if Mr. Grace had paid to create or host his blogs, his activities would be outside of the FEC’s purview, since the type of blogging conducted by Mr. Grace was “exactly the type of Internet activity” protected under the “volunteer exemption” added to the FEC’s updated regulations last year.

That’s according to a report released Wednesday by IDC.

Karsten Weide, the IDC analyst who wrote the report, pointed out that despite their current status as tech media darlings, social networks are still a work in progress. “Few offerings generate an income that would be in a sensible relation to the media attention they receive,” wrote Mr. Weide.

By social networking, Mr. Weide refers to publishing sites, such as YouTube; destinations such as MySpace and LinkedIn; and service-oriented sites, such as Craigslist, Wikipedia, and Amazon.com

Mr. Weide predicts that over time the networks will settle on a business model that includes both subscriptions and e-commerce, but said brand advertising is the only approach that will bring in enough revenue to support a large social network. First, however, the networks must figure out how to get their advertising to scale and ease the concerns of advertisers who remain uncomfortable with the prospect that their ads will appear next to unpredictable user-generated content.

Though leading social network MySpace already focuses most of its money-making efforts on advertising—on its home page, through brand-specific campaigns, and through banner ads on profile pages—Mr. Weide said the Fox Interactive Media-owned company’s earnings pale next to those of tech companies in other sectors.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp., which owns the Fox properties, said earlier this month that Fox Interactive Media brought in an estimated $550 million in the last fiscal year. Mr. Weide pointed out that Microsoft’s Online Services Business earned $624 million in Q4 of last year alone.

Industry experts say Fox Interactive Media has had a difficult time selling ads for many MySpace pages because it simply has too much inventory. The head of one interactive ad agency said companies wanting to advertise on more coveted properties such as Fox Sports, often must agree to fill space on MySpace as well. Other MySpace inventory can sell for less than $0.10 per thousand views, according to the ad agency head.

Facebook trails far behind MySpace in both the size of its user base and the revenue it brings in, but it continues to expand its audience rapidly. Despite its recent growth spurt, Facebook has run into trouble with some advertisers. Earlier this month the British government, Vodafone, the British automobile association, and Virgin Media all pulled their ads from the site after they appeared next to a group page for the racist British National Party. In response, Facebook said it would let advertisers in the U.K. limit which groups their Facebook ads appear alongside.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that Facebook is also planning a new ad network, which would allow advertisers to better target users. Facebook tends to have more personal and demographic data on its users than networks such as MySpace because it allows users the option of keeping their profiles private and in that scenario users tend to share more personal information. Such data is highly sought after by advertisers.

Mr. Weide said social networks would do well to encourage reluctant advertisers by considering additional tools such as peer review of content (via a flagging system) or software that would filter out offensive content, but warns that the social networks could go too far in limiting online speech.

"You can control what users upload, but you have to be careful," said Mr. Weide. He said if you crack down too hard, "Your service will become less attractive to users."

Johnson & Johnson-owned BabyCenter is a Web 1.0 company that provides advice, information, and ecommerce services for new and expectant parents. Though the company launched a redesign of the site last week, both BabyCenter and ParentCenter (a sister site that takes moms through year nine of child-rearing) have done little—beyond message boards and chat functions—to encourage users to contribute content.

That’s one reason Tina Sharkey, who took over as BabyCenter’s chairman earlier this year, was brought on. Prior to joining BabyCenter, Ms. Sharkey led AOL’s social networking and instant messaging initiatives and co-founded iVillage. She said the acquisition of Maya’s Mom will help make BabyCenter a Web 2.0 company as it becomes more of a social networking destination for mothers.

BabyCenter will use the technology from Maya’s Mom as a white-label platform for social networking on the BabyCenter and ParentCenter sites, which combined pull in more than 6 million monthly visitors, according to the company. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, BabyCenter was the leader in the family resources destination channel with 3.3 million unique visitors in July, though MyFamily.com beat BabyCenter in user engagement by nearly two minutes.

Ms. Sharkey said she selected Maya’s Mom’s architecture and technology over other white-label social network providers such as Ning and KickApps because it is more nuanced toward parents.

“Moms are constantly going in and out of different modes,” Ms. Sharkey said. For example, sometimes parents will want to be able to sort information and find other members by zip code to arrange play groups; other times they may want to search and interact around specific topics, such as tantrums or colic. Maya’s Mom “built a social network with features and functionality specifically tailored to moms and what moms want to share. And its nuance makes all of the difference in the world,” said Ms. Sharkey.

Maya’s Mom was founded late last year by Ann Crady, who previously ran business development for Yahoo Autos, an enthusiast site. Ms. Crady will join BabyCenter as a senior vice president and Maya’s Mom will continue to operate as a separate site as it becomes the first affiliate in BabyCenter’s just-launched affiliate network. Ms. Sharkey said BabyCenter’s affiliate program will be similar to that of Glam Media, which operates a network of online publishers.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Enter corporate social networking company SelectMinds, which on Tuesday announced a Series A funding round of $5.5 million from Bessemer Venture Partners. Bessemer has invested in other communications and social media companies such as Skype, LinkedIn, Wikia, and Revver.

New York-based SelectMinds “helps organizations become better connected and strengthen relationships among employees, alumni, women and other key constituencies,” said Bessemer Venture Partners Managing Partner Robert Goodman in a statement. Mr. Goodman will also join the company’s board of directors.

SelectMinds, founded in 2000, gears its software toward mid-to-large size organizations such as global 2000 companies, and focuses on what a company spokesperson described as the "employee life cycle." That is, on hiring and retaining employees and institutional knowledge as employees reach different stages in their lives.

WomenConnect, one of the networks created by SelectMinds, helps companies stay in contact with female employees when they’re out on maternity leave, for example. EmployeeConnect is designed for all of the workers in an organization.

Employees of companies that use SelectMinds’ software can build profiles, communicate through emails and forums, collaborate to develop new ideas, post and respond to classified ads, and search and apply for jobs in or beyond the company network.

Last week The Dow Chemical Company signed up as a SelectMinds client. Dow will use the social networking platform to create networks for employees, alumni, and retirees.

Several other companies focus on social networking for the enterprise, including Foster City, California-based Visible Path and San Francisco-based Leverage Software.

That’s according to a recent study released by Internet security company SurfControl and reported on by Reuters on Monday.

The news agency reports that SurfControl Chairman Richard Cullen told Australian radio that the site is “so interactive that people just get addicted to watching their Facebook groups all the time.”

“People love being there and telling people what they are doing right now, what their thoughts are right at this second," he said.

Facebook has seen tremendous growth in Australia over the past several months, according to Hitwise. Visits to the site by Australians have jumped significantly since the Palo Alto, California-based social network launched a platform for third-party application developers in late May. Hitwise reports that by the end of July, Facebook had become one of the top 20 websites visited by Australians across all categories.

One can only guess how many billions of dollars are lost due to a drop in worker productivity as a result of visits to MySpace, the social network with the highest market share in Australia at 2.2 percent.

Reuters said SurfControl’s figures are based on an typical Facebook user who earns the average Australian national salary and spends one hour online each day.

Upon learning of the study’s findings, employers may be tempted to block employees from logging on to the site. In fact, the U.S. military banned the use of MySpace, hi5, BlackPlanet, and other social networks on Department of Defense networks earlier this summer.

Still, employers might want to take note of the case of international law firm Allen & Overy, which attempted to block its employees from Facebook earlier this year. Legal Week reports that the company had to retract its stance against the social network after workers complained that the site was an important tool they used for business purposes.

Most online purveyors of prescription drugs are doing so without authorization from the pharmaceutical industry or without employing the proper security measures for online sales. That’s according to the quarterly Brandjacking Index, released Monday by brand research and protection company MarkMonitor.

“We thought we’d find some conclusions that raised some eyebrows, but what we found was a very dirty business on the web. Consumers and drug companies should be concerned,” said MarkMonitor Chief Marketing Officer Frederick Felman.

The report highlights several disturbing trends in online drug sales. In addition to faking accreditation, many online pharmacies spam users and perpetrate phishing attacks, in which they attempt to collect personal details such as a person’s health history and credit card information.

MarkMonitor analyzed 60 million emails and looked at six specific brands across the most popular categories of pharmaceuticals—those treating insomnia, erectile dysfunction, cholesterol, anxiety, and depression. One tenth of the 100,000 sites tracked by MarkMonitor in June do not require prescriptions from consumers who want to order drugs and few sites studied have Verified Industry Pharmacy Practice Site accreditation, which requires that pharmacies comply with state drug laws.

According to the study, the United States hosts 59 percent of online pharmacies and 38 percent of pharmacy-related spam comes from China.

Mr. Felman said the draw to online pharmacy sites for consumers is the promise of lower prices, but often the sales stemming from such sites provide users with expired or mislabeled drugs that may be past their expiration date.

In addition to pharmaceuticals, the report highlights ongoing concerns about general phishing on the web, which Mr. Felman said continues to grow “organically, as opposed to exponentially.”

Of particular concern is an increase in “rock phishing,” originated by the Rock Phish Gang based in Eastern Europe. Rock phishers use stolen information to register and rapidly cycle through domain names and IP addresses. They obscure their origin with botnets, which automate unwitting consumers’ computers to send out spam.

This type of phishing is more difficult to trace than other methods, according to MarkMonitor, because rock phishers operate on a previously unforseen scale and build multiple redundancies into their system that make a single point of origin difficult to detect. MarkMonitor has tracked an 11 percent increase in rock phishing since Q1.

Most recently, leaked July comScore numbers—later confirmed by comScore spokespeople—showed Bebo overtaking MySpace in the U.K. for the first time, well, ever. That made Bebo the most visited social network in the U.K. that month, with 10.6 million unique visitors. Only 10.1 million users logged on to MySpace that month.

Okay, so it was pretty close to a tie, but it’s a bit surprising to see MySpace bested by anyone so soon after Facebook accelerated the race to the social networking finish line in late May with the launch of its f8 platform for applications, or widgets.

Bob Ivins, an executive vice president at comScore, didn’t seem overly impressed, despite his use of the word “phenomenal”. In fact, he seemed to think it was inevitable for the networks in second and third place to catch up.

“Social networking sites like Facebook and Bebo have shown phenomenal growth over the past six months—and should continue to do so as the ‘network effect’ gives them momentum,” he said in a statement.

In the U.K. contest, Facebook settled for a measly third place, with just 7.6 million visitors. comScore also reported that Bebo and MySpace reached 34 and 32 percent of the U.K. online population, respectively, while Facebook reached 24 percent. Still, Facebook has shown the most growth in the U.K. since January, with an increase in its reach into the general population of 19 percent since the start of the year.

That’s not to say it’s been smooth sailing for Facebook in the past few weeks. The lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair business practices brought against the company by Olympic hopefuls the Winklevoss twins (Cameron and Tyler) and their friend Divya Narendra went before a judge in July, at which point the judge postponed a decision on whether to dismiss the case.

Just a couple weeks later, Facebook pulled the site down for a few hours after several users logged on and found themselves looking at strangers’ inboxes on the site. Facebook insisted the problem was “not the result of a security breach,” but rather a bug that caused some servers to cache “otherwise inaccessible content.”

Then, earlier this month, major U.K. advertisers, including Virgin Media, the British automobile association, and the entire British government pulled their ads from Facebook after some of the ads ran next to a group for the racist British National Party. In response, Facebook altered its advertising policy for U.K. companies, though there’s no definitive word yet about which companies have trickled back to the site.

And if that wasn’t enough, several blogs posted Facebook’s source code for all the web to see. And, you know, distribute.

Despite all of this publicity Andrew Chen, entrepreneur-in-residence at Mohr Davidow Ventures, said he doesn't think the events of the past couple of months add up to much over the long term for Bebo, MySpace, or even Facebook.

“There’s one group that sort of assumes that a MySpace or a Facebook is pretty much going to emerge and take over the world. It’s interesting to see that not happen,” he said.

Inside Facebook reported on Thursday that travel site TripAdvisor has acquired the Where I’ve Been Facebook application for $3 million. Nearly 4.3 million Facebook users have added the Where I’ve Been app, which lets users select on a world map destinations they’ve traveled to, places where they’ve lived, and sites they hope to visit. The idea is to help users keep track of their travels and to compare trips they’ve taken with those of their friends.

Inside Facebook has calculated that if the acquisition is real, TripAdvisor is paying approximately $1.30 per each Facebook user who has added the app. That’s despite the fact that the landscape for third-party application developers who want to make money on Facebook is still a bit out of focus.

Since the launch of the Facebook platform for developers in late May, several ad networks for the site have sprung up, including Lookery and fbExchange. Userplane, Slide, RockYou, and SocialMedia also have similar ad networks.

The rumored Where I’ve Been deal follows the reported acquisitions of other Facebook apps earlier this summer when Slide took on Favorite Peeps and SideStep took over Extended Info.

TripAdvisor and Where I’ve Been did not respond to requests for comment.

UPDATE: Alas, it was all a rumor. TripAdvisor currently uses Google maps to provide Where-I've-Been-esque features on the TripAdvisor site.