I wrote the other day about accusations leveled at user-generated review site Yelp, claiming they were using shady tactics to get merchants to advertise with them by promising to remove bad reviews, among other things.

Yelp shot back with a response pointing out that many of their clients have not benefited from advertising with them, showing screenshots of a client that has not had bad reviews taken down by Yelp.
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YouTube is starting to place more ads from bigger companies in their top videos, marking important steps in the direction of monetizing their user generated content.

Big brands like Verizon, Adidas, and Chevrolet have started buying in-video ads. These ads, which outperform traditional run-of-network ads, are the next step for YouTube to really begin utilizing its vast sea of content.
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I like Yelp, though I’ve been forgetting to use it lately. I used it to find a great Italian restaurant in Hollywood, where I had some of the best food I’ve had in years and saw a couple of celebrities. It pointed me to some of the best Thai food in the San Fernando Valley, and a greasy Chinese joint that I order from twice a month. I think it’s a quality site.

However, a detailed and well investigated story by Kathleen Richards of the East Bay Express reveals that Yelp be involved in some pretty dubious tactics in its attempts to squeeze money out of restaurateurs and merchants. Among the allegations:
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The backlash against Facebook’s changes to their terms of service are complete now, with Mark Zuckerberg backtracking on their proposal to keep, use, and mine users’ information, even when they choose to deactivate their profile and leave Facebook.

Coming on the heels of an internal valuation much lower than the previously floated $15 billion, this move reveals that Facebook is having problems discovering ways to make money. If mining you data and retaining licensing rights to your info is the best way Facebook has found of making money, then it’s very troublesome not only for them, but other social networks.
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Google’s SearchWiki, which is already meeting with mixed reviews, gives users the chance to infuse a little bit of social media into their search experience. Think Digg for search results. Users can approve or disapprove of certain results and even comment on the pages. While this has previously been available for organic search results, it is now testing the same system on AdWords ads.

Many fear that this is an invitation for fraud. Noting Google’s dubious reputation when it comes to click fraud, what is to prevent advertisers and marketers from knocking down all of their competitors in order to gain an unnatural advantage?
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There aren’t a lot of Nokia users left in the United States, which is kind of a shame–partly their fault and partly the fault of philistines.

Nokia makes unparalleled hardware. I have an E71 and it’s sleek, has all the functionality of BlackBerry, and ever feature one could want on a QWERTY phone. It’s professional grade, and I love it.

But taking a look at iPhone’s app store, I realize my E71 is not nearly as cool as the iPhone. Sure, the battery lasts for two days, even if I’m running multiple programs and hooked up to 3.5G, I get email pushed instantly to my inbox without additional rates, and the GPS has saved my bacon numerous times. But I want to be able to shake it and find a restaurant!
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The question of how Twitter is going to manage to make money has been floated for the last year or so. Twitter is gaining in popularity to the extent that it is finding mainstream users well beyond the early adopter sphere. That so-called “hockey stick” moment, where unique visitors go off the charts, is happening right now.

So what does Twitter do to make money? Banner ads are a possibility, but is that the best they can come up with? Charging for enterprise Twitter makes sense. But what else?
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No webmaster wants Google crawling their site and indexing different pages that are essentially the same thing. There are many situations on sites that, for example, sell a lot of different items in different categories or have different session IDs, where multiple URLs get crawled, diluting the value of each link.

Previously, it may have been necessary to either deal with it or nofollow a bunch of URLs to try to get Google to give more ranking to the canonical URL. The canonical is the preferred URL that you want crawled, usually the least complicated or most easily visited one.
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You heard it right, straight from the horse’s mouth. Quite sensationally, details of Facebook’s recent settlement with the guys who Mark Zuckerberg may or may not have stolen code and ideas from (ConnectU) have been uncovered by the Associated Press by simply copying and pasting covered-up parts of electronic versions of the settlement’s documents.

That’s right: Facebook apparently tried very hard to keep this under wraps, but were undone by a simply copy and paste. Truly spectacular.
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Some actual good news for the American economy as Intel has announced they will spend $7 billion building and revamping plants to build its new 32 nanometer chips here in the United States.

The plan will create an estimated 7,000 new high-wage jobs in places like my home state of Oregon, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Intel has managed to weather the financial crisis fairly well by holding $15 billion in liquid assets, so while most companies are scraping by, Intel is able to announce large scale investing. Interestingly, Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini made the announcement in Washington as the economic stimulus is being debated.
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