On Tuesday Sept 4th Yahoo announced an agreement to acquire BlueLithium which is one of the few remaining top Internet ad agencies. The $300 million move will increase the technical capabilities and reach of Yahoo’s global ad network by adding BlueLithium’s impressive toolset for data analytics and its significant advertising inventory.

Just how big is BlueLithium’s network? Quoting Yahoo’s press release: “According to comScore Media Metrix, BlueLithium is the fifth largest ad network in the US and second largest in the UK with 145 million unique visitors each month.”

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

A Facebook press release announced the following today:

“Starting tomorrow (Weds), we are making limited public search listings available to people who are not logged in to Facebook. A public search listing provides, at most, the name and profile picture of any Facebook member that has their search privacy settings set to “Everyone”. It will show less information about a person than results of a search performed by someone logged in to Facebook. We wanted to give people who had never come to Facebook, or who are not currently registered, the opportunity to discover their friends who are on Facebook.”

The news has caused a bit of an uproar from Facebook fans concerned about their privacy. In my opinion the risks are extremely low with the minimal amount of information provided but it is a vastly smart move for this popular social media website. Why is it a smart move? By opening the gates to spiders Facebook will amplify its impressive footprint by allowing search engine users to discover Facebook while they search for specific people. This all ads up to a hell of a lot more market share in the social media web space which is sure to make an IPO all the more tantalizing for investors.

One thing is for sure… Facebook nay sayers should definitely take a step back and reconsider their standpoint because I am in good company believing that Facebook is poised to be the Google of social media.

by Ross Dunn, CEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc.

John Battelle’s blog brought to my attention a startup called Cuill (pronounced “cool”) that was created by some wealthy ex-Googlers that specialized in search technologies. Apparently the startup, and this is rumour, has already been approached by Google with a very appetizing offer.

As John Battelle said, the search engine must have some very attractive concepts for Google to jump in with an offer so soon. At this time the engine is not available for use, however, it is already gaining the attention of some prominent marketing professionals.