Remember the Google Video Marketplace? Exactly. Launched months before Google bought YouTube, the video store required cumbersome copyright protections and was a nonstarter with consumers. Google closed the store last year, enraging the dozen or so people who'd actually bothered to buy videos.

And Google's Book Search operations are a disaster, overseen by Ramsey Allington, an unqualified IPO lottery winner who joined Google at the right time to get valuable stock options and social connections. He has made a mess of his department, driving out qualified female employees by being a sexist boor. Publishers would do well to steer clear of Google until he's gone.

Even if Google Book Search is placed under competent management, I doubt it will succeed. Google lacks a merchant's sensibility, trusting algorithms over salesmanship. But most people do not walk into a bookstore knowing what they are looking for. They seek serendipity — a quality that Googlers, with their overplanned vision of the world, hope to eliminate. There is beauty in an untidy stack of books. But a Stanford MBA's spreadsheets will never capture that.

(Photo via Paris Parfait)

Never mind that! When Schafer sold his Twitter background, Commenter Gregnog told us to quiet down and "just nod, smile and take the check." Well, Gregnog, wherever you are, now's your chance. Using Twittad, Rishi Lakhani, who has 305 Twitter followers, just sold the rights to choose his background image for the next 7 days for $30.00. Even if all 305 of those followers visited Rishil's page over the next seven days — and trust us, they won't — that's a fantastically high, unlikely to be repeated $100 CPM, or cost per thousand impressions. Most social networks are lucky to get a single-digit CPM.

Born on March 16, 2005 as "an innovative and engaging way for people to share their lives, leverage their community and get the most out of their online experience," according to Yahoo's then-COO Dan Rosensweig, Yahoo 360 isn't technically dead yet. But it's proved unpopular enough for Yahoo to try to replace it at least four times with the social networks listed below.

Yahoo tried to replace 360 by offering $1 billion for Facebook in the summer of 2006. Mark Zuckerberg almost took the deal — but then Yahoo CEO Terry Semel scotched the deal by cutting the price. That's when Mark's sister Randi sang "Fuck you, Yahoo, they're going IPO!"

Yahoo began talks with also-ran social network Bebo, reportedly offering to buy it for $1 billion in May 2007. The deal never happened. AOL bought Bebo for $850 million earlier this year.

Less than a year ago came Yahoo Mash, a social network that allowed a user's friends to "mess" with each other's pages like they were Wikipedia entries. Eventually, Yahoo's Terrell Karlsten told Wired in October 2007, "it will become a feature inside other services. For example, it's possible that you'll log into Yahoo Mail and see your profile along with all of your friends' profiles in your contact list."

In November 2007, Yahoo launched a LInkedIn-like site for recent college graduates called Kickstart. But by January 2008, site lead Scott Gatz had already left the company and management began to cut Kickstart's marketing budget because no one was signing up.

YouTube execs estimated that if just 10 percent of the service's users took advantage of live streaming, the company would have to add 20 to 25 percent to its huge server and bandwidth infrastructure to support it.

Sounds like another sign that YouTube's popularity, while giving it a great position in the market, has become something of an Achilles' heel — every video played, every user added cost the company money, and neither creators or consumers are paying. Advertisers are only interested in a small percentage of videos on the site, and YouTube can't even sell all of that inventory. So adding new features such as live streams or improving quality would only serve to dig Google's $1.65 billion money pit even deeper. The episode is enlightening in one regard, though. It demonstrates how much influence YouTube's founders have at the company — little to none.

(Photo by Ben Cooper

Unsurprisingly, there's already signs of trouble. MainStreet has lost its launch editor, Caroline Waxler, amid a change of editorial direction. FiLife has ratcheted back its once-lofty ambitions. And WalletPop? One of a bevy of websites launched by AOL, which is desperate to find readers who are not turned off by that once-magical, now-deadly three-letter brand. With few prospects for attracting an audience or advertisers, will they not soon need financial advice of their own?

Regulators frown on free communications between knowledgeable company executives and information-hungry investors. LinkedIn offers "compliance" tools, but those tools amount to letting the fox electronically monitor the henhouse. Hedgies surely realize this, and will see LinkedIn's lax policies as a selling point. (Other firms which connect investors with company insiders have, at some expense, created systems which allow the experts' employers, not just the investment firms, to monitor contacts.)

If it gets in trouble, LinkedIn will likely plea that it didn't know how its networking site was being used — the standard we're-just-a-platform dodge. But it will be hard to claim that for two reasons. First, LinkedIn is touting the account managers it's providing who will actively help traders use the service. Second, CEO Dan Nye previously worked at Advent Software, a company which provides portfolio-management software to Wall Street firms. It's not like he's unfamiliar with the SEC's disclosure and monitoring requirements. Rather, one has to think he knows just how expensive complying with those rules are, and that rejiggering LinkedIn's software to obey them will make LinkedIn Research a nonstarter.

It's not a stretch to imagine how an ambitious government prosecutor could make a case for LinkedIn aiding and abetting insider trading. The law doesn't even require that money change hands; exchanging inside information for a thumbs-up reference on LinkedIn could very well qualify as a breach of the rules.

But that assumes anyone in Washington or New York is paying attention. Unlikely, given the mortgage mess. LinkedIn will likely go public on the basis of its hedge fund-juiced revenues long before an overtaxed SEC gets around to looking at how, exactly, the avaricious traders of Greenwich are getting their information.

These three are more career-driven and have more to say than their L.A. counterparts, which should only lead to more drama. Even when they're not hitting Waverly Inn for dinner or flying cross-country for exclusive Silicon Alley [sic] events, this clique is never boring. They get Restylane injections for fun, own pocket-size dogs, and never go anywhere without blogging about it. What's not to love?

• An inability for AOL to monetize more social-networking inventory. According to our sources, AOL's Advertising.com already cannot monetize all the MySpace (NWS) and Facebook inventory it has available.
• Flattening traffic growth at Bebo, which contributes to a sense that AOL is buying it at the peak.
• A 3X difference between the revenue assumptions used to justify the deal to Time Warner's corporate team and the revenue assumptions some AOL senior managers thought were reasonable.
• Belief that the Bebo founders would bolt the moment the check cleared.

Searchme may remind some of Apple's iTunes Cover Flow feature, but if it's more likely to succeed than Snap that's not why. Snap was search-ad innovator Bill Gross's brainchild. Good genes. But Searchme's Sequioa roots are better. Sequioa funded Google, which is known to return the favor from time to time.

When I hear a big company use the term "open," I almost immediately assume they mean "to fucking me."

Some of the things that have been posted have been mean-spirited, and we have received emails from people claiming to have been defamed on the site. Our hope for the site has always been that JuicyCampus would be a place for fun, lighthearted gossip, rather than a place to tear down people or groups.

The mag was indeed free (but not at newsstands). There have been some scattered reports of people walking out with them without paying. After the alarms went off, we hope they were advised about the web offer ;-)

• Just 1% of the Market? ORLY?
• My Ham Sandwich Has A Better Shot at Marketshare
• You Had Me at NanoTech

Over the span of one day, Cordarounds flooded the internet with clips of Palmer giving confusing instructions to a caricature artist on drawing the man of her dreams. "I want him to be smart and sporty. Maybe you could draw him with a book in his hand or a graduation cap? And on a surf board maybe? And he should be funny, so definitely with a smile," Palmer tells the artist.

After posting video and pics on the Cordarounds blog and Facebook page, Palmer's gang continued the barrage of internet assault by continually posting "GOT ANY ROMANTIC ADVICE FOR KAREN? WE WANT TO KNOW" and "THRILLIING UPDATE!!!!! KAREN HAS SECURED HER FIRST MEETUP. YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE IT SOON AFTER IT HAPPENS." Much like those Porntube posters touting their own vids. Cordarounds' cloyingness had users pranking the Cordaround blog and Facebook wall with gems such as these:

The ad campaign ended with a useless "We will see what happens." Pics or it didn't happen, more like it. The viral marketing for Cordarounds ended up being as annoying as corduroys themselves.

Even worse is the content Chirp displays on its screensaver: Updates from your social networks. Eric Eldon writes at VentureBeat:

It reminds me of the SETI screensaver — you know, the one that uses your computer to analyze radio telescope data collected by researchers, trying to find signs of intelligent, extraterrestrial communication. The difference is, Chirp is a screensaver that helps you see intelligent communication from your friends.

Interbrand also designed the logo to be animated, but we probably won't see the animations until Xerox's multimillion-dollar rebranding campaign is fully underway later this year. In keeping with Xerox's long-forgotten glory days, we suggest a new twist on an old idea: A children's singalong with the logo hopping from word to word. Everyone, follow the bouncing ball!

What Scoble forgets is that when Facebook was just a college project of Zuckerberg's, long before he raised any venture capital, he fought a running battle with the founders of ConnectU. While they sued him for allegedly ripping off their code, Zuckerberg's Facebook sued them over their attempts to grab data from Facebook. To this day, Facebook encodes email addresses as a graphic image, annoying users who'd like to copy and paste the information — but also frustrating automated scripts which, like ConnectU, would attempt to steal away Facebook's users.

Plaxo is one of many companies which believe that social-network data should be open and portable. Facebook — informed by the ConnectU experience — disagrees. What's true is that companies like Plaxo are envious of Facebook's success, and in arguing for openness, aren't pursuing high-minded ideals — they're seeking commercial advantage. "Open" is just another word for "gimme."

And Scoble? In acting the martyr, he's playing right into their hands. Sad to say, his massive list of "friends" isn't coming in handy. Only 284 people have joined a group petitioning for Scoble's reinstatement.

(Photo of Robert Scoble by scriptingnews; photomontage licensed under Creative Commons)

Mahalo's mentor program normally pays $10 per page reviewed. Earning this sum involves reviewing a search result's formatting and links and seeing if any top links from a Google search are missing. Not a difficult job — and one that could well be performed by a computer running a script, from the sound of it. Search IMDB for "Alvin and the Chipmunks", check link, search Rotten Tomatoes for "Alvin and the Chipmunks", etc. The complaining Web surfer was able to review 470 pages in a month, a rate Mahalo scoffed at. No wonder: At that rate, he'd be pulling down $56,400 a year for not much work. The actual labor involved is simply not worth it, even for a company that has just raised $20 million in venture capital.

And therein lies the problem: Computers never ask for a raise. Computers never try to game pay systems. And the cost of computers goes down every year, while the cost of labor rises. Mahalo has clearly miscalculated what it should pay testers. It could no doubt farm the work offshore and save some money. But wages in India have been rising, too. "We've already established what you are, ma'am; now we're just haggling over the price," goes the quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw. But no amount of pimping by Calacanis will save Mahalo's business model.

(Photo by Peter Kaminski)

The pair also face a potential lawsuit from residents upset at never getting the spa, restaurant and lounge Clark and Jermoluk promised for the building. "When we closed on the unit and walked through the lobby, we were like 'O.K., this looks kind of bland,'" one resident told the Times. "There's nothing for me to do but try and sell it." The buyer might have tried checking out the pair's full business records — something even the Times didn't bother to do. While he made a mint with Netscape, Clark's Healtheon struggled before merging with rival WebMD. SGI is on life support, a shadow of its former self. And Jermoluk is best known among Valley insiders for steering Excite@Home towards bankruptcy amid persistent rumors of a nose-candy problem.

According to an SEC filing, Writers Group Film is offering 10,000,000 shares of common stock at a price of $0.15 per share in an attempt to raise $1,500,000. Not gonna happen. The video's only been viewed 1,100 times on YouTube and 300 times on FunnyOrDie, according to the filings. Unlike this video, that's pretty funny.

"Google stressed to me that what's shown in the screenshots it provided might change and that the service might not launch at all," Danny Sullivan writes on Search Engine Land. So breathe easier, Jason. Google should soon discover that Mahalo clones are just as bad an idea as the original.