Here’s the last newsletter for 2007! We’ll be back in January with more juicy news updates~

Around the World

» In US: Internet ad spend grew to $8.4 billion in first 9 months of 2007, a jump of $1.2 billion (or 17.2 %) for same period in 2006. In contrast, expenditures on all other measured advertising only increased 0.2 %. Of total internet spending, Dot-com advertisers account for 46%.

Study shows that 47% of American adult internet users have done a vanity search in search engines. 53% of US internet users admit to having looked up info about work colleagues, friends, relatives, neighbors, etc.

» In Germany: Lufthansa is investing $300 million in JetBlue Airways and becoming a minority share holder (owning 19% of the cheap-chic airline).

» In UK: 4 out of 10 adults regularly visited social networking sites in 2006 – spending on average 5.3 hours per month on sites and returned to them 23 times during each month. As a result, companies spent more on web ads per person in the UK than anywhere else in Europe, shelling out an average of £33 per person (twice as much as France, Germany and Italy combined). UK also has highest uptake of digital TV, with 76% of households having digital. Closest rival was the US with 61%.

» In China: 2008 will see an increase in peer-to-peer computer hacking, as Chinese cybercriminals are become increasingly sophisticated and organized (not to mention surge in internet usage).

» In Japan: The car purchasing market is dwindling fast, but auto production is on the rise, spurred by high demand overseas. Japan will produce a total of 10.7 million vehicles this year. By 2010, production is estimated to reach 11.35 million (compared with 10.17 million for the U.S.)

» In Europe: Internet ad spend in Western Europe is expected to increase by 95% to $20 billion by 2010, with growth led by U.K. market. Regions with largest expected online ad revenue growth are Central and Eastern Europe. Although relatively modest in dollar terms, predicted spending will exceed $1.5 billion by 2010, which is an increase of more than 170% from 2007. This substantial growth expected to be driven by booming Russian market (Russia alone is expected to see around $728 million spent on online advertising in 2010, accounting for almost half of the projected web ad revenues for the region).

Facebook Update

» Ads-Click launched MicroSocialAds that will let you insert targeted, contextual text ads into your Facebook page. The incentive: every time someone clicks on an ad, you get paid 80 % of it! Ads are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible and highly targetable by interest. Ads-Click will match each ad from its network of more than 200,000 advertisers; all you gotta do is download it like any other Facebook application.

Newfangled Things

» Yahoo’s 2008 election site launched a new component called Dashboard, which contains basic polling and funding stats for each candidate.

» Mod My Life is a new lifecasting program that lets you watch people for hour-long segments at a time. The best part—you can command these people’s actions. The ‘people’ (aka Modstars) are actors, improve artists, comedians, etc. who voluntarily give up control of their behavior to an internet audience. For example, you can submit “do the robot”, and the Modstar will do the robot in real time, around real people (who have no clue he/she is being controlled by internet submissions). Sounds like hilarious content!

» Google has a new project called “Knol” (which stands for a unit of knowledge). It’s a user-generated knowledge base that combines parts of Wikipedia and Squidoo. How will Google attract people to write a Knol instead of posting on Wikipedia? It will offer a revenue share of ads displayed on the content page. Money makes the world go round. . .

» Flickr added a stats element for Pro users, kinda like Google Analytics for your photos: page views and visitors are tracked across each photo and numbers are updated daily. Great for the number-obsessed!

» Simkl History Saver will keep a running log of all your IM conversations. Chats are recorded and stored on their servers and can be checked from anywhere.

» The next Jackass Movie, “Jackass 2.5″, will be released exclusively first online. Backed by Paramount, the movie is being hailed as “the first studio-backed feature film to have its premiere online.” It’ll only be available for 2 weeks online before heading to pay-per-view TV, DVD and iTunes for a fee.

» SF-based Scout Labs helps companies make sense of their brands in blogs, user generated videos and images. Brand managers start by creating “scouts” for each brand they want to track. Any mention of the brand since January 07 (when Scout Labs first started their database) will be tracked and catalogued. Scout Labs then analyzes user-generated content and broadly assess whether the brand is mentioned in negative, positive or neutral manner. They also rank the source of the content to highlight more influential sources. Looks like a great tool for marketers.

» Mio.TV is a bilingual online multimedia entertainment, communications and social networking site aimed at young, acculturated U.S. Hispanics. Still in Beta, the site will allow users to access an online video player to watch original/exclusive Mio-produced content, view and share videos, create profiles, make voice-over-IP phone calls, listen to music, send IM, manage e-mails (plus a slew of other good stuff). No downloads are required and membership is free. My question is: why are people still using the term ‘Hispanic’?!

» Wii Fit, the variation of the original, recently launched in the motherland (aka Japan). It comes with a balance board, yoga games and lots of options. No date set for worldwide release yet.

» BitTorrent has a new movie section called Watch Now (Flash Player 9 needed). Using the BitTorrent DNA streaming technology, Watch Now offers a few hundred full-length movies and TV shows that you can watch in full-screen. Quality is not superb, but hey it’s free.

Happy Holidays!