Forbes.com broke a story today entitled, “Click Fraud Goes Viral.” The article was written by Andy Greenberg.

The article is based on a recent study by Click Forensics that revealed that the percentage of clicks on online ads that were fraudulent climbed to 15.8% in the second quarter of 2007, an increase of a full percentage point in just three months. And the volume of fraudulent clicks found on online content networks like Google Adsense and Yahoo Publisher Network is more disturbing: 25.6% of those clicks were bogus, compared with 21.9% at the end of last quarter.

I was quoted and Pepperjam was referenced several times in the Forbes article. Check it out HERE.

Thanks to Andy Greenberg for using me once again as an authority in his excellent articles!

Today’s article comes off the heels of an article earlier in the week featuring Pepperjam on CNNMoney.com - that article delt with making money from search arbitrage.

OK, As some of you may or may not know I am a pretty big fan and student of social media. I enjoy just watching as news stories, websites, videos and people climb from obscurity to internet phenomenon. One site I have ALWAYS been a fan of is Facebook. I remember in college (yeah, about a whole year ago) when we first got Facebook on campus. I tried to resist as long as possible but eventually I fell to the power of Facebook as it is pretty hard not to when the question “Do you have (a) Facebook?” is second only to “Whats your Name?”

Since the beginning I have seen Facebook as the superior application to MySpace, I find MySpace bland, boring and cluttered with “pimped out pages” and “awesome tunes”. Recently, Facebook has been gaining notoriety as it has opened its doors from virtual college yearbook to social network of the masses AND not only that they have also opened their doors to third party publishers so that little programs and widgets can be integrated into your Facebook homepage. So it is quite interesting to surf people profiles and play with all the virtual toys floating around. Not only that they also have their own personal RSS feed, but not what you would normally expect fro man RSS feed, it is a feed of all the updates from your friends in your network so you can find out when someone changes their status or breaks up with their significant other or changes their profile picture.

With all of this going on it was only a matter of time before someone was going to notice Facebook, their have been rumors of Fox having buyers remorse from MySpace, rumors of an IPO from Facebook and even rumors of Google wanting to snatch them up because they “fear” them, here is an excerpt from an AdAge article entitled “23-Year-Old Mark Zuckerberg Has Google Sweating”:

Just as Google has become what some people call the operating system for search, Facebook is turning itself into the operating system for social networking. While Google knows what millions of people are searching for, Facebook has something the search giant hasn’t been able to grow: a network of connections between people that creates a viral distribution platform unrivaled by any portal or search engine.

Don’t think this point hasn’t made its way to Mountain View. It has certainly made it into the New York offices of News Corp., parent of Facebook’s chief competition. When asked recently by the Wall Street Journal whether newspaper readers were going to MySpace, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who shelled out in 2005 what now appears to be a bargain sum of $580 million for MySpace, didn’t mince words: “I wish they were. They’re all going to Facebook at the moment.”

Mark Zuckerberg has seen offers rolling in from all over the place including a $1 Billion dollar offer from Yahoo! and various other ranging from $580 Million to $750 Million. Facebook does not seem to want to sell their baby at the moment, I think Zuckerberg is actually interested in seeing this company ushered into a new age of the internet and seeing his vision executed through his own means rather than through some company that will run it into the ground.

Sign up for Facebook and add me as a friend!

CLICK HERE to see Pepperjam’s Affiliate Summit - Miami Pics!

Affiliate Summit 2007 - Miami was without question the best affiliate marketing conference ever held. The host venue (InterContinental Miami) was an excellent choice, networking opportunities were abundant, and attendees included some of the most influencial leaders in both e-commerce, direct marketing, and internet marketing.

Special thanks to Shawn Collins and Missy Ward for constantly improving Affiliate Summit and for making sure that this event was the best ever.

Team Pepperjam was in full force with seven (7) members of our staff, including myself, Aaron Baker (VP of Sales), Brock Siegel (VP of Business Development), Robyn Martin (Director of Affiliate Marketing), Maura Goodwin (Assistant Director of Affiliate Marketing), and Kate Sarnak (Super Senior Affiliate Manager).

We had an amazing time with many of our industry friends, including Shoemoney, Kevin (Income.com / John Reese), Lee Dodd, David Adams, Shmuel Tennenhaus (YouTube Celeb), Asif Malik, Joel Comm (Next Internet Millionaire), Josh & Ken from DentalPlans.com, and too many more to mention.

Saturday: Robyn and I were already in Miami staying in South Beach since Thursday - the rest of the gang arrived on Saturday afternoon…I thought it would be nice to reward my team by flying them a day early and showing them what South Beach is all about.

Needless to say, we had an amazing time in South Beach!

Sunday: We spent some time at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market, which was packed with people and was great networking. We were a bit disappointed that we didn’t have a Meet Market table since many people expected us to and were looking for us - I guess there was some confusion with the fact that we wanted a table and it wasn’t included as an exhibitor. Anyway, the Meet Market was definitely a good time.

Sunday evening we went to a party sponsored by ShareASale and ABESTWEB - the party was really, really fun and I had the opportunity to meet a few handfuls of new friends, as well as spend some time with my friend Todd Crawford from Digital River and others. The entire Pepperjam Team seemed to be having a blast!

Monday: We arrived at the Pepperjam exhibit booth around 9:00a.m. so that the booth was ready to go and the energy drinks were cold….

One of the highlights of our booth was the fact that we were handing out Who’s Your Daddy Energy Drinks for FREE - a special thanks goes to Dan at Who’s our Daddy, Inc. for sponsoring Pepperjam at the event - honestly, the energy drinks were a huge hit and everybody was talking about how they rocked!

Our booth was staffed with our booth babes, which consisted of myself, NOT, Brock, Aaron, Chris, and the girls (Robyn, Maura, & Kate) - at Pepperjam, unlike other unnamed companies, we are proud of the fact that our booth babes actually work for us! The booth was crowded with people all day - once again, it went down as one of the most popular booths at the entire show - it’s like a never ending party at our booth wherever we go….people stop by to see where the parties are or to get VIP tickets; people stop by our booth for free swag; people stop by our booth to say hi, and prospective clients stop by our booth and are blown away by our energy.

We had a ton of attendees come to our booth since we were handing out VIP tickets to the party we were co-sponsoring later that night at Mansion.

The party at Mansion, which was sponsored by Pepperjam, WebmasterRadio, Copeac and others was amazing! A really classy event at a great venue. The evening definitely turned out to be a highlight of the conference and we consider it one of the best parties we’ve ever sponsored! Check out our PICS from the party! By the way - we sponsored an after party along with Zanox at Tantra that was also a great time - thanks to our friends, clients, and prospective clients who attended the after party with us.

Tuesday: After a late night Monday I started off Tuesday with breakfast in my suite, while the rest of the gang was down at the booth meeting with prospective clients. I had a series of meetings set-up throughout the day so I didn’t spend too much time at the booth, but I stopped by long enough to see the mob of people surrounding the Pepperjam Team.

Prior to my own presentation I attended a panel that included Jeremy Schoemaker and Lee Dodd on making money with community forumns. I was very impressed with Jeremy and Lee’s ability to offer so many sound money making tips - if you left that session without 10 new money making ideas you must have been wearing ear plugs. It was an outstanding session.

My session, which I did solo, was on “the Confluence of Search-Engine and Affiliate Marketing” and it was very well attended. At one point I asked the audience how many of them had made more than $10,000 by either reading this blog or hearing previous speeches I’ve given - I was blown away when about 10 or so people rasied their hand - I was deeply honored and it allowed me to give what I thought was a very informative presentation. I should also thank Who’s Your Daddy again here since one of the highlights of my presentation was the fact that everyone in attendance got FREE ENERGY DRINKS!!!

On Monday evening I did two private meetings…my favorite being a sitdown with Shoemoney, Lee Dodd, and David Adams to talk about Elite Retreat among other things.

Robyn and I were leaving the next morning so we all went to dinner and then Robyn and I went back to the room the pack our bags.

All in all the Affiliate Summit was one of the best conferences ever!

Want more reviews of Affiliate Summit? Here are some:

Click Consultants
Moose on the Loose Affiliate Marketing Blog
Shoemoney
Revenue Magazine Blog
ReveNews
The Affiliate Summit Blog
Shawn Collin’s Blog
ABestWeb.com
WebPro News
Rosalind Gardner
My Netrapreneur
Zac Johnson
Super Affiliate Mindset

I love Google maps and I have seen more interesting stuff on Google Maps than I actually ever thought was possible, whether it was naked rooftop sunbathers or businesses putting their logos on the rooftops there is always some interesting stuff to be seen. Recently Google added Google Maps Street View, which is very helpful when getting driving directions as it shows key landmarks. Everyone loved it and everything wasonce again right in the world of Google until this picture popped up.

What is it you may ask? Well, if you look close enough you will see that it is a picture of some ladies cat and the rest of the inside of her house which leads to the question who is Google working for and is protecting our privacy really in their best interest. Google has one of the worlds most extensive databases on human beings, if you have been online you are probably in that database, thats a pretty scary thought and yet we trust Google with that so it is up to them to keep up best practices and “Don’t Be Evil”. Now while it certainly isn’t illegal, because they are just photographing things that can be seen with the human eye anyway it is still unnerving in its own right. (The Picture Has Since Been Removed From Google Maps Street View.)

As long as Google uses these images in the way that they are supposed to be used I believe that they will do more good than harm and I also think that Google should make more public when their car will be driving by so that people can close their shades and windows if they don’t want the inside of their home photographed, regardless it didn’t seem like it was that big of a deal to get the image removed.

Google Maps Street View is also a very fun tool, check out some of these other fun pictures that have been found courtesy of the hundreds of map crawlers out there.

Typical Guy
Crime In Progress?
Zoom In On The Guy and Girl On The Bench
Guy With Small Head
More Cats
Street Art

I did have A LOT more links but most of the pictures have since been removed either at the request of the people pictured or the fact that these were plastered everywhere and Google decided to squelch the backlash before it turned into something more serious. Either way I still love Google Maps but seriously watch out for the privacy issues and keep up the good work!!

Later…