You may recall, that a few years ago, MySpace (or, rather, News Corp.) signed a $900 million advertising deal with Google. The deal guaranteed at least that much in revenue from Google, even if the ads didn't really earn that much. Basically, Google felt the need to do the deal to keep competitors off of MySpace. However, as people have finally started realizing that advertising on MySpace (or other social networks) isn't working out, it's worth noting that the clock is ticking on the deal. There's still a bit more than a year left on the deal, but Google has been shying away from similar deals, and there's growing evidence that ads on social networking sites just don't pay. The Google deal may have helped keep MySpace afloat for the past few years, but without a replacement things may get trickier.

It wouldn't be too much of an exaggeration to say technology journalist Dan Lyons has a Schizophrenic relationship with blogging. In 2005, he penned Forbes' laughable cover story called "The Attack of the Blogs," but a couple of years later, he was uncovered as the author of the hilarious Fake Steve Jobs blog. Alas, it seems his love-affair with the medium has faltered. In his most recent column for Newsweek, Lyons has a real surprise for everyone hoping to retire on their Google AdSense income: "while blogs can do many wonderful things, generating huge amounts of money isn't one of them." Taking a look at some recent blogging layoffs and his own paltry advertising income as the anonymous impersonator of Apple's CEO, Lyons concludes that growing rich from blogging is a "fairy tale."

What's missing from Lyons' piece, of course, is the great success he experienced as a direct result of blogging. Not only did he receive a big book deal using the same Fake Steve Jobs character he created for the blog, Lyons has been invited to speak and write widely on the topic. Further, it's doubtful that his high-profile switch from Forbes to Newsweek was anything but augmented by his blogging success. While relying on traditional advertising may not be the most promising business plan - especially given today's market - blogging can and does serve as an integral part of the success Lyons and many others seek.

Facebook celebrated its fifth birthday this week, and amid all the navel-gazing about what that means for the internet, one big question still hangs over the site: how will it monetize its popularity? This is an issue that continues to dog the social-networking space, as Om Malik points out that MySpace is struggling to generate revenues as well. These sites' massive amount of traffic and visitors, and the huge amount of time spent there, have traditionally not automatically equated to big advertising revenue, and there's nothing to suggest that's going to change soon, particularly given the slowdown in ad spending. If these sites are depending on advertising for revenues, they've got to come up with something more compelling than simple banner ads, which aren't delivering decent CPM or clickthroughs. While sites like Facebook and MySpace have plenty of life left in them, at some point, they're going to have to deliver an effective way to generate significant revenues.

The FT's got a story saying "YouTube is in danger of being upstaged commercially" by Hulu, the online video site owned NBC and News Corp. It's based on a report saying Hulu will make as much in advertising revenues as YouTube next year, about $180 million, despite having far fewer active users. Two points: first, is this really surprising given the strengths of Hulu's parents at selling advertising around content; second, when did this become a zero-sum game? The article sets up some sort of adversarial relationship between Hulu and YouTube, or between professional and user-submitted content. While perhaps there's some competition for advertising dollars -- as there is between any two parties selling ad space -- the two sites don't have to succeed solely at the other's expense. Despite what the likes of Andrew Keen would have us believe, there's room enough on the web for both professional TV shows and amateur fat cat videos, and the success of one doesn't intrinsically mean the failure of the other.

It's somewhat amazing that this case is still going on, but AOL's sneaky ad deals to boost its own revenue are still the target of lawsuits. Back in 2006, we noted that federal prosecutors had decided that it wasn't worth prosecuting the executives involved. However, it appears that the SEC feels differently. It's now sued eight former AOL execs for taking part in the scam -- though, four of them have already settled. If you don't recall, AOL had this nice little trick where it would "swap" ads with other sites, where no money changed hands, but both sides would record revenue. That let them boost revenue (up to a billion dollars for AOL) without any actual revenue coming in. It's a nice little trick... and it's also illegal. Though, it all took place in the 2000/2001 timeframe, so it's not clear why it took the SEC seven years to do something about it.

Just last month there was the latest in a rather long line of reports noting that red light cameras tend to increase the number of accidents because people slam on their brakes to stop in time, leading to rear-ending accidents. Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there's a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there's a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite! Jeff Nolan points out that six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and increasing revenue. This is especially disgusting. These cities are actively putting more people in danger of serious injury or death solely for the sake of raising revenue -- while claiming all along that it's for safety purposes. Is it any surprise that one of the six cities is Dallas? Remember, just last month Dallas decided it wasn't going to install any more red light cameras because fewer tickets had hurt city revenue.