Who needs venture capital money when you have litigation? Facebook was awarded $711 million in damages Thursday in an anti-spam case against Sanford Wallace, an internet marketer. The popular social networking platform went after Wallace for tapping its users' accounts without their permission and sending fake posts and messages.

Wallace has quite a reputation for spamming, having gained the nicknames "Spam King" and "Spamford" back in the 1990s, when he was good for up to 30 million spam e-mails a day.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) makes it easier to search for websites, e-mail messages, passages from books and videos. Where you haven't heard much about Google's search capabilities -- or Google in general -- is the music business.

But, that's about to change. On Wednesday, the search giant announced that it was partnering with music services such as Pandora, Lala, News Corp's (NASDAQ: NWS) MySpace, and Rhapsody by RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) to help users find, listen to and ultimately buy music on the web.

Doug McIntyre wrote this morning that News Corp (NYSE: NWS)'s MySpace.com will be challenging Facebook in the social networking space with its new open-source platform. This means anyone and everyone with programming and/or web knowledge will be able to wrap their hands around MySpace's hundred-million plus registered users and create applications and useful features that users of the social networking site will love and use -- and will keep them coming back more often for longer periods (known as "stickiness" in the web universe).

Although Rupert Murdoch is now touting the growth in MySpace since News Corp bought the web property two years ago, I still see no solid figures on how the property is being monetized and how profit growth is happening. Yes, Murdoch says that social networking has become "explosive" in the near past. That is very true, and it's something I noted in a post on Facebook yesterday.

MySpace and Facebook may be garnering a huge slice of eyeballs these days, but are they monetizing that traffic? What are page views and visitor counts if little to no 'valuable' revenue is being generated? Some would say all revenue is valuable, but I disagree. If irrelevant ads show up on web pages, they count as being viewed (an "impression"). Does the viewer do anything with this "impression?" Is this growth being measured?

All that click counting is well and good. And growing page views are an advertisers delight. But how much time are people really spending looking at various web sites?

Jay Meattle at Compete.com has a great breakdown of where people spent most of their time on the web in December 2006. Some of the results are surprising.

Twenty domains account for fully 39% of time spent online. MySpace.com (a division of the News Corporation, NYSE:NWS ) was the big winner, taking a lion's share of 11.9% viewing time (27,999,906,051 minutes) followed by Yahoo! Inc.(NASDAQ:YHOO) with 19,898,123,587 minutes. According to these figures, 11.9% of ALL TIME online was spent at MySpace.com!

The big surprise is Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG). It came in only fifth with 2.1% (4,959,635,138 minutes). The figures for YouTube (#12 with 1,327,25, 263 minutes) were separate, but even if you add them together they don't get close to Yahoo.

Also, some sad(to me) appearances in the top 20: Neopets.com at #18, accounting for 0.3% of viewing time with 593,851,415 minutes, and adultfriendfinder .com at #19 for 0.2% of viewing time with 575,584,893 minutes.

Maybe Christmas is a lonelier time for some.

Will Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (NYSE:NWS) rid itself of the famous social gathering website MySpace.com in order to get a big return on its investment? That rumor is swirling about these days amid reports of a possible shift in where finicky and trend-obsessed teens go online. Presumably, they are heading for the "next big thing" -- whatever that is.

Sure, Murdoch picked up MySpace.com for $580 million just this past summer in a move that was seen as brilliant because the price was abnormally low. These days, companies spend billions on completely unproven business models and trendy websites that have billions of page hits but which aren't producing the cash flow or the potential to become a long-term financial and marketing entity. Call it "dot-com 2.0." I sure do.

The scuttlebutt now is that Murdoch my be looking for a buyer for MySpace. In recent comments, he said that he thought News Corp. could garner about $6 billion for the web property. Others have said that a price tag of $10 billion to $20 billion is even feasible. Hogwash -- but I would like some of what these people are smoking. MySpace is *not* a $6 billion business by any measure whatsoever, unless the sheer number of pageviews in some analyst's marketing statistical package translates into pure cash play. It doesn't. Yet. Maybe never. Murdoch's mention of 200 million users by next year is a great stat -- but there needs to be results. Hard results. As in cold, hard cash.

In what I consider to be a brilliant move by Fox, the television network says that will be airing reruns of popular Fox Network television shows online, at MySpace.com, during the upcoming MLB Baseball playoffs.

The playoffs and resultant World Series end-up preempting several prime-time Fox shows during the October and November timeframes, so instead of forcing customers to watch baseball on their television networks, Fox is giving customers a choice of tuning into reruns of popular Fox shows online.

That, for one, is the a defining example of giving customers choice in the digital age that is integrating television broadcasting with Internet distribution. In fact, the space continues to morph more and more, and the only critical piece missing is an easy, very cheap and popular device for transferring content or even a computer screen's signal into the living room television.

Devices such as the upcoming iTV from Apple will do just that, as already many other gadgets being sold by many companies do. But, so far, the cost is more than it should be (get it down to less than $100). It is also unknown if the interfaces and designs on the current products are as well-designed as Apple's iTV will surely be. If you have one of these devices, comment on it -- I would love to hear how it works.

Will other networks follow Fox's lead and play reruns for a segment of their audience during major sporting events? You know, at least for the wives that have no interest in sports playoffs? Well, that statement comes from the numerous commercials that depict ordinary housewives being bored to tears with sports of all kinds -- a typical marketing stereotype, you know. Seriously though, this move by Fox is really a head-turner. If only more television networks controlled an online empire like Fox does with MySpace.com.

Although YouTube gets plenty pf press these days, video postings and sharing at MySpace.com topped all online video offerings in July, beating Yahoo! Videos, Google Video and the venerable YouTube.com in the number of videos served.

Over 37 million viewers collectively watched over 1.4 billion videos on MySpace pages in July. This is not surprising considering that the audience at MySpace.com is so large -- the web property rivals Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) for the amount of visitor traffic it gets. In other words, the law of averages probably came into play nicely here.

But there is a difference. YouTube has amateur videos and all kinds of clips ripped from copyrighted sources (no matter how much it's policed). MySpace.com probably has the same kind of content, but my guess is that the teenage to upper-20s demographic that inhabits most of MySpace makes the videos that are there fitting to that demographic. That's a total guess but seems rational.

On the other hand, the array of content available at Google Video and YouTube spans generations and ages easily. But the difference here comes to targeted advertising. With News Corporation (ASX: NWS) now owning MySpace, the corporate media behemoth will have a pretty influential voice into the targeted online advertising that MySpace visitors and users view (and hopefully, respond to en masse).

Google Video visitors are also served targeted advertisements, but the visitors must be much more varied than MySpace.com video visitors. What is the difference here? Hmm, not sure there is one -- depends on who is the larger overall base.

In this post, I discussed how Yahoo! was primed to continue being a great home to its millions of customers by being a "sticky" and "relationshippy" partner, as opposed to a destination for information. In fact to this day I still find competitor Google to be more of a destination for information of all kinds, and Yahoo! to be more like a community. Although Google has made great strides to change things with personalized this and personalized that.

So is there a new game in town? You bet there is, and it's News Corp.'s MySpace.com. With Fox Sports being part of the same happy family, MySpace.com is being positioned as a home to millions of fantasy football players all over the U.S. in a challenge to Yahoo! Sports' leadership in this rather unique, nichy, and lucrative "sticky" business. With live scoring and statistics available to users of MySpace's fantasy football offering -- which cost extra at Yahoo! -- here's another example that may force Yahoo! to up the ante in its offering, like Google's Gmail did years ago when Yahoo!'s email offering featured a measly 2MB of storage.

News Corp. execs aren't being lackadaisical or lazy, they are already mingling assets under the Murdoch umbrella in an attempt to grow the fortunes of News Corp. and entrench cross-promotional properties across mediums like television and the Internet. The purchase of MySpace.com gave Murdoch's company a built-in user base of highly-desirable consumers. If it can keep them by not being a totalitarian corporate overlord, which it has not done yet so far, the future will be brighter than it has been in some time -- except for the competition.

Facebook, the website network built for and designed to connect high-school and college students, is treading on interesting ground these days. Back on August 24th the company signed an agreement with Microsoft for the computer software maker to supply and deliver all the advertisements that are displayed on the Facebook website. This is akin to the agreement between MySpace.com and Google recently, whereby Google will perform basically the same function by providing search functionality and related advertising across the MySpace.com website property.

Facebook is now releasing an RSS-lookalike function that will combine user profiles and related information into a "news feed" format that will, if adopted in great strides, probably cause less actual page viewing throughout Facebook's website. It will also send consumers of the Facebook website to a feed page, not a website page, where potentially less page views and advertisements will be seen. Oops -- less advertisements will be seen? That sounds fishy to me. I wonder how Microsoft would respond to this.

Facebook, however, may decide to embed advertising into its "news feeds" for condensing user profile information. This would be the sensible thing to do, although it must proceed carefully to not alienate consumers and users of that new feature. With 9 million registered users and 14.4 million user visits claimed in July, Facebook.com has a meaty section of advertising market targets.

But as always I question the exact measurement of what constitutes "registered users." Did Facebook.com see 14.4 million "unique" visitor pageviews in July, or did the same 1 million users view 14 pages each throughout the month? When ad rates are drawn up data like this is extremely important but usually glossed over. Microsoft is hoping for unique advertising opportunities I would think, not consistent users who at some point may actually ignore ads.

When Rupert Murdoch's News. Corp purchased the incredibly-popular MySpace.com social networking portal, the global media behemoth promised not to distract the founders from what they do best -- provide a great environment for a certain age demographic. They said they would let MySpace continue to be the virtual "mall hangout" for millions.

So far, that has held true, and of course, News Corp. wants to have advertising displayed all over the social website to cash in on those lucrative and captive-audience ad dollars. To that tune, Google signed a rather high-profile deal with MySpace just a few weeks ago worth $900 million to do just that. Off to the races we all go now...

But are there signs of change at MySpace lurking beneath the proverbial covers? Recently, after some worry-filled days and nights, the MySpace laid-back, but intensely-focused, culture was uprooted as its headquarters was moved from Santa Monica to Beverly Hills, where News Corp. was consolidating its Internet properties. Tom Anderson -- co-founder of MySpace -- is now going through regular corporate drills like budget reviews and executive meetings.

MySpace is also about to roll out enhanced photo and video-sharing capabilities that will allow the site to complete with social photo-sharing and tagging communities like Yahoo!'s Flickr and YouTube -- two of the web's most popular sites for sharing photos and videos, respectively. Will MySpace be able to integrate advertising in such a way that it does not overwhelm and scare off its target market of teens and young adults? That remains to be seen. If it can, then Yahoo! and others may need to watch out. The community of the future may not be on Yahoo!'s immensely-popular portal, but on MySpace.

MySpace.com seems to be the hottest ticket around these days for Internet eyeballs. Specifically, the highly-touted younger eyeballs that many advertisers love to court. There are reports that Google missed the boat on purchasing MySpace.com earlier (according to this story), and shortly thereafter Rupert Murdoch beat Viacom to land the immensely-popular social networking site for $580 million. That gives News. Corp an instant presence in the online world, although it's been very careful about not transplanting its own brand and identity to MySpace.com. Even the founders are still around and are running the site and operations just like before. Smart move, Rupert.

With the just-announced partnership with Google, MySpace.com will now be replacing its generic search engine with Google search, which will most likely be a huge winner for both. Google gets its advertiser's ads in front of billions of page views, and MySpace.com gets a highly-relevant search function that will connect its customers with information just like its customers do now -- they connect themselves to one another.

Does Yahoo! fit into all this? It could have. The world's largest Internet portal lost out on its bid to supply search services to MySpace.com to rival Google. Although that was a blow to Yahoo!, it was by no means a death sentence to the company. Yahoo! continues to be the leader for Internet-focused eyeballs, garnering more visits than any other web property around. It just won't lose customers like dust in the wind, regardless of the Google/MySpace.com relationship. Sure, MySpace.com surpassed Yahoo! Mail as the most heavily-visited web destination last month (according to Hitwise). That's a problem that Yahoo! should be attacking, but it's far from a death sentence. Yahoo's varying services for customers encompass so many different types of content it'll be just fine -- if it keeps innovating to stay where it is.

Brian White has worked in various executive positions in technology and telecommunications and now focuses on editing and writing.

This was a good one after reading about it -- Wal-Mart's new MySpace-ish website for the totally uncool teenager at its "School Your Way" website -- and its just about as far-fetched and kitschy as I have seen in some time. What are they trying to do here -- re-invent the wheel in the worst possible way? This is most likely a marketing experiment, but you never know how things like this will turn out -- perhaps everyone will migrate from MySpace over to Wal-Mart. Not.

Teenagers and entry-college people are generally the most faddish and entranced by fashion and trends, and it is hard to say if this marketing demographic will gravitate towards Wal-Mart as a fashionable trendsetter. Wal-Mart vs. Abercrombie? That's a rather odd comparison to visualize, yet that is exactly what Wal-Mart is trying to accomplish here from my perspective. The ad agency that created the campaign, GSD&M of Austin, Texas, must have some interesting research to back up up what they created.

With so many limitations and disclaimers on what visitors can do at the Wal-Mart "School Your Way" website -- no email interchange and a laundry list of what you "can't do" -- will this marketing junket even take off from the launch pad? With this stab at creating a semi-edgy slant of content to appeal to a certain purchasing set, some seem unimpressed by the display. Amy Kandel, 14, of Columbus, Ohio -- "Some of the kids looked like they were trying to be supercool, but they weren't at all, and they were just being kind of weird," and "Are these real kids?" Pete Hughes, 18, said this: "It just seemed kind of corny to me."

Was Rupert Murdoch placing a large bet when he decided to purchase MySpace.com for $580 million? Sure he was -- but the media baron knew that having an outlet for online advertising and eyeballs was going to be a big business. Yes, the MySpace.com contingent is nothing short of amazing. So amazing, in fact, that MySpace.com became the No. 1 leading web destination in the U.S. just recently, passing such Internet stalwarts like Google and Yahoo!

Keep in mind that MySpace.com is frequented by kids and teens more than anyone -- and Google and Yahoo! are frequented by just about anyone with a web connection. That fact speaks to the heart of the "MySpace generation" -- those who are spending much (if not most) of their leisure and social time online. Are malls and other physical hangouts on the decline? Hard to say -- but MySpace.com and text messaging are changing the social strata of today's kids.

As much as 4.5% of all web visitor traffic was sent to MySpace.com last week, making the social portal the most popular web-based destination in the U.S. Forget all those business trips being booked on Priceline or Hotwire, or all the email being sent at Yahoo! Mail. MySpace.com trumped them all.

With Google receiving so much press lately with the flood of product releases it's had, can it learn from MySpace? It can -- and that lesson is: make a compelling and personalized portal and people will show up. The more customized a web destination is, the more people feel in-tune with what's there instead of a cold, non-personal visit. Information by itself is good, but personal relationships can sometimes be better.

With MySpace.com being all the rage these days (on sitcoms, even), it's looking for a search partner to join in in bringing advertising to the site in ways that both MySpace and the chosen partner can make a nice revenue stream. Google and Microsoft are, at this time, the apparent front-runners to being the default search partner for MySpace? Who will win out? A more important second question -- will the target demographic and socio-economic class that predominantly uses MySpace respond to ads on that social network like the standard web search user?

There's been talk that advertising on MySpace -- in any form -- will not nearly be as lucrative as search-based advertising is on the general internet. The age group that uses MySpace (by and large) are prime folks to market to -- that's for sure -- but they can also be the most fickle with annoying ads (and the most resourceful at not even responding to them and blocking them). Google, which has had enormous success with its relevant and unobtrusive text-based ads, would be the optimal choice if the advertising displayed at MySpace follows along the already-established guidelines of the Google universe.

With the potentially-lucrative ad income MySpace and the chosen search partner will share, there are definite reasons for having your ads showing up on the MySpace network (for sheer visitor numbers alone). But, are you listening, Google and/or Microsoft? To be successful, you must ensure the actual way that ads are displayed along with the relevancy is suited for the specific audience. This is something Google has the upper hand in (my guess) at this time.

Bambi Francisco, a columnist at MarketWatch, has a very interesting piece this week: MySpace-engine.

Despite being the second most trafficked site on the Web, MySpace is still a teenager when it comes to monetization. True, generating $200 million in revenues is no small feat (especially for a company less than three years old). Then again, companies like Google and Yahoo! are sucking-up much of the enormous amounts spent for online advertising.

So, why shouldn't MySpace jump into the search game? One idea would be to purchase a company like LookSmart (Nasdaq: LOOK). The company has made a comeback – and more importantly, has the necessary search infrastructure (which took hundreds of millions to develop over the years). And the market cap is dirt cheap: $95 million. In fact, the company has $44 million in cash and liquid securities.

According to Francisco, about 8.2% of Google's traffic comes from tools on MySpace.com. Interestingly enough, it is the biggest source of traffic for Google. So, it looks like a no brainer for MySpace to have its own search engine.

Actually, this morning, I talked with the CEO of a company called Foldera. It's a Web 2.0 collaborative tool focused on small to medium-sized businesses. His product also pushes lots of traffic to Google. "Why not try to monetize this large amount of corporate traffic?" he told me.

Yes, many online communities are asking themselves this question. And, with the huge amounts of money at stake in the online advertising market, Google will need to deal with fierce competition on all fronts – not just from Yahoo and MSN.