Mark to market is R.I.P. But that's good news. Sentiment is building in the punditosphere that unemployment has not yet peaked and might not peak until 2010. TechCrunch reports that not a single venture-backed company IPOd in first quarter and M&A transactions were down by half compared to a year ago. Twitter is the next MySpace, according to this post. Too many impostors, follower counting and other sad parallels.

Marketing is always difficult. Often, you need to experiment with a variety of approaches. And, of course, you need to measure things.

Obvious, huh?

Yet, when it comes to using social media like Twitter, Facebook and so on, it seems that many small businesses forgot to measure things.

Then again, if you read much of the how-to's on the topic, it does seem that social media is an elixir; that is, there is some type of magic that will create more business.

But, when I talk to business owners about the success of their social media, things get a bit fuzzy. Often, there are few tangible examples.

Over the past few years, there has been an explosion of social media – as well as many fundings. However, it hasn't been easy for social media platforms to standout.

But, as for Wetpaint, things have been moving nicely. In fact, the company has announced a $25 million venture round (in all, the company has raised $40 million). The investors include: DAG Ventures, Accel Partners, Trinity Ventures, and Frazier Technology Ventures.

Essentially, Wetpaint allows you to create your own social media site – with pictures, blogs, videos and so on. So far, there are more than one million sites – with about a half a billion words (keep in mind that the system is extremely easy to use).

More importantly, Wetpaint has had lots of success monetizing the traffic, which is no easy feat when dealing with user-generated content. Although, Wetpaint's pages are optimized for major search engines, allowing for cost-effective traffic. And now with much more money in the bank, there is likely to be a further push to get users to create many more sites.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates MergerBook.com.

No doubt, there are many shareholder activists. But with Eric Jackson -- who manages Ironfire Capital LLC -- he is a bit different. That is, he uses social media, like Google Inc (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s YouTube, to help with his campaigns against companies like Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT).

Well, I recently had a chance to interview him:

Why did you setup your fund? What's your take on shareholder activism?

After last June's Yahoo! annual meeting, when they changed CEOs following a high "against" vote by shareholders towards the current board, several friends and supporters encouraged me to think about setting up a fund. Frankly, they and I were a little surprised what I had been able to accomplish owning only 96 shares of the company. Many people had told me it was a waste of time and I had no chance of gaining support for an alternate "Plan B" for Yahoo! But we showed that the quality of ideas matter more to other shareholders than the quantity of shares owned. My hard costs were negligible for the campaign: a $30 webcam and a couple of JetBlue tickets to California. Several people said: "You need to do this on a larger scale." Ironfire Capital will allow me to do that.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) doesn't look like it is slowing down on the deal front for AOL. Just when everyone is wondering if AOL will be sold, AOL has announced that it is paying out $850 million to acquire the social networking site Bebo, "a global social media network which combines community, self-expression and entertainment to enable its users to consume, create, discover and share content."

Bebo is also one of the leading social networks in the U.K. and is supposed to ranked number three in the U.S. Its users view an average of 78 pages per day.

Bebo has a total membership of more than 40 million worldwide. The press release notes that together with the AIM and ICQ network, AOL will have 80 million unique users in the world of social media.

For $850 million in cash as the purchase price, AOL probably just added a serious site that it can convert rapidly into advertising profits with Platform-A (Advertising.com and more). Its giant ad platform that still ranks number one on many ad metrics.

So while $850 sounds like a lot, it may well prove to be a bargain ultimately for AOL.

It seems that every couple months there are new buyout rumors regarding the fast-growing social media site, Digg. And, yes, the rumors are buzzing again. The culprit this time is the Valleywag blog.

Of course, the suitors include old media stalwarts that – yet again – can't seem to shoot straight in the new media world. They would include such companies as the New York Times (NYSE: NYT) or the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO).

Oh, and the price tag for the deal is $300 million to $400 million. But, hey, in light of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT)'s investment in Facebook, this seems cheap-o.

Ironically enough, Digg recently signed a $100 million ad deal with Mr. Softy. In other words, it seems like Microsoft may be to blame for the craziness in the social media world, huh? And, as a result, it may be making it very expensive for old media companies to buy into the space.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Social media has been hot lately. This week, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and General Electric (NYSE: GE), announced a deal to buy Newsvine (the price tag was not disclosed). The site allows people to comment and vote on news stories.

However, the business models are still in the formative stages -- and are mostly focused on advertising.

Yet, we are seeing some new approaches, as seen with ThisNext. The company operates a social media site that allows users to recommend, share, and discover products. It's called "shopcasting."

The social web – which allows everybody to participate – got a boost this week. That is, MSNBC.com, a joint venture between Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) and General Electric (NYSE: GE), agreed to buy Newsvine, a news site that allows for voting, comments and so on.

However, as the social web expands, it gets difficult to follow things. While a variety of services track blogs, there's not much in terms of following comments.

Well, that's what coComment is focused on. "Think of us as the Digg for comments," said Kristina Serafim, VP of Marketing at coComment, in a BloggingStocks interview.

And the site is growing. There are more than 550,000 users so far.

"User-generated comments about you or your company are likely to be fragmented across different sites, such as blogs, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO), and so on," said Serafim. "But with coComment, we essentially put comments into a conversation."

Yes, the site is free, although coComment has plans for monetization. "There are display ads. Or, if users don't want them, they pay a fee for an ad-free environment. We also see opportunities for using the site as a large focus group."

And with the power of social media growing, I can see where companies will want to call on coComment for some help.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Typically when NBC and YouTube interact, the result is not very friendly. As users posted content to the web 2.0 video site they did not bother about the legalities of their uploading clips from shows owned by various media groups. In the past NBC has sent takedown notices, and YouTube has complied with the requests.

But now NBC and YouTube are working hand-in-hand. YouTube is uploading NBC content to help promote new shows. Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion points out that it is a great reversal, and it is. YouTube will get extra promotion from NBC promoting its service and NBC gets credit for recognizing how to use web 2.0 social media as a way to assist its properties instead of just being a wet blanket on fan enthusiasm.

NBC will be the first big media partnership to jump in bed with viral video sites.