If anyone was holding their breath about the future of Yahoo!, there are some bad news for you. Comscore has just announced that mySpace has overtaken Yahoo! as far as display advertising is concerned. The issue is so discouraging for Yahoo! that they have become defensive and tried to question Comscore’s methedology. Here is what Yahoo had to say:

We believe there could be issues with the measurement that could be misrepresenting Yahoo and we are reviewing comScore’s methodology and working with them to resolve these issues.

Really? I sure do hope that there is no money changing hands here as Yahoo! has indeed used Comscore data to show all how good they are in display advertising. Now all of a sudden, Comscore is wrong! Yahoo! is falling fast regardless and can be Microsofts’ if things don’t turn around soon.

I don’t know about you but Twitter to me is a classic example of a company who should not have survived with its dismal business plan but for some reason it has due to its innovative ways and the support of its community. But how is Twitter going to survive without making real money. eCommerce Times is running a great story on how Twitter can actually make money. The truth is that Twitter can put limits on the number of twits you can do every day or create premium services that people would pay for. LinkedIn has done some neat things that should give Twitter a lot of ideas how to monetize. But in general, these companies have proved that VCs are ready to throw the classic approach of reviewing viable plans out of the window if the idea catches fire in the community (YouTube is still trying to break even which is crazy really!)

We all heard the story about how Barack Obama tried to use text messaging to announce his VP. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people in this world that are good at nothing but spoiling the party, and a few of those managed to leak out the fact that Barack’s choice was Joe Biden. So the whole experiment failed miserably with Obama campaign having to send text messages 3 in the morning to announce the VP.

But Mccain has a great opportunity now to show that he has mastered the art of Web 2.0 as well. While I don’t think he should copy Barack Obama, he should definitely consider using his twitter account to announce his VP (which we know for 90% is Mitt Romney). Then he can claim that he had the judgement and pragmatism to get what he promised done unlike Barack Obama. I mean if these politicians can’t keep their simplest promises, then how can we trust them to solve our energy or healthcare crises?

Picture courtesy of Uncorelated.com.

We all heard all these stories about how Web 2.0 can change the world and bring us all closer. How it is an unstoppable force that has revolutionized how we consume content and network with others. Well, meet the irremovable object in governments of Iran and China. Two of the most closed governments in the entire world have successfully managed to suffocate Web 2.0 services in order to keep control of their people. I remember when Orkut was launched a while back. It was the best place for Iranians, Brazilians, and … to network. But the Iranian government has pretty much closed all windows for its people to communicate with the people outside. I guess if you can’t see the other side of the aisle, you can’t claim it to be greener. Web 2.0 is revolutionary but governments are too powerful to be rattled by technology these days. People still find ways to reach out, but the social nature of Web 2.0 services almost always works against them in countries such as Iran and China. As the word gets out about new services, they get blocked, and that’s the end of story. Of course, you get prosecuted too if you talk too loudly. A shame!

VentureBeat is reporting a developing story in the twitter world that has set the web on fire. It seems DMCA and Twitter have dropped hammer on a few Twitter users for using TV character names and acting like them on Twitter. I personally think that the U.S. legal system will finally destroy the Web as we know it by putting too much pressure on users to behave a certain way. It’s a shame that lawsuits and censorship still is the best approach the media companies use to put their sub-par productions down our throats. RIAA and MPAA killed P2P as we know it. And the Internet is next folks. Here is the story.

Poor YouTube doesn’t seem to get any breaks. Now YouTube is in hot waters for hosting a video a few kids who urinated at the scene of Holocaust. While I am not sure what the potential risks will be for YouTube as far as lawsuits and things like that, it is essential for YouTube to get a handle on these inappropriate content. It wouldn’t surprise me if Holocaust survivors sued YouTube for emotional distress!

It seems Amazon has seen enough success with Kindle 1.0 that it is working hard on the new version of Kindle. Amazon is a very ambitious corporation, and in Kindle it has a device that has iPod like potential. But is it going to add social book reading features as rumored? I personally would be interested to see how Amazon leverages the wireless connection included with the Kindle device to foster a true social community around the Kindle device. Today it’s just not enough to have an innovative product. Having the community behind is more vital.

We’ve got to give kudos to Jaroslav Tulach for his excellent book on designing APIs in a Web 2.0 world.These days a lot of companies are jumping on the API bandwagon without really knowing why they need an API or wht makes an API effective. Obviously, you can find a lot of information on different APIs on the net. But the theory is hard to find, so the gap was there in the market for a good book about API design patterns. But thankfully, Practical API Design has been released for those of you interested in starting up your own APIs. No more excuses for badly designed APIs.

Believe it or not this coming election can be decided by how effectively the candidates use the social networks to their advantage. FaceBook which is the home of 80-90% of all college students in the U.S. is a major channel for Obama and McCain to tackle. Unfortunatley for McCain, he probably was too focused on finding which of his 7 homes he left his laptop at, so he got on the FaceBook bandwagon quite late. But McCain does have the advantage with the older folks (people over 40). So for Obama to win this election he needs to use FaceBook and other social networks to mobilize the youth and actually get them to show up and vote (as they certainly didn’t with John Kerry).

Obama will need a double digit win in 18-34 demographics to have any chances of beating McCain in the general election. The good news is that Obama has a great organization around the nation and on the Internet. He has a major headstart on McCain too. The bad news is that McCain is catching up fast, and we might see a slugfest after all.

In borrowing from other social networks who are going hot on chatting again, Bebo has introduced its own IM services. Unfortunately for Bebo, it seems not many users are happy about the glitches and the whole concept behind it. I guess this is one of those cases of “build it and people will love it” kind of things. The moral of story here is that you first want to know if your users want the service that you want to offer them, and secondly you don’t want to rush your service to the market.