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There are just over 24 hours left until the formal announcement of Facebook's new advertising initiative. Is the site experiencing some jitters in preparation?

Late last week, one of my editors IMed me to ask whether Facebook was down. It was, but within five minutes, it was running again. Over the weekend, I noticed that the site was logging me out periodically. I wanted to check out a friend's new profile photo, but I repeatedly got log-in screens instead.

Then, on Monday morning, the site has slowed to a crawl. When I attempted to approve a new friend … Read more

This is the question asked by Robert X. Cringely, among others, in an excellent article detailing some of the strategies Google deploys...and how they compare to Microsoft's.

Like Microsoft's standard practice of cozying up to a startup to learn its tricks, only to then turn on it in the market. Google recently did this with Free-411, an information service:

Free411.com has competitors, of course, and the most daunting just appeared on the market from Google - Goog-411. Goog-411 is actually a bit more sophisticated than free411, offering product and service classifications and suggestions, which, of course, also generate more revenue. But for the most part the two services are comparable.

They should be since Google took a long look at investing in or acquiring free411 under a nondisclosure agreement between the two companies, only to abruptly break off discussions and start its own competing service. Is this beginning to sound familiar?… Read more

Google launched a privacy channel on YouTube Wednesday with videos explaining its privacy policies. The move comes on the eve of a two-day Federal Trade Commission-hosted town hall event on behavioral ad targeting to be held in Washington, D.C.

In a Google video titled "Google Search Privacy: Plain and Simple," a Google support engineer draws on a whiteboard, explaining what type of information is collected by Google servers, such as IP address and cookie data, when you conduct a Google search.

"In future videos, we'll talk about why Google keeps logs, what information we record … Read more

It's by no means the most interesting thing that I write about, but Microsoft tops the list of topics read by Open Road readers. In fact, it accounts for four of the top 10 posts on this blog since its inception in July.

The only open-source vendors to crack the top 10 are OpenAds and MySQL. For an open-source blog, that's a wee bit depressing.

Here they are:… Read more

Yesterday, the New York Times ran an article about Imeem, pegged to the news that this fledgling site has signed a third major label, EMI, leaving only Universal in the "not yet" column. The service is getting credit for trying to pioneer a new business model for digital music distribution: users can select songs and stream them for free, as long as they're willing to sit through the occasional advertisement.

I registered and fired the service up, and while I'm not ready to call ad-supported music DOA, Imeem isn't about to unseat the current digital music leaders. The main problem: I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing on the site. … Read more

Online advertising firm AdBrite is set to announce on Tuesday a new program to serve ads for third-party Facebook applications. Considering it a niche "channel" alongside existing AdBrite verticals, the company has launched a new Web-based interface so that Facebook application developers can join the program and make their inventories "instantly available to AdBrite's large base of advertisers."

The company saw it as a logical move, AdBrite co-founder Philip Kaplan said in an interview with CNET News.com. "We've just had a lot of Facebook applications signing up to use AdBrite," he … Read more

Representatives from Facebook confirmed to CNET News.com on Wednesday morning that the company will be making a significant advertising-related announcement in two weeks. This coincides with the AdTech new-media marketing conference.

"Facebook has invited some of its closest advertisers to an event on November 6 in New York," a statement from the company read. "As part of it, Facebook executives will discuss new approaches for advertising online. We are not sharing any further details."

Invitees to the event were asked to be discreet about details, but at least one person leaked the information to AllFacebook.… Read more

Google is partnering with Nielsen so that companies that buy its Google TV Ads can find out how many people actually watch the ads.

Nielsen's metering devices are installed in a large number of households across the U.S., enabling the company to keep track of which TV programs are the most popular.

Now, Google will have access to Nielsen's demographic data from aggregated set-top boxes so advertisers can see what ads are effective and get additional aggregate information about the viewers, such as age and gender, according to Nielsen.

"This is the first time that advertisers … Read more

HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--Being chief executive of Yahoo is "a lonely job," says Jerry Yang, who co-founded the company in 1994 and was promoted to the top job in June in a management shakeup.

"It is a lonely job in the sense that you have to make some of the tough calls," he said in a "fireside chat" session at a conference here. "It feels like I've been in training for the past 13 years." The conference was put on by the Right Media Exchange, the advertising marketplace of Right … Read more