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In mid-December, Forbes.com concluded that pro skateboarder Tony Hawk is the world's third-most influential athlete, trailing only Tiger Woods and Lance Armstrong.

For those not all that familiar with skateboarding as a sport, this might come as a surprise, given some of the athletes he came in ahead of--football star Peyton Manning, basketball prodigy LeBron James, and NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr.

But to the millions of people who have played any of the 10 Tony Hawk video games, the Forbes honor surely came as no surprise. After all, those games have become one of the most successful … Read more

Facebook announced Tuesday that it has followed MySpace's lead and will ban Project Playlist from its service. According to the company, it has removed the Project Playlist app from Facebook and all embedded playlists have been removed from user profiles. Facebook said in a statement that it hopes Project Playlist can come to an amicable agreement with the labels so users can get back to using the app.

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it witnessed its online ad revenues drop for the first time in the site's history. According to the company, its online ad revenue … Read more

TechCrunch suggests that Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, will shortly announce his candidacy to become California's attorney general in 2010. Given how poorly Facebook has handled privacy, it's difficult to see why California voters should assume Kelly would do better in the higher matters of public office.

Specifically, California's attorney general is charged with the following responsibilities:

The attorney general represents the people of California in civil and criminal matters before trial, appellate and the supreme courts of California and the United States. The attorney general also serves as legal counsel to state officers and, … Read more

Social network Facebook has disabled widgets from music-sharing site Project Playlist at the behest of the music industry, several days after rival site MySpace did the same. The reason? The user-uploaded music on Project Playlist that doesn't have industry sanction.

"The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initially contacted Facebook last summer requesting the removal of the Project Playlist application for copyright violation, and recently reopened those communications," a statement from Facebook read. "We have forwarded the RIAA's letters to Project Playlist so it can work directly with that organization and music labels on a … Read more

Social games company Playfish just launched a new premium in-game ad campaign with Procter & Gamble and Herbal Essences via the Geo Challenge Facebook game in the UK.

In April Playfish launched in-game advertising with Google and in July launched in-game transactions with Paypal. The launch of this new premium game shows some of the advertising possibilities available during this economic downturn.

The upside? An audience that already likes the Geo Challenge game who are likely willing to experiment with this new module resulting in increased brand awareness. The downside? This doesn't seem easy to do as Playfish basically had to create a new game, which takes time and effort. … Read more

This was originally posted at ZDNet's Between the Lines.

We may be about to see the latest frontier of viral marketing--fake students starting groups for the incoming class of 2013 in the name of data collection.

Brad Ward, a recruitment specialist at Butler University, outlined the details on his blog. He became suspicious after talking to a colleague at Winthrop University. Here are the common links:

Class of 2013 groups are being started at a bunch of universities. The people that start the groups aren't registered at those schools. Those same names--Patrick Kelly, Justin Gaither, James Gaither among … Read more

Web-based chat company Meebo has announced that it now supports MySpace and Facebook's instant-messaging services. That adds to a lineup that already includes Google Talk, AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, and ICQ.

"Today's announcement reflects Meebo's long-time goal of offering open access to all IM and social-networking users, as well as providing them with the best IM experience possible," co-founder and CEO Seth Sternberg said in a release. "People have friends across a variety of different social networks, and Meebo is a place where they can come for real-time social … Read more

Facebook and MySpace may reign supreme in North America, but we can't forget that they don't control every country in the world. Simply put, people from around the globe have different tastes and the major U.S. networks barely capture relevant market share in some countries.

It's a big world out there and believe it or not, Facebook and MySpace don't own it.China: Xiaonei

Xiaonei is basically a Chinese Facebook clone. The site's design is extremely similar to Facebook's layout and profile options are quite similar, as well. But with a reported $430 … Read more

Facebook is still growing like wildfire: earlier this week, the social network put out stats that peg its active-user count at 140 million.

Inside Facebook blogger Justin Smith compared this to the date that Facebook said it hit 130 million members, and estimated that Facebook must be growing by a whopping 600,000 or 700,000 users per day.

We've checked in with Facebook to see if it has an official comment on that estimation; earlier this year, the company's network was growing by 250,000 users per day.

Statistics firms like Nielsen, ComScore, and Compete.com all … Read more