This weekend, my mother-in-law asked me to enter a life of crime. Not in the real world, of course - she'd like the father of her grandkids to remain jail-free. No, instead she invited me to play that Mafia game that's so popular on Facebook. Not interested in the game, I politely declined. But when my mother-in-law, who has just joined Facebook, becomes part of an online trend, that's a sure sign that it's hitting critical mass in the population at large.

by Eric Brown This storyline isn't new. Jennifer has blogged about what her kids taught her about SEO, what her kids taught her about blogging, and what her kids taught her about Social Media . A friend in the apartment business just blogged about Bass Fishing and Leasing Apartments. As you can tell Gus is a dog, a mostly wonderful Bull Terrier. Gus is a year and a half old and is my first dog of my own. Gus goes to the office regularly,

Google Analytics has been moving things around , giving parts of the site a new feel. But don't get used to the way things are now. Analytics is using Website Optimizer to, um, optimize their site. And that means things can continue to change. But like a good search marketer, the Analytics team isn't testing everything all at once. Instead, they're taking it a step at a time. Their focus right now is on the education and professional resources.

I'm not sure how new this is, but when a Facebook user's profile is returned in Google's search results, you can now see the user's location (or network) and a random selection of their friends, as shown on their public profile. I'm not seeing any special markup in the Facebook profile page, but could this be Google's " Rich Snippets " feature in action, as announced at this year's Searchology conference? [Thanks Luke!

When the economy started going south, many expected mediums such as paid search to be the winners - if there were any - in the advertising industry. Being able to track conversions would be crucial in an uncertain economy. But two new data releases are showing that display ads and social media are weathering the storm. First up, display advertising for consumer goods is up 57% since 2007, according to Nielsen Online. YouTube and AOL.

The U.S. Microsoft Search Summit was held the first week in June in Bellevue, WA. We brought together 80 participants from the worlds of SEM and SEO to learn their opinions about Microsoft Advertising and the new decision engine, Bing . The conference.

Posted by Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, Shumeet Baluja Unfortunately, there is a war going on between humans and 'bots. Software 'bots are attempting to generate massive numbers of computer accounts which are then sold in bulk to spammers. Spammers use these accounts to inundate emails and discussion boards. Meanwhile humans are trying to simply create an account and don't want to spend a lot of time proving that they are not a program.

Yahoo today launched the pilot launch of Yahoo My Display Ads, a self-serve display ad marketplace for ads on Yahoo sites and partner sites. The program is being powered by Seattle-based technology provider AdReady . Advertisers can create and customize campaigns using more than 800 display templates, choosing either CPM-based (cost-per-thousand impressions) or CPC-based (cost-per-click) pricing. Ads will be targetable by geography, channel or audience demographics.

Yahoo has just announced the launch of My Display Ads, a self-service display ad solution aimed to assist small and medium-sized businesses to put their ad campaigns on Yahoo's content network. Yahoo! My Display Ads allows small businesses to build on their search marketing with display campaigns that reach a targeted audience on some of the Internet's most popular websites," said Joanne Bradford, senior vice president North America Revenue and Market Development, Yahoo!

Media outlets today are heralding the next coming of the T-Mobile Android phone, the gadget that was going to help Google set the mobile applications world on fire. Well, maybe the G1 didn't live up to the hyperbolic expectations. In trying to be everything to everyone, the device came across as big and clunky compared to the unparalleled iPhone. But T-Mobile did manage to ship more than one million of the devices in 8 months. This number was,