StumbleUpon has had quite a year. They bought themselves back from eBay and launched a URL shortening service , among other things. Now, they're revealing the most stumbled sites for their historic year that was 2009 . Here they are,

Facebook - along with a few other social sites and the developers of games for them - may be in for a great few years. Certain experts believe that the business of virtual goods is going to take off in a big and very profitable way. Here's the opening line of a new article from the BBC : "Virtual goods such as weapons or digital bottles of champagne traded in the US could be worth up to $5bn in the next five years . . .

Google thought it had a right to own Groovle.com , so it took it's case to the National Arbitration Forum (NAF). (The NAF is an international arbitration service accredited by ICANN.) But the NAF didn't agree with Google that Groovle could be confused for the search giant. Groovle does use Google's custom search. It also provides a service where you can skin your Google homepage with a photograph (similar to Bing without the hotspots). Still,

Indeed is a job search aggregator. If you conduct a job search on Indeed, it will pull opportunities posted to a variety of job boards including Career Builder, Dice, etc. as well as corporate sites. Today, they've revealed the fastest growing job opportunities for 2009 . Twitter Cloud Computing iPhone Facebook Corporate Social Responsibility Blogger Pediatrician Hospitalist Social Media Speech Language Pathologist (SLP) With high unemployment rates in the past year,

If you uploaded pictures of your family on Christmas Day to Facebook - or updated your status to dish on all your new goodies - you weren't alone. For the first time ever, Facebook ousted Google for most visited site in a day. Or at least, so tweeted Hitwise . It makes sense. No longer were people frantically searching for presents. The big day arrived and it was time to be social, not searching.

This is the 9 th post in the SEM Beginner Series, following last week's post, part 1 of 2 on measuring success . This series of posts is intended for new search engine marketing professionals that are looking for guidance to help identify, monitor and adjust the key performance indicators (KPIs) that determine the success of a PPC campaign. Previous posts in this series discussed click-through rate (CTR) , cost-per-click (CPC) , ad copy , dynamic text , ad position ,

Using YouTube may become a much less passive experience in the near future. Google's received a patent on a "Web-based system for [the] generation of interactive games based on digital videos," and several facts point to the search giant moving ahead with the idea. Let's start with an overview of the patent. As explained in the official application (hat tip to Erik Sherman ),

comScore (NASDAQ : SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today reported retail e-commerce spending for the holiday season from November 1 through Christmas Eve. During this period, approximately $27 Billion was spent online, which represents an increase of 5 percent over the same period a year ago. For the period from Black Friday through Christmas Eve, and after adjusting for the additional shopping day in 2009, sales grew by approximately 3.5 percent.

In what may be a mini bell weather moment in advertising, Pepsi has decided to keep its usual Super Bowl advertising money in its bank account. While they are not exactly saving it they are certainly redirecting it to online opportunities. I say this is a potential bell weather moment because it ends a streak of 23 consecutive years where Pepsi has advertised during the event that attracts some of the largest viewing audiences in the history of television.

A couple of the mysteries surrounding the forthcoming Nexus One/Google phone may have been solved. Information related to the price of the phone and its plan has leaked, and assuming the details are accurate, the device should line up pretty well with the existing marketplace. Here's the bad news: rumors that Google would offer a cheap or free phone weren't confirmed. The standard monthly fee doesn't look like it will be trivial, either,