He may be all cute and cuddly with the kiddies, but online, Brad Pitt is one dangerous dude.

He and Beyonce have just been rated Public Enemy No. 1 & 2 in terms of dangerous web searches, as cybercriminals use their names the most often to plant viruses in users’ computer, according to security software company McAfee Inc.

A search for "Brad Pitt screensavers," for instance, turns up website results in which over half are identified as containing malicious downloads with spyware, adware, and potential viruses. "Beyonce ringtones" yields sites that promote misleading offers used to gather consumers’ personal information.

Justin Timberlake, Heidi Montag, and Mariah Carey took the remaining spots in the Top 5.

In 2007, Paris Hilton was considered the most dangerous celebrity, with Britney Spears at fourth, writes MarketingVOX.
This year, neither name makes the top 20. Just goes to show you: today you’re Miss Danger, tomorrow you’re a struggling starlet settling for book deals.

Okay, we all know it: Wall Street is dead. Yah diddy yah, time to cry into our hankies. (Or, be secretly glad we didn’t take that lucrative job at Lehman Bros. that was *almost* offered us when we graduated.)

But we are where we are, and what we’d really like to know is, how will this affect us?

Tech is down, down, down, with Dell plummeting 10% yesterday, Oracle -7.5%, Yahoo -16.5%, and even Apple and Google stock have plunged, 19.3% and 17%, respectively.

Industry observers predict that M&A activity will be stymied,
IPOs will be shelved and that venture capital will dry up as investors
seek safe havens from risk, writes Adotas – but gives no clue as to what will happen to online advertising.

What do you (mean: third person plural, as in vosotros) think?

This is ridiculous. Facebook makes $100 million a year in virtual gifting?

Some $30-$40 million of that comes from Gifts, a Facebook-owned application, but the other $55 to $60 million is generated from the "virtual currency" that more than 30,000 other independent
applications in the Facebook economy use to buy and send gifts, feed virtual pets, or unlock advanced gaming features, Adotas reports.

One of those companies,  Offerpal Media, said that the "virtual economy" will grow even more, estimating that their own revenues and payouts could easily double or even triple
over the next 6 to 12 months. Developers are digging the virtual currency model – mostly because they get paid more – so they’ll keep on coming out with new apps that require the fake (but very real) moolah.

Soon enough, we’ll catch up to Asia, where online consumers shell out many yen, won, and RMB to buy virtual property, like, say, a Hello Kitty purse for a 14-year-old avatar. Don’t laugh, guys. This is money we’re talking about. And this is your own industry (online advertising, remember?) being squashed by virtual pet food: Some reports say that China’s virtual economy is bigger than that of its total online ad market.

Whoosh.

NBC and Apple have kissed and made up, reports Mediapost, and the whole world knows about it – because the whole world was watching Steve Jobs at "Rock On" earlier this week.

Gossip-hungry viewers may have tuned into Jobs’ speech in front of that now-oh-so-familiar black backdrop (via Engadget) more to see if he was still alive than to know more new Apple products. Bloomberg, in updating its 17-page obituary for the famed CEO accidentally published it, prompting Jobs to quote Mark Twain: "The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

But, as always, reports of Apple’s "genius" products were also greatly exaggerated. The ultra-slim, oval-shaped, 8GB/16GB Nano – which is receiving less verbal applause from bloggers than they gave it at the event – may be nicely innovated, sure. But the iPod Touch as the best handheld gaming device? Apple iTunes as the only platform with recommendation features? (Have you heard of Pandora, Steve?)

The most newsworthy news, therefore was the truce with NBC. The battle of the two titans was over pricing flexibility for NBC shows sold on iTunes, and the broadcaster emerged as the clear winner, as now some shows will be priced differently.

No, I take it back. Apple is the clear winner. Why? Because it always is, because it has to be. The triumph of the hip nerd over the corporate chunk. He’ll take three-quarters of the music and TV show download market – but wouldn’t dream of stealing your lunch.

Just about anybody can write an iPhone app or design an ad that will look great on its ginormous screen. But what about the millions of people who want nifty doodads on their "mass market" phone, and access the internet every day on a teeny weeny screen with old-fashioned number touchpads?

This broader group is the one that marketers and advertisers should be thinking about, writes Lai Kok Fung on Adotas. We have to face the fact that even though we have an iPhone, many of our friends and colleagues have an iPhone, and we are convinced that all of God’s children probably should have an iPhone, the fact of the matter is that not everybody has one. Wait, really? Yes.

So bone up and realize that while owning an iPhone may make you a better/cooler/more distracted person, it does not necessarily mean you – or anyone else – are more affected by ads.

So says Fung:

…[M]obile advertising is just as effective on smaller, more mainstream “mass market” phones. In spite of the apparent disadvantages to advertising on devices with smaller, more compact displays, the adage that it’s not the number of advertisements but the effectiveness of the advertisement that matters is especially true with the mobile medium.

It’s also true that the size of the ad matters much less on the mobile screen than with other media, rendering the idea that advertising is better or more effective on the iPhone a questionable proposition at best.

Questionable, indeed – like the crab salad you just had for lunch.

So, considering that worldwide mobile Internet usage is growing so fast – expected to nearly double the 2006 rate to reach 546 million users and surpass 1.5 billion users in 2012 (according to the IDC) it certainly makes sense to listen to Fung and start making ads for the masses, giving in to the sheer scale of non-smartphone users. Just let it. Go.

And let somebody else pay too much to get too little in return.

I have a new crush. His name is Chris Brogan. He preaches social media like Billy Graham – but with a bit more of a rational "twang."

Check out this bite of inspiration:

For every pale imitation and clone out there, someone is shining
bright and delivering an original piece of value. Getting there first
and doing your own thing well adds value.

It’s not that everyone must blog, but if you’re looking to stand
out, to reduce noise, to share your perspective in a crowded space, it
can certainly help.

Does every business need to make social media and dive into this
space? No. But would you readily throw away a tool that helps your
product or service or company stand out, help your customers feel
included, and highlight the unique personalities within the
organization?

I’m converted. Again.

When will internet ad spend surpass TV?

Probably not anytime soon, said Michael Sprouse, CMO of Epic Advertising (via BNET).

"However, online ad spend is growing on a percentage basis and will continue to close the gap between TV with each passing month as more and more people realize the inherent qualities and effectiveness of online. Every day, there are advancements made in the online advertising industry that enable more effective advertising, the same can’t be said of TV. And that is what all advertisers, regardless of type, want – effectiveness."

What, then, will become of TV? Some had predicted that the internet would evolve so rapidly that it would eventually become TV – in that freaky, hulk-like way. But over at Forester Research, David Graves has another idea: TV will Become Internet.

In his report, Personal TV: The Reinvention of Television, he basically says that the industry is going to shift – necessarily – over the coming decade, and "personal TV" will become the norm. Ah, but what is that exactly? It’s a screen, with a set-top box that allows users to view both real-time and programmed content (Video on Demand) though partnerships of the networks, the cable operators, and telco companies.(Though, how likely is that? They certainly don’t have a very good cooperative track record.)

Users will be happy because it’ll give them VOD at no cost, as the system will be supported by non-skippable ads. And advertisers will get some cake, too:

TV advertising will thus be prevented from slipping into the depths of irrelevancy through fragmentation and ad skipping, Graves notes.  In exchange for free content, users will be viewing ads, and – thanks to data gathered from the set-top boxes on each consumer – highly targeted ones at that.