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Once upon a time, retailers measured success by the number of people walking by in the mall, how many entered the store, the percentage they spent, and basket size. Now, a world of zeroes and ones has changed their perspective entirely. Social media is expected to be the star during the coming holiday season, with retailers pushing Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter content to get in front of consumers and affect either online or in-store purchases. Smaller Christmas budgets are expected, so the fight is on to garner as large a share as possible of a shrinking pie.

Of course, nobody would come out and say, "Social media is nonsense, and I'm not getting anything for my investment." So, when the likes of Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX), JCPenney (NYSE: JCP), and Target (NYSE: TGT) say that social media is connecting them with their customers and leading to more effective campaigns and product launches, do take it with a grain of salt. What can't be ignored, however, is that they're committing more resources to social media marketing, even though it's still far too soon to tell if it will be effective.

Who needs venture capital money when you have litigation? Facebook was awarded $711 million in damages Thursday in an anti-spam case against Sanford Wallace, an internet marketer. The popular social networking platform went after Wallace for tapping its users' accounts without their permission and sending fake posts and messages.

Wallace has quite a reputation for spamming, having gained the nicknames "Spam King" and "Spamford" back in the 1990s, when he was good for up to 30 million spam e-mails a day.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) makes it easier to search for websites, e-mail messages, passages from books and videos. Where you haven't heard much about Google's search capabilities -- or Google in general -- is the music business.

But, that's about to change. On Wednesday, the search giant announced that it was partnering with music services such as Pandora, Lala, News Corp's (NASDAQ: NWS) MySpace, and Rhapsody by RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) to help users find, listen to and ultimately buy music on the web.

RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) is profitable again! The online media company that provides music and other entertainment cut its way into the black, getting rid of the costs that were getting in the way. It wasn't much of a profit, only $1.5 million for the third quarter, not even a full cent per share, but it's a hell of a lot better than the $4.5 million loss it sustained in the third quarter of 2008.

Revenue fell 8% last quarter to $140.3 million, just shy of the analyst average of $140.9 million. This trend is likely to continue through the fourth quarter. Music, technology product and game revenues were down. The profit was instead eked out of the supply chain and headcount.

One known consequence of the spread of the H1N1 flu? Possible, short-term school closures, as well as keeping under-the-weather kids out of school, to help contain the virus.

One little-known consequence? Traffic jams on the Internet, caused by all those school kids and adults out sick from work, logging on to the Web from home -- something that could overwhelm Internet networks, a Government Accountability Office study warns, and The Washington Post reported. To read the full GAO report, click here.

Unless you already have a major foothold in the search engine market – or an amazing, disruptive technology that can make the world take notice – there isn't much point in staying. Competing with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is hard enough, even when you're Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) or Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) ... and, apparently, when you're IAC/InterActive Corp (NASDAQ: IACI). Barry Diller is ready to give up Jeeves, but only if asked nicely.

Diller's presence in the search space is Ask.com, ranked #4 behind Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing. With a substantial gap between first and second, fourth barely registers at all. Ask.com has only a 2% U.S. market share, according to Hitwise, more than 60 percentage points behind the industry leader.

Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), China's leading search engine, sold off during Monday's after-hours session after the earnings report for the third quarter was issued. When you're a theoretical growth company like Baidu, missing estimates on the guidance side is never a good thing to do.

Nevertheless, Baidu delivered in Q3 itself. Sales skyrocketed 39%. Net income per share exploded over 40% to the upside, coming in at $2.07 per share on a GAAP basis. Adjusting for items, the company earned $2.16 per share. Earnings.com gives an expectation of $1.81 for per-share profit.

Traditional retailers haven't exactly embraced online sales channels. Sure, they all have websites, and they sell varying amounts of merchandise through them, but they've been slow to tap into the potential. When I was watching the space as an analyst at a major consulting firm (admittedly, back in 2007), many retailers equated a website to a new store opening. Finally, however, this industry is starting to see the potential of this venue, particularly when it comes to tracking consumer behavior.

When the CEO of Macy's (NYSE: M), Terry Lundgren, says that online sales are only good for 6% of last year's total sales, it's a hint. The translation: "We focus on where the revenue is" is much different from "We focus on where the revenue could be." Aeropostale (NYSE: ARO), on the other hand, sees the upside of playing in the online space, which is where it saw revenues spike 85% last year. Aeropostale has seen increases in traditional venues too, but nothing like what it's realized on the web.

So, maybe there's something to this internet, after all.

It's tough to take on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). The search engine behemoth owns 65% of the U.S. search market and has a commanding brand presence. Yet, the software maker up the coast isn't known to give up easily. Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) has cut a deal with microblogging site Twitter that should give it an edge in the battle to harness data and make it easier to find. A new deal will feed all those tweets into Bing, the Microsoft search engine.

Twitter is giving Microsoft full access to its data, in a deal announced Wednesday. Bing will provide search functionality for Twitter that you won't find in Google, which seems to have been outbid for the rights to the "tweet-stream." Under the deal, Bing will be able to index and display the tweets almost immediately as they are posted.

Online auction giant eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), a business that counts Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) as related companies, was not popular in Wednesday's after-hours session. The third-quarter report just didn't do it for Wall Street, so Wall Street decided to make some trouble and bring the per-share price of the stock down by 4.5%. Oh sure, the company beat earnings by the most famous amount there is -- the proverbial penny -- but, according to this Bloomberg piece, guidance was not so inspiring.

The top line was actually pretty cool. Net sales saw an increase of 6%. Unfortunately, the bottom line couldn't take advantage of such growth. On an adjusted basis, net income dropped 16% to 38 cents per diluted share. And, as I just said, that was one penny ahead of the analysts.

The number two search engine in the United States turned in a fantastic third quarter, far ahead of expectations. Cost-cutting, layoffs and business divestitures led to a surge in Yahoo's (NASDAQ: YHOO) profits and a 4.8% increase in share price in extended trading on Tuesday evening. Net income more than tripled to $186.1 million (13 cents per share) from the third quarter of 2008's result of $54.3 million (4 cents a share). Sales (exclusive of fees passed to partner sites) reached $1.13 billion, slightly above the $1.12 billion expected by analysts, according to a Bloomberg survey.

With the advertising market in rough shape and competition from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) continually rising, Yahoo refocused on its core properties: the home page, messaging and mobile services. The company trimmed what it didn't need, which is why it was able to boost its earnings even with a decline in revenue. Increased ad revenue from auto manufacturers, travel companies and consumer product manufacturers also helped.

Yahoo's chief financial officer, Timothy Morse, says that the company's markets are "starting to stabilize." Of course, Yahoo itself must be doing something right: its share price is up 41% this year.

KaChing! KaChing!

It only makes sense to call a company a sound you like to hear. This is exactly what CEO and co-founder Andy Rachleff must have had in mind. His new company -- kaChing, of course -- is backed by Marc Andreesen (a name often associated with that sound) and Jeff Jordan, the CEO of OpenTable (NASDAQ: OPEN), two guys who usually do a solid job of backing winners. But, they've taken on a challenge by backing a company in the financial services industry.

A new executive team is trying to bring MySpace back to its former glory. By focusing on music, videos and games, it hopes to recapture some of its luster. With the MySpace refugees mounting, it's time for some new blood to make some brilliant, future-changing decisions. This week, the company is holding a conference for its global ad sales team to explore ways to bring in traffic and beef up ad spending.

MySpace is poised to haul in $495 million in ad revenue this year, down 15% from last year's $585 million, according to research firm eMarketer. In August, MySpace attracted 64.2 million unique visitors from the United States, off 15% from August 2008, according to comScore, while Facebook pulled in 92.2 million unique U.S. visitors – up more than 100% year-over-year.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) increased both sales and income in the third quarter. The giant of online search, which issued its earnings release after the bell on Thursday, is saying what a plethora of companies are also saying: the worst of the economic downturn may finally be over.

According to TheStreet.com, sales, after traffic acquisition costs are taken into account, rose about 8%. On an adjusted basis, profit grew almost 20% to $5.89 per share. Our earnings preview article stated that expectations were for $5.38 per share. Google did a good job of giving the world a reason to believe that the rallies seen in the major market indexes should be taken seriously.

Investors have flocked to foreign exchange trading over the past 10 years, and the venture capital community is ready to grab a piece of the action.

Two companies -- Currensee Inc. and Tradonomi LLC -- are angling for central spots in this emerging trading community, and several funds are placing pretty big bets on their success. Currensee has a social network for forex traders, while Tradonomi's move was to create a game-like user interface to make it easier for would-be fortune-makers and thrill-seekers to trade foreign currencies.