Crenk

The news of the day must be that Google has acquired Jaiku. Jaiku is a microblogging site similar to Pownce and Twitter. It is a bit of a surprise that Google has opted to purchase Jaiku (which hails from Finland) instead of Twitter (the market leader) or Pownce (the new kid on the block with the best user interface).

Have a look at what everyone else has been saying about the deal:

• Jaiku
• Techcrunch
• CenterNetworks
• Mashable
• Rev2
  

Twitter has not long got Series A Funding, so it would have been rare for them to be purchased. Pownce on the other hand seems to be on the downhill slide. Since their highly publicised launch Pownce has never lived up to expectations and with the recent news about Kevin Rose potentially moving Pownce features over to Digg, it has just never recovered. If you look at Alexa data on Pownce you will notice it wont be too long until it dies a death, on the quick slide down. Its seems that Jaiku was an important match with Google because it has more of a presence in activity streams and mobile presence and those are the markets Google is trying to gain more market share. It that last week Google also launched Adsense for mobile, so this will be a nice addition to boost the start of that new service.

The word around the blogosphere today is the launch of Adsense Video units. Problogger broke the news last week and it is slowly starting to happen. The Google blog has said you can log into your Adsense account and then select Video Units, but I’m yet to see that option. Below I have added what the Video Unit will look like.

Much the same as every other Adsense unit in the market it looks like crap. The poor quality of banners and what they are promoting just makes the ad look pathetic. I have never understood why anyone would click on one of these ads.

At the end of September last year John Chow released his a list of the Top Google Whores, and this post is going to try to update this list. Any readers who might know of anyone who should be on the list make sure you let me know. Additionally, if you are on the list and need the amount update, please let me know.

1. Markus Frind: PlentofFish.com - $300,000 per month. Plentyoffish.com receives up to 500 million page views per month and make over $10,000 per day for Markus, who runs the site from home.
2. Kevin Rose: Digg - $250,000 per month. Do I really need to give Kevin Rose an introduction. Kevin Rose started Digg in December of 2004 with just $1000. Today Digg is one of the biggest news sites on the Net, with over 400,000 members and over 200 million page views per month.
3. Jeremy Schoemake: ShoeMoney - $140,000 per month. If ever anyone can be considered an Internet marketing superstar, ShoeMoney would be near the top of the list. Jeremy Schoemaker is a search engine marketer who knows how to take advantage of both Google AdSense and AdWords.
4. Jason Calacanis: Weblogs, Inc. - $120,000 per month. Before Jason Calacanis sold Weblogs to AOL for $25 million, he got the network of blogs making over $4,000 a day from Google Adsense.
5. David Miles Jr & Kato Leonard: Freeweblayouts.net - $100,000 per month. This was claimed by the Washington Post in an article. Freeweblayouts.net gives away designs that people can use on their Myspace page.
6. Tim Carter: AskTheBuilder.com - $30,000 per month. Tim Carter is a licensed master plumber and carpenter with his own radio show. He also makes frequent television appearances. He founded AsktheBuilder.com in 1995, The primary focus has been catering to an avid following of fellow builders on the site.
7. Andrew Leyden: PodcastDirectory.com - $30,000 per month. Andrew receives nearly a million hits a month on his podcast directory.
8. Shawn Hogan: DigitalPoint.com - $15,000 per month. According to the New York Times back in January 2005 Mr Hogan makes $15,000 per month from Google Adsense by using a very unique revenue sharing model.
9. Max Goldberg: YTMND.com - $10,000 per month.
10. Steve Pavlina: StevePavlina.com - $10,000 per month.
11. Matt Daimler: Seatguru.com - $10,000 per month. Matther Daimler, 28, developed an obsession with finding the most comfortable seats on the long airline flights he took for business.