Amazon; Google; Club Penguin; Lonelygirl15

Amazon Fresh, a new online grocery service founded by Amazon, serving customers in the Seattle area?  Looks like, smells like, and probably even tastes like the old late 90′s Webvan/HomeGrocer experiment that went bankrupt in 2001.  Hey, wasn’t Amazon an early investor of HomeGrocer?

Google begins using contextual, I mean behavioral, oops, my mistake, they say intent-based advertising.  Other advertisers have been doing this for a long time, and I think a new term has arrived, invented by Google:  Intent based advertising. 

Club Penguin was bought by Disney for $350 million.  Web personalization and social networking is on the rise and big companies see big audiences growing and willing to pay big bucks for it.  If you have a great idea for something personal on the web that includes social networking aspects, pull the trigger.  If you have fear, may I suggest watching The Big Idea with Donny Deutsche for a week on CNBC…he’ll help you to build your confidence. 

I’ve been a fan of YouTube for a long time, maintaining four accounts for a family of two (plus one cat account!).  We have been amused by the significant trend in some of the more popular ameteur channels and some not-so-ameteur.  For those of you who are big fans, you may know of lonelygirl15, whose smash series became an instant hit, and even moreso when the show’s creators admitted it was all an act.  MySpace has announced they have rights to air the season finale.  The online world of video will forever be disruptive to television.  See you online!