On Monday Time announced that it purchased Golf.com. While no price was publically announced, it may be made available in future in SEC filings. Golf.com is perhaps one of the largest golf sites on the web with a Alexa rating of 32,000.

If you read any search engine optimization blogs you probably have noticed nearly every one of them has said something about “linkbait” within the past few days. So what exactly is this linkbait?

Linkbait is content which attracts links — plain and simple. I’ve talked about it before, but not using those words. A very expensive example: MyHeritage.com’s free face recognition tool. A not-so-expensive example: FamilyMediaGuide.com counting the number of expletives on Stern’s first Sirius broadcast.

I’ve tried my own hand at linkbait on this blog from the Googlegini to interviewing the semi-famous.

So whats the big deal about linkbait anyways? People are just realising that sometimes the most powerful”trick” to have up your sleeve is no trick at all. Publishers, bloggers, and users want to read, hear, and see cool stuff. Linkbait isn’t just novelty eyecandy — it includes real content too.

Businesses have been doing the same thing for years with press releases. Reporters don’t care about press releases that read like a transcript from a late night infomercial — reporters follow up on press releases with real stories behind them.

Bottom line, focus on making a damn good site and the links will follow. It just doesn’t hurt to let other bloggers or site owners know when you publish that “linkbait.”

When Microsoft and Yahoo complied with the DoJ’s request for search data they did not turn over any personally identifiable data, so they claim.

“Google’s acceding to the request would suggest it is willing to reveal information about those who use its services,” Ashok Ramani, a lawyer representing Google, said in a letter to the Justice Department. “This is not a perception that Google can accept.”

The move to web-based applications and centralised information storage has raised many concerns not only with privacy advocates, but those concerned with security. Phising and hacking are already big threats to online users. Un-warrented Government intrusions simply add to the mess.

Forget search history, Google is already storing massive levels of e-mail data on their servers. Its not inconceivable that every e-mail you send and recieve in your whole life could be stored in a centralized location. Thats a goldmine not only for criminal investigators but also civil suits and hackers.

I believe the solution is a user-side encryption key, perhaps a USB stick, that allow users to store their online data using high-level encryption. Yet even this raises problems. Google likes to read their data. Terabytes upon terabytes of information allows for deep data mining and the ability to extract all kinds of statistics to help make their company more profitable.

Whatever the future holds for Google and the other search engines, consumers are going to demand security as we move to a global desktop. Too bad there are probably hundreds of patent holders ready to sue the first company that actually brings a workable solution to consumers.

I just read an astoundingly good post by David Card over at JupiterResearch’s blogs who comments on two stories from the New York Times today. If you read this article News Corp’s purchase of MySpace will make even more sense.

The articles about the generation of millenials and the impact technology is having on their media consumption. Its no secret that newspapers are in serious trouble, but television is too. They aren’t reading newspapers and they aren’t watching much TV either.

It sounds a little wierd to blog about another blog post about a newspaper article (usually I just comment on the article itself) but David makes a very good conclusion at the end of his post — “Somebody has to create what everyone talks about. And facilitate the talking.”

This is it guys — this is the business to be in. I fully expect website buyouts by major media companies to continue at an accelerating pace for the next 5 years, at least. And may be, just may be, a young web publisher will turn into the next Bill Gates.

From paidcontent.org:

…this March, as Jon Fine reported Friday, when AOL begins in earnest to roll out new features. (No comment from AOL.) AOL already has expanded AIM’s mission from an instant communication tool built around buddy lists by using it to deliver advertising and market AOL services. Now the Time Warner unit is pushing ahead with the extension of AIM in a way that will intersect with the content side from the user perspective. Look for the new effort to include personal web pages integrated with AIM in a variety of ways.

Even better, they’ve decided to embrace open source development and have already released an alpha toolkit that you can play with.

From the AP..

“..ombudsman Deborah Howell wrote that Abramoff “had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties,” prompting a wave of nasty reader postings on post.blog. There were so many personal attacks that the newspaper’s staff could not “keep the board clean, there was some pretty filthy stuff,” and so the Post shut down comments on the blog, or Web log, said Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com.”

Both AOL and Yahoo have had to deal with this stuff for years now. News Corp will probably run into a few big bumps in the road in 2007 thanks to MySpace. Despite some skepticism I have, I believe that big corporations will do just fine (until a billion dollar class action suit comes along.)

I was hoping for some good news on my return, but unfortunately have come home to this: the Department of Justice subpoenaing Google, not in a criminal investigation, but in order to support a law that was already struck down by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Worse, MSN, Yahoo, and AOL complied with the original request without hesitation — records for all search results in a one week period.

Here is were things really get messy. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had an article on new internets created by other countries seeking more independance. If you have been following the news over the past few months, there had been a move, which was rejected, to ceed control of the Internet primarily from US hands to the United Nations.

I wish I had this article in front of me but I don’t right now. The best I can remember it, the Wall Street Journal article had quoted a US government official as saying one of the best reasons that the United States should keep control of the internet is because of freedom of speech and lax regulations which have allowed the internet to grow very rapidly. Many other countries, such as China, don’t take this same viewpoint.

No one wants China or any other country that suppresses free speech to have a say in how the Internet, world wide, is run. I believe that this move by the Department of Justice is purely political. Remember, this law was already struck down as unconstitutional. However, continued pressure will cast serious doubt on the United State’s ability to continue to allow for a free and open internet.

Read more about this over at Boing Boing.

This morning I woke up and opened my door to a beautiful tropical beach and a warm breeze. Absolutely gorgeous. Bare feet and a warm sun. Unfortunately, looking out my door right now its cold, dark, and pretty damn ugly.

I’ve spent the past week in the Netherland Antilles and I had an absolute blast. Great weather, beautiful blonde Dutch girls, and no shortage of fun things to do. I’ll admit it, not once did I miss my websites, my blog, or my computer. I had no laptop, no internet, nothing.

I made some interesting observations which relate to the internet and web publishing which I’ll share with you soon. For now, I’ve got a lot of work, and sleep, that needs to be done.

Alright, this will probably be my last blog post for over a week. I promise, this ones good!

As you may know (or may not know) Howard Stern did his first show on Sirius satellite radio this morning. Over the past week I’ve seen him on TV a few times. A&E had a Biography show on him, he was interviewed by Larry King, not to mention countless articles in newspapers all over the US leading up to this.

I happened to notice this story by the UPI over on the front page of The Drudge Report tonight.

It was a short wire story, but a few key excerpts tell it all: “Shock jock Howard Stern’s first 5 1/2 hour broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio Monday contained an estimated 129 expletives, a watchdog group said… FamilyMediaGuide.com CEO David G. Kinney said his group supports an uncensored media environment.”

At first it sounded to me like a press release issued by a conservative right wing group. Well I was right about it being a press release, but ..Hmm.. this “group’s” CEO supports uncensored media? Interesting.

I headed over to the site, FamilyMediaGuide.com.Hardly a “watchdog group”; a better description: commercial website. This press release was clearly planned in advance and seems to have had the desired effect.

As website owners, we can learn a lot from this successful release. To make it simple, here are the lessons I picked up on from their press release (if you’ve got your own ideas, please post them in the comments!)

1. Piggy back off of relevant news stories and events.
2. Don’t be afraid to pick controversial issues. I see too many press releases that might be interesting to the site’s owner, but are as dry as a bone in the desert to everyone else. Controversy is an easy thing to exploit whether you are a business owner, a politician, or a radio/TV talk show host (think about it, Howard Stern, Rush Limbough, Bill O’Reilly..)
3. Put a little extra work into your press release. All someone had to do was listen to a few hours of Howard Stern, and write a tick mark on a page everytime someone said F this. Lets see, listen to a 5 1/2 hour broadcast, maybe 1 hour writing and issuing the release, and in return a bunch of major media mentions. If that sounds like a lot of work to you, well, I’m not going to say what I’m thinking
4. Sound legitimate. From the actual press release — “Three specially trained auditors from FamilyMediaGuide.com were immediately hard at work “data capturing” the show.” Whether or not this is true or not, who knows. What matters is that is sounds pretty authoritative.

If you want to know more about writing press releases read this.

Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin is moving into new territory, reports ContentSutra.

The company believes that in the next decade Asia will become one of the largest producers as well as consumers of entertainment products. Virgin Comics intends to look to Asia, and India in particular, as both a growing market for consumers of entertainment products and also a source for unique, innovative content to be brought to the world in comics and licensing into movies, animation, toys, video games and consumer products.

Think this includes online entertainment?