YouTube’s $1.65 billion price tag wasn’t exactly chump change, even for a $141 billion company like Google. So five months after buying the upstart video-sharing site, the Internet search king is still grappling with questions from Wall Street.

They came up again this week after a Google regulatory filing revealed that YouTube reported about $15 million in sales last year—meaning the Mountain View, California-based company paid over 100 times the startup’s revenues.

That had some analysts cringing, but it didn’t surprise anyone. With Google raking in plenty of cash from its search-advertising technology, investors never expected immediate returns from side projects.

But so far, YouTube has been nothing but a source of headaches for Google executives. Their efforts to negotiate content deals with mainstream media groups have resulted in a rash of negative publicity, forcing CEO Eric Schmidt to spend an inordinate amount of time defending a subsidiary that accounts for a sliver of Google’s revenues.

Some observers are now worried that top executives are becoming increasingly distracted by YouTube, just as chief rival Yahoo appears to be regaining its footing by revving up its new “Panama” search-advertising system.

“YouTube has ended up being a management, operational, and legal overhead, and a drag,” said analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research.

It wasn’t always so. YouTube seemingly came out of nowhere to establish itself as the edgy anything-goes video-sharing site of the moment. Then Google stepped in to snap up YouTube—moments after YouTube signed a handful of content distribution deals that seemed to suggest it could partner with big media.

Optimism about the YouTube acquisition pushed Google shares up from $401 to $476 by the end of October. Although grumblings about potential lawsuits and sticker shock reverberated, many praised Google for recognizing the potential of video advertising.

But now, with large media companies such as Viacom, CBS, and NBC angry about copyright violations and revenue-sharing issues, YouTube’s reputation has suffered. Microsoft eagerly stepped into the fray on Monday, with its copyright attorney singling out YouTube’s missteps as an example of Google’s “cavalier approach to copyright.” He argued that Google was a content owner’s enemy.

Wall Street analysts prefer to consider Google more of a “frienemy” to media companies, and they say the company’s increasingly dubious reputation is starting to hurt its efforts to work with media groups.

Posturing and Positioning

“This concern isn’t just about YouTube and the revenues and the legal issues,” said analyst Scott Kessler of Standard & Poor’s. “It’s a lot more about posturing and positioning for potential partnerships in the future. There’s already a fair amount of tension in terms of whether or not media companies are willing to buy into full-blown relationships with Google.”

Mr. Chowdhry says some institutional investors have told him they are growing dismayed over the fallout from the YouTube deal.

But Clark McKinley of CalPERS, the giant California state employee pension fund that is one of Google’s larger investors with 1.5 million shares, said he remains unconcerned.

“We don’t really care what they do in terms of specific deals,” said Mr. McKinley. “We look at how’s their stock performance, and if it’s really terrible within the industry sector, then the flag will go up for us.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Schmidt continues to insist that YouTube’s phenomenal traffic and video-advertising potential makes it worth any short-term troubles or hassles it might bring the company. “If you can build a sustainable eyeball business, you can always find clever ways to monetize it,” Mr. Schmidt told a group of investors Tuesday.

Many analysts agree that YouTube could make a significant impact on Google’s revenues in three to five years—as long as users don’t object to its efforts to commercialize the site. YouTube members have so far stuck by their site, but Internet audiences who used to flock to cool underground sites such as Napster, Kazaa, and Friendster have proven to be a fickle lot.

---Sunshine Mugrabi contributed to this article.

It’s hard to forget the hilarious spoof video featuring George Bush and Tony Blair singing a touching rendition of “Endless Love.”

The parody, a huge hit on Google Video, YouTube, and other video-sharing web sites, pokes fun at the unusually close relationship between the United States and British leaders who plunged their countries into the disastrous Iraq war.

The video, which fuses the Lionel Richie/Diana Ross duet with video clips from mainstream media outlets, is considered by some a form of political speech and an example of “fair use”—the exemption to U.S. copyright law that lets people borrow and transform copyrighted material to comment, criticize, teach, or report news.

But new video-filtering tools that MySpace and YouTube hope will automatically detect and block copyrighted content could prevent commentators from posting such videos in the future. To free-speech advocates, these “fingerprinting” tools are a dangerous threat to an emerging form of free speech on the Internet.

“It’s like using a sledgehammer on a thumbtack,” said Anthony Falzone, director of the Fair Use project at StanfordUniversity’s Google-fundedCenter for Internet and Society.

Pressure to adopt filtering tools has come from large media companies that are threatening legal action against web sites they believe have not done enough to block users from posting copyrighted content.

Bending to Pressure

Web sites such as News Corp.-owned MySpace and Google-owned YouTube have begun to bend to the pressure, even as they risk alienating users who love the sites’ edgy and freewheeling atmosphere.

YouTube is seen to be moving slowly, but MySpace has already started to filter all content owned by Universal Music Group, NBC, and Fox. MySpace has also invited other media companies to sign on to the system to have their content blocked.

Users who try to post videos containing content in the database are supposed to receive a notice that their video is ineligible. MySpace users can appeal, but their video remains blocked while the complaint is reviewed.

A key issue is that the fair use law is vague and difficult to interpret. John Palfrey, executive director of HarvardLawSchool’s BerkmanCenter for Internet and Society, said he was concerned that an automated system could end up curbing fair use content that is socially desirable.

“That would be a terrible outcome,” he said. “The onus is on the intermediaries to make sure they’re implementing it in a way that doesn’t kill the golden goose.”

Man vs. Machine

Vance Ikezoye, whose Los Gatos, California-based company Audible Magic invented the tools that MySpace and YouTube are licensing to filter content, said the problem isn’t with his technology. He argues that the issues are legal and business-related.

Mr. Ikezoye said he expects to be given a clear, numerical, fair use definition to plug into the filtering tools. For example, if a clip is 20 percent copyrighted content and 80 percent homemade content, Audible Magic’s tools could declare it “fair use” and allow it to appear on the site.

Humans need to come up with the formula, Mr. Ikezoye said, and then the technology will do the work from there.

But free speech advocates rejected Mr. Ikezoye’s argument because the fair use exemption does not include numerical definitions. Free speech advocates and others involved in video search contend that, given the right context, almost any piece of copyrighted material could be protected under fair use. They say the law is too nebulous to automate.

“With technology like this, there’s no ability for a human to make a reasoned judgment,” said Mary Hodder, founder of the video search site Dabble. “Fair use loses in this context. That’s really important because that’s the genre that a lot of the users do on these sites.”

Fine Line

Alex Laats of video search site Podzinger took a far different view. He said the debate over blocking copyrighted content is short-sighted and could have a disastrous effect on mainstream media groups and the video-sharing sites that are trying to walk a fine line between content providers and Internet consumers.

Instead, he argued, all parties should be working on revenue-sharing systems that automatically compensate copyright owners for video posted on user-generated sites. With such systems, which YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley has said the company intends to implement, no video would ever have to be blocked because copyright owners would be compensated.

First MTV, now TV Chile?

Internet TV broadcaster Joost won’t formally launch for another few months, but it’s wasted no time in lining up eclectic content that analysts say could steal away some of YouTube’s audience.

The Luxembourg-based startup will announce Friday that it has signed with JumpTV, a Toronto-based Internet television broadcaster that culls content from stations in 70 countries around the world. JumpTV seeks to appeal to immigrant populations in the United States and Western Europe who want to watch shows from their home countries.

On Joost, that content will be added in channels that play high-quality full-screen videos on a peer-to-peer network through software that users download on their computers.

That news comes on the heels of a recent revenue-sharing deal with Viacom for MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and Paramount Studios content. Other Joost channels broadcast shows from the likes of National Geographic and Voy, which targets Latino youth.

Those deals suggest that Joost is interested in just about any type of content, but attracting young viewers is an especially high priority.

“Early adopters of the platform are going to be of a younger generation, so we’re looking for things that will be popular with those generations,” said Stacey Seltzer, senior vice president of content strategy and acquisition for Joost. “But we also want to make sure that we can provide content that may appeal to anyone.”

To start out, Joost will feature JumpTV’s Spanish language series from Columbia, Chile, and Peru, along with Arabic-language comedy, drama, and news from Middle Eastern broadcasters. Eventually, Joost will have access to more JumpTV content from countries like Romania, Turkey, and Russia. Live international stations broadcast through JumpTV are also in the works.

New Media Darling

Mr. Seltzer said more big deals are on the way. Joost has become the new media darling since founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom declared the service was designed specifically to cater to the interests of professional media companies. Copyright protection? Revenue? No problem, the founders say to anyone who will listen.

That kind of language could be interpreted as a jab at YouTube, which has run into its share of copyright issues of late. But it’s more a reference to Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis’s past, which includes inventing Kazaa, a video-sharing service that infuriated media companies to the tune of a more than $100-million settlement, and Skype, the VoIP service that scared telecommunications companies and was sold to eBay for $2.6 billion.

“If there is a serious challenger to YouTube, this could be it,” said analyst Phil Leigh of Inside Digital Media. “They are reformed sinners. They don’t have a halo, but they have been at the front end of the new waves of the Internet.”

JumpTV, on the other hand, has found Internet television to be a more difficult field—at least for paid subscribers. That side of Jump’s business has signed up 30,000 paid subscribers a year and a half into the current service. The company now does most of its business selling content to other providers.

The Internet has spawned countless virtual communities, but it also a place for real-world places such as Brooklyn’s 11215 zip code, otherwise known as Park Slope.

The intellectual neighborhood is home to early web innovator and author Steven Johnson, whose newly launched Outside.in Website is a community aggregator built around zip codes and zoomed-in Google maps that serves up local blogs, newspaper articles, and user-generated reviews and comments.

Outside.in is a play for the territory that sites like Yelp, Craig’s List and others have circled, but Mr. Johnson thinks he can do it differently. Right now he’s focused on building up a critical mass of users attracted to the site’s one-stop-shop for local content based on a very specific location.

Outside.in has been live since October, but got its first bit of attention this week after officially launching, adding key new features and announcing a $900,000 round of funding from early backers Union Square Ventures.

“We think it’s a pretty cool innovation to see not just restaurant reviews, but real conversations that people are having in the neighborhood,” said Mr. Johnson.

The site aims to become a destination to find out what people are saying about the local public school, or a new development project going up in the neighborhood, or a mugging that happened last night on the block. Outside.in automatically culls content from 1500 local blogs around the country and adds in the conversation under appropriate zip codes. New features allow users to find out and contribute information about a specific place, and to have their own pages.

Translating the experience of being in a specific location into the global reach of the Internet has become an obsession of web developers, advertisers and funders. O’Reilly Media, for example, is set to hold the Where 2.0 Conference in May to discuss mapping, location-specific sites and targeted advertising.

That’s also been on the mind of Mr. Johnson, an early web developer, magazine writer and book author, who has thought critically about the intersection between cities and technology. There’s no doubt that he can write eloquently about the theories of why Outside.in should work, but whether he can turn those theories into a viable business is a different question.

Analyst Greg Sterling said that so far, attempts by hyper-local sites to generate revenues have been difficult because successful, automated location-targeted advertising tools haven’t been developed to the extent of national banner ads and search-term-based advertising.

“For the advertiser, the proposition is very compelling, to have super-targeted ads that are zip-code-specific, that’s very desirable,” said Mr. Sterling. “But the question is how do you, as a publisher, get those advertisers on board? So far, the tools on the back-end have not been robust enough to reach the right customers.”

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures is betting that those types of location-targeted tools are going to be included in the next wave of web advertising, and thinks Outside.in could be well-positioned when they are. He sees the site as a kind of personalized all-encompassing newspaper service.

Megasites such as MySpace and Facebook have hogged all the headlines, but niche social networks revolving around specific people, topics or ideas have popped up all over the Internet to cater to users looking for a little discretion or focus. Spend enough time surfing the Internet, in fact, and you might find it tough to imagine there’s anything left to network around. One startup is betting there is—and that you’ll user-generate a user-generated site.

The do-it-yourself model has become the inevitable add-on to any catchy web idea. Blogger and TypePad did it for blogs. WetPaint and Wikia did it for Wikis. Now Ning has launched a new version of its software designed to help the average Joe create a social network.“We want this to be about you creating your own world, not joining ours,” says co-founder Gina Bianchini.

But it is not entirely clear how many people might actually want to do this. “The people who like to organize other people make up a much smaller group than the people who like to participate in groups,” says analyst Rob Enderle. “It’s an interesting play.”

With $9 million in funding and the support of co-founder Marc Andreessen, who invented the modern web browser and also co-founded Netscape, the Palo Alto, California-based Ning has some weight behind it. But the company’s first stab at do-it-yourself social networking was too cumbersome and technical for novices, and Ning was slammed for not living up to the hype.

But Ms. Bianchini says throughout all that, Ning had been working on coding the latest version. Meanwhile, users built 30,000 social networks on Ning. Under the new system, users can quickly and easily create an individualized social network about any topic for free, allowing Ning to run ads. For $19.95 a month users can run their own ads, and for an additional $4.95 they can use their own domain name.

Ning says users can build a vast range of social networks—from a “draft Al Gore” public network to a private network for Texas state employees. CBS used Ning to quickly launch “Who is Keppler?”—a social networking and video sharing site built around a character who made a brief appearance on hit TV show CSI.

With back-end social networking software available for purchase, and do-it-yourself companies coming up behind Ning, analysts say that the company’s software had better be easy to use if it hopes to attract enough members to reap profits.

But there could also be a limit to how many times a person will be willing to join – or create – a new network. “There’s a lot of group think. People go to Facebook and MySpace because other people are there,” says analyst Greg Sterling.

YouTube’s decision to license copyright protection tools from a small Silicon Valley startup was expected to ease relations between the Google-owned video sharing site and big media companies.

But observers said the agreement, confirmed to Red Herring, could alienate users who flock to YouTube to upload and view clips of the latest popular TV shows and newscasts.

Google’s decision to license technology from Los-Gatos, California-based startup Audible Magic highlights the challenges that Google must navigate as it tries to maintain its underground appeal while appeasing big media companies that generate advertiser–friendly content.

YouTube has come under intense pressure from media companies such as Viacom for not utilizing copyright protection tools and allowing hundreds of thousands of unauthorized videos to be uploaded by users onto the site. YouTube removes copyrighted materials after being contacted by media companies, as required by law.

But this practice has helped YouTube build a vast online library of unauthorized content, angering the media companies. CBS, NBC and Viacom recently walked away from the negotiating table after failing to reach revenue-sharing agreements.

Audible Magic, which announced last week it was providing tools to YouTube-competitor MySpace, claims that it can automatically find and remove videos based on audio music or soundtrack “fingerprints” embedded in files provided by media companies. Audible Magic co-founder Vance Ikezoye has said the company’s technology would not allow users to re-upload the files in a different format.

“If we had the content registered we believe the technology can enable the kind of identification and filtering and monetization desired,” said Mr. Ikezoye.

YouTube earlier this week said the company possessed “substantial” copyright protection tools. Audible Magic’s “audio fingerprinting technology” depends on the cooperation of media companies to provide the fingerprints of each media file, said company co-founder Vance Ikezoye. Audible Magic already has built relationships with big music labels and is in the process of also developing a database of fingerprints provided by film and television companies.

YouTube would not comment on the deal and what a spokesperson Friday morning called a “third party technology”.

But to analysts, the Audible Magic news speaks to a potential Google weak spot. “You have this incredible technological behemoth throwing up its hands and saying: ‘We’re really smart guys and we know a truckload about online advertising and search marketing, but we don’t really know that much about the media business, we don’t understand their sensibilities,’” said Jupiter analyst Todd Chanko.

The technology, if successful, would likely dramatically reduce the number of professionally created clips available on YouTube.User-created content like personal confessionals, unexpectedly delightful little finds and amateur shows are part of YouTube’s roots and still engender a large and loyal following. But consumers—and advertisers—want to see professional content on the site.

“Advertisers will find it hard to align themselves with video of unknown quality,” said Mr. Chanko. “Imagine you’re selling Huggies diapers, and somehow your ad appears on the page of a Mexican snuff video. User generated content can be a very, very dangerous game for advertisers.”

“They can do relatively well with user generated content, but (without professional content) they won’t be able to meet the ambitions that Google has for the site,” said analyst Phil Leigh.

Mr. Leigh said he expects media companies and YouTube to take a little break from one another, and then reassess how much they need each other.

“The consumer is not going to remember a dozen different places to go for videos,” said Mr. Leigh. “In the end, they’re going to gravitate towards two to three, and YouTube is going to be one of those.”

A fledgling video service is benefiting from big media’s growing disdain for YouTube.

Joost, the latest venture from the founders of Kazaa and Skype, walked off with a major content deal last week from media giant Viacom that doubled as a slap in the face to Google’s $1.65 billion conquest. Prior to announcing its deal with Joost, the New York City-based media group – which owns such networks as MTV, Comedy Central and VH1 – ordered YouTube to remove 100,000 Viacom videos that users illegally uploaded to the site.

YouTube has also reportedly lost similar licensing deals with NBC and CBS, and Joost says it is close to signing deals with more big media players.

The Viacom will offer Luxembourg-based Joost hundreds of hours of old and new shows, such as MTV’s Beavis & Butt-head and VH1’s over-the-top dating show I Love New York. But hot properties like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, favorites on YouTube, were notably not on the list.

Viacom says it went with Joost because it has a “piracy-proof Internet platform.” Indeed, Joost founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis built their service to avoid all the copyright problems YouTube currently faces.They learned about the hassles of copyright infringement the hard way—their file sharing service Kazaa was last year forced to pay more than $100 million to music companies for allowing users to swap illegal music and video files. For Joost, “what we’ve done is built an online television distribution platform from the ground up with the content owner in mind,” Joost spokesperson Kate Larkin says.

YouTube, however, has been a runaway success because it allows any content, copyrighted or not, on its site.By law, the San Bruno, California-based company is required to remove copyrighted material only when content providers specifically request it be taken down.

YouTube’s discussions with media companies have stalled over revenue-sharing issues, but analysts say copyright controversies don’t help. “It’s a thorn in the side of any media player,” says Forrester analyst James McQuinney. “They want to walk into a partnership discussion knowing their partner has their back, and they don’t think they have that with YouTube because YouTube also wants to maintain relationships with its users.”

Joost says it doesn’t want to disrupt the media status quo, claiming it will announce more major studio and network deals in the coming weeks.

It’s too early to say, however, if Joost poses a significant threat to YouTube. Joost’s peer-to-peer downloading technology streams continuously and the high-resolution videos can be viewed on TV screens. But Joost doesn’t host user-generated content – you won’t find clips of a young girl’s confessional or a politician behaving badly. It also doesn’t allow users to send files from its site across the Internet. But some analysts say Joost could lure away some of YouTube’s user base. “If it’s a way to get copyrighted material that works seamlessly, it could simply start robbing YouTube of media time and eyeballs,” says Gartner analyst Mike McGuire.

Despite frustrations with YouTube, industry watchers say media companies probably aren’t ready to quit the video-hosting site for good. Media companies “are going to work with YouTube,” Gartner analyst Allen Weiner says. “It’s posturing right now. They’re ticked off at YouTube, but YouTube provides them with huge opportunities for distribution.”

The health of an Internet services company now lies in the hands of American cities such as sprawling Houston and rabble-rousing San Francisco. That’s where the once-dialup provider EarthLink is making its last stand on a wire-free future.

It’s been a busy month for EarthLink, which signed new deals to build municipal Wi-Fi networks in St. Petersburg, Florida, Houston, Texas, and its hometown, Atlanta, Georgia. Those deals still have to go through the approval processes. Meanwhile, its high-profile Google hybrid in San Francisco appears close to unraveling after rabid opposition buoyed by several recent reports.

EarthLink began heavily bidding on city-generated municipal Wi-Fi projects after it became clear that the company’s core services—Internet dialup—were becoming eclipsed by cable modems and DSL. Premium dialup subscribers declined 25 percent between the last quarter of 2005 and the last quarter of 2006. Cowen & Co. analyst Jim Friedland said in a recent report that he expects dialup subscribers to hit zero within five years.

That kind of outlook has added a note of desperation to EarthLink’s Wi-Fi pitch.

“EarthLink is a company who really needs this to work,” Donald Berryman, who heads Earthlink’s Wi-Fi division, told a group of wireless aficionados at a Wireless Communications Association conference last month.

EarthLink’s Houston deal is set to become the largest municipal Wi-Fi network in the country, with 10,000 transmitter nodes and a $50 million investment. The company plans to charge a wholesale price of around $12 per user that will be resold to customers for higher subscription rates. EarthLink has said the network will be up by 2009.

Muni Wi-Fi fever is starting to hit cities across the country—which could be good news for Earthlink. Los Angeles and California’s MarinCounty—both with vast areas to cover—announced they were interested in commissioning networks. But municipal Wi-Fi is an area that big telecommunications companies are starting to jump into, after initial resistance. AT&T has dipped its feet in with a project in Riverside, California, and is also competing against EarthLink for a deal to build a network in Chicago.

And rising opposition in San Francisco could spell trouble. EarthLink hasn’t yet had a dissenting vote in any of the cities where it’s gone before a public process, but that kind of political walk-in-the-park has ended at the Golden GateBridge. Several San Francisco Board of Supervisor members are pushing for public control of the Wi-Fi network, and they have delayed a vote on the project. Their position was strengthened last month when the city’s Office of the Budget Analyst issued a report that said it would be financially feasible for the city to retain ownership of the network, doling out operations to a non-profit organization.

In San Francisco, some of the early municipal Wi-Fi activists are beginning to think that a city Wi-Fi network owned by EarthLink may not be the promised wonderland to “bridge the digital divide” that it was cracked up to be. They’re starting to push something else—a city-owned fiber optics network buttressed with wireless. That could provide higher speeds and more reliable services than EarthLink’s nodes—but it’s a larger undertaking. A draft of a city-commissioned study conducted by the Columbia Telecommunications Corporation recommended the city start by building out a “backbone” network connecting 250 public buildings for $12.3 million. Connecting every home and business in San Francisco would cost an estimated $560 million, the study said.

“It still looks like fiber is the future,” said Becca Vargo-Daggett, a telecommunications activist for the Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance who has been a leading voice in the anti-EarthLink San Francisco debate. “The city owning the fiber backbone of the network and the wireless hardware is something that is attractive in terms of the ability to create a truly neutral, open network infrastructure.”

Broadband analysts and operators such as EarthLink say those kinds of ambitions are all well and good, but shouldn’t stop cities from also going forward with comprehensive Wi-Fi projects, which can be implemented faster and cheaper.

“Fiber is going to take years, and require some serious construction,” said Phil Belanger, a broadband wireless consultant. “Maybe it should be done, but it’s on a completely different financial burden and time scale.”

A new social networking Web site is organized around a single, simple question: “What do you want to change in the world?” The answer, it seems—at least in the week or so since the site’s been up—

ranges from ending the crises in Darfur to letting women drive in Saudi Arabia.

In the spectrum of social networking between mega-sites like MySpace and Facebook, and a proliferation of recently launched niche venues like USVetSpace.com (for veterans) and MyBarackObama.com (for supporters of U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama), Change.org sits somewhere in the middle. In its brief life, it has sought to become a clearinghouse for causes environmental, social and religious. And with its focus on tying networking with fundraising, online nonprofit marketing experts say it could become an interesting experiment to test whether online network participation leads to giving.

A recent graduate of Stanford and the London School of Economics, Change.org founder Ben Rattray spent time studying theories behind community engagement. “There are so many worthwhile causes, but how do you foster a sense of connectiveness?” said Mr. Rattray. “As human beings we can either be incredibly generous or incredibly selfish and callous, and how do you create a context where you can elicit that generosity?”

Nonprofit professionals have been asking those questions for a long time. Socially-oriented sites like Gather.com and Care2.com contain strong nonprofit presences. Meanwhile, nonprofits also manage active presences on mass networks like MySpace and YouTube.

So far, social networking has been used primarily for spurring advocacy, and for fundraising around disaster relief. There are online fundraising clearinghouses and social networking sites organized around issues—but Change.org is trying to carve out a space for itself by bringing those two concepts together. “There’s a theory in fundraising that it’s not celebrity influence but friends and family that make a difference,” said consultant Nancy Schwartz. “If you create an online fundraising community of friends and family that’s issue-oriented, that’s an interesting feature.”

The networks on Change.org are organized around causes and organizations. Any member can enter a cause, or desired “change”. That creates a place for users to write comments, list actions to take and suggest places to donate money. Using nonprofit database Guidestar and online donation collector JustGive, Change.org allows users to form “giving networks” and wire money directly to nonprofits.

The company, which is not a nonprofit itself, keeps 1 percent of each donation. Mr. Rattray also plans to generate revenue by selling space for nonprofits to conduct online campaigns.

Family and friends have funded the five-employee company so far. Mr. Rattray said he is interested in a socially conscious angel investor or fund hopping on board. “My position is, given how small the team is, and given the potential size of the network, this is easy to monetize,” said Mr. Rattray. “We will probably need to take funding, but it will only be from somebody who cares passionately about the idea and knows the money is incidental.”

But Ms. Schwartz said that with a presumably young demographic, Change.org could find it easy to build up its Web site with users, but harder to translate that into donations—key to the company’s business model. “It’s much more likely to generate online advocacy involvement. That’s less of a commitment than giving money,” said Ms. Schwartz.

Beka Economopoulos, an online organizer for Greenpeace, met with Mr. Rattray and set up a profile on Change.org. She said the organization is open to all types of online social networking experiments. “Greenpeace is interested in going to those places where people are hanging out,” said Ms. Economopoulos. “We feel like it’s important to keep our finger on the pulse and offer as many opportunities or channels for people to get involved as possible.”

But some in the field have become concerned that the proliferation of sites is spreading potential activists thin across too many separate networks. “One of the really great things about social networking tools is that any individual can grab them and put them into action, and actually make a difference in terms of influencing how things happen,” said Alan Rosenblatt of InternetAdvocacyCenter. “There are a lot of really great Web sites out there. I hope we can figure out a way to have them talk to each other.

Yahoo’s top music executives have resigned, a company spokesperson confirmed Wednesday.

David Goldberg and Robert Roback, who served as both vice presidents and general managers of Yahoo Music, had been with the company since Yahoo bought their product, Launch Media, in 2001. They issued their resignations on Monday from a company weathering a topsy-turvy struggle to keep pace with rival Google.

In the past year, Mr. Goldberg had become a prominent spokesperson in the battle with record labels to relax digital rights management, the technology that record companies use to block music consumers from playing a song on multiple devices. His position is one that Apple’s Steve Jobs recently made headlines by endorsing.

Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Roback will leave the company in April, with Entertainment and Games division head Vince Broady taking over the music unit, Yahoo Music representative Carrie Davis said.

In separate statements, the two indicated that they were resigning to return to their “entrepreneurial roots” and start a new business together. Ms. Davis added that Mr. Goldberg had said he wanted to stop commuting back and forth between the company’s offices in Los Angeles and Northern California, where his family lives.

But those explanations didn’t stop media watchers from speculating on the causes and implications of yet another shift in the ranks at the troubled Internet giant.

“This points to the continuing frustration with the operating structure of a company that has become overly bureaucratic,” said Wall Street analyst Tim Boyd of Caris & Co. “Hopefully, this is going to be among the last of these examples of people leaving.”

Yahoo has weathered a turmoil-filled last year, with executives complaining loudly of a disorganized structure that led it to try to be too many things to too many people. In December, Yahoo announced a reorganization plan that was supposed to help it stay focused. Numerous other executives have resigned recently, including Chief Operating Officer Dan Rosenweig and media head Lloyd Braun.

The departures of Messrs. Goldberg and Roback also raise questions about the future of Yahoo Music. The site attracts big numbers for online, free, ad-supported music. But the division’s subscription service, which was started up under the two men’s watch in 2003, has found it tough to get users to download music that is not compatible with Apple’s iPod, the dominant portable music player. Under Mr. Goldberg, Yahoo Music wrestled with record companies to present music that could be played on multiple music players and was successful in releasing a few singles that way.

Ms. Davis said Yahoo Music will continue to encourage record companies to adjust their DRM standards. “It’s a shared Yahoo Music mission that we move away from DRM,” said Ms. Davis. “DRM creates barriers to getting your music when you want it where you want it.”

But media analysts said the closed system could continue to provide headaches for a company that doesn’t control the playback hardware.

“The DRM issues are very real for Yahoo because they’re facing Apple and they don’t have a grasp on the device end of things,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire. “They’re at a crossroads right now in how they view this service. Is this something they continue to invest in, and how do they grow in a world where the DRM issues aren’t going to be solved any time soon?”

Those problems and the recent changes at the top have led to some speculation on the chances of Yahoo selling or shutting down its subscription service.

Mr. McGuire, for example, said the departures are likely to lead to “soul searching” among the company’s higher ranks on the future of its music product.

Digital media analyst Phil Leigh said the subscription service is still the right way to go. “I don’t think Yahoo Music did anything wrong given the options they had,” said Mr. Leigh. “They had to compete with iTunes and had to sell music in formats not compatible with the iPod, and that left them promoting a subscription service, which is fundamentally a good idea.”

The endings are never as fun, but that’s where the new, cumbersomely-titled Web site ShouldIDumpHimorNot.com is looking to carve out a space.

Flowery hope-filled beginnings? Those heady early days when the love of your life is just a click away? The Internet is full of those. And around Valentine’s Day, the dating sites break into full gait.

Comcast’s two-year-old Dating on Demand service, for example, marked the holiday with a publicity-seeking “date a model” contest—a partnership with the company’s user-generated Web site Ziddio.com. And eHarmony, which matches partners based on psychological profiles, used the occasion to announce that it was opening a research facility aimed at figuring out why two people fall in love.

More targeted sites, meanwhile, litter the landscape. Already the run-up to the big lovey-dovey day has raised sightings of sites like InterracialOasis.com (interracial dating), FarmersOnly.com (self-explanatory), My BVG-Moments (missed connections on the Berlin subway system), and HotPrisonPals.com (for those seeking the perfect incarcerated mate).

In mobile phone dating—much bigger outside the United States—a proliferation of sites jockeying for market domination operate on the principle that the future love of your life could be seated at the next table over.

“Don’t give up,” all these sites and devices scream at us. “Love is all around,” and “Technology will help.” Rest assured, some people are profiting handsomely off a belief in that principle.

But sometimes hearts and flowers just aren’t what a person’s looking for—even of the virtual sort. With the Web 2.0 focus on how to begin a relationship or how to sustain a relationship, some new sites are looking unabashedly at the end.

Take, for example, the BreakupButler. He’ll do the breaking up for you, with impersonal, pre-recorded break-up messages delivered in a faux-English accent. That’s the handy work of Snapvine, a Seattle-based voice message company founded a year and a half ago. Other sites will, for around $300, walk you through the entire divorce process.

But before getting to that point, the more wishy washy might prefer ShouldIDumpHimOrNot.com. It’s hardly targeting the big Match.com business, but it’s carved out it’s own, little, slightly-more-cynical (or some might say realistic) dating/relationship niche.

The site allows users to post a description of their relationship, while the community votes on whether or not they should dump their partner.

It’s a simple ask-the-audience interactive Web model that Ann Arbor book author Kim Roth dreamed up a couple years ago, after witnessing her friend go through the typical should-I-or-shouldn’t-I-stay dialogue. The idea being that there’s a tricky art to knowing when to throw in the towel, and who better to ask than a community of strangers.

“You go back and forth in your head, but I thought, wouldn’t it be great to get the perspective of other people, outside of your immediate circle of friends and family who have their own ideas of what you should be doing with your life,” said Ms. Roth.

She launched the concept over a year ago, but has seen a spike in traffic (although she wouldn’t disclose the numbers) since she revamped it last month.

“The holidays push people to reflect on their relationships. On Valentines Day, because of the nature of the holiday, people have expectations for how they’re going to celebrate that day together, and that leads people to say, ‘Wait a second, is this the person I want to be celebrating it with,’” said Ms. Roth.

The site’s small innovation is that it’s built around a standardized poll: “dump him,” “give it time,” or “keep him.” So, for example, a woman who is concerned that the man she’s been dating since October is not willing to say nice things to her and recognize Valentine’s Day is told in no uncertain terms that this man is not worth keeping. “Dump him,” was the crowd’s advice (with ten votes).

Ms. Roth says that although the site is still modest, she has some revenue and partnership plans. She also would like, eventually, to expand beyond break-ups into other yes-or-no life question territory. She didn’t elaborate, but one could imagine the types of personal decisions that might be quantified—everything from “should I quit my job or not” to “should I buy this house or not”.

Eventually, perhaps, there could even be a “should I start dating him or not”. And thus the ending becomes a new beginning.

Last week, YouTube users lost access to 100,000 Comedy Central, VH1 and MTV clips that parent Viacom ordered removed. But now, as a consolation prize, they can access all the Gumby and I Spy their heart could desire.

The 1950s green amorphous clay blob shenanigans and the 1960s Bill Cosby whodunits are the property of Digital Music Group, which has spent the last couple of years doing what YouTube never bothered itself with—buying up digital broadcast rights. On Monday, the company announced a distribution and revenue-sharing deal with YouTube. (That, of course, assumes the company Google bought for $1.65 billion starts generating some revenue one of these days.)

Meanwhile, the Viacom-owned MTV Networks is becoming perhaps the first major media company to recreate one of the keys to YouTube’s success—embedded video capabilities. While many media companies allow users to share videos by emailing links from the company’s Web site, one of YouTube’s innovations was understanding that allowing for embedding on unrelated Web sites across the Internet could increase the viral spread of videos.

In that vein, MTV Networks recently started allowing users to take certain Comedy Central videos and embed them on their own personal Web sites, with traffic directed straight back to “The Motherload”—Comedy Central’s Web video site that holds clips from The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and many other shows. It’s a way to spread video content around the Internet the way YouTube has done, but still retain some control of that content.

MTV Networks also recently announced 250 layoffs as part of a reorganization strategy that will give stronger emphasis to new media properties.

Mika Salmi, MTV Networks president of global digital media, recently told Reuters that opening up the Networks’ content to consumers and other companies is a key adaptation.

Media analysts hailed MTV’s embedding decision as a sign that it “gets’ Web 2.0.

“Instead of saying it’s happening and it’s scary, they’re saying it’s happening and we’re going to take steps to do it in way consumers like, to ensure it’s high quality, and the best clips that can be used for promotion,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey.

But to Mr. McQuivey, MTV’s adjustments and recent statements don’t rule out a YouTube deal. “Doing it yourself is fine, but you’re never going to replicate the tens of millions of people going to YouTube every day,” said Mr. McQuivey. “I believe everybody is still interested in taking advantage of YouTube.”

While still alive, Anna Nicole Smith dyed her hair blonde, got breast enhancements, and donned an up-swept skirt, but the Marilyn Monroe status she openly chased still eluded her. In death, she came closer. By Thursday, the media couldn’t help noting that her seemingly sudden and mysterious collapse faintly echoed the demise of Ms. Monroe.

But in the minutes and hours after, Anna Nicole also got something a little extra, a little nerdier than Marilyn ever could have imagined: a Wikipedia battle.

The former Playboy model, former reality TV star, and former wife of a very old billionaire was quickly swept up into the online user-generated encyclopedia’s normal eruptions. It happens, to varying degrees, pretty much any time a sensational breaking news story hits: Rapid entry changes, defacements, and corrections—all while the headlines are still churning. Meanwhile, an army of core volunteer editors pound their keyboards, struggling to maintain accuracy and objectivity in the face of falsehoods, conspiracies, and mean jokes posted on the site.

There are over 5.3 million entries on Wikipedia, written and edited throughout the day by 75,000 active users, according to the site. Wikipedia has built up a number of features to protect entries against abuse. Those include shutting off editing capabilities to new users for a period of time, or—in the most extreme situations—to anyone at all. But six years into the grand experiment, the staff and volunteers behind the nonprofit entity still haven’t found a way to fully safeguard entries from defacement, especially during the moments when people are most likely to seek out information about that particular topic.

Blogs claimed to capture Wiki entries before they were edited out, saying they had come across all manner of posting drama that was questionable.

The posts sparked an active conversation in the behind-the-scenes comment zone on Wikipedia. One editor called a statement “legally dangerous.” Another responded, “How is it dangerous and you make Wiki seem like it’s the damn Bible.”

On Friday morning, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales shrugged off the Anna Nicole incident as a non-incident.

“There’s always the editing of anything that’s in the news,” said Mr. Wales. “There’s a lot of information coming out and people want to work on that. This happens all day every day.”

Mr. Wales may laugh at media outlets trying to turn this into a story, but it does underscore a key question on the accuracy of a company that’s become so dominant in delivering information online. Some have even begun to wonder whether it could present a serious challenge to Google as a search site.

Moments of flurry present some trouble to Wikipedia. But, over time, evidence indicates that Wikipedia entries tend to establish an equilibrium that, for the most part, reflects the truth.

A study in the journal Nature recently found that entries in Wikipedia were less finely written but nearly as likely to be accurate as those in The Encyclopedia Britannica, which employs a far more hierarchical structure of editing, charges for access, and has not deemed Anna Nicole Smith worthy of an entry.

Spokesperson Tom Panelas said that, in general, Encyclopedia Britannica entries are updated when necessary to reflect news events that affect them, but editors try to stay out of the fray in evolving stories.

“People are not coming to find out things that happened five minutes ago, they wouldn’t come to us to find out whether Anna Nicole Smith is alive or dead,” said Mr. Panelas. “Why would you, if you’re sitting at your desk you could just look at Google News or Yahoo News? They come to us for an overview of a subject that they can rely on.”

With information moving rapidly on the Internet from one point to another, Yahoo introduced a new service, dubbed Yahoo Pipes, to help users mix all those information streams together.

Yahoo Pipes went live Wednesday night, but by Thursday morning it was gone. “Our Pipes are clogged! We've called the plumbers!” read a brief message on the new site.

Pipes is poised to put the Sunnyvale, California-based company ahead in mash-ups. That’s a niche the tech giants are just beginning to investigate. On Wednesday, IBM introduced a preview of its own mash-up tool—known as QEDWiki—that’s aimed at businesses.

A Yahoo spokesperson said in a statement that the company’s offering was overwhelmed after what was meant to be a small test among web developers turned into a blogger free-for-all. The company did not say when the site would return.

The prototype site allowed developers to interact with a visual pipe-like interface, using a drag-and-drop technology to piece together and map feeds from different sources to create new, hybrid feeds. Then the new link became accessible for other developers to use as a starting point for a new mash-up creation.

Influential technology bloggers test-drove the service Wednesday. Many praised Yahoo Pipes for simplifying mash-ups.

Tim O’Reilly, credited with inventing the term “Web 2.0”, called Yahoo Pipes “a milestone in the history of the Internet” and said he’s been waiting ten years for a service like this one.

Matt Cutts, a software engineer for Google, called Pipes “a really neat idea” in his personal blog.

To RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady, an expert in mash-up technology, Yahoo’s foray into the space is a clear bid to win the praises of that influential web developer crowd.

“The more traction they can build with developer communities, the better,” said Mr. O’Grady. “This is a hook for Yahoo to introduce itself and ingratiate themselves with a very important community of early adopters, which is a good way of building interest in other Yahoo services.”

Others in the mash-up space said the Yahoo project may open up mash-ups to a less tech-savvy user base than has been involved in creating them thus far. And that could create new business opportunities.

“Yahoo’s move to popularize this is great for everyone in the mash-up community,” said Joe Keller, Chief Marketing Officer for Kapow Technologies, a Palo-Alto-based company that develops software for businesses to create mash-ups internally. “Yahoo will get people started and will create opportunities for us to grab the people who want to go further.”

But Yahoo is also entering a space that has been fraught with legal issues that still haven’t been fully settled—the kinds of problems that arise when a company seeks to merge content from other content creators. At a mash-up camp several weeks ago in Massachusetts, Mr. O’Grady, who led a talk on licensing and commercialization, said he heard testimony of legal hurdles from many mash-up creators in the room.

“It’s still a new frontier,” said Mr. O’Grady. “Because [Yahoo Pipes] is about repurposing feeds of existing content, it’s probably not immune. There will almost inevitably be questions of what you can do with this and what you can’t do, and respecting copyright. But the trend here is clear. There’s more and more data being exposed via feeds every day, and it’s being used in all sorts of creative and interesting ways that usually benefit the content owner.”

What’s the top newspaper Web site in the United Kingdom? Why, that depends on who you ask.

Several top papers have recently engaged in a minor spat over which is the top trafficked “quality” newspaper Web site in the country. The Daily Telegraph recently began declaring as much in an advertising campaign. That led Guardian Unlimited executives and journalists to claim the top spot themselves.

The problem? Both claims are, possibly, legitimate. It depends on what measurement company you go to for information.

Top metrics companies Hitwise, comScore, and Nielsen/NetRatings employ different methodologies and sample groups that sometimes produce numbers that vary widely. And that can be confusing to advertisers, investors, and company executives who rely on web measurement data for key decision making.

The Telegraph’s declaration—which is posted on the newspaper’s Web site and billboards around town—is based on Hitwise numbers that have the newspaper’s Web site leading all U.K. newspaper sites. Hitwise measured total visits and based its sample on 8.43 million Internet users tracked through Internet Service Provider addresses, according to a Hitwise spokesperson.

Nielsen and comScore ratings differ from Hitwise’s methodologies by using smaller, more targeted samplings of users, and measuring unique visitors within a given period of time rather than total page views. Nielsen/NetRatings numbers point to the Guardian as the top newspaper Web site among U.K. Internet users, with 2.1 million users. Trailing were The Times at 1.6 million users a month, The Sun, a tabloid, at 1.5 million and The Telegraph at 1 million. comScore figures show The Sun as the top newspaper Web site with 2.6 million users. The Telegraph is the fourth largest U.K. newspaper Web site, with 1.2 million users, according to comScore data.

That kind of discrepancy led Simon Waldman, director of digital strategy and development for the Guardian Media Group and self-described “web metrics nerd” to explain last week in excruciating detail in his blog just where The Telegraph went wrong.

“Given the enormity of the decisions we all have to make at the moment—and the leaps we are often asking advertisers to make, transparent, accurate, and well understood metrics are absolutely critical, and all of us in the market have to be very careful about what we use,” wrote Mr. Waldman.

The dispute has been referred to the U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority, according to U.K. news reports.

Web audience figures are more difficult to extract than television viewership, where a single company—Nielsen—dominates measurement. There are numerous ways to measure the reach of a Web site, including unique visitors, total page views and length of time spent viewing the page. Meanwhile, growing Web 2.0 trends like online video, mash-ups that combine content from various companies into a single site, and social networking have challenged traditional Web measurers to keep up.

“There’s a growing consensus in the industry that page views may not be the best way of determining the value for a site,” said Gartner Analyst Andrew Frank. “All of the stuff of Web 2.0 flies in the face of the page view model for measuring exposures or impressions.”

comScore recently announced a deal with Federated Media, an ad network that represents sites like BoingBoing and Digg, to develop methods to better track social media, blogs, and user-driven sites. With those kinds of initiatives, the big three Web tracking companies are trying to out maneuver one another to gain the trust of marketing executives and investors, who pay to access the information the metrics companies provide.

But analysts point out that there’s a fine line between healthy competition and mass confusion. As more and more varying methods of measurement are employed, it could be a while before all the differences are fully sorted out.

“I think claiming number one on some metric is defensible if there’s a metric that says you’re number one,” said Mr. Frank. “But these kinds of disputes are bound to arise, and it’s good for everyone involved that they’re solved.”