The news that that MySpace was undergoing massive layoffs just as Facebook passed it in terms of unique US visitors has generated some insight into the future of social networks. Ars tecnica offered the simple explanation, that eye bleeding graphics and lack of privacy controls knocked the one time leader off of its perch. Marketing Shift agreed, citing the teenage stigma and mailboxes full of spam invites. All Things Digital (a Fox sibling of MySpace) offered the high level explanation: MySpace was now an entertainment portal while Facebook was a utility.

The MySpace model was not totally discounted. Jason Nazar felt that the portal concept would work if MySpace could walk away from some short term revenues, attract better UGC and court some star power. The blog Youth Marketing Insights reminded MySpace that a youthful audience needs to be constantly refreshed and that it may never be the place to track #IranElections. ReadWriteWeb used the shift to look at the trends in social media that could include augmented reality and fully distributed social networking.

• 10 Social Media Tools - Best Kept Secrets (Junta 42)
• 4 Easy Ways to Find Valuable Business Twitterers to Follow (Scott Fox)
• 30 Largest Facebook Fan Pages by number of fans with user figures and page URLs (Nick Burcher)
• 10 Great Ways To Use Twitter To Your Business's Advantage (WebProNews)
• 5 Tips for Optimizing your Facebook Marketing (Marketing Profs)
• Pro Twitterers Share Their Secrets (Mediapost)
• Connecting with customers through Facebook (Social Media Today)
• Which Facebook Pages Are Growing Fastest Right Now? (Inside Facebook)
• How Do You Balance Personal and Professional on Social Media? (Hubspot)
• Affiliate Marketers Flock To Facebook And Click Fraud Skyrockets (All Facebook)

• 9 Reasons Your Website Can Have a High Bounce Rate (Search Engine Journal)
• Five PPC Landing Page Design Trends (Website Magazine)
• Writing Your Best PPC Ads (Search Cowboys)
• The Top 10 Twitter SEO Tips (Mashable)
• PageRank Sculpting: What You Need to Know (Find Resolution)
• What Bing, Twitter, and Facebook Mean for SEO (WebProNews)
• Link Building Worksheets - Organize Your Campaign (Search Engine Journal)
• The Link Builder's Guide To Analyzing SERP Dominators For Link Opportunities (Search Engine Land)

• 9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy ( CopyBlogger)
• Measure Your Mobile Marketing Potential with Three Free Tools (Natural Search and Mobile SEO Blog)
• 10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To (Smashing Mag)
• 25 Excellent Typography Tools for the Serious Designer (Six Revisions)
• 7 Rich & Creative User Interfaces and How to Create Your Own (Noupe)
• Ecommerce Know-How: Picking the Right Shopping Cart (Practical Ecommerce)
• 10 really cool Flash websites (Econsultancy)
• 51 Hand Drawn Fonts (Birdsall)
• 30 High-Quality Icon Sets for E-Commerce Designs (Six Revisions)
• 18 Free Text Editors To Clean Up Your Code (Sitepoint)

• 5 Lead nurturing tips to create relevant and engaging emails (B2B Lead Generation)
• Use Facebook For Additional eMail Opt-ins (Email Marketing Vodoo)
• Users Pressure Microsoft to Fix Outlook (PC World)
• The Power of Word in Outlook (Microsoft)
• Mobile email: the marketing challenges (Email Marketing Reports)
• Writing Email Marketing Copy That Sells (VR Marketing)
• Killing Off Inactive Subscribers
• Who at BMW Cooked Up This Disastrous eNewsletter? (Content Marketing Today)
• Email Marketing: Optimize the New Subscriber Experience (Practical Ecommerce)
• Product image 360 in Email (Style Campaign)

• Tie It All Together: Linking Google Analytics Goals With AdWords (ROI Revolution)
• Google Analytics Gets a New Site (Google Analytics Blog)

• Google Voice rolling out new invites (Google Mobile)
• Google To Launch Shiny New News Site (Silicon Alley Insider)
• Yahoo rolling out DIY display ads (Webware)
• Google testing out new format for search ads (Webware)
• YouTube Gets a Slew of Updates Including Wonder Wheel, Improved Advanced Search (Search Engine Watch)