Boston-based Web-analytics firm Compete came out with some numbers on how the death of Michael Jackson last week affected the World Wide Web, The New York Times' Bits Blog reported.

According to Compete, the week ended June 27 saw 9.98 million queries for the terms "Michael" and "Jackson" across the top 25 search engines and news and social-media sites, or more than 24 times the number of queries using the terms "Iran" and "election" during the prior week. Google handled 61% of those queries.

Compete added that Yahoo! Music drew 45% of Web surfers seeking the King of Pop's albums, music videos and merchandise, while YouTube ranked a distant second at 23%.

Baseball blogger Rany Jazayerli received less-than-royal treatment from the Kansas City Royals this week, but relations were smoothed between the Baseball Prospectus co-founder and the Major League Baseball club.

Jazayerli, a die-hard Royals fan, wrote a post earlier in the week on his Rany on the Royals blog that was sharply critical of longtime Royals trainer Nick Swartz over the team's treatment of outfielder Coco Crisp's shoulder injury. Crisp recently had season-ending surgery on that shoulder.

As a result of that post, the Royals cut off his access to the team and threatened any radio show that welcomed Jazayerli as a guest, Deadspin reported.

But cooler heads prevailed Friday, as the Royals reversed their decision.

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Online-video site Dailymotion named Cédric Tournay CEO, replacing interim CEO Ian Brotherston, who replaced Mark Zaleski in April, paidContent:UK reported.

Tournay had been CEO of European health portal Doctissimo.

Zaleski became non-executive chairman in April, taking over international operations. Brotherston will now serve as executive vice president, international strategy.

Evite laid off nine of its 38 employees as part of a reorganization by its parent company, IAC, paidContent reported.

Among those affected were general manager Rosanna McCollough and vice president of marketing Lariayn Payne.

Pronto co-founder Hans Woolley was named president of Evite, and he will report to Pronto head John Foley, paidContent added. Pronto is also owned by IAC.

PricewaterhouseCoopers predicted that total Internet ad spending in Europe, the Middle East and Africa will rise to $25.2 billion in 2013 from $19.4 billion in 2008, while online display will drop to $4.8 billion from $5.1 billion during the same period. PwC also sees display-ad spending slipping to $4.4 billion in 2013 from $4.8 billion in 2008, AdAge.com reported.

According to AdAge.com, PwC sees search as a steady growth component. AKQA U.K. head of media and search Neil Eatson told AdAge.com, "I say it to so many of my clients: The search engine is the new home page for brands and businesses. People just don't see home pages anymore, because 80% of Web use begins with a search engine. Google, MSN and Yahoo! really do enhance the user experience, so more and more clients see search as the most cost-effective form of advertising."

Besides search, "Social media, when done well, is very powerful," Weapon 7 CEO Steven Hess told AdAge.com. "Video carries more information more quickly, so it's more effective, but the brand needs to encourage the user to consume it."

PwC entertainment and media senior manager Eva Berg-Winters seemed to agree with Eatson and Hess, telling AdAge.com, "Because of the downturn, there's a shift in business models, and search is seen as the best return on investment. There's also a strong transition to classified, which is doing OK, even though it's based on weak sectors like jobs and auto. But online display is still in its infancy. Post-downturn, we expect search and classified to hold up and for display to enjoy growth."

People often take different paths before starting online-media companies, but one would be hard-pressed to find a path as unique as that taken by Daniel Pinchbeck, who founded Evolver two years ago.

Evolver is the parent of Web magazine Reality Sandwich, which says its "subjects run the gamut from sustainability to shamanism, alternate realities to alternative energy, remixing media to re-imagining community, holistic healing techniques to the promise and perils of new technologies."

The company also launched in beta form a social network called Evolver, and Pinchbeck says, "Our intention is to promote social change and consciousness change through online collaboration and offline activations, creating local groups called Evolver Spores. We have 20 community groups already meeting, in the United States and abroad."

According to Pinchbeck, Reality Sandwich gets around 75,000 unique visitors per month, while Evolver gets around 1,000 uniques per day. He added, "This is without any marketing, other than my talks and media appearances."

2012 Time For Change v03 from Joao Amorim on Vimeo.

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Silicon Alley Insider took its best shot at estimating how Facebook brings in money, as the social-networking company has not yet gone public, so it is not required to disclose its financial information.

Sources told Silicon Alley Insider that the company told its investors its 2009 revenues would reach $550 million, up from a $400 million figure the blog received a couple of months ago.

Based on input from sources, Silicon Alley Insider's breakdown of the $550 million: $125 million from brand ads; $150 million from Facebook's ad deal with Microsoft; $75 million from virtual goods; and $200 million from self-service ads.

A Texas real estate rivalry led to a lawsuit against craigslist for trademark infringement, even though its users were responsible for the postings.

As reported by MediaPost, First Call Properties alleges that rival real estate company AAA Apartment Locating posted ads on craigslist using the phrases "first call," "call first" and "call us first," claiming that this was done with the intent of confusing consumers.

First Call also claimed that craigslist knew about AAA's actions but failed to stop them.

First Call named craigslist, AAA and two individuals as defendants in the lawsuit, which was transferred to federal court in the southern district of Texas late last week, MediaPost reported.

TheStreet.com had a phone interview with News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, in which the media titan spoke about the layoffs at MySpace and his impressions of Twitter.

Murdoch on MySpace:

The business sort of grew out of control and really out of size. I blame myself, and it had to be brought back in size, but we feel that we've got new creative people and it will be a very strong force in many ways and shouldn't be compared…I mean, it will be a very different social site to, say, Facebook. Facebook is more of a directory. People go looking for their relatives or their friends, who they are going to meet. With MySpace, people go there to find common interests, share music, that sort of thing.

Murdoch on Twitter:

It's an amazing phenomenon but I have no idea how they can monetize it. No one monetizes the Web today to any extent other than search.

The long-running feud between CNBC Reports host Dennis Kneale and financial bloggers has hit the name-calling point.

Apparently tired of being referred to as "Beaker," "super dipshit," "as desirable to watch as a 350-pound woman in a thong bikini on the beach," "clueless" and countless other things, Kneale fired back.

After referring to the bloggers in general as "dickweeds," Kneale invited a blogger named "Mike" from Annuityiq.com to call into the show, then proceeded to tear into the blogger's answer to his question, saying at one point, "If this were The Gong Show, the producers have just given you the gong. You've got no specifics. You've got no facts."

The latest news from Google News: People quoted in Google News articles can no longer leave comments.

The New York Times' Media Decoder Blog reported that Google eliminated what had been an experimental feature, as it did not get much use despite receiving substantial news coverage.

"We're always experimenting with ways to make Google News more useful," Google said in a statement. "Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts to be sure we focus on features that make the most sense for our users."

Johnston Press, publisher of The Scotsman and other Edinburgh newspapers, banned access to Facebook, paidContent:UK reported, saying in a memo that more than one-half of its outbound Web traffic went to the social-networking site. But if more than one-half of traffic goes to a single site, shouldn't that highlight its importance?

Several newspapers reversed earlier decisions to cut off Facebook access, as the site has become a valuable tool for reporters. And JP publications even use the social-networking site to send out messages, going so far as to create local pages.

"Will whoever is responsible for this have to get departmental consent every time they update those pages?" paidContent:UK asks.

"Anyone can make games now, Kodu is available on Xbox LIVE Marketplace http://bit.ly/3wlWKo #microsoft #xboxlive #kodu"

That was the first tweet from the main Microsoft account, as the company's four-person corporate-communications team began using its main Twitter account, TechCrunch reported.

Microsoft started off slowly, as it has only posted two tweets and only has some 1,000 people following it, according to TechCrunch.

Microsoft also announced earlier Wednesday that it will add tweets to results from its Bing search engine, updating them every minute, according to The New York Times.

TheWrap set its site-traffic record in the month of June, totaling nearly 380,000 unique visitors and 1.8 million page views, according to data gathered by Google analytics.

Comscore does not index TheWrap yet, but its latest available recorded traffic for The Hollywood Reporter is 266,000 per month, and that figure for Variety is 546,000 per month.

Big stories for the site during June included an internal memo containing the salaries of William Morris agents and revelations about the recording of Michael Jackson's last rehearsal.

TheWrap also announced that former TVWEEK deputy editor Josef Adalian will join the site as TV editor Aug. 1.

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Overstock.com followed in the footsteps of Amazon and announced that residents of California, North Carolina, Hawaii and Rhode Island will no longer receive referrer payments for products sold through their Websites, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

The issue is the same one faced by Amazon: The states want Overstock.com to collect sales tax on affiliate sales as if the affiliate was actually a brick-and-mortar store selling its products.

California has not yet passed its e-commerce sales tax legislation, but Overstock.com appears to be preparing for that eventuality, Silicon Alley Insider reported.