A blog hosting an offensive image of Michelle Obama with monkey features has removed it and posted an apology.

The image, which has been appearing at the top of search results when the words "Michelle Obama" are put into Google Images, was posted on a blog called Hot Girls, which is hosted by the Google-owned blog service, Blogger.

Hot Girls' owner has today removed the image, which appears to have originally been put up with a blog post on 21 October, and displayed an apology in Chinese with a very loose English translation.

Despite complaints about the image, Google decided not to remove it, stating in an explanation linked from an ad (see graphic below) at the top of the "Michelle Obama" Google Images search results:

"Google views the integrity of our search results as an extremely important priority. Accordingly, we do not remove a page from our search results simply because its content is unpopular or because we receive complaints concerning it. We will, however, remove pages from our results if we believe the page (or its site) violates our Webmaster Guidelines, if we believe we are required to do so by law, or at the request of the webmaster who is responsible for the page."

None of that applied, so Google stuck to its policy, which really was all it could be expected to do. Fortunately (and perhaps ironically), the Hot Girls owner showed some class and took the image down on his own.

Of course, it's hardly the last we'll see of this racist image on Google. It'll pop up again elsewhere, a testament to hate's persistence.

At an event in London to celebrate the milestone, founder and chairman Reid Hoffman said the company plans to launch an initial public offering at some point, but an IPO was not on the immediate radar, TechCrunch Europe reported.

The Sobees desktop client is a Windows native desktop app with built in .NET and a Web application built with Microsoft Silverlight, according to TechCrunch. It will mine LinkedIn for connections updates, status updates, applications updates, jobs posted, groups joined, recommendations and profile changes, and updates can be performed via the client.

Sobees also told TechCrunch it is launching a native Android Twitter client with support for multiple Twitter accounts, search and most basic Twitter functionality, with an iPhone version on the way, as well.

Joshua Premuda is the turkey behind TurkeyTwitter, which doesn't seem to have much of a shelf life past, oh, Thursday.

The Germany-based seller of laptops owns a trademark on the word in most of Western Europe, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and two other countries, according to TechCrunch, but the term has been adopted by the industry to describe a device that falls somewhere between a smart phone and a netbook.

This will likely turn out the same way Twitter's attempt to prevent use of the word tweet ended up.

Current shares in the social-networking site would be converted to class-B shares, which would equal 10 votes apiece in matters of corporate governance, while new class-A shares, which would be sold in an initial public offering, would carry one vote each, the Times reported.

Facebook spokesman Larry Yu told the Times:

We did introduce a dual-class stock structure because existing shareholders wanted to maintain control over voting on certain issues to help ensure that the company can continue to focus on the long term to build a great business. This revision to the stock structure should not be construed as a signal that the company is planning to go public.

University of Delaware professor of corporate governance Charles Elson told Financial Times:

Dual-class stock is an anathema to institutional investors. Ultimately, shareholders lose. If something were to go wrong, there's absolutely nothing they can do about it.

ABC's Dancing with the Stars was the most-visited broadcast-show Website, followed by CBS' Survivor at No. 2 and fellow CBS series NCIS at No. 3.

As for cable shows (adults only), Comedy Central's South Park grabbed the top spot, followed by Comedy's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart at No. 2 and BET's 106 & Park in the No. 3 position.

When combining broadcast and cable networks, South Park was No. 1, with Nickelodeon's SpongeBob SquarePants holding the No. 2 spot and Dancing with the Stars third.

The only fast riser on the broadcast list was CBS' Criminal Minds (to No. 15 from No. 27).

Cable's fast risers were MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show (6 from 16), Lifetime Television's Project Runway (8 from 46), Comedy's The Colbert Report (9 from 47), Food Network's Everyday Italian (21 from 43), Food's Food Network Specials (22 from 75), Food's Tyler's Ultimate (23 from 52) and BET's Monica: Still Standing (24 from 38).

Fast risers among the top 25 Websites were Rachel Maddow (16 from 35), Project Runway (18 from 93) and Colbert Report (21 from 94).

Click here to see the report.

In his post Bullas cites a recent study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research on the usage of social media by the 200 largest charities in the U.S. (based on Forbes magazine data). Among the organizations participating were the Salvation Army, American Red Cross and Easter Seals.

Bullas writes:

[A] remarkable 89% of charitable organizations are using some form of social media including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis.

Blogs are the top social media tool, used by 57% of the charities. An overwhelming majority (90%) reported that their blogs were successful (though how isn't specified). Also, about one in four of the charities with blogs use WordPress as their platform.

Nearly two-thirds (65%) of the top U.S. charities use video on their blogs, and uploading to YouTube is common.

You can read Bullas's post for more data. One point made by a commenter to the post is that the survey isn't about "best practices" as much as level and types of social media usage. I think that's true. Still, as a snapshot of social media adoption by non-profits, the study offers some interesting information.

In a very long but fascinating post on his Occam's Razor blog, Kaushik quickly defines the problem:

Analysis of new social media channels has been hobbled by old world thinking, when it comes to marketing, from the world of Television and Magazines or, when it comes to measurement, from the world of traditional web analytics.

These new channels, twitter and facebook and youtube and tumblr and, yes, even blogs, are very distinct customer/participant experiences. Stale marketing or measurement thinking applied to them results in terribly sub optimal results for all involved.

Absolutely true. The problem with being able to grab and bang out Twitter data is that most of it merely measures activity, not effectiveness. Or as Kaushik writes:

Most twitter analytics tools just do data puking. They find numbers that can be computed and then proceed to puke at you as many as they can find, with wonton disregard of value being provided or outcomes being measured.

Hailing a "massive proliferation of new thinking," Kaushik goes on to discuss four Twitter analytics tools that he believes "look promising."

The four are:

Klout -- attempts to measure reach, demand, engagement and velocity

GraphEdge -- measures legitimate followers (see graphic), churn rate

(Note: The next one wins today's "It's a Little Freaky" award.)

TweetPsych -- Kaushik: "uses the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) method and the Regressive Imagery Dictionary (RID) method to build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their last 1,000 tweets"

Twitter StreamGraphs -- visualizes word associations

As I said, Kaushik's blog post is long, but he really drills down. If you're into analytics, it's a must-read.

In a blog post today, HootSuite said Twitter Lists were a frequent request of its users, who now can import their existing Lists as well as create new lists in HootSuite. An example of the Lists management interface is below.

The blog also detailed how Facebook and LinkedIn are integrated:

Whereas before you could update Facebook and LinkedIn through Ping.fm functionality, things are different now. Facebook and LinkedIn accounts are treated similarly to Twitter accounts: you can create columns from these social networks, read your friends' status updates, and update multiple Facebook accounts. Facebook integration offers in-line commenting.

Finally, HootSuite says it is extending the scheduling function for tweets to include status updates on Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm.

This is a significant strategic move by HootSuite, which is trying to evolve from a Twitter-centric service to a social media management platform. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

OK, not really, but a post by Schnitt on the Facebook Blog is aimed at busting the myth that the social-networking site is using members' photos in ads without their consent, as has been the topic of several status updates by users reading something like this:

FACEBOOK has agreed to let third-party advertisers use your posted pictures WITHOUT your permission.

Schnitt posted:

This rumor about Facebook using your photos in ads without your consent is spreading again. The rumor was not true earlier this year and it is not true now.

The advertisements that started these rumors were not from Facebook, but placed within applications by third parties. Those ads violated our policies by misusing profile photos, and we already required the removal of those deceptive ads from third-party applications before this rumor began spreading.

We are as concerned as many of you are about any potential threat to your experience on Facebook and the protection of your privacy. That's why we prohibit ads on Facebook Platform that cause a bad user experience, are misleading, or otherwise violate our policies. Along with removing ads, we've recently prohibited two entire advertising networks from providing services to applications on Facebook Platform because they were not compliant with our policies and failed to correct their practices.

We're committed to remaining vigilant in enforcing our policies to prevent bad ads from appearing on Facebook—whether served by us or a third party. But we also need your help. If you ever see a misleading ad or believe it violates our policies, report it to us.

If it's one of our ads, you can simply click the thumbs-down icon that appears above or below the ad to report it. If the ad is from a third-party application, click the "Report" link at the bottom of the page to report it to the developer and us.

According to comScore Video Metrix, Hulu served 856 million video streams in October compared with 583 million during the previous month. Unique visitors also rose, to 42.5 million from 38.7 million, as did minutes per viewer, to 123 from 92, according to AdAge.com.

And with higher traffic comes stronger ad sales, as Hulu CEO Jason Kilar told AdAge.com:

We are getting to a spot where we won't be able to accommodate additional advertisers until the new year. Advertiser demand has exceeded our growth.

The main thing is we are now able to look back see the seasonality from the prior year. In 2008, we had no prior year to look back on.

In what seems like a direct message to applications that have been accused of scamming users, Jeffries wrote:

We've all seen applications build long-term businesses by staying focused on providing a good user experience, creating user trust and engagement. These apps help all developers succeed by attracting more users to engage with great applications, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits the whole ecosystem. To continue to support this focus on user experience, we're investing in personnel and technology to help us better uncover and rapidly respond to policy violations. You'll continue to be able to launch an application without prior approval—that's an important part of our open Platform philosophy—but you should expect it to be proactively reviewed at any time.

Our aim is for the Developer Policies and Examples and Explanations to reflect the specifics you need to easily make decisions and manage your applications. While our policies will guide our approach, no document can itemize every way to generate a bad user experience, so we'll be enforcing our broader principles, as well. Those who try to circumvent the spirit of the policies or principles, or exploit a "loophole," will be subject to enforcement.

When we find a violation, the action we take will depend on the developer's compliance history, and the nature and severity of the violation. In many cases, we temporarily suspend some or all application functionality, or permanently disable.

Nonetheless, runners should welcome the Runner's World Route Finder, an online resource powered by TrainingPeaks. The RW Route Finder enables runners around the world to both search for or map new running routes in their own community or wherever they travel.

More details from Runners' World:

The RW Route Finder automatically searches for routes in the runner's current location and displays all the available routes on a map view, not just in a list. In addition to a map, runners can view interactive elevation profiles of any hills, providing a more complete understanding of the route's difficulty level. Finally, runners can search for routes in any part of the world simply by entering a new city in the search field.

In addition to finding new routes, runners may upload their favorite running course to the public RW Route Finder database. Runners also have the ability to drag and drop routes into their training log calendars, which automatically uploading the runs' distances and elevation gains directly into their personal trainer account. Routes recorded in the RW Route Finder can be instantly shared with friends on Facebook and Twitter, allowing runners to post their achievements in real time and receive feedback from the running community.

It's easy to test out the Route Finder, which I did. While it has a great interface and returns results quickly, there still appear to be some bugs in the coding. A search for runs in "Saratoga Springs, NY" produced some excellent runs in that area -- along with a few courses in Saratoga Springs, Utah. Well, they'll come in handy if I'm ever passing through.