In addition to today’s Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for May 9, 2007:

MySpace buys Photobucket: What do they get for $300M? [Compete]

It’s an interesting question that Compete is asking here: what does $300,000,000 get you in the online photo-sharing world? According to their data, it gets you a site that competes on many fronts with Flickr for popularity and, at times, accounts for 0.25% of all the time spent on the Internet. That might not seem like much… but it is. And as Andy Kazeniac says… “I guess you could argue that’s worth a few hundred million.”

Google Attacked Over Webmaster Relations [Search Engine Roundtable]

Color me shocked. A heated thread at WebmasterWorld accuses Google of a less-than-stellar relationship with Webmasters. I won’t go as far as to say that Google is the best Big Brother Internet that it could be. But you have to give BigG some credit. They do a better job at transparency, overall, than most of the other search companies out there. They provide a lot of resources and tools for webmasters that you can’t find anywhere else. That being said, I can understand some of the points being raised in the discussion. But a lot of that isn’t Google’s fault alone. A lot of the “roll over and take it” attitude from webmasters in regard to mandates from Mountain View are those very webmaster’s fault… because they continue to roll over. As long as Google feels that it can do something, it will.

Magnetic Blogging: How to Use Metaphors to Create Irresistible Content [Copyblogger]

I’m a big fan of creative, unique approaches to writing. You can find “writing” anywhere. But you can’t find engaging, interesting writing as easily. Luckily, sites like Copyblogger exist to help move more people toward the unique and interesting spectrum of the writing continuum. This post on the use of metaphor is a great example of a simple, yet effective, way to make your writing *pop* just a little more than the next person’s (assuming they didn’t read the same post).

Yahoo Travel Adds Personalization, New Maps [Search Engine Land]

According to Greg Sterling, Yahoo Travel is all grown up… and includes some pretty nifty new features. I’ll let you read his take for the specifics. But I want to point out that while I’m sure it’s an improvement over the old version, Yahoo Travel still suffers from the same problem that every travel site I’ve ever stumbled across suffers from: information overload. I have yet to see a site that’s able to bring all of that information together in an easy to use, easy to see, and easy to discern fashion. I guess if that’s what folks are used to it’s not a big deal. But I’d love to see someone bring a more streamlined approach to travel information.

Have a great evening, ya’ll! Until tomorrow…