Play God: play 'Spore'

Ad Networks and Analytics:

• Visible Measures says it can effectively track how far videos have spread online. It can also measure audience engagement.

Agencies and Marketing Execs:

• Agencies are placing heavy emphasis on training existing employees in mobile marketing.
• Allyson Campa has officially left Metacafe, where she was VP of marketing. The site does not plan to fill the now vacant position.
• Hispanic agency REVOLUCION promoted Amy Gómez, Ph.D., to Managing Partner/Director, Account Services.
• Digital media and tech firm Sportgenic made Thomas Flynn and Douglas Schirle its VPs of Sales in the East and West, respectively.
• Two more execs have left Yahoo. The latest to jump ship are Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, the co-founders of Flickr, which Yahoo acquired a couple of years ago.

Biz Buzz:

• Professional social network LinkedIn closed a round of financing worth $53 million, valuing the company at over $1 billion.
• Gannett made a "strategic investment" in Cozi, an online tool that lets families create sharable journals.

Mobile:

• IAC Advertising Solutions is partnering with Ringleader Digital for mobile advertising management across IAC properties.

New and Improved:

• NBC will be rebrand its World Championship Sports Network. Its new name shall be UniversalSports.com, and it will be fully-functional by the time the Beijing Olympics arrive.
• MySpace debuted Phase I of its redesigned site. Feature film The Dark Knight sponsored. General consensus dubs it a vast improvement.
• Waste Management launched a green social network dubbed Greenopolis.
• Yahoo will allow people to create email addresses with two new domains, an effort to cater to people that need aliases.

Online Content:

• AOL signed a deal with Scripps to distribute video content from properties like HGTV, Food Network and more.
• CBS Television launched its Local Ad Network in eight new markets, allowing local blogs and news sites to grab news-syndicating widgets and share in the ad revenue they help generate.

Privacy:

• Undertone Networks, which has never paid much attention to privacy concerns, joined the Network Advertising Initiative.
• Ask.com added a privacy policy link to its homepage.

Tools and Software:

• Social news site Reddit is throwing open its entire code to provide a level of transparency that it says sites like Digg lack.
• The New York Times released TimesPeople, a Firefox plugin that allows readers to recommend NYT content to other members.
• Kaltura released an open-source video platform that enables creation, management and monetization of videos.

Virtual Worlds:

• Avatar creation site Meez built a virtual world for its avatars to inhabit.
• Electronic Arts released Creature Creator, the first component of its long-gestating virtual world Spore, which turns players into god-like manipulators of life.