Facebook recently passed 350 million users worldwide, but the lingering question about the social network (and social media in general) is if it’s making any money. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the answer seems to be that at the least, revenue, if not profits, at social networking sites is starting to take off.

Using data from NYPPEX, the WSJ reports that Facebook’s estimated to generate $710 million in revenue next year. That would represent more than a 40 percent improvement from this year, where the social network is rumored to be bringing in about $500 million in revenue.

Elsewhere, NYPPEX estimates that LinkedIn will generate more than $200 million in revenue in 2010. The firm also says that four years from now, Facebook could be doing $1.9 billion sales, LinkedIn could be at better than $300 million and Twitter could be at $283 million (how exactly, they’re not sure either).

Of course, all of that is based on the social networking sites mentioned continuing to grow strongly both in terms of users and sales. That’s been anything but a given in the short history of social media, where we’ve seen sites rise and fall quickly. Nonetheless, the report does seem to support other research that indicates money is flowing into social media marketing at an increasing rate.

On the consumer side of things, Google has just released a bevy of new features like Google Goggles and real-time search. But the search giant hasn’t forgotten about its business users. For you they offer up a holiday present.

Now Google Analytics users can add annotations to dates in order to better document spikes in traffic, use custom variables in advanced segments and view them in custom reports, and even use a super simple analytics tracking code wizard for setting up specialized situations.

Google also took to their Analytics blog to announce that a new version of the Analytics API is coming soon and will support advanced segmentation.

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Annotate Your Graphs

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The majority of Google Analytics users will get the most value out of annotations, especially since the notes can be used to designate why there were peaks or dips in traffic, campaign launches and other information to help team members process traffic data.

To use the annotations, simply click the tab below the date on the graph. The tab will expand to include a date field and text entry box for your note, which will be attributed to you once you save. You can also save your note as private or edit previous annotations.

As the post points out, the use cases for annotations are manifold:

“Annotations can become your central repository, or logbook, for all online marketing and website design actions within your business. So even if you have multiple marketing teams, agencies, or webmasters, or if you have employee churn or other disruptions, you can always see which events may have caused conversions to increase or decrease.”

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Go Custom: Advanced Tools for Tracking

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If slicing and dicing data is your thing, the refreshed Google Analytics also offers up custom variables in advanced segments plus specialized variables in custom reports. This means that “if you’ve created a Custom Variable such as ‘Logged-In Member,’ you can also create an advanced segment based on that variable and see it across all of your reports.”

Should comprehensive traffic tracking be more your style, look no further than the new tracking code set-up wizard. The wizard will automatically generate the right tracking code for your site profiles, so you can more easily track cross-domains, multiple sub-domains, mobile sites and the like.

On the whole, the new Google Analytics features are perfect for data-crunchers and Web site admins looking to better understand their site metrics.

LAKE FOREST, CA – [April 1st, 2009] – Internet marketing specialists Digital Eye Studios has announced it experienced an upswing in business despite bad economic conditions and credits the expansion to the need by businesses to have an increased Internet presence and track their marketing dollars.

Digital Eye experienced a 98 % increase in the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 15 % increase in the first quarter of 2009. New clients say they are looking to allocate more marketing dollars on Internet marketing and SEO because it can be tracked and easier to convert those interested into paying customers. “There was a time when businesses just needed to have a website to establish legitimacy. But now a presence isn’t enough,” said Gary Brewer, president of Digital Eye. “Internet marketing not only includes a functional website that attracts prospects and sells a company and its products or services, but one that is accessible to search engines, provides fresh information continuously and that contains landing pages geared specifically to a target market. The work is often too overwhelming to be done internally. ”

Digital Eye’s success has led the agency to receive the endorsement of search engine optimization expert Steve Wiideman, President of http://www.seoexpert.tv/ and author of SEO Blog Optimization and The Four Layers of the SEO Model: How to Rank Higher in the Search Engines, both books which have been popular and well-received. Wiideman, who has managed million-dollar pay-per-click budgets and turned brick and mortar businesses into Internet profits, continues to refer clients to Digital Eye.  In all cases, Digital Eye has increased traffic and conversions generated from organic and sponsored placements on Google, Yahoo! and MSN.