Foursquare, the location-based social media site, is aware of the value of its data for searches and has started talking to "a lot of different potential partners," including industry majors such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in order to clinch data deals.

Bits and bobs to keep up with search agency news: Trada/Google Ventures, IBM and Boostability

On Wednesday, I asked, "Will Social Media Get Governor David Paterson of New York to Veto a Bad Bill?" We're still waiting to answer that question, but we do know that social media has rallied Stephen Kaufer, CEO and Founder of TripAdvisor, Arthur Frommer, author of the world famous Frommer's travel guides, and more than 500 people to urge Governor Paterson to veto Bill S6873, which would ban apartment rentals of less than one month.

If you scour the rates and registration details for SES San Francisco, you'll find something that I haven't seen before. There's group pricing for 4-6 passes, 7-9 passes, 10-19 passes, 20-29 passes, and 30+ passes.

According to Glenn Blain of The New York Daily News, Governor David Paterson of New York has signed into law a measure giving New York City greater power to crack down on so-called "illegal hotels." However, Dennis Schaal of Tnooz reports that Paterson issued a statement saying that he, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the bill's sponsor support an amendment to the bill which would mean the law would not go into effect until May 1, 2011, giving property owners time to adjust to its provisions.

This past week, Matt Bailey, the president and founder of SiteLogic, Cindy Krum, the Chief Executive Officer of Rank-Mobile, and I taught half a dozen of the modules in the Rutgers Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing certificate program. Rutgers incorporated "cutting-edge digital technology" into our teaching approach for this program - supplying all participants with their own free Apple iPad tablet, containing the pre-loaded program materials.

Microsoft's Greg Nelson and Yahoo's Mark Morrissey recently gave interviews to Kara Swisher of AllThingsD. Nelson and Morrissey are in charge of a two-year effort to coordinate the massive search and online advertising partnership that their companies struck last year. According to Swisher, their job "essentially is the search equivalent of herding cats."

NBC Universal (NBCU), the media and entertainment company, has launched its own advertising platform UAP to serve its own network of owned and operated sites, Mediaweek reported, quoting company executives.

When AOL is in the news, it means business... CEO Tim Armstrong said advertising would be AOL's primary source of revenues in his turnaround plan for the company. As such, AOL already demonstrated its willingness to leave non-viable operations behind by selling its failing and ailing social site Bebo for a reported $10 million. Now it's building a new future, starting with the launch of an innovative political ads platforms and at the same time looking for its future head of music operations.

AOL is currently gauging the offers of several companies to power its search as its $700 million-a-year deal with Google is set to expire in December. Whether it renews its agreement with Google or switches to another search company, AOL is likely to sign in its partner for the few years to come by September, according to various reports.

The rumor is growing fast. Now the New York Post has it that Google could launch its search-related music store as early as this holiday season, i.e. November-December.

The advertising industry is launching its own PR campaign by way of setting up an Institute for Advertising Ethics. The sector has always had a negative image and the likes of the "Mad Men" series are certainly surfing that tide to... sell. With the market staging a robust recovery the industry is planning ahead and wants to tweak its reputation. Here's how.

Most reporters are focused on the United States Copyright Office declaration that it is it legal to unlock or 'jailbreak' a mobile device from the manufacturer and network provider from which it was purchased from, which permits users to install unapproved software under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's (DMCA) fair use provisions. The request was made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) particularly as it applies to AT&T and Apple's iPhone Software License agreement.

Yahoo Japan -- an independent entity from Yahoo -- has decided to forgo the Bing transition and will be using Google search results, Reuters announced today.

According to new research from Econsultancy, companies worldwide are increasing their investment in site search because they want to improve the experience for website users and increase site usage and sales.