What’s Rummikub, you ask? True, it’s not as synonymous with boardgames as Monopoly is, but the tile-based game sells 3 million units a year globally. Add an avid following since the seventies, and you can quickly come to the conclusion that it might not be a bad idea to try pressing Rummikub’s luck in the times of the social Web.

That is precisely what P-Karma has done with its recently debuted Rummikub for Facebook app, which can also be played right on Rummikub.com thanks to Facebook Connect.

Rummikub is a multiplayer game whose objective is to create either a sets three tiles bearing the same figure in different colors, or sets of runs—three consecutive numbers in the same color.

The first player to place all the tiles on their rack on the table wins.

From Wikipedia:

Rummikub’s main component is a pool of 106 tiles, consisting of 104 number tiles and two joker tiles. The number tiles range in value from one to thirteen, in four colors (black, yellow, blue and red).

Each combination of color and number is represented twice. Players each have a rack to store tiles, without revealing them to the other players, similar to that used in Scrabble.

In Rummikub’s online version, game play takes place in both private and public rooms that accommodate up to four players at a time. Extra bells and whistles include video chat and throwing of tomatoes at slow-playing opponents.

Unsurprisingly, Rummikub is running a virtual goods ecosystem based on ‘Joker Credits’ as currency. The credits can be used to purchase entry to tournaments, as well as gifts and room themes. For example, gifts players can send each other during a game cost 1-3 Joker Credits, room themes can cost up to 20. Pricing is tiered, where 50 credits will run you $5, 150 credits will cost $10, and so on.

Will Rummikub be the next Zynga Poker? Probably not, but with a third of its users being women in the 20-40 yearold demographic (a virtual goods sweet spot), it could still make loot.

Total Beauty Media is adding to its quickly-growing fashion empire. The Santa Monica-based startup operates cosmetics tips and review site TotalBeauty, BeautyRiot, and ModernMan (the latter as a joint venture with Break Media). Now, it has acquired LimeLife, a woman’s lifestyle portal in an all-stock deal. The value of the acquisition is not being disclosed, but it is less than the $21 million raised by LimeLife since 2005.

Limelife is struggling as a women’s lifestyle site on the Web, but on mobile it is doing much better, with about 2 million monthly mobile visitors (versus only 750,000 for the Website). Much of this traffic comes from being placed on the carrier deck of many feature phones. LimeLife will bring the company’s total reach to about 6 million people a month, including its ad network of about 40 fashion blogs and other sites. Most of Total Beauty’s traffic is driven by search.

With the LimeLife acquisition, Total Beauty will also get some mobile technology still in development called MySnaps, which works as a Web bookmarking tool now. The mobile version will let women snap pictures of products they want to buy in stores and share them instantly with their friends, who get the to vote on it (similar social shopping ideas have been tried before, see JustBoughtIt and iliketotallyloveit).

Total Beauty is trying to pull together a cosmetics and fashion-oriented audience for advertisers. CEO Emrah Kovacoglu used to be the global digital brand manager for Procter & Gamble before leaving to start Total Beauty Media in 2007. “At P&G,” he says, “we couldn’t find enough inventory online. I saw how much money we planned to shift.” So he created a place where women could learn about cosmetics, and rate and review different products. If he could bring the women, he knew he could get the advertisers. He estimates $300 million to $500 million will be spent this year in the U.S. on online advertising for beauty products alone.

The company has raised $16 million in three rounds from Wallington Investments and U.S. Venture Partners. Revenues are ramping from $2.5 million in 2009 to $10 million in 2010 well within reach. The first half of the year already brought in $4 million, and the majority of revenues usually comes in the second half. Sounds like just the kind of company Demand Media might want to buy.

Yahoo’s top engineer who heads up mobile app development for the company, Sandeep Gupta, just resigned, I have learned. It is another blow to Yahoo’s mobile ambitions. Gupta is a rock star mobile engineer who previously worked at Apple in charge of the iPod software and UI teams. At Yahoo, Gupta was in charge of creating all mobile apps for phones and tablets. He led the teams which launched the iPhone apps for Flickr, Fantasy Sports, Yahoo! Finance, and Yahoo! Messenger, as well as Yahoo! Entertainment on the iPad.

Gupta’s title was Senior Director, Application Development, according to his LinkedIn profile. It still lists Yahoo as his current job:

I currently lead the Application Development efforts at Yahoo!. I am responsible for all aspects of development including UI, Engineering, QA and Program management for both mobile and tablet devices. I work with the executive team to shape and define Yahoo’s Mobile applications, and then execute on them, conforming to a defined schedule. To this end I assembled a best of class team to deliver best of breed applications for Yahoo.

Yahoo’s mobile team has seen a series of high-level departures since Carol Bartz took over as CEo, starting with former mobile chief Marco Boerries and chief scientist Marc Davis.

Update: Yahoo has confirmed the departure.

Photo credit: Flickr/Marc Davis.

The Web is dead, or at least in decline, declares Wired editor Chris Anderson in the magazine’s September cover story. The article is anchored by the startling infographic above, which shows the proportion of different types of traffic on the Internet. The Web, HTML traffic visible though a browser, is only about a quarter (23%) of the overall traffic, down from about half a decade ago. It’s been pushed down by peer-to-peer (23%), video (51%), and other types of apps which use the Internet for transport but are not browser-based. It’s not clear what exactly Wired is counting as video, but presumably it is not all of the Flash video on YouTube which is very much part of the Web.

Setting aside whether Wired massaged the numbers to make its chart look pretty, Anderson’s larger point is that increasingly we are consuming information via apps other than the browser. He writes:

Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen).

That may be true for now, but don’t count the browser out just yet. These shifts happen in waves. First the browser took over everything, then developers wanted more options and moved to apps (desktop and mobile), but the browser will eventually absorb those features, and so the leapfrogging continues. The ubiquity of the browser overcomes most of its technical deficiencies. Even in mobile, people will become overwhelmed by apps and the browser will make a comeback.

When AOL bought hyperlocal news site Patch in June, 2009, it covered five towns in Connecticut and New Jersey. On Tuesday, it will open its 100th Patch, and by the end of the year it plans to open 400 more for a total of 500.

I recently visited AOL’s headquarters to learn more about what Patch is all about. “We look at what we are doing as digitizing towns,” says Patch president Warren Webster (see video interview below). Patch was first founded and funded by AOL CEO Tim Armstrong when he couldn’t find a resource on the Web for volunteer activities his family could do together in the small Connecticut town where he lives. Armstrong bought Patch afterwards when he came to AOL, but only took back his initial investment in AOL shares—and he is obviously very interested in the product. He stuck his head in the conference room where I was getting my demo because he saw the Patch screen projected on the wall.

Matching volunteers with local organizations is still one of Patch’s features, but its main focus is covering local news and creating an in-depth directory of local businesses and places of interest. Each Patch covers a small town with a population between 15,000 and 75,000, places like Fairfield, Connecticut, Mill Valley, California, Scarsdale, New York, and Morristown, New Jersey (which will be the 100th Patch).

The front page covers local news much like you would find in a local small town newspaper (“Police Investigate Drowning,” “A Guide To Walkable Westchester,” “Coyote Attacks Another Young Girl In Rye, Bites Neck“). Each town has its own editor, a “walking newsroom” who writes stories and assigns them to an average of 11 freelancers, who also fill out listings in the directory and take photos. There are also events, announcements, and volunteer opportunities. Readers can add their own.

Some complaints have surfaced about Patch’s low pay and the grueling working conditions (mostly, it seems, from older out-of-work journalists who aren’t used to the rapid-fire pace of Internet publishing). Webster responds that Patch pays “competitive market rates for community journalists” and that “75% of local editors are making the same or more than they did at their last job in journalism—the other 25% came from journalism school or were freelancers.”

But the real engine of Patch is the database it is building up of local businesses. So far it has 105,000 local listings, and is building out more every day. Before Patch launches in a town, it creates a directory of the local businesses, parks, hospitals, schools, and other public places. It launches with about 1,200 for each town, which get entered into Patch’s structured database. Each place gets its own profile page on Patch, with a description and highly detailed data such as teacher/student ratios for schools or suggested dress code and parking options for restaurants. For instance, here is directory listing for the Crabtree Kittle House & Inn in Chappaqua, NY.

The local directory of places is how Patch makes money. If a business wants an enhanced listing, complete with a video tour (shot by one of the 40,000 freelance videographers who work for another AOL acquisition, StudioNow) and preferred placement, that costs $1,000 a year. Patch is going after Yellow Pages and local newspaper advertising dollars.

These profile pages are very search-engine friendly, and any time a Patch article mentions a place in the database, it is automatically linked. “A lot are using their Patch profile as their place on the Web,” says Webster. Patch also offers a self-serve ad tool that turns any directory listing into an online ad unit which can be used on any Website and link either back to their Patch listing or to their own site.

Webster explains Patch’s rollout in terms of phases. The first phase is to get up and running in hundreds of towns and get local residents engaged. The goal is to reach half of each town’s population. “We exceeeeded every metric we had set for ourselves,” boasts Webster. “Phase 2 is how do we get people to buy things from local stores.” That is where the coupons and local deals come in (you saw that one coming). The coupons are shown as ads on the homepage of the towns where the businesses are located, as well as on their directory listings.

The local coupons are still pretty primitive compared the experiments we are seeing from geo startups like Foursquare and shopkick, but Webster hints that a mobile Patch app is coming soon. And when I asked about whether the directory would become available to other developers and startups through an API, he notes that could be coming soon as well: “We are looking at every possible way to distribute Patch content.” Once Patch gets into gear, it could definitely start driving a whole new class of advertising revenues for AOL.

Social networks worldwide are estimated to bring in $3.3 billion in advertising dollars this year, according to updated estimates by eMarketer. That number represents a 31 percent increase from 2009′s $2.5 billion. A full 39 percent of that amount, or $1.3 billion, will go to Facebook.

In the U.S., social ad spending is estimated to rise 20 percent to $1.7 billion. Facebook is gobbling up even more market share in the U.S. It is expected to make up 50 percent of that amount ($835 million), compared to a 36 percent share last year (when it’s U.S. advertising revenues were estimated to be $500 million out of a total of $1.4 billion).

The big market share loser in social ads this year is MySpace, whose share is estimated to drop from 32 percent in 2009 ($445 million) to 19 percent in 2010 ($323 million). Social games and apps, interestingly, are also expected to pretty much stay flat in terms of ad revenues, with $142 million of the total this year. The social game segmentation really doesn’t make sense to me. It kind of makes me wonder whether the folks at eMarketer have ever heard of Zynga.

Hulu is testing the waters for an IPO, hoping to get a valuation of $2 billion, according to the New York Times. A Hulu IPO would be a pure play on the transition of TV to the Web. While the company has not yet filed with the SEC, in the past it claimed to have 2009 revenues of $100 million, and is perhaps on track to double that this year.

It is not clear how profitable Hulu can be, or how viable its long-term survival will be. Hulu already has to fork over as much as half or more of its advertising revenues to its TV network partners/backers (Fox, NBC, and ABC). But it is not a complete experience. You can’t watch CBS shows on Hulu, and earlier this year Viacom decided to pull its most popular shows from Comedy Central. And NBC’s new owner Comcast has its own plans for streaming TV on the Web. It is not clear how long it will continue to support Hulu.

Until we see it’s actual SEC filing with audited financials, investors won’t be able to make an informed decision one way or another. Maybe I’ll be blown away by the numbers and they will change my mind. But from what I know right now, I’d say Hulu still has some proving to do.

The streaming video site is the tenth largest in the U.S., with 28.5 million unique viewers in July (according to comScore, which recently changed its methodology—Hulu used to be No. 2 after YouTube). But Hulu is still No. 2 in terms of viewer engagement, streaming an average of 158 minutes per viewer each month. And in terms of video ads served, it is No. 1, with an estimated 783 million video ads served in July, nearly twice as much as the next largest video ad network (Tremor Media).

Hulu is preparing to launch a premium subscription service for $10 a month, which will supplement its advertising revenues. Investors are going to want to see some traction there before attributing too much revenues to Hulu Plus.

The subscription service will help diversify Hulu’s revenues and make it less solely dependent on advertising, while at the same time creating more loyal users. The subscription service will still shows ads, but it includes a deeper catalog of shows which never expire (as they do on the site). But CBS shows will still be missing, and there will be no Daily Show. Gaps like these will make the $10 subscription a harder sell.

Meanwhile, Hulu’s biggest competitor in streaming video is perhaps Netflix, which is streaming more and more movies online, and TV shows as well. In June, more people went to Netflix.com than Hulu for the first time, and that trend continued in July. If you look beyond TV shows and include Netflix’s streaming movies, it’s catalog of streaming video is arguably better than Hulu’s. I could see some people subscribing to both—Netflix for movies, and Hulu for TV—and still saving a ton of money by getting rid of their cable plans or simply paring back to basic cable. But Hulu needs to fill in some major programming gaps before that starts to happen.

Today, as CEO of BuzzFeed, he is making a business out of making things go viral. At a meetup last night at BuzzFeed’s New York City offices, he gave his five rules for making things go viral (slides below), which I made him repeat in the video above (yes, that is 4Chan’s Moot in the background). The rules are:

1. Create media for the Bored At Work Network: There are hundreds of millions of people around the world bored at work sitting in front of their computers connected to high speed networks.  This network is bigger than any traditional media network like CNN or ABC. Create something they will want to pass around.
2. Practice The Mullet Strategy: Business up front, party on the back.  If you have a Website, keep the front page serious so as not to scare off the casuals.  Give all the crazy commenters and contributors space in the back, and only show them to the rest of the world when they create something that catches on.
3. Try Big Seed Marketing: If you are  brand trying to create  a viral campaign, it might be hard. True viral memes are hard to reproduce.  It is much easier to make something that still gets passed around, but you might have to spend some money to seed it around the Internet.  The more seed you spread, the more chance it will grow. “Buy the seed, get the viral for free,” he says (this is basically BuzzFeed’s business model).
4. Target The Maniacs: The Web is ruled by maniacs, people who get worked up about things and push their ideas out.  ”Content is more viral if it helps people express their personality disorders,” notes Peretti.
5. Be A Mormon, Not A Jew. This one is tongue in cheek.  But Mormonism is a growing religion, whereas Judaism is stagnating in terms of population.  Why?  Mormons are better evangelists.  ”The problem with Jews is that they suck at marketing,” says Peretti.  ”It’s almost like they don’t want anyone else to be a Jew.” His point is that it is not just the quality of an idea that counts, it is how much effort you put into spreading it.

The Pew research center put out survey results today on broadband adoption and Internet use in America. There was one data point that I found startling. According to the survey, 21 percent of American adults say they don’t use the Internet. One fifth of all Americans.

This isn’t just people who do not use broadband (which is 66 percent of American adults). It also includes people who don’t use dial-up (another 5 percent). These people don’t use the Internet at all. That is like not using the telephone.

The number is a bit inflated because a third (34 percent) of these self-described non-users live in a house with Internet access or have family members who use the Internet regularly. They just don’t think the information on the Internet is relevant to their lives (48 percent), are uncomfortable with computers (60 percent), and are not interested in getting online (90 percent).

Who are these people? I can understand why elderly Americans who didn’t grow up with computers not seeing the need for them. And that is certainly reflected in the broadband numbers. Only 31 percent of people 65 or older are on broadband, compared to 80 percent for those 18-to-29 years old. People without a high school education, with low incomes, or who live in rural areas also are less likely to use broadband. It is likely that these demographic groups also make up a disproportionate number of the non-users.

At least race is becoming less of a factor. One of the fastest growing groups of broadband use is among African Americans. More than half (56 percent) use broadband (compared to 67 percent of white users), up from 46 percent of African Americans last year. And most people (53 percent) don’t believe the government should get involved in making broadband more broadly available. They think the market is doing just fine on its own.

Well, except for those 21 percent of Americans who are apparently still communicating by telegram.

TweetDeck is preparing to release its first Android app in beta tomorrow. I got a hold of the beta build and some screenshots. The app adds some new elements which go beyond TweetDeck’s popular iPhone app, and even introduces some new elements not yet found in its desktop app. But this app shows the direction where TweetDeck is going. As CEO Iain Dodsworth noted in a blog post yesterday that it “also represents the future of our iPhone and iPad applications.”

The mobile app, which is TweetDeck’s first foray onto Android phones, supports multiple streams beyond Twitter, namely Facebook, Foursquare, and Google Buzz. (The desktop is also multi-stream, but the iPhone app only supports Twitter and Facebook). The biggest departure, though, is a blended stream that combines updates from all four services, color-coded with different backgrounds for each one. TweetDeck’s other apps maintain a separate column for each stream. The Android app supports columns as well, and if you have an existing TweetDeck account, it populates them with your existing preferences.

There is also a new “Me” column which pulls together all messages that mention you from across multiple streams, including Twitter @replies, Facebook likes and comments, and Buzz updates on your posts. It is essentially a unified vanity search column. When you compose a message, you can pick which service you want to send it out on from the same screen (much like the desktop app)

The app takes full advantage of the Foursquare API. In addition to being able to see where your friends are checking into Foursquare, TweetDeck acts as a full Foursquare client. You can check into a location, leave a shout or a tip, or see a location on a map. Each location has a detail view which shows you all your friends who checked in there recently and any messages they left.

A general map view shows all nearby Foursquare venues and any geotagged Tweets. Friends who have check in nearby are also placed on the map. The app has a contacts page with quick links to each of your account profiles, and slots for the people you talk to the most.

One thing it doesn’t have that is in the desktop app is user streams, which delivers Tweets as fast as they are produced without any limits or throttling. Apparently that feature kills the battery life on mobile.

This is a beta, which means TweetDeck is still working on it. For instance, it doesn’t handle multiple Twitter accounts as smoothly as it should or video uploads. But these issues will be fixed in the near future. Another thing to note is that seems to be an older build of the Android beta floating around, which has even more bugs. Better to wait for the official beta release which should come tomorrow.