In case you missed them, here’s this week’s CHART OF THE DAY highlights.

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A rusted printing pressAll American newspapers fared terribly in the first half of 2009.

What happened?

The economy collapsed and advertising budgets went with it, accelerating a process already underway: the Internet’s erosion of the entire newspaper industry. The Atlantic’s Megan McCardle explains:

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iphone apps billion tbiThe iPhone 3GS jailbreaking app Purplera1n is here, reports CNET.

Teenage hacker Geroge Hotz, who was first unlocked the iPhone, released Purplera1n yesterday in a blog post titled “I make it ra1n.

Technicallly, this is bad news for AT&T and Apple — for AT&T (T), since people can use their jailbroken on any phone service, and for Apple (AAPL) because users won’t have to go to the app store to buy add new ones to their jailbroken phones.

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federerwimbledon_tbi.jpgFollowing on its disastrous “coverage” of the Wimbledon quarterfinals, NBC is now wrecking the Wimbledon semifinals.

Andy Murray and Andy Roddick are a tight first set (Roddick’s up 4-3). ESPN, which owns the rights for this hour, can’t show the match on TV because NBC won’t let them. 

NBC, meanwhile, refuses to show the match online, because that might dilute its TV audience when it finally bothers to put Wimbledon on the air.

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Fourth of July weekend is a time for celebration and relaxation, but also reflection on the critical juncture our nation faces.The U.S. has been on an “unsustainable cycle of buying and spending” that cuts across all strata of society, says TJ M

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There is an article in the FT today that asks whether Facebook is a “web phenomenon on the cusp of greatness or just a social craze?”, and as we’ve discussed here before the last thing any of us needs is for it to turn out to be a fad.

I think it is just about fair to say that the debate is still open, but what is definitively the case is that Facebook’s momentum is on the increase.

First take a look at these charts (courtesy of the FT)

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The graph on the left shows the traffic momentum is strong, and the pie chart on the right shows that Facebook is pretty much an all age site now (or at least all age up to retirment).

Secondly, these highlights from recently released engagement stats on FB (courtesy of Inside Facebook) tell a story of a community that is on the rise in terms of depth and richness as well as size:

  • 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day (13 million did per month at the beginning of the year)
  • 8 million users become fans of Pages each day (up from 2.5 million per day at the beginning of the year)
  • 10 million videos are uploaded each month (up from 4 million)
  • 900 million photos are uploaded to the site each month (up from 700 million)
  • 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared each week (up from 15 million per month)
  • 35 million active groups exist on the site (up from 19 million)
  • 2.5 million notes created each month
  • 30 million users access Facebook each month through a mobile device

Given all this, and that with a population of 240 million Facebook would be the fourth largest country in the world I’d say that Facebook should be able to lay the ‘social fad’ accusations to rest pretty soon.  Then if they could just start making money they could answer the business sustainability question….

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Don't Tread on me, a Flickr photo by David Paul OhmerOnline advertising’s biggest players to government: Please stay out of our business.

Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft, along with a host of other advertising, agency and marketer associations, took another step in pressing their case that the government doesn’t need to regulate the collecting of data for ad-targeting purposes by search engines, websites, advertisers and ad networks. They’ve crafted their own set of rules in the hope of heading off potential regulation in Congress.

For months, a wide-ranging group of marketers, portals, publishers and ad networks represented by industry groups — such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Direct Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers — have been working on “self-regulatory principles,” which were released today. They require sites to provide prominent disclosure of who is collecting information and the ability to opt out, inform consumers of any change to a site’s privacy policy, and offer special protections for sensitive data connected to health and financial issues or children, among other things.

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Citigroup this week joined Bank of America and JPMorgan in sharply raising fees on credit cards for late payments, balance transfers and the like.The banks appear to be trying to raise rates before new consumer-protection rules go into effect. They’re als

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For this Independence Day, here are words of financial wisdom — to and from some of the Americans portrayed on US currency.

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A new program links payments on federal student loans to income and forgives balances after 25 years. Those working in public service could have loans forgiven after 10 years.

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After nine months of explosive monetary and fiscal stimulus, you’d think economic recovery would be upon us. But the June jobs report tells a much different story.
Non-farm payrolls fell by 467,000 as the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent. This isn’t nearly as bad as the 700,000 monthly job losses of last winter, but it’s still a rough number. Equally disappointing is the household survey — often a key turning-point signal since it captures the health of small businesses — which has dropped 811,000 in the past two months.
Donald Marron, a former senior economist with…

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barrydiller tbiEvite, a unit of Barry Diller’s IAC (IACI), has undergone a restructuring and cost-cutting meant to right the struggling ad-driven business.

Nine of 38 employees were laid off, paidContent reports, Rosanna McCollough, GM, and Lariayn Payne, VP of Marketing, were among the casualites.

The online invitation service finds itself back under John Foley, who ran it from 2002-2005, but as part of his Pronto division of IAC.

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Washington Post CEO Katherine WeymouthThe Washington Post has canceled plans to host a series of “salons” that would have mixed Obama Administration officials and Post reporters with reps from companies and nonprofits paying as much as $250,000 to attend.

Politico reported the plans this morning after obtaining a flier inviting sponsorships.

Once the news broke, the Post newsroom quickly pulled back on the offer of reporters attending the events. This afternoon, the paper announced the whole even has been cancelled.

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twitter shirtAn Australian company uSocial is offering to get people Twitter followers for a fee, reports BBC.

The going rate is $87 for a 1000 followers.

While Twitter itself has yet to convert its hype into revenues, here is yet another business that’s making money off the micro-blogging service.

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OTS red tape regulationVirtual currency is turning into a multi-billion dollar economy, and much of that money sits in virtual banks that exist outside normal government regulation.

So what happens when fraudsters wake up to the laissez-faire virtual economy?

And worse, what if the one of those fraudsters happens to be the bank CEO?

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