Cost-per-action social media and search advertising service Taykey has just closed a $9 million second round of funding led by Sequoia Capital.

The company tracks social media mention and search trends in real-time to take advantage of urgent advertising opportunities and interest-based targeting parameters to power Facebook, Twitter, and search campaigns. Here’s a closer look at what it provides to advertisers on and off Facebook.

How Taykey Works

Let’s take a look at an example of an advertising campaign powered by Taykey. A singing contest television show such as X-Factor could hire Taykey for a month-long campaign on what amounts to cost per Facebook Like model, where the client pays a price per Like and sets a goal of the total Likes they want. Taykey would then monitor social networks, news, blogs, and searches for trends in the behavior and interests of the show’s target age and location demographic. It could determine what other TV shows or musical artists the audience Likes, and then run a series Facebook ad campaigns for the X-Factor Page targeted at people with those Likes.

Taykey co-founder and CEO Amit Avner tells us that “if X-Factor judge Paula Abdul falls off the stage, we’ll know in five seconds and go buy ‘Paula Abdul’ Google search keyword ads” to preempt the oncoming rush of searches for that keyword. Taykey might also purchase Twitter trending topics, or ads on Bing, Myspace, Digg in an effort to drive its own cost per Facebook fan as low as possible to make the maximum margin on the deal with X-Factor. Otherwise, X-Factor might just target 18-35 year old women, whereas Taykey would target those with interests related to the show, such as those who Like competing show American Idol.

Taykey says its patent-pending algorithm mines data from across the web, deduces keywords and sentiment, and maps the data to demographic and psychographic profiles. It then specifically targets those with the right profile, relieving brands from having to constantly discover new targets. Without using cookies or tracking of individuals, it shifts spend from one trend to the next attain the optimal CPA.

Avner explains to us that brands advertising on Facebook often target an age, gender, and location demographic that is too wide and unfocused, leading to lower conversion and rapid burnout. Taykey pinpoints the interests of these audiences to run a series of campaigns that keep conversion rates higher over time than more general campaigns. For instance, instead of targeting 18-24 year old males in New York City that Like ‘hip hop’, Taykey would determine specific artists such as “Jay-Z”, or television shows such as ’106th & Park’ to target the fans of.

Taykey and Real-Time Facebook Advertising

The 19-employee Tel Aviv-based company was founded by three former members of the Israeli Defense Ministry’s intelligence arm, and has now secured a total of $12 million in funding. Several Fortune 100 companies have already run campaigns targeted by Taykey’s algorithm, including Pepsi, for which it attained 46,000 Likes in two days at half the projected spend.

It will use use the new round of funding, joined by Softbank Capital and Crescent Point, to hire engineers in Tel Aviv, Israel and to build out a New York sales office.

The “Related Adverts” real-time advertising system Facebook is testing that displays ads related to the content of a user’s most recent status update or wall post could be very useful to Taykey’s business. “We’d love to get in on it as soon as possible” says Avner of the beta product that doesn’t allow advertisers to choose if or which traditional interest-targeted Facebook ads are displayed in real-time.

As more brands realize the concrete value of Facebook fans, CPA ad services such as Taykey will become crucial to attaining large volumes of fans at the lowest possible price. While more well established Ads API tools and services will likely continue to manage much of the Facebook spend of the world’s biggest brands, real-time focused advertising services can complement a marketing mix by exploiting fleeting low-cost pockets of conversions.

WordPress just announced that it has added WordPress.com, Twitter and Facebook login options to its own comments widget. Users can also be logged into multiple different accounts at once, making it easy to use different identities to comment depending on where they want their comments syndicated.

The addition of Facebook login to the WordPress comments widget could decrease demand for Facebook’s own Comments Box social plugin, which only supports less popular logins such as Yahoo! and AOL, and lacks support for Twitter or WordPress.com.

Facebook launched the revamped version of the Comments Box plugin in March. Though some initial bugginess and missing features such as comment exporting may have slowed its adoption, 50,000 sites had integrated it by mid-April. Post-launch, it added comment exporting, analytics, and some second-tier login options, but despite launching with live code for Google and Twitter logins, the plugin still doesn’t support these premier identity providers as login options.

Some sites might want to offer a Facebook login option, but not exclude Twitter users or have to include a second comments widget. For these, the updated WordPress comment widget may be the best choice. If WordPress added a Google login option, it could tout its wide accessibility, the Facebook plugin’s biggest weakness, as a core selling point. If Facebook can’t work out its differences with Google and Twitter, it will need to add as many other top login providers as possible, including WordPress.com, in order to remain competitive.

To access our strategies for how businesses should respond to comments on their Facebook Pages and integrated sites, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and brand management through Facebook.

Photo and video contests were popular on our roundup of featured Facebook campaigns this week. Virgin America, PetSmart and Tourism New Zealand each used a variation on that theme. Meanwhile, film director Peter Jackson used his official Facebook Page to promote a film not due out until next year, Warner Music is set to create a virtual world for one of its featured artists and a Tblisi, Georgia-based bank is using Facebook to engage its customers when they’re out of the store.

We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Virgin America’s Flight for Chicago

Goal: Page Growth, Engagement, Network Exposure, Charity, Brand Loyalty, Product Purchase

Core Mechanic: A photo and video contest that users can enter to both win free airfare and donate money to cancer research.

Method: The One Trick Pony-designed promotion is Like-gated and allows users to participate either by voting or uploading photos and videos in line with the Flight for Chicago Challenge. As part of Virgin America’s upcoming new daily flights to Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Los Angeles and San Francisco, the airline is trying to get customers involved in the “fight” to bring more affordable airfare to the Chicago area.

Users may share media that promote “rising above the ordinary” or showing they are not “featherweight flyers” to receive a two-for-one offer on the chicago flights, but Virgin America will also donate $5 per entry to Stand Up To Cancer, a cancer research organization. The winner will fly on one of the inaugural flights between Chicago and the new destinations and there are 10 additional winners. The promotion lasts until May 11.

Impact: There are about 100 entries so far, not bad since the promotion just opened up last week. The Virgin America Page has about 92,000 Likes so far. This particular promotion is a great combination of entering to win a prize, but also being able to make a charity donation, and is an example other campaigns could emulate.

PetSmart’s Just Doggin’ Around Photo Contest and Sweepstakes

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure, Page Growth, Product Purchase, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: The Just Doggin’ Around Photo Contest and Sweepstakes allows users to submit photos of their dogs, use their networks to get friends to vote for their photo, and have a chance to win prizes.

Method: The contest is Like-gated, so users first must Like the PetSmart Page, then submit photos of their dogs caught “doggin’ around”, with a brief description to enter the contest. Entrants may win a daily drawing, one of 9 runner-up prizes or the grand prize. The runner-up prizes include gift cards, pet apparel or a dog makeover, the grand prize is a four day, three night trip to Miami, Florida where your dog can stay at a per spa, plus a cash prize and more merchandise. Daily winners win $50 gift cards to PetSmart.

Perhaps one of the best things about this campaign is that the branding is wound through and through the contest. Not only with the prizes, the Like-gating of the promotion, but also the promotion directs users back to PetSmart services, such as providing grooming tips for your dogs (PetSmart provides this service. When a user participates in the promotion a feed story with a thumbnail is published to the stream.

Impact: The Votigo-powered promotion ran from March 28 through April 24, the Page’s total Likes recently numbered 245,6500 and entries total about 10,100. Multiply that 10,100 by the network exposure every time someone voted or uploaded a photo and PetSmart likely received a lot of exposure for their money on this particular promotion.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Weekly Facebook Developer Blog Update – This week’s Platform Update to the Facebook Developers Blog announced that developers can now upload videos using the Graph API, and can batch upload binary data, including photos. It also reminded developers not to use fake accounts as admins of their apps, or their apps could be disabled. Developers should use real accounts to create apps, and Graph API-based designated test accounts for testing.

Facebook Unblocked in Vietnam? – Vietnam’s telecom company, FPT, signed a partnership with Facebook this week wherein the company will help promote and sell ads, as well as consulting developing Vietnamese apps for Facebook. The news was reported in PC World Vietnam, which hints that Facebook may be unblocked in that country soon.

Facebook Considers Censorship – Responding to questions about how Facebook sees working in countries that restrict free speech, aspokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that ”Maybe we will block content in some countries, but not others. We are occasionally held in uncomfortable positions because now we’re allowing too much, maybe, free speech in countries that haven’t experienced it before.” Facebook, like Google and other tech companies, do censor some information in specific interests (Nazi propaganda in Germany being an easy example, or hate speech), but have so far resisted widespread censorship of users over political or cultural issues.

Uganda Set to Block Facebook – Facebook is increasingly a target for blocking among governments, regardless of how it handles its service — the free-wheeling nature of the communication medium is what some fear. The government of Uganda is set to order ISPs there to block Twitter and Facebook in the face of widespread protests in the face of high food and fuel prices.

Facebook Increases Lobbying Spending in DC — Although not by much. Spending is up to $230,00 in the first quarter of this year from $41,000 a year before. Other companies and organizations spend many millions of dollars per quarter.

A Look Inside Facebook’s Oregon Data Center - Data Center Knowledge went on a tour of the servers at Facebook’s Prineville, Oregon datacenter and included photos and a video. Robert Scoble also went on the tour an includes more information and photos, such as that Facebook’s datacenter is the most efficient in the world. [Image via Facebook]

Winklevoss Twins Are Back in Court, Again – Although last week we reported that the Winklevoss twins had lost their latest challenge in an ongoing series of lawsuits against Facebook, they’re back. This time, the twins and another UConnect co-founder Divya Narendra, claim that Facebook hid instant messages that could have aided their cause during the course of their lawsuit (the newly-produced emails from a separate case against founder Mark Zuckerberg, from Paul Ceglia).

One User’s Question Goes Viral With 4M Votes – A random Facebook user, Heather Marie Hollingsworth, recently posted a question to her friends that ended up getting 4.11 million votes. AllThingsD reports that the virality designed into Facebook’s Questions product was likely responsible, as Hollingsworth simply asked her network whether they wanted to stay on her friends list as she began to clean it out.

Facebook Glitch Resets Email Notifications – Facebook reported it fixed a glitch that affected the amount of emails users receive from the social network, which users adjust in their account settings. All told users may receive email notifications for up to 73 different actions, such as being tagged in a photo.

Latest Android for Facebook Released – Facebook for Android v1.5.3 was released this week; the latest version allows users to tag friends in status updates, bug fixes and a friend finding feature.

FormSpring Names Former RockYou Executive as COO - Ro Choy, a former business executive at the social developer, is now the chief operating officer of the question and answer site that makes heavy use of Facebook features.

Compete: Financial Services Ok on Facebook – Compete studied the state of financial services firms on Facebook and found that State Farm, Capital One, Progressive beat out iTunes and Ford.

Pixable Raises $3.6M – Pixable, which created the Photofeed app that helps people discover their friends’ photos, raised $3.6 million this week in a second round funding.

Adaptly Raises $2.7M – Adaptly raised $2.7 million this week in seed and Series A funding from investors that included First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures and a group of angels. The money is set to help Adaptly continue to help advertisers spread their message across social networks, not simply Facebook.

Which Green Cars Capture the Most Chatter? – Social media analytics company Infegy ran an analysis of which “green” vehicles captured the most social chatter. Their analysis found that the Chevy Volt, then Audi A3 Diesel and Ford Fusion Hybrid were the top three midsize cars, whereas compacts were the Toyota Prius, Mini E Electric and the Nissan Leaf.

American Express Holds Small Business Contest – American Express Open and Facebook are partnering to hold a contest for small business owners to get a “small business makeover” at Facebook’s headquarters. The contest will award 5 business owners an all-expense paid trip to Palo Alto, California for a two-day, one-on-one business makeover, along with $20,000 to revamp their business’ social media strategy.

White House Spokesman Not Headed to Facebook – Although there was widespread speculation that former White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs was being courted by Facebook, The New York Post reports that an interview didn’t favor him. There was also speculation that Gibbs planted the story to boost his image. [Image Via Pete Souza]

Twitter to Offer Pages Similar to Facebook – Marketing Magazine reported this week that Twitter is set to offer branded Pages similar to what Facebook offers. The idea is to allow brands a space to deliver their own content and cultivate more Twitter followers.

Sean Parker Pushed Back Against “The Social Network” – The New York Times reported this week that the first president of Facebook, Sean Parker, used a public relations firm, ID, to undermine the credibility of “The Social Network” during the Oscars race earlier this year.

MySpace SVP Joines Tagged – TechCrunch reported that MySpace’s SVP of Customer Care Tish Whitcraft left the social network to join another, Tagged, as chief customer officer this week.

Marin Software Raises $16M - Marin Software raised $16 million in Series E funding from a variety of investors this week, bringing the company’s total to $51 million. Marin Software creates search engine management software for agencies and advertisers, according to TechCrunch.

SeeClickFix Launches on Facebook Platform – SeeClickFix launched an application on the Facebook platform this week, reported TechCrunch. The service helps people flag issues for officials to tend to.

Shoutlet Updates Management Platform - Shoutlet released an update to its platform this week, Shoutlet 4.0. The new version adds CRM functionality to YouTube and Twitter, in addition to Facebook. It also includes contest functionality, HTML5 compatibility and more.

Vanity Fair’s Facebook Revolution Slideshow - Vanity Fair created a slideshow of Egyptian protesters that used Facebook widely during the recent change in leadership in that country.

Argentine Footballer Gains 7M Fans in 7 Hours – Argentine football (soccer) star Leo Messi just started his Facebook Page Wednesday; 7 hours later he had 7 million Likes, reported Mashable. The sudden growth was likely due to a Facebook merging the various unofficial Pages and community Pages users had created for the athlete before he made his own.

Later today, social browser RockMelt will roll out its first major update today, adding a Facebook Chat bar, an Instapaper-esque “View Later” option, and deeper Twiter support. It also runs on the latest Google Chromium 10. The new features bring RockMelt Beta2 closer to becoming a full-fledged replacement for leaving a window of these services open at all times.

RockMelt first launched in November of 2010 with the goal of building an internet browser with social baked into the chrome, allowing users to access much of their Facebook, Twitter, and bookmark functionality without visiting a URL. Instead, notifications for wall posts, @ replies, blog updates and more are pushed to RockMelt as alerts, eliminating the productivity-fracturing process of checking each site manually.

There are several deficiencies in the product’s Facebook integration, though. Users can’t see Facebook’s relevancy sorted Top News feed or activity stories about friends, just the real-time feed of full stories. The status update publisher also doesn’t let users edit the caption of a link’s preview. Still, for those wanting real-time social updates, RockMelt has a lot of promise.

The social browser’s Facebook Chat already had some advantages over the canvas site, including the fact that photos and videos linked to would appear in-line. It was one of RockMelt’s most popular features, with users Chatting an average of three times a day, but users requested a better way to Chat with multiple friends at once. Now Chats can be parked as tabs in the bottom Chat bar of Rockmelt Beta2.

The Twitter improvements include the ability to edit  retweets (something annoyingly absent from Twitter’s website), read direct messages, reply to all users mentioned in a tweet, and simpler Twitter search.

View Later makes it easy to favorite a Facebook update, tweet, or URL that users didn’t have time to experience. The option, quite similar to Instapaper, improves on traditional bookmarking by making important items easy to consume and then delete, allowing saved content to be accessed from anywhere users log in to RockMelt rather than trapped on a single machine, and enabling users to save social media content in addition to full websites.

The update won’t be available for download until later today, so we can’t tell exactly how smooth the flows of these new features are. In concept, though, the Chat update will make RockMelt Beta2 a viable Facebook substitute for those carrying multiple conversations at once. View Later for Facebook updates adds something unavailable on the canvas, and could be especially helpful for pulling longer form content such as videos and news articles out of the stream and saving them for when a user has time to consume them.

The Andressen Horowitz-backed RockMelt has combined both incremental updates and another valuable web service into the Beta2 release. Judging by the source tags on items published to our news feeds after RockMelt launched, users played with the browser for a few weeks but soon returned to their old habits. Time will tell whether these changes make RockMelt any stickier.

Warner Bros has expanded its test of renting films through Facebook, adding “Watch” tabs to Pages for five more films. Since its release on March 8th, 98,330 users have engaged with the “Watch The Dark Knight” app hosting the original test of the streaming service. The streaming app for the additional films, developed by Milyoni, has not been changed to bring Facebook’s social features any closer to the viewing experience.

The five films to receive renting capabilities are “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets”, “Inception”, “Life as We Know It”, and “Yogi Bear.” The inclusion of both complicated, more adult films and family films may help Warner Bros determine if a specific audience type is more receptive to Facebook rentals.

The near 100,000 users of the Dark Knight app, according to Facebook’s Open Graph protocol, only represent 1.6% of The Dark Knight Page’s total fans, and we can’t tell how many actually paid the 30 Facebook Credits, or $3, to rent the film. Still, the traction was apparently sufficient to warrant further testing.

The rate at which The Dark Knight’s Page has been adding fans has slightly increased from roughly 10,000 to 17,000 new fans a day during March, according to PageData, our fan growth tracking service. This indicates the streaming rentals may have somewhat increased virality. Note that the Page grew 1.8 million fans between March 14th and 18th, but that this is likely due to unofficial Dark Knight Pages being folded into the official Page.

Warner Bros could do much more to stimulate mentions of the rental service, though. Users can click Facebook and Twitter share buttons within the streaming app, but can’t compose their own updates from scratch, or leave any sort of public comments while viewing.

The addition of Facebook’s Comments Box social plugin, the option to chat with other viewers, or a persistent status update field could help the Warner Bros film rental service gain more visibility in the news feed, drawing in new customers. The ability to gift a rental to a friend, or watch a film simultaneously with friends using different computers could also drive sales.

Before the film studio concludes its test of the value of offering streaming rentals through the social network, it needs to make sure its app takes advantage of all of Facebook’s viral channels. Users aren’t watching in a silent theater or alone on their couch  – they’re a click away from discussing the film with all their friends. Watching films on Facebook could be a whole new social experience, but Warner Bros or any other long-form content distributor will need design their apps to promote interaction with friends.

Among notable campaigns on Facebook in the past week, a Levi’s and Water.org partnership offered a branded app that taught users about saving water, Sprite’s Spark Park Project asked users on Facebook to help decide what basketball courts need remodeling. Then there was Tourism Ireland, which created a virtual Ireland to hook users on the real island nation and give them a chance to win a trip there.

We’ve excerpted the Levi’s campaign bleow. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Levi’s and Water.org’s WaterTank

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure, Page Growth, Product Purchase

Core Mechanic: A WaterTank game developed by Levi’s to support Water.org efforts to save water and support the organization’s clean water projects across the globe.

Game: WaterTank is a game developed by Levi’s to support Water.org that helps users learn about saving water.

Method: By playing the Levi’s WaterTank game, users can complete a series of tasks to unlock water for Levi’s to donate $250,000 around the world as part of Water.org’s mission. For example, Liking the Levi’s Page unlocks 1,000 liters. Users can complete several such tasks, pledging to wash your jeans bi-weekly instead of weekly saves water, tweeting about the game, answering questions, donating, etc. Other challenges include: using the #waterless hashtag on Twitter, checking into a Levi’s store in the U.S., inviting friends to play WaterTank, donating money to Water.org, scan a QR code in a Levi’s store and watch a Levis-Water.org video. Each challenge completed also generates a Facebook feed story. The game and accompanying water donations runs from March 22 through May 8.

Impact: The Levi’s Page has more than 3.7 million Likes, possibly helped in part by the game’s request of players to Like the Page to stay updated about the water initiative. Payers have unlocked more than 66 million liters of water by playing WaterTank and the game notes thousands of challenges have been completed with the game. By generating a feed story for each challenge completed, Levi’s really leverages each and every user and every action they take on the game to spread the word about the game, which probably explains why, in just about a week, the company’s 200 million liter goal is more than 25% complete.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Eventbrite shared data at its South By Southwest Interactive panel on social commerce showing that when the site integrated Facebook Connect at the start of 2009, it hit its inflection point and doubled gross ticket sales that year. The data could inspire more ecommerce sites to consider significant Facebook integration.

The site has also become an even more crucial tool for organizers of SXSW events this year, since the conference reportedly grew 33% to 20,000 registered attendants from 15,000 in 2010. Eventbrite’s ability to cap or cease RSVPs while leaving an event’s page up helps party sponsors avoid negative sentiment by reducing overcrowding and the number of people they have to turn away at the door.

Facebook Events, which experienced a surge of popularity at SXSW 2010, doesn’t offer this function, allowing thousands to RSVP to a party with a capacity of 300. This limits the feature’s value to organizers of popular or exclusive events. Facebook should consider adding RSVP cap or suspension functionality to expand the scope of the gatherings the feature can be used promote.

Eventbrite has previously indicated that Facebook is its top source of referral traffic, but today co-founder Julia Hartz also noted that it ranks Google search at number two, Twitter at number three. and LinkedIn at five or six.

Prior to the Facebook integration, Eventbrite’s referral sources in 2008 ranked:

1. Direct traffic
2. Google /organic
3. Eventbrite.com / referral
4. Yahoo / organic
5. Google / cost per click advertising
6. Facebook / referral

The self-service event promotion and ticketing service website has deepened its Facebook integration since 2009, now allowing users to see events their Facebook friends are attending. The average Facebook share of one its events drives 11 clicks and $2.52 in sales, compared to $2.34 via email share, $0.90 via LinkedIn, and only $0.43 via Twitter.

Last year it looked as if Facebook might partner with Eventbrite to let Facebook users earn affilate fees from ticket buyers who they referred. However, the system never went live and Hartz confirmed the sites have no official partnership at this time.

Post-Purchase Shares and Music Generate More Revenue

Hartz explained that 40% of Facebook shares from the site occur pre-purchase, but that the 60% occurring post-purchase generate 20% more sales per share. This indicates that ecommerce sites should focus more on driving post-purchase shares.

Another new data set Eventbrite revealed was the breakdown of average revenue generated per Facebook share of different event categories. Music events drove an enormous $12 per share, suggesting that musicians have a lot to gain from selling their own concert tickets via EventBrite, especially those with existing Facebook followings.

The rough breakdown of revenue per share by category is:

1. $12 – Music
2. $11 – Fundraising / Charity / Giving
3. $6.75 – Social Events / Mixers
4. $5.75 – Food / Wine
5. $2.10 – Classes / Workshops
6. $1.90 Conferences / Seminars
7. $1.10 – Networking / Clubs / Associations
8. $0.90 – Business / Finance / Sales

These figures could be slightly confounded by total number of events in each category and the quality of the event’s page. Still, they demonstrate serious revenue potential from promoting fundraising, food and wine, and social events through a combination of Eventbrite and Facebook.

The recently released version of Facebook’s Comments Box social plugin for third-party websites now accepts AOL accounts for login. Initially the plugin only allowed Facebook and Yahoo! for login, though we discovered there was live code for Twitter and Google logins present but inactive.

The additional login option will make the Comments Box accessible to a larger user base, but some might say that AOL’s willingness to be a login option is a signal that is has accepted its fate as a second-tier identity provider.

It appears that Facebook is reaching Comments Box login agreements with sites who have reciprocated by allowing Facebook as a login option on their sites or services. AOL allows users to sign in to it’s AIM instant messaging and some other service  with Facebook, and Yahoo! recently enabled Facebook as a login and account registration option across its properties.

The Comments Box has brought up a difficult question for the web’s largest services and social networks. By refusing to be a Comments Box login option, they force their users to employ another service provider’s credential in order to comment, but they in turn don’t have to permit Facebook as a login option. This allows them to own the registration information of anyone benefiting from their services.

On the other hand, by agreeing to Facebook’s terms and becoming a Comments Box login option, their users won’t have to choose another’s service credentials, but they usually must permit Facebook to colonize their site with its own login buttons.

Facebook is winning the identity game, and Yahoo! and AOL both now seem to have folded. The question remains whether Google or Twitter will concede to Facebook’s terms, work out a more evenhanded deal, or if they’ll continue to stay autonomous and try to themselves become the premier online ID.

[Thanks to David Sanger for the tip.]