Advertising-spending growth on social networks is going to take a major hit amid the recession and the sites’ continued struggle to develop effective ad models, according to a new report from research firm eMarketer.

The firm plans to release on Wednesday its revised projections for global ad spending on social networks. It forecasts an increase this year of 17%, to an estimated $2.3 billion. While any growth in the otherwise dismal ad market is a bright spot, the projection is just over half the 32% growth rate the research firm previously projected. In the U.S., ad spending on social networks is expected to increase 10.2%, reaching $1.3 billion this year.

Rivals MySpace and Facebook, the two largest social-networking sites by visitors, continue to dominate. The two companies will account for two-thirds of total U.S. social-network ad spending and will hold a smaller share outside the U.S., attracting 40% of world-wide spending in 2009, eMarketer says.

For the past few years, social networks have furiously experimented with new ad formats to translate their massive popularity among consumers to ad dollars. Marketers continue to show interest in tapping into social networks to reach consumers but increasingly are looking outside buying ads. Instead, they are creating new programs, such as building fan communities on the sites.

Advertising might not be the way for social-networking sites to find a revenue stream, eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson says in the report. She highlights the success of subscriber-based revenue streams on sites such as Mixi in Japan and Cyworld in Korea. “Social network sites must have multiple revenue streams to stay viable in the global economic crisis,” she says.

Security consultant Ade Barkah checked in with us to alert us to a couple of serious security issues associated to Google Docs, the web-based office software from the world’s most famous search engine company, giving a whole new meaning to its mission to make the world’s information universally accessible. On his blog on software, infrastructure and security, Barkah outlines no less than three issues that he discovered while investigating some potential security lapses.

Since he did the right thing by contacting Google about his findings (only to receive no response after five business days), we’re hoping that this article will help trigger the company’s engineering team to plug the holes asap. In case you missed it, earlier this month we uncovered some major privacy blunders going on with Google Docs, which the company later confirmed and fixed.

So what’s up?

First, apparently when you embed an image in a protected document it gets uploaded to a Google server where people you’ve not given access to the file can still see and download it, even after you’ve deleted the document in question. I’ve uploaded an image to a protected file in my account for testing, and deleted the document right after. If you see the image embedded on top of this post, or click this link to find you can still get to the image, that means the above checks out.

I concur with Barkah, who writes:

If you embed an image into a protected document, you’d expect the image to be protected too. If you delete a document, you’d expect any embedded resources to be deleted also. The end result is a potential privacy leak.

Images can potentially contain confidential information, both personally and professionally, and it basically only takes finding out what the dedicated URL for an image is for anyone to access it freely, which is a massive privacy blunder.

Second, it appears that if you share a document carrying a diagram – a feature Google introduced yesterday – with anyone, this person will be able to view any version of any diagram that has been embedded in the document. That basically means that if you create a diagram with sensitive information and later decide to strip some of it away before sharing the document in view-only mode, the person you share it with will be able to revert to previously saved versions simply by tweaking the URL a bit, uncovering what you thought you were still hiding from him or her.

The third issue Barkah lays out is such a serious bug that he doesn’t go into the details of the mechanics behind it yet, pending further research and feedback from Google. The security specialist claims that if you take away the permission for another person to access your documents, they could in some cases still be able to get to them later without your knowledge.

If that last claim turns out to be valid, I’m leaving Google Docs and never coming back.

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A new private equity fund has picked up what was left of Sneakerplay, the social network for sneaker fanatics that we deadpooled late last year when its founders pretty much abandoned the service (but kept the website online, hoping for a buyer to step up).

The fund, dubbed Keroch, has acquired the assets and IP of Sneakerplay and plans to grow the niche community site to a more relevant property. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sneakerplay has always been a completely bootstrapped venture so we can safely assume the founders are happy with the sale, especially since they’ve basically moved on from the project some time ago.

What struck me is the fact that everyone seems to be doing their best to conceal the names of the people involved with the private equity fund. The website won’t teach you a thing about that, except for the tidbit that the team consists of four partners, who “possess 30+ years of combined experience in the technology/internet industry ranging from large companies such as Yahoo! to small start-ups.”. The only name we came up with so far is Brian Rothenberg, former product manager for Yahoo! Real Estate.

Either way, the acquisition of Sneakerplay is Keroch’s first move and they plan to turn the small community of sneakerheads into a relevant niche social network with more features and a clear path to monetization through sponsorships and on-site advertising on the roadmap.

As an aside, some people were upset when I deadpooled the company (and now of course I happily admit they were right) but it seems like the article at least got the Sneakerplay team the necessary attention to engage in bidding wars with potential acquirers. Co-founder Robleh Jama has promised a post on his personal blog with all of the juicy details from dealing with investment bankers, to press coverage, bidding wars and exploding term sheets, which should be an interesting read.

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Viral video tracking and measurement firm Visible Measures has closed a $10 million series C round of funding, led by Northgate Capital. Existing investors Mohr Davidow and General Catalyst also participated, bringing the total capital the company has raised since launch to $29 million. The last time it raised money was in January, 2008.

Visible Measures lets both ad agencies and big video publishing sites on the Web track viewership and engagement with videos across the Web. Ad agencies can measure the effectiveness of specific video ad campaigns, and publishers can see which of their videos are being played and passed around the most.

The company is currently tracking more than 200 million different online videos and video ads. Each day it measures the equivalent of 100 years worth of collective online video viewing consumption. It is trying to bring the types of metrics normally associated with direct response ads to brand awareness.

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Web chat service Meebo, always innovative with advertising, is trying out something fairly aggressive: full takeover ads that show a persistent advertisement in the background.

The company says that they already got 1% or higher click throughs on existing ads units on the site, which included rollovers at the bottom of the screen and another unit right in the middle. But the new units actually take over the entire background of the site, meaning users are literally slammed with the messaging. They are presented with an option of removing the add with a click.

And the users don’t seem to mind at all.

Founder/CEO Seth Sternberg wrote a blog post today on the new ads and asked for user feedback. Most of the 100+ comments to the post are very positive. Example comments:

“Awesome…Black is a really nice look for Meebo…The ad is really subtle, too — not all up in your face…“Did we strike a good balance between not disturbing your use of Meebo, while acknowledging the need to run ads?”…Hell to the yes!”

“I read your message about why the background changed and everything, and I definitely agree with what you’re saying. (Especially the sucky, flashy ads that cover your page you’re trying to view). With that said, nice work! I actually really like the way the ad is incorporated into the background, and slightly opaque. It’s not too distracting, and if the ads are helping you guys out, by all means, keep doing it this way! : )”

“I think this is a brilliant way to put ads up without being obtrusive and annoying. No one likes banner ads or popups. This does look like a good balance. I hate ads as much as the next guy, but know the need for them to support your business, and the fact that you concidered your clientell in your design means a lot. It means my willingness not to click the ‘backtoblue’ button and get rid of it because it simply being there and me not clicking is paying you for a job well done.”

YouTube, ESPN, MySpace and others have tried similar ads in the past, and these things command great fees. If Meebo really has gotten the users to buy into this, we may be seeing similar stuff all over the place, and soon.

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