By 2015, social network marketing is expected to hit $38 billion and make up a third of all online marketing spend.

Though promotions made up less than a quarter of the social networking spend, Borrell predicts promotions will surpass social network ad spending in 2012 and make up a whopping $24 billion of the estimated $38 billion in social network spend in 2015. That’s $1.75 in promo spending for every dollar in ads.

The microblogging (and search) site sent nearly one in five downstream visits to social Networks, and one in five to entertainment websites, according to Hitwise. The top social nets visited after Twitter were Facebook and MySpace, followed by the Twitter search page and YouTube, traffic analysis reveals. The top Entertainment websites were Twitpic, YouTube and Flickr.

John Battelle likened Twitter to a real time, conversational search engine, one of the reasons he felt Goolge better buy it soon.

Heather Hopkins, Hitwise senior Online Analyst, says that it is being used as a social network and means of distributing content. “Twitter’s clickstream differs markedly from search engines in that relatively little traffic goes to retail websites and Education (i.e. Wikipedia). It is also different from Email in that less traffic goes to Dating websites and again, to retail and Business and Finance websites.”

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Or so it seemed to some at a San Francisco event yesterday. Williams said the company is in talks with large consumer packaged good companies, whether to sell services or make money off its own Twitter feeds, it was unclear.

According to Rafe Needleman, Williams said, “We’re looking at Q1 for revenues…The original plan was to focus on revenues in 2010. That’s no longer the case, since I don’t want to raise money in 2009.” The plans aren’t just ads or sponsorships, “We want revenues to be product-based. Google built something that can really scale, and that’s our intention as well, ” the co-founder and CEO said.

(If Google is the model, it’s ambitious, but a bit of a reach).

Williams, who also co-founded Blogger, which was later sold to Google, believes staying small, or not hooking up with a bigger company or going into new areas, will actually allow the company to be better off in the long run. Williams mentioned that Twitter is working on grouping, enabling users to create subgroups, and making it easier for newbies.

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Panettiere joins a star-studded board of spokespeople – including Pierce Brosnan, Isabel Lucas and Keely Shaye Smith – created to draw attention to the industrial killing of whales and dolphins.

Some of her wardrobe items on the block: a Dooney & Bourke handbag and an Alice + Olivia pleated black and white dress that she wore to the premiere of It’s a Mall World.

The items can be found here.

Panettiere joined Zude earlier this year to launch Fanbase – a feature that allows Zude users to build fan sites and gives them exclusive access to images, videos and music. Zude users who are members of her Fanbase can visit her home page and click on the Panettiere Closet storefront widget to embed it in their sites.

Shopit marries commerce and social networking; users can build widgets, upload items and list them for sale.

This funding round brings its total to about $28 million (raised over three years). Flock will use the money to grow its research/development business and market itself globally. The company cites stats from Datamonitor, which reports that there are more than 230 million members of social networks around the world with revenues projected to reach $2.4 billion by 2012.

Flock’s user base has increased by more than 250% and its revenue has grown by more than 400% since January of 2008.

The new deal will give Google’s publishers and advertisers direct access to Interpolls’ suite of rich media solutions. The Rich Media Widgets are min-apps that can be served on Web sites and embedded within social networks and blogs.

“Expanding our distribution network to include the Google content network was a critical piece needed to provide our clients with the industry’s largest rich media distribution to reach their customers and prospects without limitations,” said Peter Kim, CEO and president, Interpolls, in a released statement. “The agreement opens the door for our clients to increase their distribution through the Google content network, and provides Google publishers and advertisers access to our innovative rich media advertising and widget solutions.”

Interpolls was founded in 1999; its suite of products can be integrated into its ad-serving platform.

“Online marketing is growing rapidly and has become core to the overall marketing activity of an organization,” said Alterian CEO David Eldridge, in a released statement. “Through the acquisition of Mediasurface, Alterian will create an integrated marketing platform that combines online and offline customer analytics with content and multi-channel execution to help marketers optimize customer experiences across the Web in real-time.”

Alterian is moving away from traditional marketing techniques, especially as it moves to expand its offerings in the U.S., the company said.

“We are already experiencing strong demand for our current products with revenue growth of circa 40% at constant currencies and profits doubling in the year ending March 2008,” Eldridge noted. “We believe that Mediasurface products will provide even stronger growth opportunities for Alterian in the future both in new customer segments and new geographies. There is also a significant growth opportunity in North America – a market in which we have already proven our ability to execute with over half our revenues now coming from the U.S.”

The Alterian Marketing Services Platform combines database, digital and operational marketing apps on a shared data infrastructure. Its partners include InfoUSA, Ogilvy One and Accenture.

“We are growing out network exponentially,” Ty Levine, the company’s vice president of marketing, told ADOTAS. “And we’ve only hit the tip of the iceberg. There are about 65 to 90 million casual gamers in the U.S. and about 250 million worldwide.”

The best part of the typical player’s profile? They actually watch ads, Levine said. “One of our brands had a click-through rate of more than 6% and 87% of the people who played the games watched more than half of the spots … 66% watched all of them,” Levine noted. “comScore consider a view to be just three to five seconds. Almost 90% watched almost 15 seconds of the spot. Our advertisers get an entirely new kind of reach and engagement.”

NeoEdge’s advertisers include Proctor and Gamble, Folgers, Ford, A&E, Netflix and Oil of Olay.

Most recently, NeoEdge was selected by social network site PerfSpot to provide an ad-supported games channel for its community of 8 million users. Gamers who want to connect with friends on PerfSpot will also be able to take advantage of the casual games powered by NeoEdge, without leaving the site. The games are supported by brief video advertisements at the beginning, the end and during level advances.

PerfSpot says its already seen higher levels of engagement and traffic with the new games. “The NeoEdge game channel is a natural fit for how PerfSpot users share and stay entertained in their online, digital life,” Hart Cunningham, PerfSpot chief executive officer, said in a released statement. “With the recent addition of free casual games, we are already seeing a higher level of engagement on our site, with a very large segment of our audience making a daily visit to our games channel.”

NeoEdge is also unveiling the NeoEdge Game Channel, which it is hailing as the Web’s first ad-supported game network for online publishers, social networks and bloggers. The premise behind the network is to give publishers of all shapes and sizes a way to tap into the gaming market. NeoEdge offers an ad-supported game widget which it says will encourage stickiness, repeat visits and increase the time spent on the site.

But as a publicist working with several online marketing technology solution providers, I felt obliged to join and begin to understand social networks and how my clients can tap into them to improve their communications efforts.

Though I’m not sure how effective social networking would be for my business-to-business clients (because of how their marketing programs are structured), when I started thinking about the true value of social networks, I realized that social networking has been very effective for my own public relations agency.

Within my own social network of clients and colleagues, all of my current clients have come from referrals. And about 90% are generated by one client and the clients referred by employees of that client.

Though none of these connections happened through one of the existing social networks, I suppose that it’s only a matter of time.

And in the last two weeks, I actually have introduced some of my clients, so they could collaborate on various projects (though I plan on keeping myself out of the collaboration after making the introduction).

My point: Without “poking” and playing games, I have derived a lot of value from my personal social network.

Truth be told, social networks have existed for thousands of years. Alumni networks, fraternity and sorority houses and the local golf club are examples of social networks. And for as long as they have existed, business (and other) people have been using them for networking purposes to increase their business.

But the real value of today’s online social networking platforms versus other social networks have to do with (1) the immediacy with which we can make social connections, and (2) the lack of physical boundaries in making those connections.

I can join Facebook and start looking for groups of like-minded people and join their groups. I can then initiate invitations to people with whom I share common interests. Though these people do not have to accept me as friends, I suspect that the great majority of invites are accepted.

Just this afternoon I reviewed the LinkedIn connections of two of my connections. Though I have yet to reach out to someone through LinkedIn or one of the other social networks, I believe that it’s only a matter of time.

In the next six weeks, OneBigPlanet will have launched about 15 communities, representing 2.5 million unique users, Eric Aubertin, OneBigPlanet’s president and CEO, tells ADOTAS.

The platform helps consumers, merchants and social networks, Aubertin argues. Altruistic instincts aside, (he invented online fund-raising with his first company, eFundraising.com, which he sold in 2002), the communities his company focus on typically serve 20 to 50 year olds – people who are already well-versed in social networks and are increasingly interested in online transactions.

The new platform creates individual, specialized portals for social networks (and each user can personalize their portal from within the network). So each user can pick their favorite stores and Web sites – and also see what their friends have picked. And the deals that pop up on the portal will be tailored to their interests.

“We keep track of clicks,” Aubertin says. “So if you’re looking for a deal, we’ll be able to send you something you’re interested in – users only ads specifically targeted to their preferences. Consumers seem to love it because they can interact on their networks and save thousands of dollar a year at the same time.”

OneBigPlanet works with between 600 and 700 merchants, who can cherry-pick the sites they want to advertise on, maximizing their revenue and the usefulness for the sites and their users.

The networks partner with OneBigPlanet for three reasons, Aubertin says: acquisition (users are more likely to join a network with the platform’s added advantages); retention (users are less likely to leave the platform because of the deals they’re getting from the merchants); and revenue (the platform boasts 600 to 700 merchants that offer discounts for the consumer – and through an affiliate marketing partnership between the networks and OneBigPlanet, the social networks make money from every transaction that’s executed through the portal).

While he wouldn’t name names, Aubertin says OneBigPlanet is in talks with the “Big 5” social networks – and they’re getting traction.