Microsoft must be really into Halloween this year, as they’ve relesaed two "Halloween oriented" commercials for their latest search engine, Bing.

Paranormal Activity is a movie that has made its way to a wide theatrical release this weekend as a result of some clever online marketing. The movie is described as a "Blair Witch"- type film, in that it is told through fake "realistic" video footage. This is a cliché that has been used numerous times in the horror genre.

The film boasts some pretty bold quotes from some well-known sources. For example:

Social news is the largest source for igniting campaigns, according to Greg Finn, Director of Internet Marketing at 10e20. This was discussed in a session called Igniting Viral Campaigns: Leveraging Consumer-Generated Content at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose.

Saturday Night Live fans were treated to a special Mother’s Day collaboration from pop star Justin Timberlake and resident viral video maven Andy Samberg. But if fans wanted to share that video with others, YouTube was not on NBC’s approved sharing list.

General Electric lawyers must have been very busy Sunday with DMCA takedown notices flying at YouTube and YouTube users so fast they must have developed some sort of script just for that purpose. As of today, what used to be uploads of “Motherlover” are now notices of deletion.

Usually viral videos are meant to be seen, spread around, stir up the hive. But a pair of videos meant to promote Casio’s new Exilim C721 phone proved too hot for YouTube and were subsequently yanked. Or is this just part of the grand viral scheme?

It’s sort of a digital/real world combo imitation of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist; instead of trying to find a band, people in L.A. are trying to find a Korean taco truck, latest locations tweeted, of course.

Nobody ever said that viral marketing is easy. Well, somebody probably said it, but if it were that easy, everybody’s viral campaigns would be wildly successful, and unfortunately, that is just not the case. For every successful one, there are probably thousands of campaigns that just don’t catch on.

Marketers everywhere face problems including mute buttons, ad-blocking software, and steep prices.  Advertising that folks actually like and spread on their own is pretty special, then, and so Barry Schwartz recently discussed Blendtec’s "Will It Blend?" campaign in the context of viral marketing.

Tis the season for top ten lists and year-in-review reporting. Not to be left out, AOL released an extensive list of Internet chart-toppers, this one focusing on mobile search and Web video in addition to top overall searches.

When we moved last month, my wife and I toted out 43 garbage bags of clothing we culled from our closets to donate to charity—some garments, a little shamefully, with the tags still on them. I’ll let that act serve as rationale enough for not sending Virgin Mobile a video of myself stripping—although Chris Farley’s got nothing on me as far as moves go.