Remember all those stories about Web sites buckling under the weight of all that Michael Jackson traffic? Here’s the flip side, now being promoted by those same Web sites: Look at all of our Michael Jackson traffic! Yahoo, for instance, wants us to know that Jackson’s demise has been its good fortune. “Michael Jackson rushed to hospital” was the site’s “highest clicking” story, while Yahoo News set a record for hourly visitors.

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How do we know that Google isn’t tracking the viewing records of people who watch YouTube videos at the official White House Web site? Because Google says so. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that’s good enough for it, but Google’s answer may not satisfy everyone.

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Did you wait in line this morning to buy a new iPhone 3G S? If you want to take advantage of its “tethering” feature and use it as a modem, you’re going to have to wait a while longer. And you’ll have to pay–though it’s unclear how much that’s going to cost.

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Yet another addition to the Twitter ecosystem of companies based on the microblogging service, but that don’t pay it a dime: Pontiflex, which is trying to charge marketers for each Twitter user name it collects.

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Did you know that Internet publishing–Internet publishing supported by advertising, that is–creates millions of jobs in this country? It’s true, says a trade group, which is trying to convince Washington that all that is at risk if people start passing pesky laws.

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Talk to online ad folks for any amount of time and you’ll walk away thinking that behavioral targeting–whereby marketers track and chase Web surfers based on which sites they visit and what they do there–is both old hat and the wave of the future. But I’m still convinced that there’s a very big gap between the way the ad industry views this stuff and the way politicians and average Americans do. For a reminder, head on over to NebuAd’s Web site, which no longer works. That’s because the targeting firm, which once employed 60 people, closed up shop on Friday.

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Nope, Twitter still hasn’t trotted out a business model yet, and that may or may not be a problem for potential acquirers like Google or Microsoft. But it’s a nonissue for a growing number of start-ups hoping to succeed simply by positioning themselves in Twitter’s general vicinity. Today’s example: StockTwits, a day-trader-meets-Twitter site that just raised $800,000 from venture capital firm True Ventures.

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Nielsen caused a stir this week by releasing data that showed that 60 percent of Twitter users stop using the much-hyped service after a month. Under fire for the survey’s methodology, Nielsen has rerun its numbers–and ended up with the same result.

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It’s now very old news that the online ad market is going to get roughed up next year. But by how much? Don’t bother guessing until the end of the month: Online ad execs say sales have basically stopped until the end of the holiday season.

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As promised, here are the comScore Cyber Monday numbers: The Web measurement firm says sales increased 15 percent over last year’s totals.

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