Just how hot is the video streaming business right now? Well, forget YouTube and Google Video, they’re lightweights compared to Akamai ($283m revenue in 2005) and Limelight ($15m in Q2 of this year).

Akamai is now suing Limelight for unspecified damages, alleging that the company’s technology infinges on its patents.

Akamai is suing Limelight for alleged patent infringement, seeking unspecified damages and a permanent injunction to shut down Limelight’s operations. And it is bringing attention to the troubled past of one of Limelight’s founders, William Rinehart.

Experts believe the suit has merit and that Limelight should be worried. Consumers should also care about the outcome, Limelight counts both YouTube and MySpace as clients.

What do you get when you add one part Digg, one part, MySpace, one part del.icio.us; mix ingredients and bake at 400F for 15 minutes? You get Fanpop of course!

Battelle likes the new concept and I have to admit that by combining the best features of other popular sites, Fanpop has a great chance of standing-out in a crowded social networking space.

Here’s how Fanpop describes itself…

Fanpop is a network of “social portals” called spots that are created for fans by fans. Share your favorite links and meet fellow fanatics. Find out what other fans are surfing on the web with “social browsing”.

Fanpop obviously knows it still needs the help of the reigning social bookmarking champs in order to become popular – each page has a “bookmark on del.icio.us” link!

The Yahoo Search blog would like you all to know that you can now find Flickr photos via Yahoo Search.

Try searching for funny photos and you’ll find hilarious and wacky Flickr photos of animals, kids, and signs. Searching for things that people think are funny is a good example of a query where combining what the community knows (and tags) with what algorithms can compute can lead to better search results.

Three of the four images for “funny photos” are of cats. I guess the phrase “every dog has his day” is now obselete. Cats now rule cute photos!

Hot on the heels of Salesforce.com’s new search marketing service, comes news that NetSuite has launched their own offering.

They’re clearly a tad upset that Salesforce.com beat them to the punch…

“We obviously didn’t write this code overnight, and we have released announcements about our earlier versions of this technology last year. Salesforce.com’s acquisition is an attempt to catch up with NetSuite in this space,â€? said the company.

Meow!

Google and YouTube both have plans for monetizing video, now VideoEgg is getting in on the game. VideoEgg provides video hosting and streaming for those looking for an alternative to Google and YouTube.

The company’s serving 14 million streams a day and plans to give users the choice on how advertising is displayed.

VideoEgg is presently avoiding pre-roll ads in favor of post-rolls and permission-based video, which uses a small banner under the video box to ask users whether they care to see an ad or not.

Alwayson has more details, including a video interview with VideoEgg founder, Kevin Sladek. One question, why the heck is the video interview using Google Video and not VideoEgg???

Ask.com has just announced the appointment of Chuck Geiger as Executive Vice President of Technology and Engineering.

According to the press release, Geiger brings 17 years of experience with leading technology companies, including recent executive-level positions at PayPal and eBay.

“Chuck has a great balance of technology, business, and mentorship abilities that will help Ask.com’s technology groups scale domestically and internationally,â€? said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “With Chuck’s help and expertise, we hope to take our technology organization to the next level.â€?

As you may have noticed, I’m slowly moving forward as an internet marketing consultant. I’m still putting together outlines of the services I’m offering, but I’m already taking on clients.

One of the first – and nicest – clients for Marketing Pilgrim’s consulting services, is We Build Pages and CEO Jim Boykin.

Jim already has a great business, but he needed help making sure the company grows while taking care of its clients and employees. I’ll let Jim tell you what he thought of my services…

So Andy spent the day with me yesterday learning about how I’ve been running We Build Pages and giving me some excellent advice on how I can grow my company, as well as how I can better serve my clients and my employees.