BusinessWeek has a great profile on Henry Blodget and how he’s fighting back with his web properties after his disgraceful exit from Wall Street after the tech bubble burst.

Henry Blodget is a man who will be neither easily riled nor insulted. When, in March, he learned that a blog had labeled a section of The Business Insider, the gossipy financial website he founded three years ago, “The Hooters of the Internet,” Blodget waited a couple hours before tweeting: “The Hooters of the Internet. I like that.” In May, Blodget predicted on his website that within just a few years, The Huffington Post will take in over $100 million in advertising revenue—more than triple the $30 million the site says it will bring in in 2010—and that by 2015 or so, it would be generating more from advertising than The New York Times. In an endnote, he disclosed that Kenneth Lerer, a co-founder of The Huffington Post, is also an investor in The Business Insider, or TBI as it is known by its readers. “Thank you for the disclosure,” someone called The Truth typed in the piece’s comments section. “Unfortunately, it invalidates everything you write. You’re a mouthpiece.” It took Blodget less than a minute to post his response: “Thank you!,” he wrote, like a fraternity pledge embracing his hazing.

Blodget was busted back then by then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has since had his own problems. Spitzer now has a TV show premiering soon on CNN, so it looks like everyone can get a second chance.

The Business Insider, along with niche areas like Silicon Alley Insider, is an excellent online magazine and news resource, so Blodget appears to be on his way.

I agree that HuffPo will keep growing as well, though at some point they might want to scale back those ridiculous and often misleading headlines.

HuffPo has a cool story about a new niche dating site – You and Me Are Pure. As the article points out, there are all sorts of online dating sites out there covering all sorts of niches, from dating based on ethnicity to things like fitness buffs, cougars and bikers.

The aim of the site, the creators explain, is “to use virginity as a significant compatibility tool to bring people together. Some people may overlook the bonding power of virginity. Virginity as an important common aspect between people can lead to close friendships, or can even serve as a mutual precious gift of marriage.”

The founders of the website, Lety and Jose Colin, explain that they were virgins until they were wed.

We have to admit we’re impressed. With all the niche dating sites out there, they may have found the most exclusive one of all!

Some Democrats in the House are poised to introduce a new bill to tax online purchases. The argument over Internet sales taxes has been raging for years, and it pits online sellers like Amazon and eBay against traditional retailers like Target and Wal-Mart.

At the moment, Americans who shop over the Internet from out-of-state vendors usually aren’t required to pay sales taxes. Californians buying books from Amazon.com or cameras from Manhattan’s B&H Photo, for example, won’t be required to cough up the sales taxes that they would if shopping at a local mall.

This is hardly a new debate: pro-tax officials and state governments have been pressing Congress to require taxes to be collected for a decade or so. They argue that reduced sales tax revenue threatens budgets for schools and police, and say that, as a matter of fairness, online retailers should be forced to collect the same taxes that brick-and-mortar retailers do.

But with states scrambling for new sources of revenue during what may be a double-dip recession, pro-tax lobbyists are hoping that they’ll have better luck this year. The National Conference of State Legislatures applauded Delahunt’s legislation, saying he should be commended for allowing states to collect as much as $23 billion in new taxes.

So did the Retail Industry Leaders Association, whose tax committee members include Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Costco, AutoZone, Target, and IKEA.

On the other side are groups that advocate for lower taxes and retailers including Amazon.com and eBay. In a statement on Friday, Tod Cohen, eBay’s vice president for government relations said: “At a time when unemployment rates are high and small businesses across the country are closing shop, we are confident that Congress will protect small Internet retailers and the consumers they serve from another Internet tax scheme.”

The absence of a tax online has been very helpful in the growth of the Internet and online sales. It makes thing much easier for small sellers as well, so any change would need to be carefully examined.

That said, online sales are now huge, and it does hurt revenues for state governments.

If they move forward, the key would be to craft a system that has one standard for all states, so every online retailer isn’t subject to 50 different state regulations. That alone would kill many online businesses.

Perhaps they should have a single national rate, like 5%, and the states get money based upon the location of the purchaser for each transaction. Retailers would simply collect the tax and then report transactions and the locations of the buyer.

Depending on how big your business is, there are things that any entrepreneur needs to buy to make a business successful. One of the first things, for most businesses, is a robust computer system. HP is highly recommended, because of its sophistication and attractive bulk prices. You can even get discounts if you are using hp coupons. You can use HP computers in a networked manner using Linksys or Netgear routers to effectively collaborate across rooms.

One other important thing you may want to invest in is a high quality printer. Every office needs a laser printer at some point of time. Once you get the printer, think of a photocopier, if you think that would be useful. Get good videoconferencing systems if you are dealing with multiple locations or need to talk to clients long distance.

Apart from hardware, there’s a bunch of software that can be useful. No business can do without a good accounting or tax software. Intuit is a good one; Quickbook Pro is also good for the small office.

Small businesses need to focus on how to use open source or freeware to keep costs down. One good way to collaborate online is to use Skype. This is a VOIP telephone system that also lets you chat and collaborate online. Businesses that deal with employees online can find this very useful for collaborative work. International businesses, dealing with long distance clients, can find this very useful.

There is not really a hard and fast rule about what you got to buy to be successful. It kind of depends on what you are selling. But in general, you should never shy away from spending in those things that improve business communication, whether it is with clients, or with business personnel.

Have you often wished that you could be your own boss by setting up your own business? Setting up a new business from scratch is never easy, but you can improve the odds in your favor by setting up as a franchisee for a running successful business. As a franchisee, you will function as an extended arm of the company which will provide all the support that you can expect from a partner. How do you go about selecting which company you are going to work with?

Ideally, you would like the franchising company to operate in a business where there is high demand and limited competition. You would also like the full range of support services from the training to marketing and advertising. We are going to look at one company that has been extremely successful in franchising because there are many lessons to be learnt from their success. The company is called N-Hance and offers wood renewal services for wooden floors and cabinets through a system of franchisees. Entrepreneur Magazine put the company at the top of the home improvement and miscellaneous services category in its annual Franchise 500 rankings.

N-Hance is a renewal system for wooden floors, cabinets and other built in storage. It makes the wood look like new without using messy and pungent chemicals and without the expense of refinishing or sanding. They have built a highly successful and comprehensive support system for their franchisees including complete turnkey packages that even include business stationery and business cards. In addition, their powerful brand and unique customer proposition put you in a position where you can provide genuine value to your customers.

If you are interested in an outstanding business opening in the flooring restoration business, you should give serious attention to this franchise opportunity. You will find it a relatively painless and low-risk blueprint to build up a successful business.

Forbes has an interesting article about the web 2.0 situation in China.

Forbes: Facebook and Twitter have been blocked here in China since the unrest this year in Xinjiang, and some Chinese Twitter clones are blocked as well. Why is this the case, and do you see the controls loosening up in the near future?

Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can’t control the information flow. That’s the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.

But this wide-scale blocking costs a lot. Discontentment in cyberspace could lead more common Chinese netizens to try to protest if all of their favorite social networking, photo sharing, video and microblogging services are blocked in the long term. And this crazy-wild blocking also harms the investment environment, which now almost makes China a Web 2.0 hell for investors. So China may loosen up the blocking in some sense.

The political reasons behind this policy are fairly clear given the recent events in Iran. Yet the risks are huge for China’s social media and tech industries as mentioned above. Can China really expect to compete in a world where Americans and others use social media to revolutionize business, news and education? The Chinese run the risk of falling way behind.

This one sounds interesting.

The “limited beta” has become a right of passage for budding Web companies. In the case of Seattle-based Gist.com, an e-mail in-box management service, it’s a business strategy.

Gist launched on Tuesday, concluding an almost two-year period of controlled growth. During that time, thousands of potential users signed up for an invitation and dutifully filled out a survey for potential users. In exchange for the mere chance to be invited to test the service, chief executive T.A. McCann got from users behavioral data, feature ideas and marketing leads–all for free.

The relationship management service scours some 60,000 news sources, 20 million blogs and 600,000 Twitter handles and matches up the information they find to a contact list generated from a user’s e-mail correspondence. The result is that Gist is an advanced Web communication tool that helps you keep tabs on the people and companies that matter most. Some of the company’s success, however, comes from one the Web’s most primitive of communication tools: online forms.

We’ll see how this does, but there’s a clear need for this service, as we all struggle to manage all sorts of online accounts. Anything that can centralize one’s networking strategy is worth trying.

Here’s a strange story.

The founders of Skype are escalating their legal battle with eBay.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who became billionaires after selling Skype to eBay in 2005, filed a copyright lawsuit on Wednesday against Skype in the United States District Court of Northern California. The suit comes a little more than two weeks after eBay announced it would sell most of Skype for $1.9 billion to a consortium of investors led by the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners.

In the court filing, Joltid, a company owned by the Skype founders, claims that eBay violated copyright law by altering and sharing the peer-to-peer source code behind the free Internet calling service. The Skype founders maintained ownership of that source code after selling Skype to eBay in 2005, and licensed it to eBay.

Joltid seeks an injunction and statutory damages, which it says could total more than $75 million a day. The lawsuit also names as defendants Silver Lake Partners and its partners in the buyout, Index Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Perhaps I’m missing something, but eBay spent $1.9 billion $2.6 billion to acquire Skype, yet somehow structured a deal that permitted the founders to retain the copyright to the source code?!?! This sounds absurd.

UPDATE: BusinessWeek is reporting that the lawsuit might complicate eBay’s proposed sale of Skype. Dumbasses!

Mint.com offers free online tools to manage your money, and it’s been a huge success. Intuit decided to pull the trigger and buy it.

Intuit is buying Mint.com for $170 million in cash, in a deal that gives it control of a startup that had disrupted its dominance in personal money management software with a free online alternative. Intuit, which sells Quicken, and Mint had been in a tight race in the online personal finance market, with both companies claiming more than one million active users of their online products. Last fall, Intuit dropped the $2.99 a month subscription fee that it was charging for Quicken Online, partly in order to better compete with Mint. Intuit says it will now offer both services separately, although it says Mint will be the “primary online personal finance management service” it will offer to consumers.

Both sites make money by referring users to financial services like credit cards and credit counseling services. I guess the free service model still works!

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