The company, which launched in April 2005, originally set out to aggregate classified ads from various media outlets to list on its own site, but Craig Donato, founder and CEO of Oodle, said Facebook has now become bigger and is generating 80 percent of its traffic.

Just like with newspaper classifieds or listings on Craigslist, users can post items they want to sell or buy on Oodle or the Facebook Marketplace. Many Facebook users may recognize it from the weekly email the service sends out detailing what items are for sale in their extended friend groups.

Donato said Facebook has become the ideal intermediary to make connections for selling vs. Craiglist, which has gained a reputation for sketchy, or just flaky, behavior among its anonymous users.

“It’s people not showing up, or they show up and say they’ll give you half price. But once we start to introduce an identity, and show how you are connected through mutual friends, or the same college, it introduces social norms. It’s people acting like real people.”

In this scenario, Donato thinks it could even encourage people to recycle items–as opposed to making a profit off them.

Oodle commissioned a survey, which was conducted by Harris Interactive, that found 69 that percent of U.S. adults said they’d rather give away or share unneeded items with friends or acquaintances rather then sell them. In the new format, users can share a “want ad” that’s visible to friends.

To that end, Oodle is mostly scrapping its original business in favor of increasing its relationship with the social network.

It will no longer seek new deals with media outlets, and will push users on Oodle.com to sign up using Facebook Connect. It’s also redesigning the way the listings look, and changing the way emails are designed.

Is it too much reliance on Facebook?

Donato doesn’t think so: “It is the social fabric of the Internet. Facebook has established a social layer and we want to fully embrace it.”

Good question, says EMI Music, the label that distributes the band’s music.

Apple has exclusive digital rights for the Beatles “into 2011,” says spokesman Dylan Jones, and he notes that the exclusivity doesn’t expire on the first of January. But he confirms that the exclusivity does indeed have an expiration date.

So when that date comes, we should expect to see the Beatles everywhere else you can get music online, right? Namely Amazon, and the subscription services that rent music by the month, like Spotify, Rhapsody and Microsoft’s Zune? Or Google, if and when it launches its music service?

“That’s a question, isn’t it,” Jones says, and doesn’t offer more.

Couple of theories here:

• The easiest explanation is that the Beatles music will follow the path of other digital exclusives, and become widely available after Apple gets its run.
• It’s also possible that Apple and the Beatles will renew their exclusive before it expires. That hasn’t happened before, but if Steve Jobs really, really wants to make it work, I guess he could.
• The most intriguing possibility: The Beatles leave iTunes once their deal ends–and don’t come back to digital again. Seems silly, but big traditional media loves “windowing” their content, and I suppose someone might convince the band this would be a clever way to go–show up, make a splash, walk away and then try it again down the road, like a band that’s always going on a farewell tour. Hope not!

That’s an unprecedented move in the ongoing fight between cable providers, broadcasters and networks over programming fees. And the news was a big deal for the digerati and people contemplating the future of video.

But it doesn’t seem to have registered in the broader world, and you have to work hard to find any mention of the story in old-media news outlets. And even Cablevision, which uses any ammo it can in the PR fight against Fox and News Corp. (which also owns this site), hasn’t said much about it.

Here, for instance, is Cablevision’s newest message to its customers. If you fast forward to the 1:35 mark, you’ll find a two-sentence description of the Web blackout. But hard to believe many Cablevision customers will be sticking around to hear this one:

At the very least, blacking out part of the Web sounds scary. So why is Cablevision so (relatively) quiet on this?

Two theories, which are not mutually exclusive:

• It’s not worth complaining about because this stuff doesn’t really resonate with consumers–at least, not in the way that losing access to NFL games and play-off baseball does. No one spent Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon in a bar because they couldn’t watch “Glee” on Hulu.
• It’s not worth complaining about because Cablevision and News Corp. are actually on the same ideological page when it comes to this stuff. Neither side is really that happy about free TV shows on the Web. The only real difference the two sides have is about money: News Corp. wants to get more of it for its programming, while Cablevision wants to pay less.

On a related note: I still don’t understand why News Corp./Fox backed off so quickly on Saturday, once news of the blackout got out.

There’s no official reason, but there were mutterings about the technical difficulty of cutting off access to Cablevision TV subscribers while leaving Cablevision’s Internet-only subs alone. But hard to believe that News Corp. didn’t think that one through in advance. Same goes for any “optics”-related reason–the whole point of a move like this was to generate publicity, right?

The short, and obvious, answer to that question is “a hell of a lot.” In a note to clients today, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi argues that Wal-Mart (WMT) can sell between 800,000 and 1.3 million iPhones in 2009, though the retailer’s low price mantra may appear inconsistent with the iPhone’s market positioning. And that would seem to be a reasonable estimate. After all, Wal-Mart has some 2,500 retail outlets in the states, through which 100 million customers stream each week.

“The addition of Wal-Mart will roughly double the iPhone’s distribution in the US to nearly 6,000 outlets,” Sacconaghi writes. “We believe iPhone sales will benefit from the added distribution, though not proportionately; in our view, price (for both the device and service plan) is still the biggest hurdle to mass adoption…. With the iPhone already available at 3,000 Apple, AT&T (T), and Best Buy (BBY) stores, Wal-Mart likely does little to expand the device’s geographic reach. However, we believe Wal-Mart will have a greater impact on the iPhone’s demographic reach in terms of raising awareness and availability among lower-end consumers who are less likely to shop at the Apple Stores or BestBuy.”

One last point worth noting here, Sacconaghi puts little faith in rumors that Wal-Mart will offer a $99 4GB iPhone. “Could there be a cheaper iPhone at Wal-Mart,” he writes. “We think it unlikely, at least initially, but the idea is not completely unfounded. In our view, a $99 price point for the iPhone seems too low, but some modest discount is not implausible.”

The short, and obvious, answer to that question is “a hell of a lot.” In a note to clients today, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi argues that Wal-Mart (WMT) can sell between 800,000 and 1.3 million iPhones in 2009, though the retailer’s low price mantra may appear inconsistent with the iPhone’s market positioning. And that would seem to be a reasonable estimate. After all, Wal-Mart has some 2,500 retail outlets in the states, through which 100 million customers stream each week.

“The addition of Wal-Mart will roughly double the iPhone’s distribution in the US to nearly 6,000 outlets,” Sacconaghi writes. “We believe iPhone sales will benefit from the added distribution, though not proportionately; in our view, price (for both the device and service plan) is still the biggest hurdle to mass adoption…. With the iPhone already available at 3,000 Apple, AT&T (T), and Best Buy (BBY) stores, Wal-Mart likely does little to expand the device’s geographic reach. However, we believe Wal-Mart will have a greater impact on the iPhone’s demographic reach in terms of raising awareness and availability among lower-end consumers who are less likely to shop at the Apple Stores or BestBuy.”

One last point worth noting here, Sacconaghi puts little faith in rumors that Wal-Mart will offer a $99 4GB iPhone. “Could there be a cheaper iPhone at Wal-Mart,” he writes. “We think it unlikely, at least initially, but the idea is not completely unfounded. In our view, a $99 price point for the iPhone seems too low, but some modest discount is not implausible.”