Affiliate Summit co-founder Shawn Collins and I had another great episode of the Affiliate Thing podcast. This week’s guest was Loic Le Meur, founder of the video platform Seesmic.com. He talked about creating a video conversation platform. Shawn is already posting on Seesmic, which is currently in the alpha stage and accepting only a limited number of users. It will be launched to the general public at the end of January.

There’s no shortage of stories and stats on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. One researcher says that purchases online jumped 29 percent on Thanksgiving, and climbed 22 percent on Black Friday. Cyber Monday’s results were expected to surpass both days.

Earlier this weekl Inside CRM came out with its list of The 20 Worst Venture Capital Investments of All Time. Number 12 on the list was AllAdvantage. You remember them don’t you?

I’m trying to get into the holiday spirit. Here’s one little widget that made my day. Shawn Collins passed it on to me.

Meanwhile, I’m not alone in getting ready for Cyber Monday. Reports say that 30 percent of U.S. shoppers will do more of their holiday shopping online this year, as compared to the 2006 holiday season. According to the survey, conducted by Vizu, a market research company, and sponsored by buySAFE, 46 percent of respondents would rather shop online for the holiday season than face the hassle of malls or pay the high cost of gas.

I just bought the Flip Camera after hearing rave reviews from Shawn Collins, Jim Kukral and Sam Harrelson. I think Oprah also recently gave some out to her audience.

Former Commission Junction executive Scott Jangro just posted that CJ has named Kerri Pollard as the affiliate network’s new general manager.

Back in July there was speculation surrounding who would be named general manager of the company. That was laid to rest when CJ made an official announcement that it would split some of the duties between Dave Duckwitz and Pollard, who recently left the Boston area to move closer to CJ’s headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif.

I would have brought you some interesting LinkShare news yesterday, but I didn’t hear about it until today. I had to call LinkShare’s PR firm to get the information. You’d think that when a company wants press coverage it might send a press release to the editorial department of a media organization – not to the sales director. You’d think.

I’m not trying to single out LinkShare as the only company that makes minor media missteps. They are just top of mind since this incident occurred this week and we’ve been attempting to correct the situation for more than a year.

It’s a very busy week for online marketing events. I’m not going to Ad:Tech New York or Blog World in Las Vegas. My persistent neck and shoulder pain along with a heavy workload has halted my travel schedule and I cancelled for both shows. I’m not leaving the Bay Area until December (although I wish I wasn’t going anywhere until 2008).

Check out our online only story about payment processing. It’s not available in the upcoming Nov./Dec. issue or in the digital edition of Revenue. You can only find it online.