This is the Link Report for August 8th through August 10th:

• FriendFeed Co-Founder: Facebook Acquisition Talks Began in 2007 – The details!
• SEOmoz | 4 Essential SEO Infographics – Rand Fishkin at SEOMoz.org published a great post with Info Graphics that relate to SEO
• 2009 Facebook and Twitter Growth by Age Group | Ignite Social Media – The following chart by Nielsen shows that audiences above 25 have experienced a whopping 84% growth in Twitter adoption over the past 6 months. Also interesting is the 20% growth happening within the 55+ age range, compared to the 16% increase in 2-24 year olds. This slight discrepancy in growth doesn’t mean that younger audiences aren’t interested in Twitter, but suggests that they have already adopted it. (Also, after seeing the age ranges listed on this chart, I now want to see what a two-year old would tweet.)
• Facebook Acquires FriendFeed (Updated) – Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few of features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates.
• 6 Twitter Directories To Add Yourself To – Everyone is always looking for new ways to get more Twitter followers. Well, one of the best ways to do this is by getting discovered through Twitter directories. There are many out there to choose from and it’s very quick and easy to add yourself to them. So, here are a few to get you started. Feel free to share your favorite (whether listed or not) in the comments.
• What is a Natural Link Growth Profile? | SEO Book.com – 3 Common Link Building Strategies1. spiky. if the spikes are associated with news and viral marketing then that is not a big problem, but if they are sorta bought links, low quality links, etc. then this is sorta the worst way to do it.
  2. linear. not as bad as spiky…but not as good as geometric. this is where a webmaster tries to build the same number of links each month.
  3. geometric. this is where link building starts off slow, but then keeps getting better each month.
• Company Boasts it Sold Twitter Followers to Michael Jackson – With the increasing popularity of social media sites and the power of marketing on them, more and more people have been investing in services which can increase their rankings faster than they could do on their own.One such service is the highly-controversial paid Twitter follower service which has been offered by web promotions company uSocial.net for several months now. Now they’re claiming they’ve had the attention of some of the world’s largest names, including one interesting one in particular.
• Reporting SERP Spam: Know How to Report & Reclaim Your Rankings – Below is a guide about spam results, how to detect them, and finally where to report them. If you want all the links to submit a spammy site, they’re at the bottom (but if you skip all the interesting info you might not know what to look for!).
• NBA star’s Twitter ID crisis rebounds on him and the site | Technically Incorrect – CNET News – The NBA, Players and Twitter. A good mix? Debatable
• Twitter Co-Founder: Attacks Continue to Change in Nature and Intensity – Apparently, we’re not out of the woods just yet. While Twitter itself has been working reliably for most of the day, some third-party applications remain impacted by measures the company has taken to defend against DDoS attacks.

Google’s Matt Cutts explains on the latest Webmaster Help Video that Yahoo, Best of the Web, other Web directories with an editorial process are not considered paid links. This is because they have guidelines that need to be met and will reject low quality submissions if they don’t meet the right criteria.

This is very helpful and makes sense because both BOTW and Yahoo Directory are actually useful to users as well as Google and the search engines. One thing that always gets me is how Cutts says that you don’t have to worry about going overboard on SEO to rank high, just provide great content. This in some ways is true. Great content should out-weigh Optimized sites, but in actuality it doesn’t always happen that way. I know Cutts really can’t say otherwise, but it just gets a little annoying that he keeps saying make great content and everything else will fall in place, when he knows full well that often that isn’t the case.

Here’s the video. I’d love to hear what you think of this and what you think about Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web.