Testament to quiet, constant growth and an example of how ubiquitous advertising — when used correctly — can become a viable business model.  I believe that freely available advertising is one of the many factors allowing businesses to flourish, succeed and launch without loads of capital.

Majority-held by Amazon.com and now boasting six sites, Robot Co-op has quietly grown into one of the most visited Web 2.0 properties in Seattle. The sites are approaching 2 million registered users, and 43 Things — the company’s largest property — attracts more than 12 million page views per month. At last count, just over 25,000 people had posted the goal of losing weight on 43 Things.

According to the Journal, people familiar with the plan say Facebook is seeking to do what Google did with AdWords, which allows anyone to place ads next to search results by buying “keywords” online.

News feed optimization + other forms of social search and profile optimization will become industries in parallel to how search engine marketing has grown.

So what’s the lesson? Apple is growing faster than its competitors because it improves its hardware and software more often than anyone else. It is broadening what we think of as a consumer-oriented PC and thus helping its market grow. That’s a good long-term investment story. And, oh, by the way, Apple also makes some pretty slick music players and cell phones

When you dream of building the next overnight success, remember how long it took to build the great companies and institutions of our time:

Charles Dow’s other lasting legacy was creating and branding a market statistic at a time when many people thought the financial markets were so irrational or corrupt as to be essentially chaotic. Mr. Dow thought the markets might be more like the ocean. Someone “who wishes to know the exact spot which marks the high tide sets a stick in the sand at the points reached by the incoming waves until the stick reaches a position where the waves do not come up to it,” he explained. He began publishing the combined average price of 11 stocks — mostly railroad companies — in 1884. The Dow Jones average of 12 industrial stocks appeared in 1896.

Dow starting building his legacy in 1884. Of course, the DJIA is commonplace now — but it took years to get there. Life moves exponentially faster in 2007 but it doesn’t mean that we can expect instantaneous successes.

Those who seemingly achieve them are probably more products of randomness than actual genius or skill.

Excerpts from “Deal Will Test a Media Titan’s Instincts” at WSJ:

Mr. Murdoch has promised to beef up the Journal’s ad-sales effort and to lift its circulation, making the paper a more potent rival to business magazines, smaller business dailies like the Financial Times and Investor’s Business Daily and some general-interest papers in the U.S., such as the New York Times.

The biggest impact, however, could be in online and television, where Mr. Murdoch has said he sees the greatest opportunity. The market for online financial news is currently fragmented among numerous players. That could change with a News Corp.-owned Dow Jones.

These are just the broad strokes. The fine details of what News Corp. will do with Dow Jones, whose properties include Dow Jones Newswires, Barron’s and the Factiva electronic news database, aren’t clear. Mr. Murdoch has indicated a willingness to invest more money in Dow Jones’s journalism, but he hasn’t revealed how much. He hasn’t given any indication what he would do with certain major assets, such as Dow Jones Newswires. Mr. Murdoch said yesterday in an interview that he wants to develop the Newswires “aggressively.” A person close to News Corp. said the only Dow Jones asset that News Corp. might consider selling are the remaining Ottaway community newspapers.

That lack of detail partly reflects Mr. Murdoch’s style. Unlike typical big companies, News Corp. isn’t known for crafting and pursuing detailed, long-term business strategies. Instead, Mr. Murdoch follows his instincts, grabbing opportunities when they arise and sometimes giving them up just as quickly.

A person with knowledge of his plans said Mr. Murdoch believes more general news and political coverage would make the Journal a stronger rival to the New York Times, which has a bigger share of consumer advertising. A New York Times spokeswoman said: “The Wall Street Journal has been a good competitor, and we expect that it will continue to be.”

Mr. Murdoch’s biggest focus, though, is likely to be the Web. He said in June that he would invest in Dow Jones’s digital operation, which includes MarketWatch, as well as the Journal’s subscription-only Web site WSJ.com. News Corp. could use these sites, along with Dow Jones Newswires, which distributes business news to media outlets and Wall Street, to develop a financial-news portal. Online financial news is a crowded field, but no one site is dominant. While 52.1 million people visited at least one financial site in June, the biggest site — Yahoo — drew just 14.9 million, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

Most sites cater to niches, like the high-end professionals who go to Bloomberg.com. Few cut across segments of the financial-news readership, says Mr. Kramer, a former president of CBS Digital Media. A merged News Corp. and Dow Jones would, at least on paper, be able to go after several segments, according to industry executives. The Journal could also tap social-networking technology developed by News Corp.’s MySpace to create an online community for business professionals.

To make a portal work, News Corp. may have to convert WSJ.com to a free site. Mr. Murdoch said yesterday he hadn’t made up his mind about the wisdom of such a move. In June, Mr. Murdoch noted that a study he commissioned concluded that “you’d have 10 times as many visitors and let’s say five times as much advertising” with a free site. The increased ad dollars were offset by loss of subscription revenue, making the move a wash, he added.