The U.S. has removed Internet sanctions applied to Iran, Cuba and Sudan. This means that restrictions for popular Internet companies like Facebook and Twitter are no longer in force and can be served to the said regions.

In a Senate hearing last week on Human Rights and the Law, a key issue discussed was the lack of access to U.S. Internet based applications.

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Forrester Research expects online retail sales in the US to continue growing over the next few years, at an annual rate of 10%, topping $250 billion by 2014. Which is quite a jump, considering that last year, online retail sales reached just over $155 billion. However, it should be noted that Forrester’s number exclude travel, auction and drug sales.

One of the most sought after, traded and talked about domains online is sex.com, which has been bough and sold several times over the past years, each time bringing in more money than previously.

Last time it was sold, the price was $14 million, but because of lack of payment from the purchaser, and general financial trouble, the domain is now up for sale again, and the bid starts at a cool $1 million.

The domain could very well break a record and sell for $15 million very soon.

On a recent online auction of the domain poker.org, it sold for a whopping $1 million USD, making it the most expensive .org domain in history. The domain was sold to PokerCompany.com.

The previous most expensive .org domain was engineering.org, which sold just under $200,000 a few years ago.

StuffBuff, an online service which lets users bid on virtually everything (also known as “Social Bidding”), has launched into a beta. The service basically works as an auction (like eBay), however, users creating an auction get access to a widget which they can place on their site, on Facebook, MySpace etc., to promote their auction. As TechCrunch notes, it’s only a matter of time before eBay creates a similar widget and completely overruns StuffBuff (or they might just acquire it).

Most of you have probably answered that question already, so I’ll go ahead and answer down here so as to give you my insights on the topic.

Plain and simple, it’s emotions that hold attention better, and they’re not connected.

Look, we’ve all seen advertising and blog posts that are just long skeins of facts building up to one central conclusion or theme.  They’re great and well reasoned and everything, but for crying out loud, they just don’t hold water when it comes to attention.

But when you go after people’s emotions–you tell a story, you make them laugh, you make them cry–suddenly you’ve captured a whole new high ground that defies every convention you might expect.

Remember yesterday when we talked about Pennzoil?  They took an intellectual appeal route, and it collapsed under them.  Meanwhile, when I talked about that Snickers bar the other day, people took that ball and ran with it.  You taste the Snickers bar, you remember how good you felt when you ate it–you didn’t consider the caloric value of the components or how valuable nutrients are found in peanuts.  You went the emotional route.

So remember that when you write a blog post–grabbing attention is at the emotional level.

BlueKai, the online data exchange startup has announced that they’ve raised another $21 million in VC funding, from GGV Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Battery Ventures, bringing to total raised capital to $35 million.

Launched in 2008, BlueKai gathers data from shopping sites online, and then sells them to the highest bidder on an auction — the bidders are usually marketers and ad-networks.

Back in the deep dark depths of 1996, back before Titanic was destroying the box office and well before the death of Chris Farley would make sure the world would never be the same again, Pennzoil came out with a big ad campaign that had this for a tagline:

“Pennzoil is the only leading brand of motor oil to meet the 1996 SAE requirements two years early.”

How many of you know what that even MEANS?

And if you know, how many of you care?

Pennzoil shelled out millions of 1996 dollars–more by today’s standards–to tell us all something we neither understood nor cared about.  And as a result, Pennzoil lost a whole lot of money on an ad campaign that did absolutely nothing to sell its own product.

This all relates back to the main headline, who cares, or why no one reads your blog.  Are you telling people something they don’t care about, like Pennzoil did?  If you’re wondering why no one reads your stuff, ask yourself if they have any reason to.  And if you find that they don’t, start thinking about what you can do to MAKE them care.  If you do that you’ll find yourself greatly ahead of the game.