A roundup up recent posts on the FSB News page.

– Barack Obama not only joined Rick Reilly for some fantasy football in Week 6, he apparently got serious about it. John McCain is reportedly wondering how many positions Sammy Baugh is allowed to play.

– Razzball ranks the 20 biggest busts among pitchers in fantasy baseball 2008. Of course, if you drafted a guy or two on the list, you might not want to relive your disappointment.

– eMarketer reports that 63.4 percent of Americans use the internet at least once a month and projects a rate that should reach 70 percent around 2014.

– The completion of an audit by the Media Rating Council reportedly gives Nielsen a step in its race with comScore to be the first accredited Web-audience ratings service.

– Through all the talk of social media and Web 2.0 principles, a survey by Forrester Research finds that business-to-business marketers stick to their traditional methods.

– BetAmerica.com is betting on fantasy football to draw consumers to its new parlay contest.

– As online ad sales continue to be troubled, Yahoo is supposedly close to cutting a bunch of jobs in that area.

RotoHog CEO Kelly Perdew has confirmed that the company recently laid off somewhere “in the 20 percent range” of its staff, as previously reported right here.

Rather than a signal of financial trouble, though, Perdew told FSB.com that the decision came out of ”a few weeks of planning and figuring out what makes sense for our business.” He says that a stronger focus on the company’s business-to-business operations is what RotoHog has determined makes sense going forward.

“We were very much going down the path of two different business models,” Perdew said, referring to the split focus of delivering products to business customers as well as straight to consumers via RotoHog.com. He said that the singular focus offers the “highest likelihood of reaching profitability as soon as possible.”

The change means the company will focus more on building games and selling its technology to fantasy providers. The NBA, for example, will run two RotoHog-powered games through the league website this season. Less attention, in turn, will be paid to the company’s site, which hosts its own games. Perdew says that RotoHog will continue to deliver content through the site but will use the portal more as a technology testing ground on which to find out what works and what needs to change within its game technology.

Perdew said that there won’t be much of a focus on developing anything “overly creative” for RotoHog.com, which is why the layoffs came mostly in the area of content creation.

“It wasn’t a comment on performance,” he said.

A roundup of recent posts on the FSB News page.

– The current economic downturn could make it tougher for new-model, free, ad-supported sites to find the support they expected when starting up.

– Young adults, those aged 18 to 29, are watching TV less often then members of the older age groups. That could direct young-seeking advertisers to the Web more.

– SI.com’s Peter King sees the new deal the Cowboys recently gave WR Roy Williams as a bad sign for the NFL’s labor health. There has been speculation over the past year or so that the league could be in danger of a 2011 work stoppage if it doesn’t work out a new collective bargaining agreement within the next couple of seasons.

– Fantasy Sports Ventures was the fourth largest gainer percentagewise in unique visitors in September, according to comScore rankings. Unique visitors to the site increased by 48 percent over August.

– MyFantasyLeague.com is offering free midseason football leagues.

– Fanball brings the NBA fantasy draft kit to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

Although head-to-head competition already exists in fantasy basketball, Hotbox Sports offers a different take.

The site breaks down the NBA schedule into three-game chunks, with each collection of games representing a single fantasy matchup. Fantasy owners set a regular lineup of positions to be determined by the league but choose just one game within the three-day window for which each player can collect stats.

For example, if Kobe Bryant is playing the Clippers on Tuesday and the Kings on Wednesday, his owners must choose whether to activate him for Tuesday or Wednesday within the Monday-Wednesday matchup window. All settings must be finalized before games start on Monday.

At the end of each three-day period, one team gets a loss and the other a win, based on the total fantasy points accumulated by each lineup.

The site officially launched on Oct. 1 – though it has been online since Sept. 15 — and is powered by Fanball. Co-founder Jeff Ciminera — one of eight founders — tells FSB.com that the company was started in 2005 around the basketball concept, which has a federal patent pending.

The site also provides NBA player news and content from Fanball.com and RotoTimes.com, as well as original content from the site’s creators.

Ciminera says that although basketball is getting things going, the plan is to add hockey next year and then potentially branch out into other sports as well. He sees soccer, in particular, as an area of opportunity because current fantasy leagues within the sport typically focus on one of the major international leagues. Hotbox’s idea is to combine the major leagues into a single player base, which would cater to more casual soccer fans.

“Now you can use all the big players,” Ciminera says, pointing out that stars such as David Beckham and Ronaldinho reside in separate leagues.