Nokia and Plazes today announced an agreement for Nokia to acquire substantially all assets of Plazes, a privately-owned start-up company of 13 people with its principal operations in Berlin. Plazes provides a context-aware social-activity service that people can use to plan, record, and share their social activities: why they are at a given location at a given time, whether in the past, present or future.

“This acquisition helps Nokia to accelerate its vision of bringing people and places closer together, in line with our broader services strategy,” said Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia Services & Software. “In addition to the key assets, through this acquisition Nokia will bring on a visionary team with an advanced understanding of social-activity services, as well as the technical ability to further develop this area.”

By acquiring Plazes, Nokia will be able to extend its context-based service offering with social presence and time-based activity planning features. Plazes adds the elements of “place” and “time” to social networking through features that allow people to alert friends of their activity and location; review their own and others’ past activities; share their experiences and make plans with friends, who are then able to respond
with comments and suggestions as well as their own location information.

“Nokia shares our vision of the social activity space and of how we can together develop the service that Plazes provides today,” said Felix Petersen, co-founder of Plazes. “We feel proud of what the Plazes team has
achieved so far with its pioneering work in context-aware services and we feel even more excited about what’s to come next.”

The agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in the third quarter 2008. After closing, Plazes will become part of Nokia’s Services & Software unit.

Here’s more on the acquisition from the Plazes blog.

See related stories at:Techcrunch, PR Newswire, O’Reilly Radar, Mashable!, localmobilesearch.net, Loic Le Meur Blog

The latest Nielsen data

The major social media sites are all opening up their platforms to 3rd party Application devs. When would LinkedIn open up?

“The numbers also reveal that business social network LinkedIn, which may or may not be aiming for a billion-dollar valuation, is still growing rapidly, pulling in 361 percent more unique users than it did a year ago. Facebook is growing more slowly, with 56 percent more visitors–and keep in mind that April 2007 was just a month before the company announced its developer platform and “exploded,” at least in terms of Valley chit-chat.”

“With the addition of Bebo and the creation of People Networks, AOL is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the exploding social media space by delivering a more personal experience for consumers and a better way for advertisers to engage them,” said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “AOL is now fully focused on growing our business in three key areas - our advertising network, publishing and people networks - by delivering relevant content and advertising across the Web, and we’re making great progress in each area.”

In March, AOL’s publishing network hit an all-time high in both unique visitors and page views, the sixth consecutive month of growth, according to comScore Media Metrix, which also ranked AOL’s Platform-A the leading online display advertising network, with a reach of 91% of the domestic online audience.

One of the first initiatives for People Networks will be to integrate AOL’s other community applications and tools, including IM, chat and mail functionality into Bebo. It will also let users merge AIM and Bebo profiles so they can use common screen names without re-registering. AIM is the leading instant messaging network in the U.S., with more than 30 million users. ICQ has 28 million active users worldwide.

In addition, People Networks will integrate other recent AOL acquisitions, including widget technology company Goowy Media and social search question and answer service Yedda. Integration plans also include the cross-distribution of AOL and Bebo content and applications to expand the scale of the combined networks. For example, AOL will promote Bebo’s successful original programming � including the award-winning ‘KateModern’, ‘Sofia’s Diary’ and ‘The Gap Year’ - across several AOL channels. Also, Bebo is integrating AOL music and entertainment content.

“This combination is about more than just putting products together, it’s about bringing together the extraordinary management teams from both Bebo and AOL,” said Shields. “When you combine Bebo, AIM and ICQ, and AOL’s other community products, we not only have an unmatched offering for consumers, we have the best leaders in the business to drive our success going forward.”

To enhance AOL’s ability to monetize Bebo and its other social networks, the company recently announced plans to introduce a ‘content screening’ tool. Based on the same technology AOL uses with its award-winning parental controls, this tool will help advertisers overcome concerns about advertising on social networking sites with user-generated content by awarding these pages a quality score and placing ads only on pages that surpass a quality threshold. AOL plans to launch its content screening tool in the third quarter.

Founded in 2005, Bebo quickly became one of the leading social networks in the UK. It is ranked No. 1 in Ireland and New Zealand, and No. 3 in the U.S. in terms of engagement. Bebo’s worldwide users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on the site. Bebo has approximately 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, TX. It will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL.

According to Venturebeat, Zuckerberg and D’Angelo met in high school and developed a music discovery service called Synapse that garnered positive press and subsequently interest (but no purchase offers) from large companies looking to hire the young developers. Zuckerberg, as most readers know, went to on Harvard and started Facebook out of his dorm room. D’Angelo was one of the first people he tapped to join him.

In fact, according to this Harvard Crimson article, Zuckerberg moved the company from Boston to Palo Alto, Calif. in 2005 in part to be closer to D’Angelo, who was attending Caltech at the time.

Facebook will not be replacing the CTO role, sources said, but has a search underway for a VP of engineering.

Adam kept a low profile for himself all along. He was universally loved at Facebook, says a source close to him. Wish him all the best!

About Adam D’Angelo: From his LinkedIn Profile

I am interested in social networks, viral engineering, development methodology, web applications, platforms, collaborative filtering, reputation systems, data mining, machine vision, computational trust, online markets, and privacy.

Why this flurry of activity in opening up APIs for 3rd party apps? All these initiatives will allow securely sending personal profile data, including friend lists, presence/status information, etc., to third party applications. The primary benefit of these services is to allow users to maintain a single friends list and to coordinate social activities across different sites that perform different services.

“The reason these companies are are rushing to get products out the door is because whoever is a player in this space is likely to control user data over the long run. If users don’t have to put profile and friend information into multiple sites, they will gravitate towards one site that they identify with, and then allow other sites to access that data. The desire to own user identities over the long run is also causing the big Internet companies, in my opinion, to rush to become OpenID issuers (but not relying parties).”

While the motivations are good (I don’t need to sign up everytime I visit a new website), there are bound to be privacy issues. Wait for one 3rd party to mess it up, willingly or unwillingly.

And the biggest gain for Google? They would now be able to target ads on individual profile level. Is that good? I am not too sure how much info I’d like to share with anyone, be it Google, Facebook, Myspace, Yahoo, Twitter…

Let’s wait and see.

Anyway, I digress. Two recent posts (on webware and techcrunch) made me look at this browser plugin called Yoono, for discovering and sharing Web content and to help track your friends’ activities. The tool integrates with several popular social networks and microblogging services including Twitter, letting you access and interact with the communities of all of them in one place.

While you are surfing, Yoono instantly suggests what others have discovered: websites, people and articles. You can create a rich scrapbook of your favorite stuff with the new “Buzz It!” feature, one-click grab and share videos, photos and texts from any web page. Yoono keeps your scrapbook and original Firefox bookmarks synchronized across your computers.

In a nutshell: Yoono is a browser sidebar that will aggregate your social network upates and allow you to update all statuses at once. In addition, while you surf, Yoono displays a list of other web pages that are “people-rated” - others have classified them in their favorites. You can also find other users who have a particular web page in their favorites.

See a demo:

If you’re an avid Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr user, they you’ll need to download this free app to manage your accounts. Check out Yoono.com, but watch the video below first to see what it can do for you (source: techiediva).

The UI is really neat and clean, looks impressive. It is also impressive how much has been packed into a plugin. I am sure designing such an app is a challenge - whom to target, what features to bring in, what to leave out. Overall, I am quite impressed. I may end up actually using it!

Users can now view related pictures, music, and videos from pages they’re on. (Credit: CNET Networks)

Well, a few months on and it looks like the BBC had a coder create an application (in three hours or less) that could swipe a whole pile of data on both you and your friends, before mailing it back home to base. I can’t stress enough - when it comes to social networking sites, NEVER post anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable posting on an otherwise open and accessible site such as your blog, personal website, whatever. I have pages on Myspace, Facebook, Orkut and a whole bunch of others - and there is NOTHING on them that you couldn’t find elsewhere. There is no hidden treasure trove of data to mine, and so I don’t care what happens to it because it’s all out there in the public domain anyway. This is what I’ve been telling people for the longest time, and it works.

The hacker in this case has been able set up a malicious application that can steal details of not only your information but the people you’re connected with. This is because in Facebook, applications have permission to ‘walk the tree’ of your friend contact details, letting the apps do things like populate the list of people for you to forward to, when you choose to “forward this and see what happens.”

We have discovered a way to steal the personal details of you and all your Facebook friends without you knowing.

The article is worth reading. Wow, good job British hax0rz! I won’t say “the sky is falling” because this has been pretty well-known among the geek-o-rati for a long time. BBC notes MySpace apps run on MySpace’s servers, giving MySpace a much clearer idea of what an application is doing with the data.

Perhaps the media attention this is sure to draw will move FB to a more secure model. One can hope.

Edwin Aoki is a Technology Fellow at AOL. Holding a joint degree in Computer Science and Sociology from Harvard College, Edwin believes strongly in the ability of technology to bring people closer together and to make our lives easier. He’s worked at Apple Computer, Go Corporation, and Intuit before joining Netscape Communications in 1996.

At Netscape, Edwin worked on the Netscape Communicator browser, enterprise products, and web applications prior to the company’s acquisition by AOL. Currently, Edwin oversees architecture and technology strategy for most of AOL’s consumer facing products and represents the company at the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

What is the Open AIM Program?
Through the Open AIM Program, AOL is providing open access to both the AIM® code base and the AOL® Instant Messaging community.

It includes access to AIM Presence functionality, the AIM Software Developer Kit (SDK), which allows you to build AIM Plugins and AIM Custom Clients, and Web AIM, our web-based application programming interfaces (APIs) for incorporating IM functionality into web pages.

The search engines have become an integrated part of our lives. Each and every day billions of searches are made all over the world, reflecting stories of work and leisure, strife and passion, and the interests of millions of Internet searchers.

If you could tap into this enormous amount of data, you could draw maps of fashion, cultural trends, political shifts and anything people are concerned about right now.

The search engine databases are kept under lock and key. The search engine companies hate the thought of loosing the trust of their users. Nevertheless, some aggregate data are available, and on this page your find links to some of the search trend sources found on the Web.

Google Zeitgeist and beyond

Google has a service called Google Zeitgeist that brings up weekly top 10 lists of the most popular searches in several countries and world wide.

With Google Trends, you can compare the world’s interest in your favorite topics. Enter up to five topics and see how often they’ve been searched for on Google over time.

Lycos has a weekly top 50 list, while Yahoo presents various search trends at Yahoo Buzz.

Blogs, bookmarks and folksonomies

Note also that the growth of social networking and bookmarking sites has given as a new wealth of search trend data.

There are actually companies out there that monitoring and analyzing fashion and trends on the basis of social media such as blogs and discussion forums

Some statistics are free, though. The blog search engine Technorati will, for instance, give you a list of the most talked about topics in the blogosphere right now.

Site popularity

There are actually no trustworthy numbers on what sites are the most popular at any given time. Alexa, which bases its data on the habits of its Alexa toolbar users, may give you a certain indication though.

For these and other web trend sources, see the categories on this page.

Popular search terms in search engine marketing

Reading lists of the most popular search queries is entertaining. Social scientists ought to love the stuff. So far, however, it is the marketing people who has made the best use of this search information.

The search trends tell them what people find interesting right now, making it possible to adapt product and service development to what’s fashionable or upcoming.

This certainly applies to search engine marketing experts as well. Do you want to know what kind of affiliate program to go for and what product to sell? Look at what people search for and make sites and web pages covering these topics.

Om Malik wrote at GigaOm, “If Yahoo is turning to Jajah for Voice on IM, then AOL wants to offer others an ability to integrate AIM Call Out service via its Open Voice APIs into softphones, as well as SIP-enabled hardware and cell phones with Wi-Fi connectivity. AIM Call Out is a pay-as-you-go outbound voice calling service built right into AIM.” He continued, “Jajah, AOL Open Voice, Ribbit and scores of others are taking a platform approach to VoIP, hoping that adding voice to applications will drive up minute volume and turn them into a viable business.”

TMCnet.com reports, “Many users are loathe to run multiple IM clients, so many switched from AIM to Skype because they could get IM, plus voice & video — all in a single client. Why bog down system resources with multiple IM clients? I will say AOL has done a good job of beefing up the feature-set of AIM, but one has to wonder if Skype’s momentum is unstoppable.” The piece continues, “In any event, Steve Murphy, Senior Vice President, AOL said, ‘By opening up our voice communications gateway to developers we’re furthering the mission of AIM which is to facilitate the world’s real-time conversations. We’re building on the popularity of the Open AIM program and opening up the AIM Call Out platform, enabling open standards voice communication services to proliferate in the marketplace.’”

• Bebop - Compare music calendar against your iTunes catalogue. www.bebopular.com/
• Clickcaster - Record, license, publish & promote your radio show. www.clickcaster.com/
• Difm - Radio community. www.di.fm/
• Dottunes - Share your iTunes. www.dottunes.net/
• Enablr - Transcribe podcasts, Text2Snailmail, … www.enablr.com/
• Fluctu8 - Create & share your sourcelists. fluctu8.com/
• Gcast - Podcasting tools & hosting. www.gcast.com/
• Genie lab - Explore, recommend & rate music. genielab.com/
• Itunes love - Share your music tastes. www.ituneslove.com/
• Jamendo - Review, tag, rate & share music. www.jamendo.com/en/
• Lastfm* - Profile your taste, share, personalize your radio. www.last.fm/
• Mercora - Search music & get recommendations. search.mercora.com/
• Muiso - Track your taste, get recommendations. muiso.com/
• Music mobs - Share your tastes & find music. www.musicmobs.com/
• Music strands - Tag, share & post music community. www.musicstrands.com/
• Odeo - Record & share audio. www.odeo.com
• Pandora* - Personalized radio. pandora.com/
• Plurn - List, listen to, create & share music. www.plurn.com/
• Pod bop - Listen to bands that visit your city (Eventful mash-up). podbop.org/
• Podomatic - Create, find & broadcast podcasts. www.podomatic.com/
• Poperti - Save your mp3 on a pop email account. www.poperti.com/
• Predixis - Discover, manage & enjoy music. www.predixis.com/
• Purevolume - Music community. www.poperti.com/
• Radio time - Personalize radio. myradiotime.com/
• Streaming Radio Stations - Choose a type/style/gendre of tunes. www.friendlycanadian.com/mp3s/
• Streampad - List, listen & share your music (= several mash-ups). www.streampad.com/
• Upto11 - Discover & share music. upto11.net/
• Webjay - Playlist community. www.webjay.org/

Mashup ecosystem (Click to see full image)

BLOG2POD 2.0

• Talkr - Converts blog text to podcasts. www.talkr.com/

BLOGGING 2.0

• Bitty - Embed content from Web services. bitty.com/
• Blogburst - Syndicate blogs to mainstream media sites. www.blogburst.com/
• Blog code - Start blog & find similar ones. www.blogcode.com/
• Blogger snap - Add your webcam snapshot to any blog. www.bloggersnap.com/
• Blog goggle - Categorize & rate pro bloggers. www.bloggoggle.com/
• Bloglet - Notification2email. www.bloglet.com/
• Blogs - Notification2email. blo.gs/
• Blurb - Turn your blog into a book. www.blurb.com/
• Cocomment - Track back your commentosphere. www.cocomment.com/
• Feedblitz - Notification2email. www.feedblitz.com/
• Freevlog - Set up free video blog. www.freevlog.org/
• Lifetype - Blogging software. www.lifetype.net/
• Measure map - Blog stats. measuremap.com/
• Qumana - Edit your blog. www.qumana.com/
• Structured blogging - Create, edit & maintain all posts. structuredblogging.org/
• Textamerica - Mobile blog. www.textamerica.com/
• Xanco~ - Mobile phlog & vlog. www.xanco.com/
• Blip - Get video & podcasting on your blog. www.blip.tv/
• Blog ladder - Create & maintain your blog. www.blogladder.com/
• Blogniscient - Rank & read blog articles. www.blogniscient.com/
• Bloxor - Maintain & use your blogroll online. www.bloxor.com/

BOOKMARKING 2.0

• 9rules - Validate & share links to content. 9rules.com/
• All your words - Associate & share words with links. www.allyourwords.com/
• Blinkist - Social bookmarking. www.blinklist.com/
• Blogmarks - Social bookmarking. www.blogmarks.net/
• Blummy - Manage your bookmarks. www.blummy.com/
• Bmaccess - Social bookmarking with thumbs. www.bmaccess.net/
• Buddy marks - Social bookmarking. www.buddymarks.com/
• Butterfly~ - Bookmark & annotate. www.butterflyproject.nl/
• Chuquet* - Find buzzes. www.chuquet.com/
• Clipmarks - Social clipping. www.clipmarks.com/
• Common Times - Social bookmarking & clippings. www.commontimes.org/
• Connotea - Social bookmarking (for reseacrhers). www.connotea.org/
• Delicious* - Social bookmarking. del.icio.us/
• Digg* - Social bookmarking. www.digg.com
• Diigo - Social bookmarking on steroids. www.diigo.com/
• Dogear - Social bookmarking. www.eigology.com/dogear/
• Feed marker - Social bookmarking for news. www.feedmarker.com/
• Furl - Clip, store & share web pages. www.furl.net/
• Hyperlinkomatic - Social bookmarking. www.hyperlinkomatic.com/
• Icio - Social bookmarking & rating. www.icio.de/
• Jeteye - Clip & share (parts of) web pages. www.jeteye.com/
• Listible - Folksonomied software & code search. www.listible.com/
• List Mixer - Social bookmarking (temporary links). listmixer.com/
• Live Marks - Live update of Delicious. sandbox.sourcelabs.com/livemarks/
• Look later - Private bookmarking. www.looklater.com/
• Lookmarks - Social bookmarking. www.lookmarks.com/
• Magnolia - Social bookmarking & voting. ma.gnolia.com/
• Mylinkvault - Social bookmarking. www.mylinkvault.com/
• Onlywire - Social bookmarking aggregator. www.onlywire.com/
• Philoi - Social bookmarking. www.philoi.com/
• Qoosa - Social bookmarking. www.qoosa.com/
• Searchfox - Social bookmarking. www.searchfox.com/
• Shadows - Social bookmarking. shadows.com/
• Simpy - Social bookmarking, tagging & search. www.simpy.com/
• Socialmarks - Social bookmarking. www.socialmarks.com/
• Spinspy - Social bookmarking & ranking. www.spinspy.com/
• Spurl - Social - Bookmarking & search. www.spurl.net/
• Startaid - Manage & share your (thumb) bookmarks. www.startaid.com/
• Stumble Upon - Social bookmarking (random sharing). www.stumbleupon.com/
• Surftail - Share your click paths. www.surftail.com/
• Taggle - Social bookmarking, tagged (German). www.taggle.de/
• Tagtooga - Social bookmarking. www.tagtooga.com/
• Tendango - Top 10 social bookmarking. www.tendango.com/
• Thumblicio.us - Displays thumbs of most pupular del.icio.us sites. thumblicio.us/
• Yahoo Myweb2 - Social bookmarking. myweb2.search.yahoo.com/
• Yoono - Save your bookmarks and manage your feeds - www.yoono.com/

BROWSER 2.0

• Camino - Mozilla power & Mac style browser. www.caminobrowser.org/
• Flock - Lightweight browser. www.flock.com/

CALENDAR 2.0

• 30boxes - Manage & share calendar. 30boxes.com/
• Calendar hub - Create & share calendars. www.calendarhub.com/
• Eventful - Create & share events. eventful.com/
• Eventicus - Create & share events. www.eventicus.de/
• Event sniper - Mix your event calendar with feeds. www.eventsniper.com/
• Hipcal - Manage & share calendar & to do lists. www.hipcal.com/
• Meet with approval - Arrange meetings & events online. www.meetwithapproval.com/
• Mosuki - Arrange meetings & events online. mosuki.com/
• Planzo - Arrange meetings & events online & thru sms. planzo.com/
• Skobee - Arrange meetings & events online. www.skobee.com/
• Sponge cell - Arrange meetings & events online; with a.i. spongecell.com/
• Tilika - Share calendars. www.tilika.com/
• Trumba - Create& share events. www.trumba.com/
• Upcoming - Create, manage & share events. upcoming.org/

CHAT 2.0

• 3bubbles - Add a chatroom to your blog. www.3bubbles.com/
• Ajchat - Create chat rooms. www.ajchat.com/
• Campfire - Permalinked chat. www.campfirenow.com/
• Chatsum* - Chat with & leave messages same-site-visitors. www.chatsum.com/
• Conversate - Create your own chat. www.conversate.org/
• PeekoChat - Make every site a ‘place’ (Firefox plug-in). peekko.com/chat/
• Zohochat - Create your own chat room. zohochat.com/
• Ekklesia - CMS for churches. www.ekklesia-systems.com/
• Loudblog - CMS inc. RSS. www.loudblog.de/
• HIVchat - www.hiv-aids-chat.com/
• Pmachine - CMS. www.pmachine.com/ee/
• Tinymce - Wysiwyg editor. tinymce.moxiecode.com/

COLLABORATION 2.0

• Askeet - Ask & answer it. www.askeet.com/
• Asoboo - Find people & places in your city. asoboo.com/
• Favorville - People helping people. www.favorville.com/
• Foldera - Organize & share all work based documents. www.foldera.com/
• Hubpages - Share your genius. www.hubpages.com/
• Ifolder - Filesharing for groups. www.ifolder.com/
• Jotspot - Take one set of notes, live. www.jotlive.com/
• Lime - Help & inspire eachother. lime.com/
• Mayomi - Mind map & share. www.mayomi.com/
• People2pray - Manage & share prayer requests. www.people2pray.com/
• Qype - Find & recommend best spots in town. qype.com/
• Rally point - Share knowledge. www.rallypointhq.com/
• Redlettr - Tag & comment the bible. www.desertfather.com/micah/
• Rel8r - Tag, read, search blogs. www.rel8r.com/
• Rrove* - Save & share places. www.rrove.com/
• Say-So - Share problems & get advise. www.say-so.org/
• Socialight - Share pictures & notes with your cell phone. socialight.com/
• Standpoint - Share & evangelize convictions. www.standpoint.com/
• Study buddy - Share notecards. www.studybuddy.info/
• Tracbac - Share, comment, revise & collaborate. www.tracbac.com/
• Vizu - Create, share & vote for polls. www.vizu.com/
• Webbrush - Collaborative drawing, charting, etc. www.stanfy.com/dev/webbrush/
• What should i read next - Share your bookshelve. whatshouldireadnext.com/
• Wobblog - Rank & share blog postings. www.wobblog.com/
• Zimbra - Work & communicate together. www.zimbra.com/

COLLECT 2.0

• Librarious - Catalogue your collection. lib.rario.us/
• Librarything - Catalogue & share your library. www.librarything.com/
• Unalog - Share what you read, in groups. unalog.com/

COMIX 2.0

• Comics - Create & share comics. www.mainada.net/comics/
• Comic Strip Generator - Personalize cartoon strips. www.comicstripgenerator.com/
• Quicktoons - Create & share comics. www.quicktoons.com/

COMMUNICATION 2.0

• E-messenger - Ajax messengers. www.e-messenger.net/
• E-messenger - Integrates several messengers. www.e-messenger.net/
• Gtalkr - Google Talk, Flickr, YouTube, feeds. https://gtalkr.com/
• Iglance - Push-to-talk videoconf and screen-sharing. www.iglance.com/
• Imeem - Share words, files & people (on messenger). www.imeem.com/
• Imvu - 3D messenger. www.imvu.com/
• Iotum - Sorts & processes calls on relevance. www.iotum.com/
• Jabphone - Messenger2phone. www.jabphone.com/
• Jumpclaimer - Inform your relatives about your whereabouts thru sms. www.jumpclaimer.com/
• Kopete - Universal messenger. kopete.kde.org/
• Mabber - Mobile messenger. www.mabber.com/
• Meebo - Integrates several messengers. www.meebo.com/
• Skylook - Record & store all Skype communications. www.skylook.biz/
• Skype - Call, conference, messenger, file sharing. www.skype.com/
• Slawesome - Add voice to your email. www.slawesome.com/
• Soonr - Mobile 2 web & v.v. www.soonr.com/
• Stickam* - Multimedia communication tool. www.stickam.com/
• Tello - Locate & collaborate with your key contacts. www.tello.com/
• Userplane - Chat, messenger, record. www.userplane.com/
• V4s - Add voice to your email. www.orb.com/skype/
• Vyew - Web based video conferencing. vyew.com/
• Waxmail - Add voice to your email. www.waxmail.biz/
• Web2messenger - Send messages from web 2 messenger. www.web2messenger.com/

COMMUNITY 2.0

• 43people - Tag based matching & dating. www.43people.com/
• Ask Me That - Public help forums. www.askmethat.com/
• 43places - Publish & share stories about places. www.43places.com/
• Blogtronix - Blogging & corporate community software. www.blogtronix.com/
• Communitywalk - Share places & routes (map mash-up). www.communitywalk.com/
• Consumating - Tag based dating. www.consumating.com/
• Create & Participate in communities. www.towncrossing.com/
• Dodgeball - Hook in with your mobile & meet friends. www.dodgeball.com/
• Doostang - Community for professionals. www.doostang.com/
• Facebook - Student communities. www.facebook.com/
• Frappr - Put your group on the map, share photos. www.frappr.com/
• Friendster - Connect with friends. www.friendster.com/
• Groups - Create groups & share content. grou.ps/
• HIV/AIDSforum - www.hivforum.com/
• HumanPages – Philanthropic “LinkedIn-Like” People Search. www.humanpages.com/
• Ikarma - Document & promote your reputation. ikarma.com/
• Linkedin - Manage and share your cv. www.linkedin.com/
• Livejournal - Join or create your own community. www.sixapart.com/livejournal/
• Lovento - Find friends & events. www.lovento.com/
• Mapmix. Find your friends (map mash-up). www.mapmix.com/
• Meetro - Find friends nearby (thru messenger). www.meetro.com/
• Meetup - Find common interests & organize meetings. www.meetup.com/
• Mologogo - Share where you are. www.mologogo.com/
• Mozes - Share information & people thru your mobile. mozes.com/
• MySpace - Communicate with & share content with your friends. www.myspace.com/
• OpenBC - Community for entrepreneurs & professionals. www.openbc.com
• Opinity - Manage your reputation. www.opinity.com/
• Orkut - Connect to your friends. https://www.orkut.com/
• Partysync - Meet & sms people. group.partysync.com/
• Peerprofile - Publish & share your profiles. www.peerprofile.com/
• Peertrainer - Buddy up, slim down. www.peertrainer.com/
• Phusebox - Community for sophisticated people. phusebox.net/
• Piczo - Create & share website. piczo.com/
• Placesite - Wi-fi portal & location communities. www.placesite.com/
• Plum - Collect, share, connect. www.plum.com/
• Poddater - Create vodcast & connect. www.poddater.com/
• Pooln - Schedule your car pooling. www.pooln.com/
• Rabble - Create it & share it mobile. www.rabble.com/
• Tagalag - Tag & map your contacts. www.tagalag.com/
• Theblackstripe - Upload & share photos. www.theblackstripe.com/
• Tinfinger - Search persons. www.tinfinger.com/
• Towncrossing - Find & Link to Friends. towncrossing.com/
• Twocrowds - Share & vote for predictions. www.twocrowds.com/
• Vcarious - Travel community. www.vcarious.com/
• Wallop - Phlog & interact. mywallop.com/
• Xanga - Blog rings. www.xanga.com/
• Zaadz~ - Network of inspired people. www.zaadz.com/
• Ziggs - Index of professionals. www.ziggs.com/
• Zoominfo* - Search persons; create your own page. www.zoominfo.com/

CRM 2.0

• 24sevenoffice - Web-based crm & erp. www.24sevenoffice.com/
• Helpspot - Wen nased help desk software. www.userscape.com/
• Pushcrm - Web-based crm. pushcrm.com/
• Simpleticket - Helpdesk solution. www.simpleticket.net/
• Userscape - Web based help desk portal. www.userscape.com/
• Zohocrm - Web-based crm. www.zohocrm.com/

DATABASE 2.0

• Turbodbadmin - Online dbase in Ajax. www.turboajax.com/turbodbadmin.html/

DESIGN 2.0

• Betterdesktop - Share usability tests. www.betterdesktop.org/
• Sign Generators. www.customsigngenerator.com/
• Flickrlogomakr - Make Flickr-like logo in a second. flickr.nosv.org/ (cf. this group’s logo).
• Online Logo Designer. www.text2logo.com/
• Desktop Wallpaper Creator. www.wallpapergenerator.com/
• PreviewHTML - Preview your HTML source codes. www.previewhtml.com/
• Netcocktail - Share color schemes. www.netcocktail.com/
• Custom Banner Advertising Ads. www.bannergenerator.org/
• Neurosky - Bionic interface technology. www.neurosky.com/
• OK-cancel. Collaboration on interface design. www.ok-cancel.com/
• Warning Label Maker. www.dangersigngenerator.com/
• Typetester - Compare screen type. www.typetester.maratz.com/
• Hide Text From Spambots. www.txt2png.com/
• Wufoo - Build & host forms. www.wufoo.com/
• Watermark Images www.signgeneratormaker.com/

DICTIONARY 2.0

• Visualthesaurus - Find & visualize synonyms. www.visualthesaurus.com/

ECOMMERCE 2.0

• 12 Wists - Share shopping lists. www.wists.com/
• 43deals - Find best deals. www.43deals.com/
• Adgenta - Add ads to your site, blog or rss feed. www.adgenta.com/
• Amazon* - Shop, sell, review & rank. www.amazon.com/
• Auctionmapper - Map Ebay auctions. www.auctionmapper.com/
• Bigcartel - Start, review & recommend online shops. bigcartel.com/
• Blish - Buy & sell digital things. www.blish.com/
• Broadbandgenie - Find best provider. www.broadbandgenie.co.uk/
• CafePress - Free to design, sell, buy custom products. www.cafepress.com/ (join affiliate program)
• CafePress Live JavaScript Feed. www.web20appz.com/cafepress/javascript.asp
• Carbonmade - Publish & manage your portfolio online. www.carbonmade.com/
• Clipfire - Shop search engine & community. www.clipfire.com/
• Closo - Start & advertise your online shop. www.closo.com/
• Cooqy - Find things faster on Ebay (client). www.cooqy.com/
• Coverpop - Mash-ups of everything. www.coverpop.com/
• Darmik - Sell & share profits with charities. www.darmik.com/
• Ebay* - Sell, rate & buy; auction. www.ebay.com/
• Etsy - Buy & sell handmade things. www.etsy.com/
• Flyspy - Graph all of your choices in air travel. www.flyspy.com/index.php/
• Fotogopo - Animated local route map; Google Maps & Geocoder mash-up. www.fotogopo.com/
• Froogle* - Local shopping search engine; Google Maps mash-up. www.google.com/sellonfroogle/
• Garbagescout - Find treasures on NY streets; Google Maps mash-up. www.garbagescout.com/
• Gumshoo - Auction analyzer; Ebay mash-up. www.gumshoo.com/
• Hawkee - Tagged price comparison. www.hawkee.com/
• Homethinking - Search, find, contact & review realtors. www.homethinking.com/
• Hotpads - Houses for rent. hotpads.com/
• Inods - Shopping review aggregator. inods.com/
• Insideflyer - Convert loyalty points. insideflyer.com/
• Judysbook - Review & rate your neighbourhood. www.judysbook.com/
• Kayak Buzz - Find cheap destinations; Google Maps mash-up. www.kayak.com/h/buzz/flights
• Licketyship - Home-delivery supermarket; retail & couriers co-operation. www.licketyship.com/
• Licketytrip - Last minute vacation rentals (map mash-up). www.licketytrip.com/
• Lopico - Social business directory. www.lopico.com/
• Mapeire - User generated lowest price finder; Google Maps mash-up. www.mapeire.com/
• Motionmall - Design & insert webads. www.motionmall.com/
• Paguna - Travel booking with 1 page Ajax interface. https://www.paguna.com/
• Peerflix - List & trade DVDs. www.peerflix.com/
• Pricenoia - Amazon price comparison. www.pricenoia.com/
• Qoop - Publish & sell photos & photo products. www.qoop.com/
• Redtoucan - Share photos & review products. www.redtoucan.com/
• Reevoo - Review & buy electronics. www.reevoo.com/
• Revver - Upload, share or sell your videos. www.revver.com/
• Savedsearchpro - Find Ebay deals easier. www.savedsearchpro.com/
• Shoposphere* - Create & share pick lists. shopping.yahoo.com/shoposphere/
• Site flavored Google* - Tailor adwords to your site. www.google.com/services/siteflavored.html
• Sofortpreis - Mobile shopping assistent. www.sofortpreis.de/
• Souki~ - Local shop search. www.souki.com/
• Spymedia - Publish & sell news photos. www.spymedia.com/
• Stylehive - Get recommendations fitting your product interests. www.shopify.com/
• Tenbills - Design & buy your T. www.tenbills.com/
• Thandora - Tag based search in yellow pages. www.thandora.com/tagit.do/
• Tictap - Price comparison for mobile. www.tictap.com/
• Tnook - Build, manage & trade your collections. www.tnook.com/
• Wazima - Coupon aggregator. www.wazima.com/
• Web20milliondollarhomepage - Pixel ads. www.web20milliondollarhomepage.com/
• Wists - Social shopping. www.wists.com/
• Wuraweb - Find local prices & credentials. www.wuraweb.com/
• Yelp - Find, review & discuss local restaurants etc. www.yelp.com/
• Yub - Meet, hang & get discounts in shopping mall. www.yub.com/mall/
• Zazzle - Design, sell & buy custom goods. www.zazzle.com/
• Zillow - Get your home valuated (map mash-up). www.zillow.com/
• Zipingo - Find local business based on community input. www.zipingo.com/

ECONOMY 2.0

• Aidpage - People help people. www.aidpage.com/
• Associatedcontent - Produce & publish content, get paid. www.associatedcontent.com/
• Billmonk - Manage debts. https://www.billmonk.com/
• Castingwords - Get your podcasts transcribed. castingwords.com/
• Couchsurfing* - Home swapping & holiday dating. www.couchsurfing.com/
• Daylo - Contribute to local yellow pages. daylo.com/
• Democracy2.0* - Consumers/Citizens unite! d2.stevemagruder.com/hub.php
• Donorschoose - Donate to schools. www.donorschoose.org/
• Elevatorpitch - Upload, read & rate pitches. www.yourelevatorpitch.com/
• Fundable - Pledge for funding. www.fundable.org/
• Gather - Share passions & get paid. gather.com/
• Givebobadollar - Begging. www.givebobadollar.com/
• Givemeaning - Give or take fundraising community. www.givemeaning.com/
• Givezilla - Create fundraising storefront. www.givezilla.com/
• Google answers - Get your questions answered for money. answers.google.com/answers/
• Ikarma - Document & promote your reputation. ikarma.com/
• Lendmonkey - Trade everything. www.lendmonkey.com/
• Listsomething - Share any list to buy & sell things, services. www.listsomething.com/
• Million dollar homepage* - Buy pixels to finance study. www.milliondollarhomepage.com/
• Mturk - Complete simple tasks & get paid. www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome/
• Myfreelanceauction - Buy or sell web services. myfreelanceauction.com/
• Oolsi - Share links to free things. www.oolsi.com/
• Prosper - P2P lending. www.prosper.com/
• Rawsugar - Social bookmarking directory & revenue sharing. www.rawsugar.com/
• Secondlifeboutique - Buy real things with virtuaa money. slboutique.com/
• Smarkets - Stock markets for products. www.smarkets.net/
• Smashmyviper - Buy pixels to destroy car. www.smashmyviper.com/
• Stuffopolis - Keep track of things you lend or borrow. www.stuffopolis.com/
• Swabba - Online garage sale (German). www.swabba.de/
• Zopa - P2P banking services. www.zopa.com/

E-LEARNING 2.0

• Elgg - Open source e-learning software. elgg.org/
• Nuvvo - On demand elearning. www.nuvvo.com/
• Medical Portal. www.medchecker.com/

EMAIL 2.0

• Dropsend - Email large files. www.dropsend.com/
• Mail2RSS - Inmail2RSS. www.mail2rss.org/
• Myemail - Check email anywhere. myemail.com/
• Newsletterarchive* - Store & share your newsletters. www.newsletterarchive.org/
• Onesens - Send teasing webmail messages. www.onesens.com/
• Quickmail - Email2RSS. quickmail.johanfitie.com/
• Sendspace - Email large files. www.sendspace.com/
• Tempinbox - Receive inmail anonymously. www.tempinbox.com/
• Trustmymail - Spam filter based on your circle of contacts. www.trustmymail.com/
• Yousendit - Email large files. www.yousendit.com/
• Irows - Web based spreadsheet. www.irows.com/
• Numbler - Excel spreadsheet online. numbler.com/
• Numsum - Collaborate online on spreadsheets. numsum.com/
• Sundera - Collaborate online on spreadsheets. www.sundera.com/

FILESHARING 2.0

• Bittorrent - Share files & bandwidth. www.bittorrent.com/
• Civilnetizen - File swapping. www.civilnetizen.com/
• Lphanr - Multi compatible P2P file sharing. www.lphant.com/

FINANCIALS 2.0

• Blinksale - Web-based invoicing. www.blinksale.com/
• Dimewise - Manage your finances. www.dimewise.com/
• Frugalbetty - Manage your spendings. frugalbetty.com/
• Ioweyou - Manage loans & shared expenses. www.ioweyou.co.uk/
• Networthiq - Track, share & compare your net worth. www.networthiq.com/
• Secondsite - Web-based invoicing. www.secondsite.biz/
• Secondssite. Finance tools. www.secondsite.biz/

Read the Part 2 of this list here: Web 2.0’s Top 1,000 List - Everything 2.0 - Part 2

Read the Part 3 of this list here: Web 2.0’s Top 1,000 List - Everything 2.0 - Part 3

“We are taking open to a whole other place,” Balogh said. “We are rewiring Yahoo from the inside out with a developer platform that will open up the assets of Yahoo in a way never done before, making the consumer experience social throughout and provide hooks to developers.” He noted that Yahoo has 10 billion latent connections across its properties, such as mail, messenger and fantasy sports.

Balogh discussed the technical architecture–known as YOS, or Yahoo Open Strategy–including an application platform that will allow developers to create apps for consumers to keep their data protected and to chose what data to share and with whom. In addition, Yahoo will unify all profiles for users and developers, which will allow the company to leverage the 10 billion relations and 500 million users to create the social graph of relationships and to manage the event stream.

“We are not creating another social network. We will rewire the entire experience to make it social. We don’t think of social as a destination but as a dimension,” Balogh said. Along with Google and MySpace, Yahoo is a member of the OpenSocial Foundation, which is developing a specification for building social applications.

The underpinnings of Yahoo’s effort include development tools, an application platform, a social platform that unifies all profiles throughout Yahoo (again, like Facebook or MySpace, this is a social graph that lets users make connections and view events) and the total rewiring of properties to make all this possible.

Yahoo’s new architecture, called YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) proves that the Internet is made of tubes (Source: Yahoo)

The heady plans are smart but, quite likely, come too late.

I left Twitter just over two weeks ago. It’s an amicable change; Twitter’s architecture is at a good point for them to pursue stability and growth, and I’m looking forward to a new challenge after nearly three years of working with Odeo and Twitter. I will likely continue as an advisor to Twitter. I can’t yet talk about the specifics of my decision, but I am moving to the UK so that my partner can pursue her career. We’re Canadian and her visa makes it impossible for her to work in the US, and at the same time there are rich web communities emerging outside of the Bay Area.

In the hothouse world of tech blogging, Twitter is becoming as well-known for its outages as for the service itself, so no doubt there will be a lot of dot-connecting here. But can the failures be all pinned down to one person? I am not sure.

But it is a good chance for Twitter to make up lost ground. Else, there are many waiting just round the corner.

Shel Israel interviews Twitter’s co-founders. The video offers some interesting insights into how people are using the service. Twitter can be described as, “a social utility which connects with people who they already know, or are interested in”.

Of all the emerging tools of social media, Twitter is the most conversational. The mobile SMS service allows people to chat in compact bite sized 140-character blocks. Some use it 20-30 times or more per day and some even have thousands of followers. But the average user only posts three times a day and chats only with a few friends.

Some businesses are also using Twitter too. For example, employees are using Twitter to communicate and share their information. Other businesses, are using the service to keep in touch with their customers, or using it for customer support.

Interestingly, Twitter’s global traffic can be broken down into four segments:

Web, SMS, Instant Messaging (IM) and API usage

Usage of Twitter’s API is 20 times than that of the Twitter.com web service.

The pie chart below, show’s Twitter’s International Web traffic usage.

NB. Remember this is just web traffic. It doesn’t include any of the other popular ways that people use Twitter. For example, this figure does not include: m.twitter.com, and API applications such as Twhirl and Twitterrific.

Interestingly, 60% of Twitter users are non US users and of that 39% are Japanese! Spain and the UK are also strong Twitter users. Good Stuff!

Teaser: GNTV’s Shel Israel talks with Twitter founders about how the company got started, who uses the popular service and how. They examine business models and how business is starting to use the mobile SMS service.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, Shel Israel, Biz Stone, Twitter Interview

Another interesting video on Twitter: Twitter in Plain English

GMP hopes the move will help it raise public awareness of local incidents and facilitate the exchange of information on crime. GMP is the first police force in the UK to use the site in this way.

According to Worklight Inc, a Web 2.0 security specialist, GMP’s use of Facebook is in line with an increasing trend for organisations to use social network sites as business tools. However, Worklight also highlights the need for tight control in order to eliminate security risks. WorkLight claims its technology allows organisations to use Web 2.0 consumer services, including Facebook, for business purposes, without the attendant security risks.

Source:Techwatch UK

SixApart launched BlogIt by TypePad last night, a Facebook app that lets you post to SixApart blogs and other blogging software like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr, to your Facebook Newsfeed and to Twitter all from one place. It’s the kind of app that makes Facebook all the closer to being a one stop social media experience.

The service could be more fully developed but it’s certainly in the lead compared to other services aiming to do the same thing. A close look at the details leads us to believe that this could be a much bigger move than it might seem to be. Here’s a few reasons why we believe it’s so interesting.

SixApart is a leading company in the field of social graph experimentation and the most outspoken participating company willing to be critical of some of Google’s efforts like OpenSocial.

Read more here

The Los Angeles Times (4/8, Quinn, Menn, 881K) reports, “By buying Snocap, Imeem, which owns a social-networking site that lets users listen to free music and watch videos, signaled its intention to offer new ways to search, discover and sample digital media. Analysts said it also might mean the firm will start selling music and other content.” Imeem “links to Apple Inc.’s iTunes store and Amazon.com Inc.’s MP3 store, which pay fees to the social network. But by owning Snocap, whose technology it began to use last year, Imeem could be setting the stage for selling music and other digital media, said Mike McGuire, an analyst with Gartner Inc. Imeem declined to comment on retail plans. ‘They are going to want to enable some direct selling,’ McGuire said. ‘That’s a natural extension of the platform.’”

Erick Schonfeld wrote at TechCrunch (4/7), “The Snocap registry is a key part of imeem’s APIs, which allow third-party developers to build their own music apps on imeem.” He noted that industry insiders “still question whether imeem can make any money based on its generous deals with the music labels, but its service is resonating with consumers. According to comScore, imeem attracted 19 million unique visitors worldwide in February. The bet here is that perhaps at high enough volume, it can start to break even.”

BetaNews (4/7, Conneally) reported, “After Snocap saw a major downsizing, laying off 60% of its workforce, the company made it known it was pursuing a sale. Four months later, reports started to circulate that social network for artists and musicians imeem had entered into an acquisition of the suffering company.” The piece noted, “Imeem is a member of Google’s OpenSocial network along with MySpace, so developments in that stratum may finally begin for imeem, which recently opened its API, Imeem Media Platform, opening up the site’s library of songs, videos and photos to developers.”

Rafat Ali wrote at paidContent.org (4/7) that Snocap “had changed tracks a few times: started a music ID/registry for P2P distribution, and when the industry didn’t take off, moved to a widget-based model to sell music through social networking sites and blogs. Meanwhile, Fanning has moved on, as he usually does after stirring the pot, and has launched Rupture, a virtual social community for online gamers.”

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, social networking

Facebook is close to putting an uncomfortable and embarrassing legal episode behind it.

ConnectU founders Tyler Winklevoss, left, and Cameron Winklevoss, right, and Divya Narendra. (Photo: Charles Krupa/Associated Press)

A person briefed on the status of dueling lawsuits between Facebook and the competing site ConnectU said on Sunday that Facebook was finalizing a settlement with the founders of ConnectU — brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their colleague, Divya Narendra.

The ConnectU founders were accusing Mark Zuckerberg and the original crew behind Facebook of pilfering their profitable idea back in 2003, when they were all Harvard students. Facebook had filed a countersuit, accusing ConnectU of unfair business practices.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. In the meantime, all motions in the case against ConnectU have been terminated.

ConnectU did not immediately respond to an e-mail message requesting comment. A California federal judge had ordered the parties into mediation last year.

The ConnectU founders asserted that they hired Mr. Zuckerberg, then a sophomore at Harvard, in 2003 to help create a campus-wide dating site called Harvard Connection. They say that he stalled on the project for months while nurturing his own idea and ultimately starting TheFacebook.com. The case cast doubts on Mr. Zuckerberg’s ingenuity, and discovery efforts turned up some embarrassing material — like his diary. Facebook clearly needed to make the suit go away before a widely expected initial public offering that could come as early as next year.

A Facebook spokeswoman said the company would not comment on legal matters. But the person briefed on the status of the negotiations said motions to dismiss the cases were expected to be filed “within weeks.”

Source: NYT