Various social networking site users can now freely share content

A new deal between social networking sites such as Twitter, eBay, Photobucket, MySpace and Yahoo! will mean that any user having a MySpace profile can now easily share content with any of the web sites. That includes popular elements, such as photos, public profile information, video, friends’ lists, and of course, text.

MySpace claims that their new initiative ‘throws open the doors to traditionally closed and guarded networks by putting the users in the driver’s seat and in charge of their data as well as web identity’. Chief operating officer Amit Kapur stated:

This is an unprecedented move for further socialising the Web and empowering users to be in control of their online content and personal data.

At the moment eBay, Photobucket, Twitter and Yahoo! have signed up, but Mr DeWolfe states that he looks forward to other web sites coming on board, comprising ‘mom and pop’ sites and their main rival, Facebook.

This project is going to be open to any web site out there that wishes to work with us. We are also happy to work with Facebook if they wish to join up with our effort.

A string of defections from Google to Facebook

A string of senior Google staff have left the company in last few months to join Facebook. This might just be a coincidence, albeit a worrying one for the search engine giant. Elliot Schrage, formerly with Google, has just joined Facebook to take up a crucial position as the global communications & public affairs head. His role will be critical to the business strategy of the popular social networking site.

Mr Schrage is not the only high-profile person who has left the search engine giant to join Facebook. Those who have jumped ship to Facebook from Google in the last few months comprise leading executives like Sheryl Sandberg, now the network’s chief operating officer. Sheryl was Google’s vice president of global sales.

Other staffers from Google to join Facebook are Ethan Beard, a former director of social media (now director of business development) and Ben Ling, now director of platform product marketing. Gideon Yu was formerly the chief financial officer at YouTube. He left shortly after Google acquired it (in 2006) and has also moved to Facebook to become the CFO there. The networking firm has also managed to poach Josef Desimone, a Google executive chief, apart from many other senior engineers and managers in recent months.

MySpace will serve as a ‘virtual audition city’ and conduct auditions online

The popular social networking site MySpace has long been known as a home for budding and established musicians as well as many other performers. All of them who use the networking site as a means of reaching out to fans, have something more to look forward to. Now they are going to reach a totally different audience, the judges of ‘America’s Got Talent’.

MySpace, NBC and FremantleMedia are getting ready to go ahead with a partnership, which will treat the popular social network as a ‘virtual audition city’ for the upcoming season of the summer reality show.

The producers of the show have already held auditions in Orlando, Fla, Nashville and other cities. Now they are all set to conduct auditions online as well. One episode of this variety show will be dedicated to the submissions of users of MySpace.com.

People are uploading music videos, stunts and tricks to MySpace all the time.

According to MySpace’s vice president for marketing & content development, Josh Brooks. The partnership will now tap into the talent, which exists online for NBC, added the network’s director of digital promotion strategies, Jared Goldsmith.

Industry leaders push for home media networks

Chip and electronics makers Intel, Infineon, Texas Instruments and Panasonic have formed an alliance for promoting home networks for movies, pictures and music using domestic wiring. The four top chip and electronics makers will also help market and test a standard for wiring together computers, entertainment systems and TVs through electricity, phone and coaxial cable lines, which already exist in most homes.

The chip and electronics makers hope that the first products utilising the new standard will hit the market in about a year’s time. Consumer electronics and computer manufacturers have long talked of the digital home concept, in which entertainment appliances and computers are linked and then typically controlled from the computer, making it easier to share digital media content between various devices. However, a lack of common standards between makers of these devices has hampered progress.

There already exists a common wireless standard for linking home devices using Wi-Fi. Wired networks do have the advantage of being more stable as well as having more capacity, plus the building blocks for the infrastructure already exist in a majority of homes.

Intel’s Matt Theall, president of the new HomeGrid Forum, stated:

Powerline is the world’s most ubiquitous technology. There is a huge market potentially for this kind of technology, since it can be embedded in TVs, PCs, DVD players, and speakers - any home entertainment device.

Businesses to spend $5 billion on social networking tools by 2013, claims a report

Web 2.0 is all set to be embraced by Enterprise 2.0 as businesses get ready to spend almost $5 billion on social networking tools by 2013. Over half of the firms in Europe view Web 2.0 as a priority for the coming year, states a report. The news comes just as San Francisco hosts the Web 2.0 conference on the next generation of the web.

This is where we perceive the future of the web. The firms making announcements here are indeed building that future.

Jennifer Pahlka, conference co-chair.

Forrester, the research firm that conducted the Web 2.0 survey, thinks that the technologies being developed and to be unveiled in the near future stand for ‘a fundamentally new way’ for business firms to communicate with customers and employees.

The report also found that consumer giants like General Motors, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance, Wells Fargo Bank and McDonald’s will drive much of this evolution. They have already embraced tools, such as RSS feeds, podcasting, blogs and social networking. Analysts are unanimous on the fact that a majority of the firms in North America and Europe regard Web 2.0 as a priority in 2008.