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MySpace will open its doors to software developers allowing them to create games and media-sharing applications for the popular social network, reports the BBC.

MySpace will formally launch its “Developer Platform” next Tuesday but is already allowing people to sign up. The tools have been developed with Google and will allow programmers to create programs similar to those used by millions on rival site Facebook.

Facebook opened up its site to outside developers last year. It has since had great success, with nearly 15,000 applications written for the site.

These include photo-sharing and music recommendation tools as well as games such as scrabble. However, despite its popularity, Facebook still lags behind MySpace in terms of overall users. MySpace has around 200 million registered users, compared to 63 million who use Facebook.

Last October MySpace announced that it would join OpenSocial, Google’s platform designed to allow developers to build applications that will work on any website.

Other networks such as Bebo, LinkedIn and Orkut already use the tools.

The tools, available from 5 February, will allow developers to build applications that make use of MySpace member profile information and their connections with other users.More at BBC News.

Dec 25, `07 — Slashdot reports on Google linking up Google Reader with Google Talk to make shared items visible to your contacts on Google Talk.

“One week ago Google Reader’s team decided to begin showing your private data to all your GMail contacts. No need to opt-in, NO way to opt-out. Complaints haven’t been answered. Some users share their problems, including one family who says they won’t be able to enjoy this Christmas because of this ‘feature.’ Will Google start doing this with all their products? You can browse the thread in Google Groups.”

Comments from Google Groups

User ‘banzaimonkey’ writes:
“I think the basic mistake here, as Modulo has noted, is that the people on my contact list are not necessarily my “friends”. I have business contacts, school contacts, family contacts, etc., and not only do I not really have any interest in seeing all of their feed information, I don’t want them seeing mine either. This is a major privacy problem.”

User ‘Paul Russell’ writes:
“Using my Gmail contacts as a friends list is a dangerous thing. Especially because a lot of the addresses in there were added automatically when people emailed me. I understand that sharing is a public activity, but to date Google reader shares were pseudo private by obscurity. In reality the only people that were going to see my share were people I told about it. I don’t like the idea of an opt out only mechanism. Facebook just took a bath on this concept. Granted Beacon was a complete disaster, but I think the lesson to be learned is when you change personal sharing to become more public it should be an opt in process.”

Chrix Finne at Official Google Reader Blog invites your feedback on Google Reader features here at Google Groups.

Dec 24, `07 — Badoo, a social networking website which offers users the chance to pay to be popular while banning all advertising, is set to launch into an increasingly crowded UK market, says Mark Sweney of Guardian Unlimited.

Sweney further writes, “At the moment, Badoo is a relatively unknown web brand. However, Google recently rated it number two on its “fastest rising” list - behind the iPhone and ahead of Facebook - in its annual report based on the most popular web searches.

The fledgling company positions itself as a “natural evolution of existing social network and blogging sites”.

Badoo’s unusual business model works against the received wisdom of the primarily advertising-led efforts of established firms such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo.

“We wanted to be advertising free in order to have a ‘clean’ site so our users weren’t subject to adverts which we know can be a turnoff,” said Neil Bryant, the managing director of Badoo.” More at Guardian Unlimited.

SAN JOSE, Calif — Dec 18, `07 — Pressured by a lawsuit, social networking giant Facebook will adopt new measures to prevent its 58 million members from sending text messages to recycled cell phone numbers, the AP reports.

The lawsuit filed by Lindsey Abrams of Patriot, Ind., said she received text messages with explicit comments and other upsetting content — and had to pay 10 cents each time. Facebook received a share of the fee, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, which Abrams’s lawyers had hoped would be certified as a class action, Abrams started getting the unsolicited messages shortly after she got a new mobile number from Verizon in November 2006.

Her suit alleged thousands of other unauthorized text messages had been sent nationwide to other recycled phone numbers, including some used by young children.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, Facebook agreed to make it easier for recipients of text messages to block future messages originating from the social network, and also will work more closely with mobile phone carriers to monitor the lists of recycled numbers and reduce the frequency of unwanted text messages. More at AP.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Dec 07, ‘07 — Syrian authorities have blocked Facebook, the popular Internet hangout, over what seems to be fears of Israeli “infiltration” of Syrian social networks on the Net, according to residents and media reports, the Associated Press reports.

Residents of Damascus said that they have not been able to enter Facebook for more than two weeks. An Associated Press reporter got a blank page when he tried to open Facebook’s home page Friday from the Syrian capital.

Lebanon’s daily As-Safir reported that Facebook was blocked on Nov. 18. It said the authorities took the step because Israelis have been entering Syria-based groups.

Human rights groups have regularly criticized Syrian authorities for blocking opposition sites and Internet sites critical of President Bashar Assad’s government.

Former President Hafez Assad’s death in 2000 after three decades of authoritarian rule raised hopes of a freer society under his British-educated son and successor.

But the younger Assad cracked down on political opponents and human rights activists, putting many of them in jail. More at IHT.

San Francisco, Calif — Dec 05, ‘07 — Beacon, the online advertising system that was supposed to light Facebook’s way to riches, has created such a dark storm of controversy that Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg today told users they could turn it off.

The dramatic reversal in the face of huge public outcry is an attempt to restore the company’s battered image with its more than 55 million users and the marketers trying to reach them.

Excerpts from Mark Zuckerberg’s ‘Thoughts on Beacon’ on The Facebook Blog

About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.

While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared.

But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends.

It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.

People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.

More at The Facebook Blog.

San Francisco, CA — Nov 29, ‘07  — Seeking to keep the peace in its popular online hangout, Facebook has overhauled a new advertising system that sparked privacy complaints by turning its users into marketing tools for other companies, the AP is reporting.

The AP further reports, “Under the changes outlined late Thursday, Facebook’s 55 million users will be given greater control over whether they want to participate in a three-week-old program that circulates potentially sensitive information about their online purchases and other activities.

Facebook provided two different opportunities to block the details from being shared, but many users said they never saw the “opt-out” notices before they disappeared from the screen.

With the reforms, Facebook promised its users will now have to give their explicit consent, or “opt-in,” before any information is passed along.

The concessions were made after more than 50,000 Facebook users signed an online petition blasting the system, called “Beacon,” as a galling intrusion that put the Palo Alto-based startup’s pursuit of profit ahead of its members’ privacy interests.

More than 40 different Web sites, including Fandango.com, Overstock.com and Blockbuster.com, had embedded Beacon in their pages to track transactions made by Facebook users.” More at AP.

NEW YORK — News Corp’s Internet division plans to launch an online network to sell advertising across Rupert Murdoch’s sprawling empire and even to other media companies as early as the first half of next year, reports Reuters.

Reuters further reports, “Fox Interactive Media (FIM) President Peter Levinsohn told the Reuters Media Summit in New York on Monday, Nov 26, that the network, internally dubbed “FIM Serve,” is the subject of discussion across the company after first being built for its MySpace online social network.

“It could happen as early as the first half of next year,” he said. “We’re ready to go … we’re starting to have conversations outside now.”

The launch of a broader ad network follows a frenzied buying spree of privately held ad networks by Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner’s AOL and Google to dominate the fastest-growing segment of the global advertising industry.

He noted that the ad network focuses on graphical display advertising and would not conflict with the company’s partnership with Google, which provides search listings.

The seeds of News Corp’s online ad push come from its work to better target MySpace users, a project which it launched over the summer called HyperTargeting. The technology mines the profiles of its 110 million global users to bring them ads more relevant to their interests.

But across the Internet, subjecting users to more marketing has drawn the ire of privacy advocates. Rival social network Facebook faced a backlash from thousands of users after it allowed marketers to place ads on user pages based on products they bought online. More at Reuters.

NEW YORK — Nov 26, ‘07 — International Herald Tribune is reporting on ABC News joining hands with popular social networking site, Facebook.

“ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership - the site’s first with a news organization - that allows Facebook members to follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “US Politics” category.

To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations plan to announce Monday that they are jointly playing host to Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the state’s primary elections.

The announcements are another sign that news organizations are looking to capitalize on the potential power of Facebook, which began as a database of college friendships, and other social networking sites.

Media companies like The New York Times, which owns the International Herald Tribune, and The Washington Post have produced program applications on Facebook and some newspapers, magazines and television stations have recently invited users to join fan pages. But ABC’s new relationship is intended to be deeper.

The collaboration between ABC News and Facebook started quietly several weeks ago, with personal pages of network reporters like Rick Klein, the author of ABC’s widely read political newsletter The Note, and Sunlen Miller, who has been following the Barack Obama campaign.

For ABC News, the collaboration puts political content on a site with 56 million active users. For Facebook, it adds an authoritative source and fresh content for the site’s political section.” More at IHT.

DARDENNE PRAIRIE, Missouri — For nearly a year, the families living along Waterford Crystal Drive in this bedroom community northwest of St. Louis kept the secret about the boy Megan Meyer met in September 2006 on the social-networking site MySpace.He called himself Josh Evans, and he and Meier, 13, struck up an online friendship that lasted for weeks. The boy then abruptly turned on Meier and ended it. Meier, who previously battled depression, committed suicide that night.

The secret was revealed six weeks later: Neighbor mother Lori Drew had pretended to be 16-year-old “Josh” to gain the trust of Meier, who had been fighting with Drew’s daughter, according to police records and Meier’s parents.

After their daughter’s death, Tina and Ron Meier begged other neighbors to keep the story private. Let the local police and the FBI conduct their investigations in privacy, they pleaded. But after waiting for criminal charges to be filed against Drew, neighbors learned that local and federal prosecutors could not find a statute applicable to the case.

The community’s patience dried up. Furious neighbors — and in the wake of recent media reports, an outraged public — are taking matters into their own hands. In an outburst of virtual vigilantism, readers of blogs listed the Drews’ home address, personal phone numbers, e-mail addresses and photographs of the couple.

Cyberbullying has become an increasingly creepy reality, where the anonymity of video games, message boards and other online forums offer an outlet for taunts. Yet drawing the line between conduct that is illegal and constitutionally protected free speech can be difficult.

On Wednesday, Nov 21, City officials unanimously passed a measure making online harassment a crime, days after learning that a 13-year-old girl killed herself last year after receiving cruel messages on the Internet.

The six-member Board of Aldermen made Internet harassment a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a $500 fine and 90 days in jail. Mayor Pam Fogarty said the city had proposed the measure after learning about Megan Meier’s death.

“It is our hope that by supporting one of our own in Dardenne Prairie, we can do our part to ensure this type of harassing behavior never happens again, anywhere,” Fogarty said, adding, “after all, harassment is harassment regardless of the mechanism or tool.”

The four-page measure defines both harassment and cyber-harassment, essentially making it illegal to engage in a pattern of conduct that would cause a reasonable person to suffer “substantial emotional distress,” or for an adult to contact a child under 18 in a communication causing a reasonable parent to fear for the child’s well-being.

City attorney John Young said constitutionally protected activity would be exempt. The measure would apply when one of the people communicating was in Dardenne Prairie.

City officials also passed a resolution encouraging state and federal officials to outlaw cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking. A state lawmaker has questioned how state law could be altered without running afoul of First Amendment constitutional issues guaranteeing freedom of speech.

Dardenne Prairie is an upper-middle-class enclave of about 7,400 people 35 miles northwest of St. Louis. Over the years, the flat expanse of farmland has been taken over by subdivisions, bistros and strip-mall cafes.

Targeted online advertising is set to face increased scrutiny from European Union regulators concerned about invasion of privacy, threatening the growth of a potentially big online revenue-booster for media companies. Reports, Astrid Wendlandt of Reuters.

“This is a very hot topic that can be expected to be part of our work programme next year,” Gabriele Loewnau, a senior legal adviser for the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, said on Friday, Nov 23. The German commissioner currently heads the European Union’s advisory body on data protection matters, the so-called Article 29 Working Party.

When an individual makes an online search or purchase, the computer can remember the entry through so-called cookies and pass on the information to advertisers.

Brussels’ heightened awareness comes as more than 13,000 Facebook users have signed a petition protesting against the networking site’s new advertising system which alerts members of friends’ purchases online. Members can opt for their transactions to be kept private but critics say the option is easily missed.

Some Facebook members have even threatened to leave, complaining the new system allowed their friends to find out what they were planning to give them for Christmas. The Facebook petition was led by the civic action group MoveOn.org.

FAST GROWING

Online advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the ad industry, gaining more than 25 percent a year, or more than five times the recent average annual growth all media included.

“Online sites have to make sure they are not intruding people’s privacy, otherwise targeted advertising will backfire,” said Vincent Bonneau from French telecoms research group Idate. More at Reuters.

Some users of the online hangout Facebook are complaining that its two-week-old marketing program is publicizing their purchases for friends to see.

Those users say they never noticed a small box that appears on a corner of their Web browsers following transactions at Fandango, Overstock and other online retailers. The box alerts users that information is about to be shared with Facebook unless they click on “No Thanks.” It disappears after about 20 seconds, after which consent is assumed.

Users are given a second notice the next time they log on to Facebook, but they can easily miss it if they quickly click away to visit a friend’s page or check e-mail.

“People should be given much more of a notice, much more of an alert,” said Matthew Helfgott, 20, a college student who discovered his girlfriend just bought him black leather gloves from Overstock for Hanukkah. “She said she had no idea (information would be shared). She said it invaded her privacy.”

The new program lets companies tap ongoing conversations by alerting users about friends’ activities through the feeds. About 40 Web sites have decided to embed a free tool from Facebook, known as a Beacon, to enable the marketing feeds.

The idea is that if users see a friend buy or do something, they’d take that action as an endorsement for a movie, a band or a soft drink. But it also raises privacy concerns.

Users are able to decline sharing on a site-by-site basis, but can’t withdraw from the program entirely.Liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org formed a protest group Tuesday and had more than 6,000 members by Wednesday. The group is calling on Facebook to stop revealing online purchases and letting companies use names for endorsements without “explicit permission.”

Facebook user Nate Weiner, 23, said he uses a tool for the Firefox Web browser called BlockSite, which he says prevents sites from sending data to Facebook.

“What if you bought a book on Amazon called ‘Coping with AIDS’ and that got published to every single one of your friends?” he said. More at AP.

Related Article:  Young Warned Over Social Websites

BBC News is reporting on The Information Commissioner’s Office in UK warning young people about the online footprint they leave on social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook.

BBC News further writes, “Millions of young people could damage their future careers with the details about themselves they post on social networking websites, a watchdog warns.

The Information Commissioner’s Office found more than half of those asked made most of their information public.

Some 71% of 2,000 14 to 21-year-olds said they would not want colleges or employers to do a web search on them before they had removed some material.The commission said the young needed to be aware of their electronic footprint.

The ICO also said young people could be putting themselves at risk of identity fraud because of the material they post on social networks such as Facebook and MySpace.

ICO deputy commissioner David Smith said: “Many young people are posting content online without thinking about the electronic footprint they leave behind.

“The cost to a person’s future can be very high if something undesirable is found by the increasing number of education institutions and employers using the internet as a tool to vet potential students or employees.”

“We have to help teenagers wise up to every aspect of the internet age they’re living in. It may be fun but unfortunately it is not the safe space many think it is.”" More at BBCNews, ICO.gov.uk

New York, NY – Nov 06, ‘07 /PRNewswire/ — Zagat Survey today announced the launch of a business application on Facebook Platform that enables restaurants and nightlife hotspots with Facebook Pages to add a Zagat e-Decal to their Business Profile pages. The application will link to a snapshot of the Zagat Review of the business, including signature Zagat ratings and reviews. Facebook Pages allow users to interact and affiliate with businesses and organizations in the same way they interact with other user profiles.

The initial Zagat Facebook Business Application will be available to all Zagat-rated restaurants and nightlife businesses (bars, clubs and lounges) in markets that Zagat currently surveys. Consumers will be able to access the ratings and reviews of these businesses, thereby providing trusted information for those making decisions for a night out on the town. Users can also go to any businesses Facebook Page and support it as a fan, enabling them to share information about that business with their friends and act as a trusted personal referral.

“This platform is a logical next step in expanding our digital portfolio,” said Nina Zagat, Co-founder of Zagat Survey. “The Zagat Survey Facebook application is yet another avenue we offer our customers to access our ratings and reviews via the platforms and devices that best suit their needs.”

Zagat Survey’s other digital products include its website ZAGAT.com, a mobile website for web-enabled cell phones called ZAGAT.mobi and a downloadable software for smartphones called ZAGAT TO GO. More at PRNewsWire.

On the heels of MySpace, Facebook unveils Facebook Ads with  60 Leading Consumer and Internet Brands Announce Participation in New Ad System.

New York, NY — Facebook Social Advertising Event — Nov 06, 2007 – Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg today introduced Facebook Ads, an ad system for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. Through Facebook Ads, these users can now learn about new businesses, brands and products through the trusted referrals of their friends.

“Facebook Ads represent a completely new way of advertising online,” Zuckerberg told an audience of more than 250 marketing and advertising executives in New York. “For the last hundred years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation. And they’re going to do this by using the social graph in the same way our users do.”

The keynote opened the Facebook Social Advertising event, which also featured senior executives from landmark partners including Blockbuster, CBS, Chase, The Coca-Cola Company, Microsoft, Sony Pictures Television and Verizon Wireless. More than 60 major consumer and Internet brand partners were highlighted at the launch of Facebook Ads.

Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

More than 100,000 Facebook Pages Launch Today
Zuckerberg detailed how Facebook Pages allows users to interact and affiliate with businesses and organizations in the same way they interact with other Facebook user profiles. More than 100,000 new Facebook Pages launched today covering the world’s largest brands, local businesses, organizations and bands.

Distribution through the Social Graph
Advertising messages will gain distribution through what Facebook has termed the “social graph,” the network of real connections through which people communicate and share information. When people engage with a business’ Facebook Page, that action will spread information about that business through the social graph.

Unique Ads with Social Actions
“Social actions are powerful because they act as trusted referrals and reinforce the fact that people influence people,” said Zuckerberg. “It’s no longer just about messages that are broadcasted out by companies, but increasingly about information that is shared between friends. So we set out to use these social actions to build a new kind of ad system.” More at Facebook.

ROCHESTER, NY–BUSINESS WIRE–Nov 05, ‘07–According to the latest Harris Poll, the number of adults who are online at home, in the office, at school, library or other locations continues to grow at a steady rate. In the past year, the number of online users has reached an estimated 178 million, a ten percent increase.

In research among 2,062 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone in July and October, 2007, Harris Interactive found that 79 percent of adults are now online. This is a steady rise over the past few years, from 77 percent in February/April 2006, 74 percent in February/April 2005, 66 percent in the spring of 2002, 64 percent in 2001 and 57 percent in Spring of 2000. When Harris Interactive first began to track Internet use in 1995, only nine percent of adults reported they went online.

The amount of time that people are spending online has also risen. The average number of hours per week that people are spending online is now at 11 hours, up from 9 hours last year and 8 hours in 2005.

Internet Access Increases at Home and at Work

The proportion of adults who are now online at home has risen to 72 percent, up from 70 percent in 2006 and 66 percent in the spring of 2005. The percentage of those online at work has also risen, now at 37 percent, and up from 35 percent in 2006. The largest increase is among those adults who are online at a location other than their home or work as this has risen from 22 percent in 2006 to 31 percent today. It appears people who do not have access at home or work are increasingly turning to other outlets to get online. More at BusinessWire.

New York, NY — Nov 05, ‘07 –The popular online hangout MySpace is expanding its program for letting advertisers target their pitches using personal details on users’ profile pages.

Since July, MySpace has allowed more than 50 leading advertisers, including Procter & Gamble Co., Ford Motor Co. and Yum Brands Inc.’s Taco Bell chain, to target any of 10 interest groups, such as movies, travel and auto.

In the program’s second phase, launching Monday, MySpace is adding an 11th category, television, along with hundreds of subcategories, such as horror movies. Even that is subdivided into “teen screams,” “satanic stories,” “vampires” and others.

Like other social-networking sites, MySpace offers a mix of messaging tools to encourage its visitors to expand their circles of friends. Central to it are personal profile pages where users can post photos and video clips, blast messages to friends and have visitors leave comments.

But targeting can also backfire if users believe their personal expressions are being misused.

When MySpace’s chief rival, Facebook, introduced a feature last year that allows users to more easily track changes their friends make to profiles, many users denounced it as stalking and threatened protests and boycotts. Facebook had to quickly apologize and agree to let users turn off the feature so that others can’t easily see what they do. Facebook was scheduled to announce its own ad program Tuesday, though officials refused to discuss its nature.

Adam Bain, executive vice president for products and technology at Fox Interactive, said the company spent a year developing its program and created user panels to study privacy and other issues. “The thing we heard from them is they wanted advertisements to be more contextually relevant to them,” Bain said. “If they have to live with ads, they want an ad to be engaging.”

Bain said MySpace only examines information users already make public in their profiles. For example, if a user indicates support for the Boston Red Sox, lists “Hoosiers” and other sports movies as favorites and posts a background image of surfing, that user would be a candidate for sports-related ads. That person may also write about guitars, so music-related ads might appear, too.

Bain said the company doesn’t use any personally identifiable information from user accounts, nor does it analyze what profiles users view (A user’s friends list, though, would be factored in because it is public). By year’s end, he said, users also would have a chance to decline targeting.

MySpace also is opening up the program to smaller advertisers through self-service tools. A jazz band, for instance, would be able to create a banner ad leading jazz lovers to the band’s MySpace profile page. (Links to external sites are not yet permitted using self-service.)

Google, which already has a deal to place those text-based ad links on MySpace, is now trying to bring that success to display ads, an area MySpace could try to challenge with the launch of its self-service targeting tools.

 Oct 31, ‘07 – Yahoo! announced on Tuesday it is adding media-playing features, large file transfers, new languages and other tools to its instant messaging service, Yahoo! Messenger. The move comes as a growing number of rivals — from AOL to social network sites like MySpace — boost their positions in the market for instant messaging services.

Yahoo! Messenger 9.0 launched as a beta and has added features similar to ones seen on social networks or media-sharing sites, including extra room to post a picture or other image next to contact names and the ability to share video or photos within a message screen. The service is adding languages from six new markets, including the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India and Vietnam, for a total of 25 international markets.

Yahoo! Messenger is one of the largest instant messaging service, with about 27.7 million users in September, up 19 percent from a year earlier, according to data from tracking firm comScore. AOL reported about 30.2 million users. Y! Messenger

Oct 30, ‘07 — The Associated Press is reporting on Google is setting up a distribution network for social networking applications, adding a new twist in the Internet search leader’s brewing rivalry with rapidly maturing startup Facebook.

Although Google confirmed its plans late Tuesday, its new social networking platform won’t be unveiled until later this week. On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.   

Google hopes to build a one-stop shop for software developers who create tools that make it easier to share music, pictures, video and other personal interests on social networking sites like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.com. The popularity of these applications, also known as “widgets,” has grown dramatically since Facebook opened its Web site to accommodate outside developers five months ago. 

Facebook now hosts more than 8,000 widgets, helping to boost its worldwide audience to about 50 million users and elevate its market value to $15 billion after Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in the Palo Alto-based company last week. More at AP

ALBANY, N.Y., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire/ — ReliefInsite today unveiled a new release of the ReliefInsite pain management diary built on Facebook Platform, a new way for companies and developers to integrate with the Facebook website. With more than 47 million active users, Facebook is the sixth-most trafficked website in the United States. 

ReliefInsite, which launched its web-based pain management system in August, has implemented a new release that makes both free and premium diaries available to users of Facebook. The company helps patients communicate better with their doctors by collecting essential medical details — such as pain location, intensity, and medications (premium diary only) — and automatically organizing these details into medical reports that patients can print and give their doctor or share on Facebook. 

Because pain is subjective, atient self-reporting plays a critical role in treating it. In this era of consumer-driven healthcare, Facebook provides a new and effective resource for people to take a more active role in their health, and for physicians and caregivers to receive timely, detailed and structured information that can help them to better diagnose and treat patients with pain. 

“We are extremely excited to be the first company to deliver a personal health record built on Facebook Platform,” said Fred Eberlein, CEO and founder of ReliefInsite. “Millions of individuals suffer from pain, so it’s wonderful to have this opportunity to offer our pain management tool to the millions of people who use Facebook every day.” More at ReliefInsite.

SAN FRANCISCO –October 24, ‘07– Microsoft agreed to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook Inc. that values the social-networking site at $15 billion, beating Google in a closely watched contest.

As part of the deal, the two companies expanded their existing advertising agreement. Microsoft, which previously handled Facebook’s U.S. ad sales, will now also sell the site’s international advertising.

“We are pleased to take our Microsoft partnership to the next level,” said Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s chief revenue officer, in a press release.

The Microsoft agreement comes after intense lobbying by Microsoft and Google for Facebook’s hand. In recent weeks, executives including Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer have courted the three-year-old Palo Alto, Calif., company, which this year expects a profit of $30 million on revenue of $150 million, according to people familiar with the company.

The deal is rooted in an online-advertising boom that has turned closely held Facebook into the newest Internet darling. In recent years, large advertisers that once focused their spending on television, newspapers and other traditional media have started shifting their spending to a host of Web sites. Google has built its fortunes on that shift and others including Microsoft are rushing in.

Facebook, a service that lets people set up their personal Web pages, is seen as the next big venue for placing online display ads. The company has nearly 50 million users, many of them the young audience that advertisers covet. In addition to selling ads on its own, the company over the past year has started placing ads through a deal it signed last year with Microsoft, under which Microsoft brokers banner ads on Facebook’s U.S. site until 2011.

By the end of this year, Asia will account for 35% of the world’s social networking users, with 28% of users in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 25% in North America, and 12% in the Caribbean and Latin America, according to research firm Datamonitor Plc.

Google Vice President Tim Armstrong declined to comment on any Google discussions with Facebook. “We have tremendous respect for them as a company,” he said during Google’s analyst day at the company’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

More at WSJ, Microsoft