For those of you who have been struggling to understand what Google’s latest service, Friend Connect, really is, and how it relates to the competitors, I’ve found a simple answer: it’s MyBlogLog on a global scale.

MyBlogLog is a great little service (later acquired by Yahoo) with a simple idea: give a name and a face to your website’s visitors. In a way, it takes your visitors and creates a social network out of them. Unfortunately, I think that Google’s Friend Connect has just rendered them obsolete by doing the opposite, as it brought all social networks to your website’s visitors. MyBlogLog has a relatively big community – 140,000 registered members is the latest number I’ve seen – but it’s not as big as Facebook. Or MySpace. Or LinkedIn. And it’s definitely not as big as all those sites put together.

The problem with MyBlogLog is that its community consists mostly of bloggers. Most bloggers, however, are also members of larger social networks, and now that Friend Connect enables them to tap into all those socnets, without any programming knowledge, MyBlogLog isn’t really necessary anymore. The only thing it can really do is join the party.

John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo, provides a good quote on Friend Connect:

“Instead of widgetizing apps and bolting them on to some corporation’s proprietary social graph, why not widgetize the social graph and socially enable any Web site or Web page?”

The implication of this is that widgetizing, outside of bigger, meta-networks like OpenSocial, might be coming to an end. What good is a widget which only taps into one service or network? Take a look at the current state of affairs:

Each arrow represents a widget which moves data back and forth between a single website and a bigger network. It’s a bit messy, because you need a lot of widgets to cover all bases. Now, with one big sweep of hand, Google introduces the following situation:

Sure, you can go around the big Friend Connect cloud, but chances are you’re going to be left behind. Of course, Friend Connect is just one implementation of a bigger framework; a sign of times to come, if you will.

OpenSocial marks the end of the fragmentation era. Friend Connect is the first big application of OpenSocial, immediately showing its strength: suddenly, it’s pointless to create a website widget that’s dependent only on one service when Friend Connect lets you tap into all of them at once. As new frameworks that connect more fragmented networks emerge, we will see less and less isolated applications. The standards are still in the making, though. Facebook, MySpace and Google all know this, and they’re all trying to grab a big chunk of the pie now while it’s still hot. It will be interesting to see how the cookie crumbles in the end.

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Related Articles at Mashable! – The Social Networking Blog:

Google Wants To Be Your Universal Profile Too; Announces Friend Connect
FriendFeed Brings Twitter Back
Petition to Bring Back Facebook’s “Skip This Step”
Martha Stewart Is Your Friend… And It’s A ‘Good Thing’
Podcast: Paul and Bret Talk of FriendFeed’s API
FabFemme Launches Professional Network for Gay Women
Sony Connect Music Service Shutting Down

On the heels of yesterday’s “Data Availability” announcement from MySpace, Facebook has just announced the launch their own initiative to allow users to port their profile data to other web sites. Here’s what will be included in Facebook’s version according to a post on the company’s developer blog:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

Along with Google and Plaxo, Facebook was part of the initial DataPortability announcement in January, but has been coy on their plans up until now. According to a report from CNET, Facebook claims that Connect has been in the works for a while, however, the timing of today’s announcement certainly doesn’t seem like coincidence.

Now the race is on to see who will actually be the first to let their users port their data to other web sites. On yesterday’s conference call, MySpace executives indicated the first implementations on partner sites Yahoo, eBay, and Twitter could be expected “within several weeks.”

In any event, it looks like there will soon be some actual meat behind DataPortability, which should be a good thing for the whole ecosystem that feeds off of the top two social networks.

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Related Articles at Mashable! – The Social Networking Blog:

Facebook Creates A Market For Developers And Those That Need Them
Jobster Launches Advanced Job Search for Facebook
Petition to Bring Back Facebook’s “Skip This Step”
WeFi: Connecting Users on Microsoft Mobile, and Facebook
Facebook Claims to Lead in People Search
Fueling the Facebook Music Rumors
Bungee Connect WideLens Syncs Computer Calendars

Are you the type of person that registers a new domain name every time you think you’ve cooked up the next big thing? If so, you might want to check out Domize, a new site that is essentially a super slick and fast interface for checking the availability of domain names, both on the Web and via iPhone. As developer Anson Parker describes it, “Without exaggeration, it blows away anything before it in terms of speed and allows you to quickly scout out an available name.”

As you type in the search box, Domize automatically starts showing the availability of dot coms, dot nets, and dot orgs. Red indicates it’s taken, blue indicates it’s available. Click the blue and Domize links you to GoDaddy to purchase the name (Domize presumably makes affiliate revenue if you complete the buy). Mouse-over the red for domain names that are taken and you’ll get a preview of the site, which allows you to see if it’s developed, or one that has nothing on it and is likely owned by a domain squatter that might be willing to sell you the name.

The simplicity is awesome, and I can’t refute the developer’s claims based on my experience with the registrars, who typically feature bloated interfaces that take forever to load. Domize won’t be able to get you out of GoDaddy’s upsell-laden checkout process, but it will at least get you there faster.

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This story is near and dear to my heart: Google Reader has added a bunch of features to make sharing items more social and much easier.

The biggest addition, which makes Google Reader sharing a lot more like saving something to del.icio.us or submitting it to Digg, is a new bookmarklet so you can share any web page in Google Reader. This isn’t actually completely new – I’ve previously described a third-party bookmarklet that does something similar – but now that it’s being officially offered by Google Reader, adoption is going to surge. This bookmarket is also a lot easier to use than the third-party app, which required some knowledge of Google Reader’s interface. Also, the Google Reader bookmarklet lets you add any web page to your shared items, not just items with an RSS feed. This means Google Reader sharing can now include a lot more than just news sites and blogs, and makes the act of sharing items even more similar to submitting something to a social news site.

Another new feature you’ll notice when sharing an item with the new bookmarklet is the ability to attach a note to your shared items. This allows you to tell your Google contacts why you find the story interesting. This feature can also be accessed within Google Reader, via a “Share With Note” link that appears next to the traditional “share” link with each item. You can also post notes that aren’t associated with any item at all – somewhat akin to posting a message on FriendFeed.

One other welcome change is that shared items now have a distinctive look inside Google Reader. This alleviates at least some of the duplicate items problem, in that you can now see that an item isn’t just showing up repeatedly, but rather, it’s being shared by your friends. A few other small upgrades are noted on the Google Reader team blog.

One big disclosure here: as you might know, my side project ReadBurner is based on aggregating data from Google Reader shared items. Combined with my passion for RSS and feed reading, I’m probably a bit more excited about these features than the average user, but I think they’re a sign that the Google Reader team is truly paying attention to what user’s want and building out sharing items into a robust system.

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Related Articles at Mashable! – The Social Networking Blog:

Google Reader: Not Everything Is About Privacy
Google Reader Now Available for your Facebook Profile
Google Saves Christmas
Share Google Reader Feeds in GTalk
Google Reader Gets Search!
Google Reader Graduates, Launches International Versions
SharedReader: Attack of the Google Shared Items Memetrackers

Bizak is a new analytics tool that’s hoping to bring in some practical features to its approach towards startups. With bizak, you can calculate how well your business will do based on its existing status, along with the comps of other businesses in the related industry. This is a service geared towards the web 2.0 startup crowd, so bizak can’t be applied to any business out there.

But in looking at what your competitors do, along with the market trends, bizak is hoping it can provide you and the investor community with the necessary tools for making the right decisions when it comes to startups.

Now, Mark has warned us to stop saying that we’re in a recession, but the market’s slowed growth certainly has a few people worried. Even if you’re not worried, having a web-based analytics tool do some of the work for you is usually a helpful thing to have in your corner. Not enough businessmen keep tabs on what their competitors are doing in their respective industries, despite services like Compete that aim to provide the tools necessary for doing so. Calculating things like valuation aims to take things a step further, however.

Bizak isn’t the first to tackle this–a handful of other startups like Frogpond offer similar communities where users can both network and gain perspective based on comparative analysis of businesses. And as with Compete, Alexa and other stat providers, there will undoubtedly be discrepancies amongst the multiple services, based on their own independent algorithms and qualifications for things like measurable benchmarks.

As such services improve, we’ll likely seem them being included in certain other services similar to Vator.tv and other communities where entrepreneurs and investors are likely to meet for a broader look at what’s going on in the space.

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Related Articles at Mashable! – The Social Networking Blog:

Announcing StartUp Camp: March 7-8th in London
Startup Search Launches Web 2.0 Directory
Is “What’s Open” the First Android Application?
Startup 2.0 Awards for European Websites
Final Reminder: Sun Startup Camp on May 4-5, Kicks off with MorningMash
Ringside Startup: Poland’s Wacky Idea
The Startup Review Sponsored by Sun Startup Essentials

Oh my. The latest words from Radiohead’s quirky frontman Thom Yorke aren’t about how much money they earned by giving away their music. (Sounds weird, but that’s how things work in this crazy 2.0 world.) It’s about how they don’t plan to do that again.

A somewhat vague quote from The Hollywood Reporter goes as follows:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

On one hand, it’s only logical. No one really expects them to let people choose what they’re going to pay for their music till the end of eternity. However, it raises certain concerns, depending on what exactly Yorke meant, whether Radiohead really gets this thing or not.

Radiohead was criticized once already by Trent Reznor, who also gave away parts of Nine Inch Nails’ new album, Ghosts I-IV, but in a slightly different fashion. Reznor called Radiohead’s effort a “marketing gimmick,” and Yorke’s latest statement does nothing to disprove it. Reznor did it right. He set out his plan very clearly, and he’s doing well, earning 1.6 million dollars from album sales in the first couple of weeks, according to him.

There’s a number of opinions on how bands should distribute (and profit from) their music; here’s mine. A band should:

a) charge very little or even nothing for the actual digital copies of their music, especially if it’s quality is lossy (MP3). Digital copies of music can be infinitely copied at zero cost, and therefore their actual value is inherently very small.

b) make sure to offer a variety of choices for purchasing their music, including some added value – CDs, LPs, limited editions, signatures, t-shirts, stickers, concert tickets, vouchers – for the more expensive versions.

c) cut out any middlemen which don’t really provide value to the customer.

It’s very simple. Nine Inch Nails did exactly that, and it worked. Hopefully, Radiohead will do some version of this with their next album. It would be a huge disappointment to see them go back to the “traditional” ways of selling music for their next album. There are other models, too. Einsturzende Neubauten, for example, have let fans that paid a subscription to their web site create their music together with them.

What matters, ultimately, is that people will not and should not pay for something that’s free anyway. Instead of decreasing value of music with DRM (the era of which is, hopefully, behind us), the value should be increased, and users should stop being harassed for sharing. Radiohead and NiN helped pave the way; hopefully they’ll stay on the right track.

Read more of my ramblings about the music industry, distribution of music, and piracy here:
Wanna Beat Piracy? You Have to Do Better Than Them!
RSS and Giving Away Music – What’s The Difference?
Preemptive Piracy Tax: Will Everyone Have To Pay?

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Related Articles at Mashable! – The Social Networking Blog:

Yahoo Adds Wikipedia to oneSearch Mobile Results
Mozy Online Backup – Don’t Spam Us, We’ll Spam You!
SmugglersMusic Launches Band Sales & Promotion Site
Poll: Which Online Video Site Pays Best?
I Do…Now I Don’t. It’s Like a Break Up Club.
AOL Purchasing Ad Company Quigo For $300 Million?
Tagged Readies to Emulate Facebook’s Platform

Sometimes it is just worlds easier watching a tutorial than reading it, and the Internet has made video tutorials of all kinds very available. Photoshop tutorials are especially popular due to the complexity of the popular program. We’ve gotten together 20+ sites with video tutorials for just about every aspect of the image editor that you can imagine.

And before any one comments, yes, we are aware of the “You Suck At Photoshop” series, but it didn’t really fit the theme.
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If you’ve been surfing the Web on your iPhone, and hit a broken Flash video link, there is now a way for you to get those to jive with your device. A new bookmarklet named iTransmogrify! has been released that will activate the broken link and allow you to play the video via the iPhone’s YouTube application.

When you come across the broken link, go to the bookmarklet, the page reloads, and you then see an image of the video which bears a YouTube-like playback button. Click the icon and the video runs. Handy for those invisible embeds you come across. You can find the link you need over at JoeMaller.com.

Note: Mashable weekend editor Paul Glazowski attempted to operate the bookmarklet on his own iPhone. The link triggered the iPhone to open its native YouTube application, but displayed the error “This video does not currently support iPhone.” If your attempts to verify that this code works correctly are successful, please do let us know.

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As the iPhone and iPod Touch continue to gain market share, more and more websites are building versions designed for optimal use with these devices. We’ve gathered together a sample of some of the better ones out there for you to give a try. Please note that some of these links will open ONLY on these devices.
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Actually, it’s “How well Pete did“, because Mashable was only Pete Cashmore back in the day. Now, he’s got other folks at his disposal, like me, who can make fun…err, objectively assess the truthiness of his predictions for 2007, which you can read here. Of course, we want to hear your opinion on it, so after you’ve read them, please jump to the bottom of the page and grade them!

1. Online Contests Become Huge – I’d say that Pete was wrong on two counts here: first with the outcome of his prediction, and second with even considering online contests to be very relevant in 2007. Sure, there were online contests and new social networking sites based around them this year, but I don’t remember any of them making a particular impact. Grade: F

2. RSS Won’t Go Mainstream (But Widgets Will Explode) – I think I can safely declare this one a hit. RSS did not go mainstream in the sense that your grandmother is using it; widgets have gone mainstream in the sense that nearly every MySpace profile/blog has a couple. However, I must add that widgets haven’t exploded in the sense that every other widget creator got rich; quite the contrary, most tech sites won’t even mention them any more if they aren’t something really extraordinary. Facebook apps is (seemingly) where it’s at today.Grade: B

3. Online Video Fallout – interestingly enough, Pete also predicted that Metacafe will get acquired; he actually hit the nail on the head with this one, since many promising sites like Metacafe are merely lingering on. However, the huge ruckus created by Joost and Hulu revived the faith in internet TV and video, and therefore real online video fallout didn’t happen. It will some day; but so will every other overcrowded space. Grade: D

4. YouTube Becomes Bigger Than MySpace – This is another solid hit for Pete; back in 2006 this prediction was not easy to make, despite this Alexa graph (take Alexa graphs with a grain of salt, as always). YouTube was way below in terms of page views back then, and MySpace seemed unstoppable. Even though YouTube may still be a bit lower on traffic or the number of users, it did catch up. Also, the important thing here is relevance, and I think you’d agree with me that YouTube is more relevant today than MySpace. Grade: B

5. Mobile Social Networking Takes Off, Mobile Becomes a Standard Social Networking Feature – I, personally, think that mobile social networking will never really take off because most people sit on their ass either at home or at work and have no time to be mobile, but its pivotal year will be 2008, with the coming of Android, iPhone and perhaps OpenSocial. However, I must admit that mobile Twittering and Google acquiring Jaiku were both pretty strong points in Pete’s favor. Grade: B

6. Social Networks Fail To Expand Internationally Due to Local Competition – yup, this one is pretty much spot on. As can be seen from this article, even the biggest player in this arena – MySpace – has had a great deal of trouble breaking into the Chinese market and beating the local competitors. Grade: A

7. YouTube Meets Dating – this falls in the same category as the prediction about online contests. The idea seems as good as any, but it simply didn’t happen (i.e., it didn’t become huge) in 2007. Grade: F

8. Metacafe Acquired – heh, it seemed like an easy prediction, since everyone was talking about it at the end of 2006. Guess what? Rumors sometimes don’t come true. Suits you right for taking the easy way out. Grade: F

9. End of Flock? – technically, he was wrong, but the fact that you’re probably wondering why the hell would anyone even mention Flock in their predictions shows that Flock really lost much of its flare since 2006. It’s still there; but has it revolutionized anything? Nope. Grade: C

10. TV Show-related Social Networks & 11. YouTube Celebrity Appears in a Hollywood Movie – I’m not sure about the latter, but Pete was definitely right about mainstream media starting to recognize the power of social networks: MySpace stars like Tila Tequila started to get serious TV air time; Twitter got featured on CSI and so on. This trend will only get bigger in 2008, too. Grade: B

So, there you go; it boils down to a C-. Not a fantastic average grade, but one that I will most certainly get fired for! Of course, if you think I was too easy on Pete, you can also have your say in this one, by completing the poll below.

How well did Pete predict 2007?

• A (great)

• B (good)

• C (solid)

• D (pretty bad)

• F (abysmal)

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