Google shows no signs of stopping its social networking start-up shopping spree–it acquired social gaming service SocialDeck on Monday.

The acquisition was announced Monday via the SocialDeck blog.

SocialDeck is a social gaming company that makes games for various mobile platforms (including Blackberry and iPhone) that are playable across multiple devices and social networks. For example, you can play a game on your iPhone and then switch over to Facebook on your computer and play with the same profile.

Some of SocialDeck’s games include “Shake & Spell,” “Pet Hero MD,” and “Color Connect.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has been in talks with popular game developers to offer their products on “a new service it is building” (courtesy of WSJ’s “people familiar with the matter”). Perhaps the acquisition of SocialDeck shows the direction in which Google wants to go with its rumored new gaming service–games that work seamlessly across multiple platforms and devices, that is. The WSJ reports that the companies in talks include Playdom Inc., EA’s Playfish, and Zynga.

Google acquired Angstro, a company known for its Knx.to product (a centralized address book that combines a user’s connections from social networks), just a few days prior to this latest acquisition. Angstro was the fourth company acquired by Google in August (SocialDeck was the fifth)–it previously acquired social games developer Slide, virtual currency maker Jambool, and visual shopping engine Like.com.

The real question is this: is Google about to roll out some funky new life-changing social network, or does it just want to own everything that’s tangentially related to social networks?

When bosses at Cognizant Technology Solutions rolled out a new internal communications system two years ago that mimicked the principles of social networking sites, such as Facebook, they were unsure if it would work.

But within a few months, executives at the US-listed outsourcing company, most of whose staff are in India, found that younger members of the workforce, the under 30-year-olds who fall into the so-called “millennial” generation, were migrating to the new system en masse.

The system, called Cognizant 2.0, is so popular that attrition among active users of the software is about one third of the level among staff who seldom use it, according to Malcolm Frank, Cognizant senior vice-president and chief strategist. “Millennials eat this up,” says Mr Frank.

For a generation that has grown up with the internet, mobile phones and other forms of connectivity, social networking with its infinite possibilities for collaboration is not just a pastime but a way of life they are increasingly insisting must be present in the workplace or in e-commerce.

For Indian outsourcing companies, this growing demand among employees and consumers for social networking-like functions represents a new frontier. Clients are increasingly asking them for help first to understand the trend and then to write and implement software incorporating it into their businesses.

“The whole digital native generation has grown up expecting that computing is just ubiquitous,” says Partha Iyengar, regional research director for India at Gartner, the consultancy. “This concern that when you’re on Facebook, you’re not working is a very misplaced concern.”

Already, some companies are turning the principles of social networking into a business in itself. S. Gopalakrishnan, chief executive of Infosys Technologies, India’s second-largest outsourcing group, points to Innocentive, a company that provides a platform for thousands of engineers around the world to collaborate on problems.

Within Infosys, the company has set up its own collaboration software, iEngage. Social network-like internal communications systems are particularly useful in software services companies because they allow easy collaboration between engineers when they are writing codes and programmes.

The international nature of Indian outsourcing companies also means that virtual networks of programmers from around the globe can join a group working on a particular client job on systems such as iEngage. The open format makes it easy for supervisors or external experts to keep an eye on progress and make suggestions.

Cognizant, Infosys and others are starting to market their internal social networking systems to third parties, as well as helping customers with other social networking-related software. “This is an important initiative for a lot of businesses, especially the retail business. Retail is completely moving digital,” says Mr Gopalakrishnan.

He says retailers are moving from traditional forms of advertising to software that allows them to leverage social networks better. This can be through “peer recommendations” in which a person recommends a product or service to his or her friends on the network.

The millennial generation is also driving changes in customer relationship management, says Mr Frank. Millennials do not like traditional bank branches, preferring to do their banking or other retail activity over the internet. But they do not like the impersonal nature of the traditional e-commerce and companies are hiring online agents who use social networking-like software to get an integrated view of a customer’s account, previous buying history and interactions with other staff.

It is unclear whether the trend will last. “It’s early days,” says Mr Frank. “It only really started to take off two years ago.”

He admits that, for the older generation at least, there is still nothing that can beat a face-to-face meeting. During the economic crisis, Cognizant started a quarterly review meeting in which senior executives get together from around the world to discuss challenges and opportunities arising from the turmoil.

In the past weeks, when rumours of Google launching a new social-networking site swirled the internet and discussion forums, it came as a little surprise to most people, given its earlier tryst with the concept although with a limited success.

 The first attempt of Google to corner the market started with facilitation the development of Orkut Büyükkökten’s eponymous social networking site, Orkut in 2004. 

 Orkut went on to become a hit in Brazil and India, with those two countries making up the vast majority of traffic to the site.

 In other countries, the U.S. included, Orkut hardly carries the same caché of other Google properties.  Hence in 2007, the company once again tried to acquire small stake in Facebook for millions of dollars but its effort again went to vain.

 And, when their new products failed to create a new ‘wave’ or a ‘buzz’ for them, the guys at google realised that it is time for them to go back to drawing board to design a new product to lure users back into its den.

 There is a reason why Google is so keen to make a statement in the social networking market and why Facebook is posing a serious threat to Google. Facebook is turning out be more than just a fast-growing social network.

 It is, potentially, an enormous source of personal data. Internet users behave differently on Facebook than anywhere else online: They use their real names, connect with their real friends, link to their real email addresses, and share their real thoughts, tastes, and news.

 Google, on the other hand, knows relatively little about most of its users other than their search histories and some browsing activity. And customized advertising is the next big thing in the online marketing. That is why Google is so keen to break into it.

 Another reason, experts argue is the rise of, what can be called as a ‘personalized, humanized Web’, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline.

 In near future, users will query this “social graph” to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search. It is a complete rethinking of how we navigate the online world, one that places Facebook right at the centre. In other words, right where Google is now.

In the coming months, the fight between these two Internet Giants is likely to intense as we are going to witness new and new products and services being launched by them to tap this social networking bandwagon. We will keep you posted about the latest updates.

Leicester players have been banned from using Twitter after Jordan Crane revealed he could be out for three months via the social networking site.

Crane, 24, injured his left ankle in Leicester’s 17-13 pre-season win at Munster last Friday night and then shared his disappointment on Twitter.

The Leicester No8, who suffered ankle ligament damage last season, initially wrote: “Ankle again bad times”.

Crane then followed it up on Monday with the message: “It’s a dark day and it will be three long months.”

The Leicester director of rugby, Richard Cockerill, said Crane has “a bit of damage” in his ankle but insisted they are still waiting on the results of yesterday’s appointment with a specialist.

Cockerill said: “He is banned from tweeting. The next time he does that I will break both his ankles. None of our players will be tweeting or Facebooking anything about Leicester Rugby Club ever again.”

Asked whether Cockerill was angry because Crane’s message was wrong or just because he did not like reading it, the Leicester captain Geordan Murphy stepped in.

“When you get an injury as a player you are always a hypochondriac. You always think the season is gone,” said the Ireland full-back. “Until you have had three or four scans and spoken to a specialist it is not fair to comment on anything. Potentially it could be two weeks, potentially you could be finished. Who knows? It is probably not worth him speculating.”

If Crane is ruled out for three months, he would join Leicester’s list of long-term injured forwards with the locks Richard Blaze and Geoff Parling not expected to see any action before November while Louis Deacon is struggling with a back problem.

The Tigers kick off their Premiership title defence against Northampton on 5 September and Cockerill insisted their position as reigning champions changes nothing.

“The Leicester board expects us to win the Premiership and do well in Europe. That is the same every year,” said Cockerill.

In her latest interview to Access Hollywood, Kara DioGuardi said she was looking forward to Season 10 of ‘American Idol’. Sometime after the interview, a source close to the celebrity confirmed that Kara was thinking about quitting the show this summer.

The breaking news was first reported by E! News and the source close the singer confirmed the story. As of now, the singer has not received any word from FOX or Fremantle regarding her tenure at the show. The panel of judges for the next season “American Idol’ will be announced soon and we will have to wait to see if Kara features in the list.

During the interview to Access Hollywood, Kara said that she was not as excited about the show like before. Kara further added that she still loves her job as the judge of American Idol as it allows her to give talented people a shot at fame and glory. Within a few weeks of that interview, reports started surfacing that Kara might have been chopped off from the Judge panel. Some of the reports even suggested that a number of other celebrities were considered to fill up the empty spot.

American Idol Season 10 starts early September 2010 when the judges will meet contestants from various cities across the U.S.

Mobile social networking is social networking where one or more individuals of similar interests or commonalities, conversing and connecting with one another using the mobile phone. Much like web based social networking, mobile social networking occurs in virtual communities. A current trend for Internet social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook is to turn mobile. In parallel, native mobile social networks have been created like Foursquare and Gowalla. Initially, there were two basic types of mobile social networks. The first is companies that partner with wireless phone carriers to distribute their communities via the default start pages on mobile phone browsers, an example is JuiceCaster. The second type is companies that do not have such carrier relationships (also known as “off deck”) and rely on other methods to attract users. While mobile web evolved from proprietary mobile technologies and networks to full mobile access to the internet, the distinction has changed to the following two types: the first is web based social networks being extended for mobile access through mobile browsers and smartphone apps, the second type is native mobile social networks with dedicated focus on mobile use like mobile communication, location based services, augmented reality requiring mobile devices and technology.

Advances in hardware and software technology have facilitated the existence of these mobile virtual communities. Industry wireless network technologies include SMS, WAP, Java, BREW and i-mode. Previous focus on wireless network technologies and functionalities has been extended to multimedia and satellite navigation by new and improved technologies like camera and GPS integrated in mobile devices. Combination of these 3 areas of technology in Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 extended the focus of mobile social networks to new areas, functionalities and technologies like cloud computing, user-generated content (UGC), location-based services (LBS), augmented reality (AR).

Japan, Korea and China have much higher usage of mobile social networks than Western countries, generally thanks to better mobile networks and data pricing (flat rate notably is widespread in Japan). Most of them are extensions of PC-based services, but others are pure mobile-focused offerings. Examples are Cyworld (South Korea, web+mobile) and Tencent QQ (China, web+mobile). In Japan where 3G networks achieved over 80% user penetration, numerous other mobile SNS have popped up.

With the current software that is available, interactions within mobile social networks are not limited to exchanging simple text messages on a 1-to-1 basis (SMS) but are constantly evolving towards the sophisticated interactions of Internet virtual communities.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The website’s membership was initially limited by the founders to Harvard students, but was expanded to other colleges in the Boston area, the Ivy League, and Stanford University. It gradually added support for students at various other universities before opening to high school students, and, finally, to anyone aged 13 and over. The original concept for Facebook was borrowed from a product produced by Zuckerberg’s prep school Phillips Exeter Academy, which for decades published and distributed a printed manual of all students and faculty, unofficially called the “face book”.

Facebook has met with some controversy. It has been blocked intermittently in several countries including Pakistan, Syria, People’s Republic of China, Vietnam, and Iran. It has also been banned at many places of work to discourage employees from wasting time using the service. Privacy has also been an issue, and it has been compromised several times. Facebook settled a lawsuit regarding claims over source code and intellectual property. The site has also been involved in controversy over the sale of fans and friends.

A January 2009 Compete study ranked Facebook as the most used social network by worldwide monthly active users, followed by MySpace. Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade ‘best-of’ list, saying, “How on earth did we stalk our exes, remember our co-workers’ birthdays, bug our friends, and play a rousing game of Scrabulous before Facebook?”

Mark Zuckerberg wrote Facemash, the predecessor to Facebook, on October 28, 2003, while attending Harvard as a sophomore. The site represented a Harvard University version of Hot or Not, according to the Harvard Crimson. According to The Harvard Crimson, Facemash “used photos compiled from the online facebooks of nine Houses, placing two next to each other at a time and asking users to choose the ‘hotter’ person”. To accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into the protected areas of Harvard’s computer network and copied the houses’ private dormitory ID images. Harvard at that time did not have a student directory with photos, and basic information and the initial site generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online. That the initial site mirrored people’s physical community—with their real identities—represented the key aspects of what later became Facebook.

The site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, and violating individual privacy, and faced expulsion, but ultimately the charges were dropped. Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final by uploading 500 Augustan images to a website, with one image per page along with a comment section. He opened the site up to his classmates and people started sharing their notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004. He was inspired, he said, by an editorial in The Harvard Crimson about the Facemash incident. On February 4, 2004, Zuckerberg launched “Thefacebook”, originally located at thefacebook.com.

Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, and within the first month, more than half the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service. Eduardo Saverin (business aspects), Dustin Moskovitz (programmer), Andrew McCollum (graphic artist), and Chris Hughes soon joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website. In March 2004, Facebook expanded to Stanford, Columbia, and Yale. This expansion continued when it opened to all Ivy League schools, New York University, MIT, and gradually most universities in Canada and the United States. Facebook incorporated in the summer of 2004 and the entrepreneur Sean Parker, who had been informally advising Zuckerberg, became the company’s president. In June 2004, Facebook moved its base of operations to Palo Alto, California. Facebook received its first investment later that month from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. The company dropped The from its name after purchasing the domain name facebook.com in 2005 for $200,000.

Facebook launched a high school version in September 2005, which Zuckerberg called the next logical step. At that time, high school networks required an invitation to join. Facebook later expanded membership eligibility to employees of several companies, including Apple Inc. and Microsoft. Facebook was then opened on September 26, 2006, to everyone of ages 13 and older with a valid e-mail address. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft announced that it had purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million, giving Facebook a total implied value of around $15 billion. Microsoft’s purchase included rights to place international ads on Facebook. In October 2008, Facebook announced that it was to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. In September 2009, Facebook claimed that it had turned cash flow positive for the first time. In June 2010, an online marketplace for trading private company stock reflected a valuation of $11.5 billion.

Traffic to Facebook has increased exponentially since 2009. More people visited Facebook than Google for the week ending March 13, 2010. Facebook has also become the top social network across eight of individual markets in the region, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Vietnam, while other brands commanded the top positions in certain markets, including Google-owned Orkut in India, Mixi.jp in Japan, CyWorld in South Korea and Yahoo!’s Wretch.cc in Taiwan.

Organised by the Julien’s Auctions, some 200 of the over 400 items will be exhibited at the Macao’s Ponte 16 Resort from Sep 24 to Oct 8, while the auction will take place Oct 9, Xinhua reported.

A few items displayed during the announcement of the auction Wednesday included Michael Jackson’s Bad Tour.

“Beat It” jacket, black glove and arm brace, Princess Diana’s ball gown, a shirt worn by Elvis Presley, Bruce Lee’s “Game of Death” costume and shoes, etc.

“We are giving full support and participation to bringing this international event to Macao, where visitors from around the world can experience travel with a difference at our Ponte 16 resort,” said Ambrose So, Chairman of Ponte 16.

Ponte 16 and Julien’s Auctions also plan to develop the exhibition and auction into a yearly event for the Resort.

Earlier this year, a Michael Jackson Gallery, the first in Asia, was unveiled at the Ponte 16.

Business networking is a marketing method by which business opportunities are created through networks of like-minded business people. There are several prominent business networking organizations that create models of networking activity that, when followed, allow the business person to build new business relationship and generate business opportunities at the same time.

Many business people contend business networking is a more cost-effective method of generating new business than advertising or public relations efforts. This is because business networking is a low-cost activity that involves more personal commitment than company money.

As an example, a business network may agree to meet weekly or monthly with the purpose of exchanging business leads and referrals with fellow members. To complement this activity, members often meet outside this circle, on their own time, and build their own “one-to-one” relationship with the fellow member.

Business networking can be conducted in a local business community, or on a more larger scale via the Internet. Business networking websites have grown over recent years due to the Internet’s ability to connect people from all over the world.

Business networking can have a meaning also in the ICT domain, i.e. the provision of operating support to companies / organizations, and related value chains / value networks.
It refers to an activity coordination with a wider scope and a simpler implementation than pre-organized workflows or web-based impromptu searches for transaction counterparts (workflow is useful to coordinate activities, but it is complicated by the use of s.c. “patterns” to deviate the flow of work from a pure sequence, in order to compensate its intrinsic “linearity”; impromptu searches for transaction counterparts on the web are useful as well, but only for non strategic supplies; both are complicated by a plethora of interfaces—SOA / XML / web services—needed among different organizations and even between different IT applications within the same organization).

At the forefront of emerging trends in social networking sites is the concept of “real time” and “location based.” Real time allows users to contribute content, which is then broadcasted as it is being uploaded – the concept is similar to live television broadcasts. Twitter set the trend for “real time” services, where users can broadcast to the world what they are doing, or what is on their minds within a 140 character limit. Facebook followed suit with their “Live Feed” where users’ activities are streamed as soon as it happens. While Twitter focuses on words, Clixtr, another real time service, focuses on group photo sharing where users can update their photo streams with photos while at an event. Friends and nearby users can contribute their own photos and comments to that event stream, thus contributing to the “real time” aspect of broadcasting photos and comments as it is being uploaded. In the location based social networking space, Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to “check-in” to places that they are frequenting at that moment. Gowalla is another such service which functions in much the same way that Foursquare does, leveraging the GPS in phones to create a location based user experience. Clixtr, though in the real time space, is also a location based social networking site since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app. Recently, Yelp announced its entrance into the location based social networking space through check-ins with their mobile app; whether or not this becomes detrimental to Foursquare or Gowalla is yet to be seen as it is still considered a new space in the internet technology industry.

One popular use for this new technology is social networking between businesses. Companies have found that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are great ways to build their brand image. According to Jody Nimetz, author of Marketing Jive, there are five major uses for businesses and social media: to create brand awareness, as an online reputation management tool, for recruiting, to learn about new technologies and competitors, and as a lead gen tool to intercept potential prospects. These companies are able to drive traffic to their own online sites while encouraging their consumers and clients to have discussions on how to improve or change products or services.

One other use that is being discussed is the use of Social Networks in the Science communities. Julia Porter Liebeskind et al. have published a study on how New Biotechnology Firms are using social networking sites to share exchanges in scientific knowledge. They state in their study that by sharing information and knowledge with one another, they are able to “increase both their learning and their flexibility in ways that would not be possible within a self-contained hierarchical organization.” Social networking is allowing scientific groups to expand their knowledge base and share ideas, and without these new means of communicating their theories might become “isolated and irrelevant”.

Social networks are also being used by teachers and students as a communication tool. Because many students are already using a wide-range of social networking sites, teachers have begun to familiarize themselves with this trend and are now using it to their advantage. Teachers and professors are doing everything from creating chat-room forums and groups to extend classroom discussion to posting assignments, tests and quizzes, to assisting with homework outside of the classroom setting. Social networks are also being used to foster teacher-parent communication. These sites make it possible and more convenient for parents to ask questions and voice concerns without having to meet face-to-face.

Social networks are being used by activists as a means of low-cost grassroots organizing. Extensive use of an array of social networking sites enabled organizers of the 2009 National Equality March to mobilize an estimated 200,000 participants to march on Washington with a cost savings of up to 85% per participant over previous methods.

The use of online social networks by libraries is also an increasingly prevalent and growing tool that is being used to communicate with more potential library users, as well as extending the services provided by individual libraries.

A final rise in social network use is being driven by college students using the services to network with professionals for internship and job opportunities. Many studies have been done on the effectiveness of networking online in a college setting, and one notable one is by Phipps Arabie and Yoram Wind published in Advances in Social Network Analysis.