If you’re like me you use a variety of applications with little thought about their usefulness in your daily routine. My eyes were opened this past weekend when Socialthing was offline.

I’ve been using Socialthing to read and post to Twitter, Brightkite, Plurk and supposedly Facebook – more on this later – via Ping. It conveniently displays posts of those I follow in a convenient view that allows me to assign a color to users I never want to miss anything on.

Its interface is uncluttered and displays thumbnail images of photos posted on Brightkite, something I have not seen any other desktop application do.  It’s web-based which means I can access Socialthing from any computer anywhere – it’s just so darned convenient!

I’ve been using it for about one year and when it was offline I was lost.  Of course, I tried searching Google for replacement desktop apps like Twhirl but it must be downloaded and installed via Adobe Air to use.  Also, Twhirl doesn’t access Brightkite’s API so this made my decision not to use it easy.

Apparently Socialthing has been bought by AOL and they’ve been enhancing it to integrate into AOL’s network. I don’t know if non-AOL users like myself will continue having access or if we’ll be shunned. The one thing I do know is that I will be lost without Socialthing. Its absence last weekend left a huge void in my enjoyment of social networking.

As for Facebook, I feel like they’re a walled garden. It seems they fuss with their API enough to thwart other apps from accessing their network and allowing users to read / post. I’ve become increasingly frustrated with Facebook’s antics to the extent that I rarely login. My page is getting dusty!

The 7-O-7 Tech Shop
Here’s the weekly tech shop for May 4-10. Mobile users have another choice from Nokia as it has come with its E71x device, Cortado offers BlackBerry users the ability to manage files on a corporate network, print documents, and send faxes, and AT&T myWireless Mobile application is now available on the Apple App Store. Among other offerings, Eye-Fi solution promises easy video uploading, Microsoft is offering its updated Photosynth technology integrated with its mapping platform Virtual Earth, Samsung has released its 70 series monitors, and Socialthing is a new online platform for socializing websites…More

Also Visit:
Tech Shop 2009
Tech Shop 2008

AOL says that Warner Bros. Television Group (WBTVG) will launch Socialthing, a new online platform for socializing websites across WBTVG’s digital destination businesses, such as CWTV.com, TheWB.com, KidsWB.com, DCHeroZone.com, Essence.com, and Momlogic.com.

Socialthing will use community tools to enable social networking publishers to attract new users and keep them engaged on their site. The announcement was made Tuesday by Joanna Shields, president of AOL People Networks, and Craig Hunegs, executive vice president, Business Management, WBTVG.

The Socialthing pact will allow WBTVG and its digital entertainment destinations access to AOL’s global messaging network of AIM and ICQ users. WBTVG will embed the Socialthing platform – free to users and requiring no installation or download – on its sites.

AOL and WBTVG will support the Socialthing launch with cross-promotion and anticipate launching the application on CWTV.com, on WBTVG’s digital entertainment destinations, and on AOL properties.

While Socialthing delivers users a high degree of interactivity and visibility, users remain in full control of their publishing activity, says AOL. They may choose to “always share activity,” “never share it” or “always be asked before sharing,” and can select which privacy option best suits their individual needs.

A site has been created at http://socialthing.com/forwebsites allowing publishers, interested in enabling Socialthing on their sites, to get more information about the platform.

Article courtesy: My Funbox

Socialthing has been quiet for quite a while with no new developments. But until recently, Socialthing has launched a new services called Socialthing for Websites which is supposed to be an “advanced suite of social networking services” that enable site owners to connect with the readers. Basically, it just means that website owners can just now interact with their readers through social networking- and all that in real-time. All the readers have to do is to sign in with their AIM username and password and gain access to other social services like Twitter and Flickr through AOL’s Open Authentication API as  well as chat with one another through the chat: all of these in a neat toolbar at the bottom of the site. Meanwhile, The Boot is using this service on which you can use it to go for a quick trial. Socialthing for Websites looks highly functional and impressive but it is still in beta to allow more testing and better improvements. Could Socialthing be the next big thing to overtake Facebook Connect in the area of social networking integration? We will let you know once Socialthing for Websites gets out of beta.

Recently, I was speaking to another web-working type about his company’s name – which I really liked, by the way. The name included “Social” in it. He said he’s been hearing mixed things about the name.

“Someone told me that ’social’ is so over,” he said, lamenting that his company name may already be dated.

Is “Social” already over? That’s news to me. Those immersed in web work may be sick of the (over)use of the word “social,” particularly if, like me, they’ve been working in the social media space back before anyone called it “social.”

Back in 1995, we called it “community” and “communication.” Heck, we all became social online when we first realized we could communicate with others via our computers on traditional phone lines. Out on the speaking circuit, I talked about how the Internet was all about “connection – not just connecting us to information but also connecting us to people, to one another.”  Sure, we didn’t have the powerful sharing tools that we have today and social networks weren’t even a glimmer on the horizon. Does anyone remember Andrew Weinreich’s “failed” online community SixDegrees.com that paved the way for LinkedIn and the like? That was a social media before it was called social media.

So is “Social” just 2008’s buzzword and on its way out?

For anyone with a company that has “Social” in their name, rest assured, I don’t think that it is over yet. And for anyone out there searching for any available combination of social with another word that might make a good name for a social media business, don’t worry. “Social” is not over yet.

In fact, the general consumer out there is still struggling to understand what a blog is much less a microblog. The term “social media” isn’t even on many people’s radars. The nice thing about “social” is that any non-techie does get what “social” means. But then try to explain to them that “social” now refers to Web 2.0 tools that facilitate collaboration and sharing, and their eyes glaze over. At least many people have now heard the word “social” used in combination with the word “network” often enough in the media, but many of them still think social networks like MySpace are dangerous. Lesson? Let us not forget the learning curve that every new technology and new terminology must go through before mass adoption.

Socialtext, Socialminder, Socialthing? These aren’t household names yet and might not ever be. I’m not knocking any of those companies but for every Socialtext there is a Yammer. For every Socialthing there is aFriendFeed. For ever Socialminder, there’s another contact or CRM management tool.

Think about who these “social” companies are targeting at this time. Not really Mom or Pop. Nor John or Jane Q. Public. Their current customers or members or subscribers tend to be industry types, the iindy Web workers who “get it” or a small pool of IT guys in corporations who also get it.

“Social” as a buzz word simply has not hit the masses.

What do you think of the term “Social?” In your opinion, is it grossly overused or still a useful and viable buzzword that hasn’t even peaked yet?

ASocialThing.com

Check it out….Things you already buy but a positive social impact!

Partners with the most trusted names of the web, secure, and about time there was something like it!

GO CHECK IT OUT

ASocialThing.com , It’s a Social Thing….

Dipity diventa 2.0: l’applicazione che permette di visualizzare su una timeline gli eventi relativi alla propria vita sociale sul web è stata migliorata e arricchita con nuove integrazioni.

Dipity è un aggregatore sociale: registra i contenuti che gli utenti pubblicano su siti come YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Picasa, WordPress, ma a differenza di FriendFeed e SocialThing! ogni singolo evento è rappresentato su una timeline da un rettangolino, facilmente espandibile al passaggio del mouse.
Questa visualizzazione permette di contestualizzare meglio gli eventi e di confrontare rapidamente le proprie attività con quelle dei propri amici / contatti.

Dipity è semplice da usare anche per chi non conosce servizi simili: basta abbinare ai siti supportati il nick con il quale ci si è registrati e l’applicazione importerà automaticamente i contenuti pubblicati in rete.

E’ possibile anche monitorare determinati topic di discussione impostando le proprie preferenze nel menu “My Topics” e anche salvare le varie password utilizzate nei servizi abbinati.

Dipity e gli altri aggregatori sociali sono un ottimo strumento per non perdere la rotta e la propria identità nel mare dei servizi proposti dal web 2.0.

Compete released the stats for August, with mixed news for the pure-play Social Web Aggregators. Plaxo continued to see nice growth, clocking 244% year-over-year growth and 11% month-over month growth in monthly unique visitors. FriendFeed, on the other hand, experienced a bit of a stall, with a tiny drop in monthly unique visitors compared with July. SocialThing (recently acquired by AOL) got a traffic increase from the news of its acquisition, but total monthly unique visitors remains under 100,000. Iminta’s traffic was too low to track.

Can the pure-play Social Web Aggregators grow fast and long enough to achieve escape velocity before the big former walled garden services, like Facebook and MySpace, re-invent themselves into true Social Web Aggregators?

We are marching down the lifestreaming road. There are a proliferation of lifestream apps, such as FriendFeed, SocialThing, Strands, Swurl and others. Lifestreaming is getting hotter, and there’s some thought that lifestreaming will be the new blogging:

Sites and social tools like these and many others encourage more participation on the social web than ever before. Although the social participants on these sites are often more active in socializing than they are in blogging, there’s still that need to stake out your own piece of real estate on the web. But we wonder: does that really need to be a blog anymore? Perhaps not.

It’s a great concept, one that Mark Krynsky has been chronicling for a while at the Lifestream Blog.

An area I think that is ripe for inn ovation here is the ability to find the meta data from one’s lifestream. On FriendFeed, people will have multiple services that fill up their lifestreams. A couple issues that crop up on FriendFeed are:

• Figuring out whether to subscribe to someone
• Catching up on what particular individuals have been streaming

Because there is one thing that has been noticed with all this lifestreaming – there’s a lot of information generated (or “noise” as some might say).

So here’s my idea:

Create tag clouds for our lifestreams

What do I mean? Read on.

FriendFeed Lifestream

I’ll use the lifestream service with which I’m most familiar, FriendFeed. Here are the tag clouds I’d like to see for each user’s lifestream:

• Blog
• Music
• Google Reader shares
• Bookmarks
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Digg
• etc…

And I’d like to see tag clouds for what users Like and Comment on. Because on FriendFeed, Likes and Comments have the same effect as a direct feed of someone’s lifestream: they put the content into the feed of all their followers.

So via the tag cloud, I’m can quickly come up to speed on what someone is interested in.

Let’s Make Tagging Easy

I don’t propose that users suddenly tag their own streams. Rather, let’s leverage the work of others.

It’s de rigueur for Web 2.0 apps to include tagging. Bloggers tag. Social bookmarkers tag. Music lovers tag. Why not pull the tags applied to the source content into the lifestream?

Here’s what I mean. My blog has plenty of tags. These tags are included in the RSS feed of my blog. So any feed that includes my blog should include these tags. Let’s leverage:

1. The tags that people apply to their own Web 2.0 content
2. RSS/Atom feeds that include tags

For some background on this, click here for a page on Technorati that talks about tags in feeds.

By leveraging the tagging work already resident in user-generated content, one can quickly build up a tag cloud for lifestreams.

An Example: Google Reader Shares

Google Reader is a good example. People ’share’ blog posts they read via their Google Readers. Sharing lets others see the articles that someone finds interesting and useful. And of course, those blog posts that someone is sharing have tags.

Here’s what the tag cloud of my recent Google Reader shares looks like. I’ve simulated the tag cloud by using Wordle for the tags.

You can see my interests lately: Enterprise 2.0, FriendFeed, social media. If someone wanted to get a quick sense of the things they’ll see by subscribing to me, this tag cloud answers that. And if someone is curious about the specific posts I’ve been sharing that relate to a subject, they could click on one of the tags and get a list of my Google Reader shares.

Curious, I ran the same analysis on the Google Reader shares of four people I follow on FriendFeed: Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Sarah Perez, Mike Fruchter. Here are the topics they’ve been sharing lately:

Robert Scoble clearly is following the iPhone and Google. Louis Gray was following the happenings at Gnomedex. Sarah Perez is pretty even in her interests, with FireFox, social bookmarking, FriendFeed, Twitter, search and photos among her favorite topics. Mike Fruchter has been reading up on Twitter and social media.

Just like that, I’ve gotten a sense for their interests right now. And if those were true tag clouds, I could click the tag and see the Google Reader shares. Robert Scoble is really good at tracking useful relevant things. Clicking the ‘iPhone’ tag and reading his shares would be a quick way to understand what’s goin.

Tags + Wordles

As I said, most user generated content comes with tags these days. So pulling these into the feeds and representing them in a tag cloud would be a fantastic move forward in creating lifestream tag clouds.

But what about Twitter? There are no tags on tweets. Not a problem. FriendFeed and other lifestream services could do a Wordle-like tag cloud. Tally the most common words in someone’s tweets, represent it as a tag cloud. And make the tag cloud clickable, which would essentially run a Summize Twitter search of the user’s tweets for a given tag.

Use Existing Metadata to Solve Two Problems

The key here is to not make it onerous on the end user. Tag once, re-use everywhere. If desired, users could be given the option to add tags to their own lifestreams. But the core idea is to eliminate double tagging work for users.

If this could be done, you’ve got a visual representation of people’s lifestreams. And an easy way to find the specific entries in a lifestream that relate to a topic.

Lifestreamers – would you want something like this

*****

See this post on FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/search?q=%22Tag+Clouds+for+Our+Lifestreams%22&public=1

With the rise of Social Media, people now have several websites where they track their status and keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. Earlier this year saw the rise of the Lifestreams – web sites that serve to aggregate the inputs and outputs of a single person’s myriad social media sites. When I saw these sites begin to take hold, I’ll admit I wasn’t a believer. I watched the Instant Messenger Wars play out years ago, and I was skeptical that companies with established user bases would ever allow a 3rd party to have access to that userbase or the rich data that it held. This walled garden approach is what sunk ICQ. In short, I didn’t believe that social media or microblogging sites would ever have a truly open API.

Glad to say I was wrong on that one. The post children of the Web 2.0 craze are social media sites and their open APIs. For every micro-blogging site like Twitter, there is a 3rd party AIR app like Twhirl that is built on its API. There are applications like Digsby that are mashups of “old” IM and “new” social media. And now there are Lifestreams – services that are successfully built around the goal of aggregating the streams of information from all these social media sites into one simplified view.

The king of the hill in the Lifestream community is FriendFeed, which launched privately in 2007 and opened a public beta in Feb 08 with a $5 million Series A funding. FriendFeed was covered mightily by the l33t bloggers at TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb. At first, I thought it was mostly because it was more because of the founding team of 4 ex-Google execs. I suppose that’s with good cause. There’s a fraternity of ex-Google employees that have gone on to fortune and glory. Sergey & Larry and Google are the 2000’s version of Jack Welch and General Electric.

The speed with which FriendFeed integrated profiles, statuses, and all other rss feeds it could lay its hands on changed my opinion of the service. Their product development methodology firmly guided by their Google background, FriendFeed put together a very simple design and then focused entirely on the product functionality itself. FriendFeed quickly added the most popular services in the all the major categories – microblogging, video blogging, photos, status, news, and music. They cleverly added RSS feeds from sites that you wouldn’t think of as 2.0 – Amazon’s Wishlist and Netflix’s favorites. That’s a mashup of sorts. In early 2008, FriendFeed had clearly focused on the aggregation of services, ballooning to 43 services at the time of this writing. Functionality exists to post to the aggregated Lifestream through a simple “Comment” feature, but in my opinion that’s not a useful service. Here’s why – if your friend uses Pownce for micro-blogging and you comment on that post in FriendFeed, your comment doesn’t become a Pownce update. After some pressure, FriendFeed did add an option to make FriendFeed comments become tweets, but that’s the limit of integration with other services from an update perspective. Recent feature additions include the concept of “rooms” and the integration of FriendFeed comments as part of blog comments. Like their chatroom namesakes before them, FriendFeed Rooms are essentially a group of people discussing a specific topic – using FriendFeed comments of course. The blog comment mechanism came to be as plug-ins for WordPress and Movable Type, where you can see FriendFeed discussions as part of your blog commentary.

Upstart SocialThing! launched in beta after securing $300k in “early stage” funding in the Fall of 2007. From the start, SocialThing! has attempted to avoid direct competition with the larger and more popular FriendFeed by claiming that they’re a different breed of Lifestream that’s not competitive at all. There’s a lot of truth to that. Where FriendFeed focused on pulling together all the RSS it could lay its hands on, SocialThing has focused on 2 way integration with the services it supports. SocialThing’s design more closely mimics others in the Web 2.0 space, which stands in contrast to FriendFeed’s mimimalistic user interface. FriendFeed comments require a FriendFeed reader (website or AIR app) to view. SocialThing caught on earlier about that major drawback. When you post a response to someone using SocialThing, it posts directly to the service, not to itself. Additionally, when you make changes to your profile or add/remove friends on other services, these changes automatically occur in your SocialThing account. This makes SocialThing more heavily reliant on 3rd party API, which is risky. But, the risk outweighs the benefits to AOL, who recently decided to acquire SocialThing earlier this August. AOL probably has desire to pair SocialThing  with Meebo, a web-based IM client that it has a significant investment stake in.

In summary, the top 2 Lifestream services both offer RSS and social media stream aggregation. FriendFeed focuses on aggregating as many streams as it can, where SocialThing focuses on a more complete 2-way integration with each of the services it supports. With the acquisition by AOL, SocialThing’s product roadmap is in doubt. The future for FriendFeed seems focused on slowly turning the discussion from Tweets and Pownces to FriendFeed comments.

You can find me on FriendFeed and SocialThing. Add a comment below if you’d like an invite to the SocialThing beta. More importantly – I’d be interested to hear how you’re using either or both of this services.

Image by Mykl Roventine

Ok, I know twittering has kidnapped me from blogging, and I admit I am addicted to read more than to tweet. All thanks to the interesting people I am following up there.

I used to get the sms’s from 1pm till 11pm everyday. Sometimes they were nice, sometimes they were annoying specially while I was driving. But it was fun!.

Unfortunately, this fun is not enjoyable no more.

Due to the high costs of sms forwarding via the UK number of twitter that all people outside the US/Canada/India use, twitter decided to halt this service. They claim it coast $1000/user/year.

The SMS thingy twitter had was one of the most important reasons why people joined twitter and not any other service. Other services that I’ve used before were Pownce, which has the advantage of file sharing.

So, from now on I will be using my Pownce account more often until twitter sms comes back. Actually, I will be using socialthing to post and I will have both twitterrific and Pownce Air on to recive the tweets and pownces.

P.S:

I got 11 invites for socialthing.com, pownce me if your intrested

Socialthing has been aquired by AOL during the weekend!

ONLINE SERVICES/INTERACTIVE MEDIA

Yesterday, CBS sent out a press release touting the success of Last.fm’s month-old redesign, citing a 20 percent increase in unique visitors and a 36 percent increase in total minutes between June and July. Despite a few bugs on the day of launch, the redesign seems to be paying off. But why is CBS so keen on beating its chest when it comes to Last.fm? Ever since CBS bought Last.fm in May, 2007 for $280 million, it’s been under pressure to justify the purchase. At the time of the purchase, Last.fm was running neck-and-neck against social music network imeem and music radio service Pandora.. Today, imeem is killing Last.fm (see Google Trends for Websites chart above), and Pandora is still holding its own. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/15/lastfm-needs-more-than-a-redesign-to-catch-up-to-imeem 8/15)

Techcrunch received confirmation from AOL that the company has acquired Socialthing!, a lifestreaming service that competes with FriendFeed. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/14/confirmed-aol-acquires-lifestreaming-service-socialthing 8/14)

CBSNews.com and CNET.com will feature live, Web-exclusive specials anchored by Katie Couric each night following CBS’s prime time coverage of the 2008 Democratic and Republican national conventions. The Webcasts will be archived for on-demand viewing. (Iwantmedia 8/15, http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6587662.html 8/14)

Facebook’s controversial and widely-disdained Beacon service, which it originally introduced in November, has led to the company behind slapped with another class action lawsuit. The suit alleges that Facebook never sought user approval before collecting personal information, and was also keeping tabs on people who weren’t even signed up for Facebook. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/14/facebook-gets-slapped-with-another-lawsuit-over-beacon-wishes-it-could-opt-out 8/14)

After more than two months of testing, Google has finally turned on AdSense for Feeds. Formerly, these were FeedBurner ads. The acquired company has moved its advertising program over to Google’s system, and now any AdSense advertiser can tap into the Feedburner network. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/15/google-turns-on-adsense-for-feeds 8/15)

With the appointment of Frank Biondi, Jr. and John Chapple to Yahoo’s board of directors today, the last two slots on the board are now filled. Biondi, the former CEO of Viacom, and Chapple, the former CEO of Nextel, were both on Carl Icahn’s original alternate slate when he was still trying to replace the entire board. As part of his compromise with Yahoo, Icahn backed down from his proxy battle in return for three seats on the board. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/14/yahoo-rounds-out-its-board-with-former-ceos-from-nextel-and-viacom 8/14)

There is a sea change underway in social networking. If there were any doubt that we are moving from the “walled garden” phase to a new era defined by interoperability between aggregation hubs and the rest of the Social Web, recent moves by Facebook and MySpace should erase any doubt.

The biggest winners of the future will be the services that do the best job of harnessing the power of the virtuous cycle of social discovery at the core of “Social Web Aggregation.” Let’s take a look at how two pioneers of the new model are faring, Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed…

Before looking at the numbers, it’s important to remind ourselves that last summer, walled gardens were the future. Plaxo wasn’t yet in the social networking space. And FriendFeed hadn’t yet launched their service. It was almost exactly a year ago that Plaxo launched Pulse, the first Social Web Aggregator. [Disclosure/reminder: I work for Plaxo, but you already knew that.] One of the key questions was, “Are enough people using multiple user-generated content sites that one can build a thriving service based on ‘lifestreaming’ the activity streams from those services?”

So, let’s look at the July numbers from Compete, which just became available within the last 48 hours. [One caveat, every third party traffic tracking service has it's limitations; Compete is looking just at U.S. traffic and does not have visibility to activity originating from client software.] How are the two most prominent pure-play Social Web Aggregators faring? In a word, “thriving.”

Plaxo and FriendFeed both posted greater that 20% month-over-month growth from June to July, and Plaxo clocked 225% year-over-year growth in monthly unique visitors. (Year-over-year data for FriendFeed not yet available, but coming soon.) The slope of Plaxo’s rise is slightly higher than FriendFeed’s, but that is not as significant as the clear sign that both services are surging.

I am an enthusiastic user of both services and I don’t see them as competing with each other. Quite the contrary. I love using FriendFeed for staying on top of what the early adopter and influencer crowd are buzzing about in public conversations. And I love using Plaxo for private sharing and conversing with highly granular control of what I share with whom.

As a footnote, the rising “aggregation” tide is *not* floating all boats equally. Latecomers, with little obvious differentiation, such as Iminta and SocialThing, have generated so little traction as to barely show up in Compete.

Congratulations to Plaxo (who pulled off a re-invention of the company and has managed to execute well through a change of ownership) and to FriendFeed (who have entered a hot space with really great focus and execution). Game on!

I knew this question would come so: Why choose ping.fm vs. Socialthing?

Answer: ST´s intent is not only to post through different services, furthermore it gives you a timeline to view your friends’ posts in a tiny stream!

ping.fm on the other hand handles different kinds of posting: 1. statuses 2. blogging/micro-blogging
So they have actually different services to post to. Ping.fm does not have a timeline to view and just sends pings to your services.

With ST integrating ping.fm as a service you can now push posts through more services, like brightkite, which is not yet supported for postings by ST.

Everyone got the idea? No? Then check it out… ;D

More information you´ll find on their websites:

• http://ping.fm/blog/socialthing-in-the-house/
• http://tinyurl.com/586ph9

Congrats to CEO Matt Galligan and the crew at Socialthing! TechCrunch is reporting that they have been acquired by AOL!

AOL is getting into the lifestreaming business. Like Friendfeed or Facebook’s News feeds, it recently launched AIM BuddyUpdates, which lets AIM users keep up with what their instant-messaging buddies are doing on social services such as Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and Digg. To beef up its lifestreaming capabilities, we have been able to confirm that it has also bought Socialthing!, a FriendFeed competitor that is still in private beta.

I remember meeting Matt and the rest of the crew at their booth at this year’s South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival and then their party.  You could right away tell that these guys were cool and that they were on to something.

After SXSW, it was great to see all the new features they pushed out and the positive press.  AOL must have noticed.

I hope that them getting acquired by AOL means that they’ll be out in Virginia (by us) more often.

Have you tried Socialthing? If so, what do you think?

Monomoy Capital Partners has acquired the Missy Group — Monomoy Capital Partners has acquired the Missy Group from the Redcats Group Inc., a unit of French holding company PPR SA. No financial terms were disclosed. Missy Group will be renamed Women’s Apparel Group LLC, and is a catalog and online retailer of “value-priced” clothing and accessories under the Chadwick’s, metrostyle and Closeout Catalog Outlet brands.

Monster Acquires Job Search Site Trovix For $72.5 Million; Military Site Armees.com — Monster, the incumbent job site, has announced a couple of deals this afternoon, as it looks to fight off upstart competitors, like LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed.com and TheLadders… first it has acquired Mountain View-based Trovix, a site that applies semantic search technology to job search. The acquisition price was $72.5 million in cash. Monster says it will integrate its technology, which can help scan resumes and job openings for better matching. Trovix was founded in 2002, and was backed by 3i, Granite Ventures and US Venture Partners. The company has announced over $18 million in funding over two rounds.

YouTube Buys Video Tools Firm Omnisio — YouTube, part of Google, has done a rare acquisition: it has bought online video tools firm Omnisio, for an undisclosed sum. The small Atherton, CA-based startup has mashups, video annotation, video presentations and other tools to allow video sharing users to better express themselves…the thought is that these will be integrated within YouTube as well. For these mashups, the service could ingest video in from YouTube, Google Video and Blip.tv, though it may be that it discontinues Blip if it is integrated into YouTube. TC says the deal is all cash and is in the $15 million range.

WPP Group Acquires Majority Stake In Actis — WPP announces that its wholly-owned operating company, Wunderman, the New York-based global relationship marketing network, has acquired a majority stake in Alite Ltd, trading as Actis, one of Russia’s leading digital agencies. Founded in 1997, Moscow-based Actis employs more than 120 people. Offering full-spectrum digital services, Actis provides strategy, design, development and content management for clients in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The agency has completed more than 700 commercial internet projects for clients including Canon, Microsoft, MTV and VimpelCom. Actis’ unaudited revenues for the year ended 31 December 2007 were RUB 124m (EUR 3.4m), with gross assets at the same date of RUB 51m (EUR 1.4m). This investment continues WPP’s strategy of developing its networks in fast growing markets and sectors and strengthening its capabilities in digital media.

Yellow Pages To Buy Volt Directory Services — Yellow Pages Group said Wednesday, July 30, that it has agreed to buy the directory systems, services and North American publishing operations of Volt Information Sciences Inc. for about $178 million in cash. New York-based Volt, a staffing company, said the deal includes its directory systems and services assets, which provides telephone directory database management. Also included is DataNational, a publisher of community directories under the Community Phonebook brand.

AOL Buys Online Profile Manager SocialThing — AOL has bought Socialthing, a company the offers to help manage users online identities, according to Techcrunch. The Boulder, CO.-based company raised $300K of a planned $500K back in October and has been in beta since last year as well. Terms of the deal weren’t revealed. In March, AOL expanded its web mail service to include tighter integration with its AIM messaging tools. The purchase of Socalthing is likely tied to efforts to make services like AIM more portable.

Socialthing.com is an online service that lets you consume most of your online social streams easily.

“See everything that’s going on with your friends in all the sites you use, easily figure out where you’re missing connections with your friends, interact with multiple sites at once, and more! ” [socialthing]

Currenlty supports the following:

• Brightkite
• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Flickr
• Guitar Hero
• Last.fm
• Plurk
• Pownce
• Seesmic
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• YouTube

More and more services are being added as time goes by. This is a great service that keeps me updated with my favorite social services, in an easy to follow stream.

Technorati : feed, online, social, socialthing, stream

From day one i had not been a huge fan of big social networking sites. I could not get into Live Journal, I don’t really care for MySpace, and did not understand the use of Twitter. Now after tons of trial and error, to see what really keeps you in touch and what doesn’t I am now very much within the social networking..network. But with careful consideration, I feel there are only a few worthy of getting the job done.

One of the things that are great about all of my selected network sites, is it actually DOES keep you in touch with people who very much want to keep in touch with you. Facebook and MySpace are were the “big” sites for you to sign up for if you wanted to begin your networking venture. At this point, after seeing ever emo scene kid, with flat-ironed hair covering one eye, looking at their sidekick, just to see if someone they don’t really know messaged them or commented their bulletin (because they ask people to) turns you off to the whole thing. After getting away from Myspace, I knew i had to stay in touch, but not with a internet community based on how many friends you have, and whether you are n their “top list” or not. Those politics, i feel, are not what social networking is about. Its about getting information to people you want to have it, and you, receiving from people you want to receive from.

This is where Pownce came into my life. I remember it was an invite-only beta, that i very much wanted to be a part of. After the wait, as soon as it was launched to the public, i knew it was exactly what i had been searching for. The user set-up is perfect. ONE photo of your choice, short description of yourself, with a chosen theme layout. That is really all you need! While setting up you can also download a native app for your Mac or PC (powered by adobe air) so you can update and see feeds straight from your desktop.  Pownce will let you advertise your site, and other social network links to the people you want, and people who are interested. Share photos, links, videos, quick! It was developed very very well, and is probably my favorite site when in front of my computer or on my iPhone. Everyone on there is on for one reason. To stay connected. This community is part of a more intelligent group which can use Pownce and Twitter to get their messages across, the way it was meant to be sent.

Although Twitter has been out long before Pownce, I feel like this is an amazing extension of that. I am a late adopter of Twit but i absolutely love it. If anything, with iPhone and Text Message integration, this is the fastest way to let people know your happenings, and vice versa. The next step to this great way of staying connected, is with more than words. This is where QIK comes in. Unfortunately, I cannot use it yet, because the iPhone cant support it without video, but any of you with Nokia’s…. Get on that. If you dont know what QIK is, Click HERE to visit them and find out.

On one last note I do have to mention a great addition to these sites and all others you may own (last.fm, flickr, ect.) It is called SocialThing! and is not only quick and efficient, but it is iPhone integrated. Thanks to fellow Powncer Amber A, i was able to join the beta, which is damn near completion. This site will let you set up an account that will login in to ALL of your social sites, allowing you to view them ALL on one page of feeds, which at the same time will let you update all of YOUR sites in bulk! Also choose the ones you don’t wanna update (See Photo). It just so happens to be that the best integration with this website is with Pownce and Twitter! If you can get an invite, join SocialThing! and you will love it.

-Jake