Ajax Girl

Here’s a juicy tip - we’ve been hearing about a new Yahoo social network initiative called Mosh, which is at mosh.yahoo.com but can only be accessed from inside the Yahoo offices. If you happen to be using the guest wifi at Yahoo, you should be able to access the site, although this may be shut down soon.

It’s likely this would replace Yahoo’s 360 social network service, which has never really gotten traction. The existence of Yahoo Mosh also most likely puts a bullet in any further speculation that they are in acquisition talks with Bebo, a somewhat unsubstantiated rumor from May. Last year Yahoo made a serious effort at acquiring Facebook but the deal was never closed.

Yahoo isn’t acknowledging that the product exists and generally won’t comment at all on this kind of thing. If anyone has a screen shot or more information, please email me confidentially.

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Source: TechCrunch
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We’ve gotten word that Fox has closed the acquisition of Photobucket, has wired the money to the Photobucket shareholders and will issue a press release tomorrow.

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Scribd, dubbed “YouTube for documents” didn’t have the the traditional dip in traffic after its launch, and has continued to grow rapidly after raising nearly $4 million in two rounds of venture capital.

I looks like they already have competition, though. I’ve been hearing good things about new startup Docstoc, which is currently in private beta. I haven’t been able to get in and see the service, but others that have are telling me its pretty cool. The video above shows an early interface, which I grabbed from the Docstoc blog.

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A team of ex-Microsofties left to create Jackson Fish Market, with the tagline “Handcrafted Software Experiences,” in November 2006. In their introductory blog post, co-founder Hillel Cooperman talks about his grandfather’s fish store, Jackson Fish, a “small businesses was run by family, with everyone pitching in as best they could” and which sold “handcrafted products” that “that both address a core customer need, but also make them feel emotionally satisfied, content, and… happy.” They credit 37 Signals with much of the inspiration behind the company.

They’re working on a number of projects, and “They’re Beautiful” is the first to launch. It’s a free virtual flowers site. Users can send a virtual bouquet to any email address (even without registering). The recipient sees the bouquet and can choose to put it in their Greenhouse on the site by registering. They then must return every few days to “water” the flowers and keep them from wilting.

The coolest feature is the ability to embed the virtual gifts in another website, as I’ve done above. The “products” are visually stunning, and if they can get significant enough distribution through the widgets it would be a simple step to add premium, limited edition items in the future for a fee.

The timing of the launch is perfect, as Facebook and others are testing virtual goods (HotOrNot has sold virtual flowers for years) and the market seems set to explode.

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Finishing off our week of niche social networks comes a newish social networking offering from chess portal Chess.com.

Chess.com is dedicated to becoming the premier online social networking community for chess players world wide. Chess.com aims to provide an environment where chess players of all skill levels can learn, contribute, play, build, chat, and share.

Chess.com comes with the standard array of features including profiles, blogs, friends, events, video sharing and email. The social network launched in June and is on its way to 10,000 members.

Catering for a niche audience doesn’t necessarily require aesthetic beauty (although admittedly it does help), content and community ultimately drives success. As much as some of the members of Chess.com make Chris Pirillo look like Brad Pitt, there’s little doubt that the site has something to it, besides a url that could potentially be worth $1million by itself. If you’re heavily into chess, Chess.com is worth a visit.

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Hey!Spread is a video uploading service that delivers user generated videos to multiple video sites.

Promoted as “the first video sneezer service”, the aim is simple: only 3 steps to “Spread your videos over the best video networks in one shot.” Users simply select the video they want uploaded, adding a description and tags. In the second step users add their login details for the sites they want the video uploaded to (first time only and user/ pass details are stored for subsequent sessions). The third step: the selected video is submitted to multiple video sites.

Video uploading sites supported include YouTube, MySpace, Google Video, Yahoo Videos, Dailymotion and Blip.tv.

Hey!Spread is not the prettiest site you’ll see this week, but it is practical. Video content creators are moving to multi-point distribution of content and a one stop service like Hey!Spread will definitely come in handy.

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Source: TechCrunch
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Once I asked a friend of mine whether he ever joins chat, blogs, discussion fora on the internet. Hearing me asking this, he shrugged off his broad shoulder and he affirmatively said, “No and never ever.” “But why? Why are you so up in arms against internet culture?” I tried to pinch him seductively.

He shot back point blank at me. He said that he loved to live in the real world and never thought of living in the killing fields of virtual world as there is no or there shoild not be any perceptible reality in that so-called virtual world. He opined that virtual world is a stale world, a dirty cheap world. And a virtual world is like a world of nothingness. Why should we ever keep shy of the world of verdant splendour? Being there is akin to a feeling of belongingness. How can we afford to fight back the grim reality of belongingness just by overhauling it? Yes, it is a dirty cheap world. And there is no denying of the fact.

“A dirty cheap world? What do you mean?” I fired back.

“Yes, I mean what I say. It is not only very cheap, but dirty to the core. Enough is enough. There is nothing serious, nobody serious. It has corrupted and polluted the entire world culture and psyche. It is just teasing, appeasing and molly-cooddling our libido and that libido as it were is the summum bonnum of our existence. Examles are aplenty. This perversion is going on and on. It is doing more harm than good.”

“But so many people are involed in this in so many ways. What is the bugbear as such?”

“The bugbear is cultural perversion. Nobody is serious about it and nothing is commited seriously. I’ve asked many people what they actually do on the internet. They could not answer convincingly. This so-called virtual world provides us with oodles of dry informations and datas. There is no objective reality. It is disatrous…”

I thought a while and kept on thinking. Is there no serious discussion? Everything is a storm over a breakfast tea? I do have my own options and reservations. Are those dry informations and datas not value-added? Can they not prompt us to churn objective reality out of this? Cheap they may be in some cases and dirty also in some other cases but the bottomline remains the same: it has come to stay, my friend agrees or not.

A new data release from The Face of the Web, Ipsos Insight’s annual study of Internet and Technology trends, shows (probably quite obviously) an increasing use of video and social networking sites.

According to Ipsos, the evolution of Internet users’ digital media and online habits appears to be transitioning “to the digital video age”. At the end of 2006, online video activities had taken over from audio as the fastest growing sector in digital media.

Thes study found that one in five adults worlwide had visited a social networking website. South Korea was the leading social networking market with two thirds of all adults having visited at least one social networking site. In comparison, only 32% of Americans had ever visited a social networking website.

Full details of the data release are available here. Access to the full report is $24,500.

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