Yahoo to Join Google in OpenSocial

Yahoo announced Tuesday that it will join Open Social, along with Google.

OpenSocial already has several big names in its social network, such as MySpace, Linkedin, Orkut, Ning, Friendster…and now Yahoo.

OpenSocial aims to enable developers to create applications (APIs) compatible with all social platforms that have joined Google’s alliance.

OpenSocial now has a total of more than 600 million users, facing competition with Facebook, which has 60 million members.

Site: http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

Yahoo Buzz The Yahoo Digg

Yahoo is going to launch Yahoo Buzz, a competitor to Digg.

It should replace the actual Yahoo Buzz - The Buzz Log : http://buzz.yahoo.com/

Project Manager is Tapan Bhat. Yahoo Buzz will be first open to 100 publishers and will rank the news according to the most popular search results and the number of votes.

This Summer YahooBuzz will be open to every member of the Yahoo Publisher Network, that means all webmasters that display Yahoo Ads on their Website. Very Bright from Yahoo to recruit publishers and to increase the overall Yahoo online Ad Revenue!

Here are some screenshots of Yahoo Buzz:

Ginger Netvibes opens in beta

Out Netvibes, here comes Ginger.

Ginger is the new Netvibes with a social platform, 110 000 widgets, a network of contacts, an internal mail and the ability to create your own universes…

Netvibes gave beta test invitation codes everywhere on the web but this was very limited (100 invitations to the fastest people on Netvibes Blog, 500 on Techcrunch, 50 on Mashable,…) I did’nt have the chance to get one, so I won’t tell much more about Ginger.

Netvibes got his big buzz today when we see all bloggers talking about Ginger, especially in France.

Hey watch I’m talking about it even without invit! My god!

What Mashable says about it:

“One feature that looks to really make Netvibes more social is the 2GB of free storage space you’ll get as a registered user, giving you a box.net type of storage system for sharing documents via your start page. [...] you’ll also be able to save blog posts, images and video for yourself. These items can be shared with friends, and will also appear in your personal timeline.”

Reddit Algorithm Explained

Here is the secret revealed: Why and How Reddit works or how a post makes the frontpage.

This secret was initially revealed on a Digg’s story but I suspect the image below to be actually the explanation of Digg Algorithm.

Warning: this is humor, via Digg Reddit.

Wikia Open Source search engine to launch Jan 7, 2008

It was first known one year ago under code name Wikiasari, Human Search engine by founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales, Search Wikia will open January 7, 2008, so in 10 days!

Wikia is an open source Internet search engine, to which the community can contribute to content, relevance and rankings of the search engines result pages.

Just not like Google, Yahoo or Msn that are automatic search engines, Wikia is a Human Search Engine.

It was founded in 2004 and received investment money from Amazon and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Search battle is going to be exciting for all of us in 2008, thanks to the war between Wikia-Wikipedia and Google-Google Knol.

SEO and SEM is already ready as you can see here.

CommandShift3 : vote for hot websites

CommandShift3 is a hot or not for websites. Instead of voting for hot girls and boys, you vote for the design of hottest websites.

You can browse websites by tag or by winner/looser.

Then you can browse winners by day / week / month / All time.

And if you are ready, watch the worst ever websites.

Google Knol against Wikipedia

Google is going to launch a similar service to Wikipedia in the next months : Google Knol (from the word “Knowledge“). The service is currently in very private beta.

People who are experts in their domain will be invited to write an authoritative article about it on Knol.

Like Wikipedia, Knol will be totally free and contributors will be able to make money from their articles with sharing ad revenues with Google. For example, see the screenshot below where you can see the Adsense Block:

(Click to enlarge)

Knol will be a online encyclopedia and will cover all subjects, from scientific topics to entertainment.

Contrary to Wikipedia that is a collaborative encyclopedia, Knol authors won’t be able to contribute anonymously neither edit the articles from other contributors.

So we are going to see (for the best) in the next year a war between Google Knol and Wikipedia, and between Google Search Engine and Search Wikia (open source Internet search engine, to which the community can contribute, by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia).

Knol is not even public that Small Business SEM wrote an interesting article on 7 ways how to use Knol.

Blog Competition a new digg-like with Prizes

Blog Competition is a new Digg-like competition with prizes for the top posts (up to $2500, monthly prizes and a weekly featured article).

The site is run by “Chris” author of Blogsrecord, GotToRead and MattNutt

Add a Vote Button in your blog, you can find them here on the BlogCompetition Blog.

A Wordpress Contest Plugin is also available for download.

Prizes are on offer on a regular basis including:

* $25 for the top post within the month.

* $2500 for the top post of the year

* Weekly featured post on the front page

* T-Shirt Every 4 Months for the top post in each category

* Banner Ad 125×125 for the bottom post weekly

* Top Post of each category gets a 468×60 or 125×125 banner ad on each of my other sites (per month, ads are rotated)

* Plus regular sponsored prizes, best of all you don’t have to pay a thing.