Damien Saunders

The New York Times writes that an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning. Facebook opened up its network for 3rd parties to develop their own applications earlier this year and this has resulted in a mass of new developments for everything from ’super-poke’ to free sms. This would be seen as a move to ‘compete’ with Facebook on the level of integration 3rd parties have with websites.The New York Times learned of the alliance’s plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party on Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

Facebook calls the integration of 3rd parties applications, they added to peoples profiles by users or by recommendation from their friend. One of the most popular Facebook applications is iLike a music sharing service. iLike was a minor music internet website until it developed a plug-in for Facebook allowing people to share their playlists, dedicate songs via messages to their friends or buy music.

Today WSJ writes that Microsoft has brought a minority stake in Facebook that would value the social network site at $15 billion. This ends month of speculation if it would be Google or Microsoft that would get a share.

Read/Write/Web goes on to suggest this will be a plus for the Microsoft adnetwork to help spread its presence in key sites.

Youppo at www.youppo.com is a new social space in Turkey to catch up with friends with free storage for your pics and talk about what’s happening.

Youppo has been in the planning since late last year and development for it is not stopping. While very much in a beta site, we are working to add new features each week to keep the site busy and fresh.

my page is www.youppo.com/web/damien

In the last week new media marketing sites reported on a portal being developed Avea in Turkey. Secretly named GenCinSan (young people in Turkish) the site was launched this week as www.patlican.com.tr (patlican is eggplant/aubergine and a play on ‘it will explode’)

The new site is a reminder of early telco portals from the dotcom error and features include news, reviews, video, with a mix of traditional telco products and services. Tacked on to this is a 1/2 mix of web2.0 services - create your own profile and you can have a personal webpage or find other users with shared interests.

You have to join to be able to view almost anything on the site and be a customer of Avea if you want to participate …. which is all bad news for anyone checking the site. And to register, you have to give them your mobile number … funny stuff?

You can’t call this a web2.0 site as it is not driven by user generated content instead the focus is on a range of editorial content taken from other sites. Looking behind the scene its been developed by VSP/news portal e-kolay.net with support from azbuz and gayet.net. What all these sites have in common is the involvement of a leading media communications player in Turkey, Dogan Grou. Pretty powerful stuff

It might prove a nice new edition in the portal market for Turkey and relevant to Avea customers. Vodafone already offers a similar portal at netbul.com and other similar portals are mynet.com and previously mentioned e-kolay. Thats before you start looking at the long news and media sites.