Google+ remains a challenge to Facebook
Google remains undaunted in its bid to create a flourishing online community that can go toe-to-toe with social networking powerhouse Facebook.
The California Internet titan's popular products and services will increasingly be woven into its nascent but fast-growing Google+ social network to make joining irresistible, executives said Thursday.
"We are in an enviable position that we have people who come to Google," Vic Gundotra, Vice President in charge of Google+, said at a Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
"We are in this for the long haul... By Christmas you will see Google+ strategy coming together." Google+ has attracted more than 40 million users since it opened to the public about a month ago, but has a long way to catch up with Facebook's membership of approximately 800 million.
In the coming days, programs offered as online services at Google Apps will work with Google+ accounts, which will eventually synch with other popular offerings such as YouTube.
Google plans to eventually open its social networking platform to outside developers to make games and other kinds of installable "apps" that have been part of Facebook's success, according to Gundotra.
Google+ will also eventually allow people to use pseudonyms on accounts instead of their real names, he said, touching on one of the criticisms of the social network.
Google is moving slowly and cautiously to make sure its social network is a safe, stable haven for families, friends, and other associates who connect with one another in "circles" created at the service.
Gundotra acknowledged that Facebook has the advantage of a "network affect," in that complex webs of friends are established there and people might find it daunting to up and relocate to Google+. "The incumbent has a huge advantage," Gundotra said. "If you play the same game, you are not going to win... So we are going to do it differently."
Differently, for Google+, includes giving users more discretion regarding what they share and with whom.
"We do not believe in over-sharing," Gundotra said.
"There is a reason why every thought in your head does not come out your mouth... We think a core attribute to being human is to curate."
Google+ launched with a requirement that people use their real names online in order to let others find them more easily, according to executives.
"We wanted this to be a product where you can discover people you know," Gundotra said. "You don't know 'Captain Crunch' or 'Dog Fart'."
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said that he initially thought Google+ was too complicated, but has come to like the online community that lets users create "circles" of contacts depending on intimacy.
"I have connected with friends who I haven't touched base with in a while," Brin said at the summit. "I wasn't able to do that with existing services because of the way the sharing models worked," he said in an indirect reference to social networking king Facebook. "It just didn't work for me."
Brin said that Google has been streamlining its product line and merging offerings under the leadership of fellow co-founder Larry Page, who replaced Eric Schmidt as chief executive earlier this year.
"I completely agree that some of our products and services seemed scattered over the past few years, and we definitely have been trying to bring them together," Brin said.
"In some ways, we have always run the company as 'let a thousand flowers bloom,' but once they do bloom, you want to put together a coherent bouquet."
Brin added that he was happy in his new role working on special projects, such as Google's self-driving car, and getting to be the "peanut gallery" when Page is grappling with executive decisions.
FACEBOOK -- YoVIlle : Level Up Guide
Many of you might have played YoVille on Facebook, and if you haven't yet, its time you tried it out. For the discerning, YoVille is a game on Facebook where you hang out with your friends and make new ones while at the same time you decorate your Virtual home, chat with your buddies, host a party, play games, earn coins and well, shop and send gifts to your friends.
Here is a Levelling up guide for your character in YoVille : (thanks to yvlounge.com)
2. New Yo in Town, Mood Lamp, kitchen knives, 10pts
3. Laugh, 30pts
4. Air Guitar, Zynga shirt, 50pts
5. Rookie Royale, Guest Bathroom, 80pts
6. Party Lamp, Wind up Penguin, 120pts
7. Impatient, 170pts
8. Bronze Medal, 230pts
9. Egyptian, 310pts
10. Yo Q. Public, Hall of friends, black chair and ottoman, 400pts
11. Angry, 510pts
12. I’m Hot, 630pts
13. Budding Tree, Pop sneakers, 770pts
14. Running Man, 930pts
15. Prodigy, Flowering Cherrytree, 1100pts
16. Yawn, Light destroyed skinnies, 1400pts
17. 2 Kewl 4 U, 1700pts
18. In Love, 2000pts
19. CanCan, Jack-in-the-box, 2300pts
20. Upstanding Citizen, Master Bathroom, 2700pts
21. KungFu, 3100pts
22. Be Gone!, Spherical Red Chair, 3500pts
23. Mystery Bookshelf 1/3, 3900pts
24. Moonwalk, 4400pts
25. Socialite, Mystery Bookshelf 2/3, Toy robot, 4900pts
26. Touchdown, 5400pts
27. Tough Guy, 6000pts
28. Gold Medal, Barrel Costume, 6600pts
29. Disco, 7300pts
30. Civic Centered Yo, Mystery Bookshelf 3/3(-> new room), 8000pts
31. Shadowboxing, Toy Monkey, 8700pts
32. Model Fabulous
33. Wave, 10300pts
34. Krunk, 11200pts
35. Cosmopolitan, Guest Bedroom, 12100pts
36. PU!, 13100pts
37. Head Spin, 14100pts
38. Purple Medal, 15200pts
39. Pop & Lock, 16300pts
40. Local Yocal, Basic Herb Garden, 17500pts
41. Sit Ups, 18700pts
42. Sit on Ground, 20000pts
43. Herb Garden, 21300pts
44. Hip Hop Spin, 22700pts
45. Resident Yo, Swanky balcony, 24100pts
46. Backflip, 25600pts
47. Meditation, 27200pts
48. Rainbow Medal, 28800pts
49. Uber Dance, 30500pts
50. Master Yovillian, Magical Herb Garden, 32200pts
FACEBOOK -- 3 Tips for Customising the New Homepage
With the new “real time” stream on Facebook’s redesigned home page, Facebook is relying less on its ability to algorithmically select interesting content for users and more on users’ abilities to group and categorize their friends to create the most interesting stream. Here are a couple quick tips I found on Inside Facebook for customizing it the new Facebook home page to make it work better for you:
1) Hide friends whose updates you don’t want to see.
The easiest way to get started is to hide friends from the News Feed. You’ll no longer see any shared content from friends you hide.
2) Group friends into Friend Lists and use them to filter your feed.
The next step is to group friends into what Facebook calls “Friend Lists.” Friend Lists are private friend groups that no one ever sees but that you can use for privacy - for example, sharing personal content (like photos) with only some of your Facebook friends. You can also use them to create filtered views on the home page stream so that you only see updates from certain types of friends - like “Best Friends,” “Work Friends,” “High School,” etc.
To create Friend Lists, go to the Friends tab and click “Make a New List” on the left side of the page.
3) Change your default home page filter. 
You can change the default stream you see on the home page by dragging a friend list or network filter above “News Feed” on the left. Most people don’t know that this is possible, but it’s a powerful feature once you’ve created a friend list you like using a lot.
Now, you’ll only see updates from “Best Friends” (or whichever list you prefer seeing most often) when you load the home page.
You can only currently use friend lists and networks as your default News Feed filter - not applications. However, you can still rearrange applications in the section below friend lists and networks in order to put your favorite ones on top.
ANNOUNCEMENT >>
FACEBOOK -- 10 Important Points
These set of Facebook Tips I found on Pravdam... and I think they are worth sharing
1. Be careful with whom you connect - so you can keep the network personal. When someone you don’t know asks to connect with you, you should always email him/her and ask how you know each other, and why you should connect. If you don’t get an answer, then ignore the request. This way you can feel comfortable with writing a status message such as “Kfir is having a bad day” without feeling, well, bad.
2. Create groups in areas that are not saturated, and you can add value to the community
BUT
3. Don’t nag people in the group too much - this is Facebook, not Ning. Learn from Chris Brogan’s Grasshoppers experience.
4. Choose the applications you use carefully - don’t Myspace your Facebook profile. Check all the applications you find, but be very careful with the ones you keep on your profile.
5. Invite your friends only to useful or fun applications - and no, Zombie is not one of them
6. Constantly review the groups you are member of, and engage in the discussions there. Nothing new here - this is a social network, so, be social.
7. Try to be a member of up to 30 groups - so people can see what are your topics of interest.
8. Initiate discussion threads between your friends - but don’t spam them. This is a great way to create a conversation with your friends not only you are talking with people you like, you are also helping them to connect amongst themselves. Did we mention that this is a social network?
9. Make your profile interesting to read - Invest a lot of time in creating a profile that not only provides information but make people read it through. Applications like iRead, friends wheel, flixster, and wordpress plugin (if you have a blog) bring your profile to life.
10. The most important tip of all - use it as a part of your social media toolbox - mesh it up with your blog, create events that are relevant to your day to day live, share your posts and video material and so on. It is like a snowball effect - one effort feeds the other and increase the impact of your online and offline social activities.
ORKUT -- Sending Blank Scrap
The Social Network
From the Wikipedia A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services. Social networking has created new ways to communicate and share information. Social networking websites are being used regularly by millions of people, and it now seems that social networking will be an enduring part of everyday life. The main types of social networking services are those which contain directories of some categories (such as former classmates), means to connect with friends (usually with self-description pages), and recommender systems linked to trust. Popular methods now combine many of these, with MySpace and Facebookbeing the most widely used in North America; Nexopia (mostly in Canada); Bebo, Facebook, Hi5, MySpace, Tagged, Xing; andSkyrock in parts of Europe; Orkut and Hi5 in South America and Central America; and Friendster, Orkut, Xiaonei and Cyworld in Asia and the Pacific Islands. So here we go, its time we delve into the Online Virtuality of the Social Networks and get the more out of it... C ya!!!