Okay I know this is the band wagon, and this is all yesterdays news, but I couldn’t help blogging about Google’s Open Social.  I know it’s been awhile since I have posted anything new, but I have been swamped with launching a new platform.  ZDnet’s Robin Harris hits on an interesting thought about why Microsoft won the  deal with Facebook – that is was a “bluff”on the part of Google to get Microsoft to throw a bunch of money at Facebook.  I agree that 240 million is a small amount for either Microsoft or Google, and I think Harris is right that Google didn’t really want the deal because they had the plans for Open Social ready to reveal the following week to steal the thunder away from the Microsoft/Facebook deal – and they way I see it – it worked.  There are a lot of big companies, including Myspace that is going to support the Open Social movement.

A friend of mine and I were talking about all these big happenings and it’s like a big tug of war.  The good thing about this tug of war is that the social web is going to greatly benefit by the results.  Working in the social networking industry it continues to amaze me how fast the web and development of social applications are moving.  Making it more open and enhancing broad scale collaboration will only speed that process up even more.

  Big news for the folks on Myspace, the gaming world is about to about to join in on the social network frenzy on Myspace. News Corp. announced today that Myspace.com has partnered with Oberon Media, a platform for casual games. Oberon Media has experience in PC, online, mobile and interactive TV categories. They also have a nice list of heavy-hitting partners that they currently work with, and the largest social network, Myspace.com is about to join in on the fun.

The Myspace games, powered by Oberon is scheduled to launch in January. The timing of this move is huge for Myspace since the online gaming (now with its own acronym OLG) is growing faster than any other online activity, and will reach 4 billion in revenue by the end of 2008. Looks like Myspace is positioning itself with the help of Oberon to be a part of the booming trend online.

The fairly new social network site MyLifeBrand recently received $750,000 from an undisclosed party – pretty hefty amount for a small start-up out of Utah (by the way my home state). MyLifeBrand launched earlier this year with some big claims about their social platform. I heard about the social network several months ago, but not until recently did I decide to give it a try. So here are my impressions:

• The graphics of the site are pretty cool, but the bright colored navigation buttons on the site are a bit distracting to me, in fact I avoided clicking on them for a good while because I thought they were paid banner ads or something.

• I am a bit confused with the Community -I can’t seem to figure out how to change from the Global community, but I imagine we’ll see more from this as time goes on.
• They have a nifty little way of allowing users to aggregrate other social networks although when I tried this with my Facebook account and it displayed Facebook in a frame – personally not a fan. Not sure how else they could achieve this, but my thoughts on this would be to minimize the MyLifeBrand navigation menus it would allow for a more appealing user experience.

• I tried to import my friends from my Facebook & Myspace accounts and it neither of them worked. Oh well, they are in Bet.
• I like the Jazzbots.com site that is running as a MyLifeBrand social community, and I can see this feature being a potentially high revenue platform if they do this right. If they prove a solid solution for the NBA Jazz it could open some doors for them.

It will be interesting to see what the $750k will do for MyLifeBrand, I would like to see more with the Community idea and the social aggregation.

Big talks going on in the social network arena.  Microsoft and Facebook are in talks about a big deal wherein Mircosoft may consider investing $300 million to $500 million into Facebook for a 5 percent stake in the company.  Not only that but Google is also expressing interest in the booming social network according to New York Times.

This is the crazy part as noted in the by DealBook editor, Andrew Ross Sorkin:

“The amount, the publication noted, would amount to more than $200 per Facebook user — well above the $70 that Google put on YouTube’s individual eyeballs or $50 that Ebay paid for each of Skype’s earlobes. “

The sandbox of Social Networks is getting pretty hot in the noon day sun, and with this recent deal with Facebook and Microsoft one is left to wonder how News Corp is feeling about this news since MySpace is still the number one social network on the world wide web.  It makes sense that this is a positive note for MySpace since they are still leading the pack in the Social Networking world.  Sorkin points out:

“MySpace is clearly bigger than Facebook. It had about 68 million unique visitors to its site last month, according to comScore. That is about twice the number that stopped by Facebook during the same period. “

If one recalls the big deal with MySpace of $580 million that thought went around that the social networking industry had hit a peak because MySpace is the giant.  That point aside, I ask the question, why Microsoft?  I am sure there are several reasons, but Forrester analyst Charlene Li sums up a very valid point in the Reuters coverage of this story:

“If you are building a business around building a platform there is one company that has done it better than anybody else — and that is Microsoft,” she said. “People have been just assuming that Google would be the best partner and that is not necessarily the case.”

Whether you believe this point or not, there is some undeniable truth to it – look at the numbers.  Any way you look at thi, Mark Zuckerberg, will be a happy man whether Microsoft or Google put a stake into Facebook.  A Microsoft could do a lot with a partnership with Facebook.

One thing that can clearly be derived from this recent news…the game ain’t over yet.  MySpace is not immune to competition and that leaves the opportunities wide open for anyone.