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Microsoft has now planned to have social networking services inside its Office 2010 applications. Microsoft Office 2010 is planned to be released this year.

Social media sites like LinkedIn have already started creating plugins which can integrate your Outlook with LinkedIn by passing updates to your inboxes. Microsoft is working with MySpace and Facebook to create a similar synch program.

Dev Balasubramanian, Outlook Office group product manager stated, “”It really is about bringing friends, family, and colleagues into you inbox,” Balasubramanian said in a video posted at the US software giant’s website.”

Dev also added, “As you communicate with them you can see their social activities; you can see all of the folks in your social network and it updates as you are reading your email.”

Though Microsoft feels LinkedIn connection would help people using email programs stay updated on job status, contact informations or affiliations on the friend network, one would feel would many companies allow these features be used by its employees. Given the fact that LinkedIn is a huge source for job updates, job searches and enquiries.

Elliot Shumkler, product management director, LinkedIn mentions, “LinkedIn is all about your professional network. Meanwhile, Outlook powers the professional inbox so the match is very clear.”

The test version is available online at office.com/beta

Here is a small Scroll Box script that you can just copy paste in your MySpace profile. Scroll boxes are perfect to add any number of text and images in your MySpace profile page. Read the full story

Lindsay Lohan has been blocked from accessing her own Facebook account as the site administrator thought it was just another fake account. Writing on her MySpace account, Lohan mentioned to her fans that though initially she laughed out, she was ‘shocked’ and red faced. Read the full story

MySpace has now officially launched a self-serving ad platform. With MyAds, users would be able to create their own ad banners and use demographic targeting.

MyAds claims to provide more features than its competitors. Some of its top features include:

1. Create your own ads

   Myspace provides all the necessary templates and instructions to build your own add.

2. Audience Targeting

   You can choose which audience can view your ad. For example: An advertisement on home loans can be blocked for kids or teenagers and displayed to audience above 30 years of age.

3. Choosing Budget

   You can fix your maximum budget for the day so that you will not experience unanticipated costs.

4. Performance Monitoring

   Real-time data on the performance of your ad campaigns are possible which can help you better determine the demographics and the audience your campaign reaches.

MyAds would become competitive and popular as Google Adsense if MySpace uses them on its own website alone. Currently, MySpace looks like targeting only Musicians. However, MySpace states that the service is for everybody.

With more number of players in the internet advertising market, advertisers may get the edge with lower PPCs. But this would also affect publishers to a large extent.

Warnings by ISP’s do seem to work in Britain. A voluntary agreement between six of the largest ISP’s in Britain and the British Phonographic Industry has helped reduce illegal songs downloads considerably.

Internet piracy has always been a major issue for the music industry. Music industry suffers huge loses due to illegal downloads. A recent survey by a entertainment media research company may show some light in the tunnel.

The survey reveals that with just a warning from internet service providers can help stop many illegal downloads. The survey taken from 1,500 UK consumers found that 75% of music pirates would stop their illegal downloads if they are warned by their ISPs.

The survey showed that over 40% of the internet users had downloaded songs from illegal websites during the last year. Fifty eight percent of teenagers also mentioned that they freely downloaded music.

The anti-piracy deal by the British phonographic Industry and the six major broadband providers are working on various strategies to stop piracy. However, the agreement is still in its early stages and a decision to warn consumers would bring in a serious debate.

The research further revealed that 41% preferred YouTube for videos and 25% prefered MySpace for music.

Yahoo along with MySpace and Google would be forming a OpenSocial Foundation to ensure neutrality and longevity of OpenSocial being a community-governed specification for building social applications on the internet. OpenSocial Foundation would be an independent non-profit entity.

OpenSocial would be handed over to the new organization by July 1. Yahoo! Inc Vice President for Platforms, Wade Chambers mentioned, “Yahoo! believes in supporting community-driven industry specifications and expects that OpenSocial will fuel innovation and make the web more relevant and more enjoyable to millions of users,” and also stated “Our support builds on similar efforts with the OpenID community and will expand the opportunity for developers and publishers to benefit from an open and increasingly social web.”

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