Microsoft, Social Media | featured news

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After a long period of closed beta testing, Microsoft made the beta version of its social network, Socl, available to everyone on Tuesday.

Do we really need another Social Software Platform? Given Microsoft’s acquisition of Yammer, I for one am glad to see another contender jump in the game. And this one is carrying a big bat.

Microsoft agreed to buy online social network firm Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash, which will allow the software company to offer a service like Facebook's to corporate customers.

Microsoft Corp is close to buying business software company Yammer Inc for more than $1 billion, according to a source familiar with the details. Microsoft's interest in Yammer, known for its social networking functions, could allow the software giant to beef up its offerings for corporations.

Facebook is paying $550 million to Microsoft for some of the patents the software giant recently bought from AOL, as the social network beefs up its patent defenses ahead of its IPO.

On Thursday, the computer giant accidentally published a splash page advertising Tulilip - a social project under to the Microsoft-owned domain name socl.com.

Nokia has announced it will bring social networking to the masses on its freshly minted C3, C6 and E5 phones. This comes just a day after Microsoft did the same for mobile Windows users, and Sony Ericsson is promising to catch up. The Nokia phones will communcate with Facebook and Twitter, as well as Ovi Mail and Chat. Meanwhile, Sony Ericsson's Spiro and Zylo add Walkman branding to the inevitable Facetwit connections, as money ceases to be a barrier to social networking.

The buzz around realtime search of social networks has mostly surrounded Twitter and Facebook. Collecta, OneRiot and the search giants, including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo all tap into Twitter (and Facebook too) to capture the realtime stream of content. But MySpace is also getting into the game, recently releasing a set of real-time APIs that both OneRiot and Google will be tapping into to provide content from the social network. Today, real-time search engine Collecta has launched a search platform that offers a real-time view into MySpace.

Beyond talking about how fast it was growing, one of the hottest topics surrounding Twitter in 2009 was “how does it make money?” Perhaps that was the wrong question to be asking, though, because as it turns out, Twitter already makes money.