Yahoo and Google Moving on Social Media; Microsoft Stalks to Buy

Ed: Yahoo and Google moving with small changes to integrate social media features. Microsoft talks about Windows 7 and buying Yahoo. 

Yahoo Profile is another effort by Yahoo to create circle's of friends. Past efforts include 360, myBlogLog, FlickR, and others. Too little, too late.

Google has integrated gReader and iGoogle. Past efforts to share these personal pages with friends have not received much buzz. 

Go Get Yer Shiny New Yahoo Profile…And Make Some Connections!

by Michael Arrington on October 16, 2008

Yahoo begins the rollout of its new user profile today, which marks the first tangible product release for the social part of the Yahoo Open Strategy, or YOS. The profile is one of the anchors (mail is the other) to Yahoo’s strategy of turning the site into one big social network.

It’s been a long haul for the company, which first talked about the new strategy almost a year ago. More details, and a few conceptual screenshots, were announced at CES in January. A newcomer to Yahoo, VP Communities Jim Stoneham (he joined six weeks ago), is leading the team that’s creating new social features.

So here’s exactly what Yahoo is launching today: 

Google Updates iGoogle: Better Integration with Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance

Google today updated its iGoogle homepage by improving its integration Google Reader, Gmail, and Google Finance. These gadgets can now make use of iGoogle's canvas feature, which allows a gadget to take up the whole screen. This is especially useful for the Google Reader and Gmail gadgets, which now bring almost all of the features of the actual services to iGoogle.

iGoogle Goes Wide, Introduces Canvas Pages.

by Erick Schonfeld on October 16, 2008

Google’s startpage, iGoogle, is spreading its wings. Today it is rolling out a new design that shifts tabs to a column on the left so that more Google gadgets and sources of content can be accommodated. But the biggest change is the ability for content partners and developers to expand each gadget to take up nearly the whole page.

Partners that are launching with expanded gadgets include the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, TV Guide, iLike, CurrentTV, and Go Comics. Google itself has created extra-wide gadgets for Google Reader, Gmail, Google Finance, and YouTube. If you have an iGoogle page in the U.S., you should see the new design rolled out by the end of the day.

In effect, Google is stealing a page from Facebook here and giving Gadget developers their own canvas pages. Within these iFrames, an entire Website can be exposed, with ads and all. Any money from ads on the canvas page go 100 percent to the content partner...

Yahoo SearchMonkey gets Zagat, CitySearch

from CNET News.com | Tech news blog

Trying to reclaim a lead lost to Google, Yahoo is repackaging some search results with extra information. New business review Web sites have joined the effort.