Could it be that MySpace profiles aren’t all bad? You be the judge.

A Fine Frenzy - This artist has been high in the charts for quite some time, and her page, courtesy of BandSpaces.com, happened to make it as the first in our musical roundup. As you can see, it’s no wonder why.

Joss Stone - It’s all about placement and graphics. One glance down the artist’s page and it’s clear that the standard layout can be warped with some nice colorful touches. This page is a winner.

Shine - You can keep your page looking segmented if you like, but it doesn’t have to be boring. Sweep the page with images and buttons in the right places and you’ve got yourself a rockin’ MySpace destination.

MyNameIsAugust - Delivered by OutLoudMarketing, the page for August looks fairly ordinary in comparison with the items above, but it still manages to please.

Valerie Nicole - Tidy and neat, this isn’t as in-your-face as some of the others, but it’s still a sight for sore eyes - of which there are plenty across the wide world of MySpace.

Underhills - Though the silver-colored music player does feel a little clunky amid the wallpaper, the complete ensemble is nothing short of fantastic. It’s one of those pages bound to elicit an “I wish that had been mine” kind of critique from visitors.

Airlines - Let’s face it. Good promotional media from bands can mean great publicity. (Books are judged by their covers, in other words.) Which is why the MySpace page for The Airlines, another invention of BandSpaces, lands on this list. It gives the visitor a clear impression that they can make equally kick-ass without breaking the bank.

Lady Sovereign - I’ve been somewhat familiar with Lady Sovereign’s songbook for several seasons now, and the sharp color contrast of her MySpace page is befitting of the musical experience she delivers. Very billboard-esque, this one is.

Stereo Transmitted Disease - If you want to take things a little musica obscura in terms of your band name and bio and things, the page assembled for STD sets a good example. It’s a kind of hodgepodge, wrapped into an easily digestible square.

Man Like Machine - Lots of white space but still fun and playful, Man Like Machine is a music page, but gets marked in the Just Plain Pretty category just the same.

We Are Tokyo - This design is white and red in a way reminiscent of staple colors commanded by The White Stripes. Which is fine by us, because We Are Tokyo pull it off quite well.

Mia Sable - This is a winner in so many ways. Done up with just the right amount of glitz and glamour to make it stand out from the crowd, Mia Sable’s MySpace page is nothing short of fantastic. If this doesn’t make you envious, few others will.

The Academy Is - Having your band name plastered across nearly the full top fold of your MySpace page may not such a bad thing, so long as everything else looks proper. And it does!

Censura - Put your name and music front and center and leave the rest for window dressing. This one is not only beautiful. The geography of it makes it worthwhile to emulate.

The Midway State - Another boxy beaut, the page for The Midway State is impressive for its elegant design and its translucent features.

Race the Sun - This one’s simply a gem to look at. Loading the page takes some time, and some things make seem out of place, but heck if this isn’t one of the most image-enhanced pages on the network.

Cambria Detken - An extraordinary piece of work, the profile for Cambria Detken is one of the best. It makes good use of white space like and wraps it up in butterflies and flowers with plenty of green to go around.

Mr North - Oh what some motion graphics can do. The idea here is to splash the page. The paint job is entertaining. The features are all there. Altogether, it’s an engaging place to be. Which is the point.

Rented Mule - One of the more plainly drawn pages, Rented Mule Jazz is something that lots of folks could take cues from without a degree in design. Easy does it.

Helena Jesse - The lesson here: put heavy emphasis on your header and you’ll grab some attention. The rest of the page is fairly ordinary, but perhaps we’re in store for further enhancements.

Goodnight Caulfield - Akin to the Mia Sable page, albeit made for a four-piece group, Goodnight Caulfield’s profile is so polished that you start to question whether anything is wrong with it. Very little, it turns out!

Gonna Get Got - What a treat. Name emblazoned in white across the top, great graphical touches the entire length of the page, music placed front and center. What else can you ask for? Add another URL to the winner’s circle.

Zone Music - It would be quite basic without that collage to the right of the music player, but if that’s what makes this gem, then so be it. The page is superb with all facets included.

Paul Cullen - So well done, yet not excessively so. It befits the artist, for sure. Which is how it should be, wouldn’t you agree? Out Loud is responsible for making this page happen.

Scott Philipp - That’s Scott Philipp and the StoneBaby Band, to be precise. The contrast of colors make seem a little unusual to some. Black and soft gold are quite a juxtaposition to make. But stick around for a moment and you’ll why we picked it as one of the best.

Ricky Martin - Alright, you may like the guy’s music, or you may not. But one thing is certain. His MySpace page is a great one. It’s refined and easy to navigate without being imposing in any way.

The Stooges - The page rocks. Enough said.

Lenny Kravitz - If you haven’t seen the place before, you will be surprised. The choice of  photo slideshow and background and menu layout and profile componentry, there’s something for most any MySpace page designer to be fond of.

The Almost - Bold and soft all in one page, it’s an interesting thing to look at. It’s colorful but not too much so. It’s very clearly and basically designed, which makes it seem borderline amateurish. So it get a nod.

JMR Productions - We’ll toss this in simply for spice. It’s brash and at the same time fairly plainspoken. It’s great.

Brianna Sage - One of the better sites to make smart use of white space, the profile constructed by Out Loud for Brianna Sage is really well done. The design firm has certainly shown a consistency across many of its creations that it’s hard to imagine anything dreadful coming from its assembly line. A complementary applause is deserved.

Teddy Geiger - It’s not immediately apparent that this is a great design, but give it a moment, we say. It’s the right mix of photography and fringe edits that give it a place on this map.

Ken Hyland - One of the more clean and collected profiles of this broad bunch, the profile for Ken Hyland has professionalism written all over it.

Coldplay - Are broad brush strokes enough to make a MySpace page attractive? We think so. Oh, and there are plenty of little quirks and uniquities to satisfy most folks. (Just as long as they’re noticed.)

Led Zeppelin - The page is top notch. There’s nothing else to say, really. Top notch, indeed. Befitting of the band, wouldn’t you say?

Blue Island Tribe - It’s all waterworks here. And we have to admit, it looks pretty darn good. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’re looking for surfer inspiration, you’ll be hard-pressed to find something much better.

Anouk - From top to bottom (or at least the middle), Anouk’s MySpace page is nicely finished. Everything is clearly delineated, which definitely works in its favor.

Kate Nash - It’s amazing what a checkerboard background can do to a MySpace page, isn’t it?

Citizen Cope - A grand banner topping the page, Citizen Cope’s profile has its rough spots, but there’s nothing that will displease. Chalk that assessment up to the backdrop.

Death Cab for Cutie - Have we gotten loose with our praise with this one? Perhaps, perhaps not. It’s certainly a subjective thing. Some will love the page for its squarish sensibility. It’s got a few abstract bones in its body, for sure.

Dido - Mostly black with plenty of beveled edges, Dido’s profile is well made. There’s ample empty space, which can detract from the sense of fine design, but that may suit some folks. Does it suit you?

Eisley - At least one member of the Mashable crew is partial to Eisley (hint: check the byline), so take this plug as you wish. The extra-large borders around every piece of the puzzle are what really bring things home.

Elbow - This band’s profile is black and white done right. It’s as simple as that.

Eminem - Everything’s so packed together that we can’t help but like it. It’s pretty much the antithesis of sprawl. Kudos on the set design, Eminem.

Ingrid Michaelson - There’s hardly anything unusual about this page, but its colorway and layout are what we think every band should strive for at the very least. The better to please listeners.

M.I.A. - Beware of the flash. Alternatively, if you like the flash, you’ll love it. Seriously.

Nine Inch Nails - Another fairly docile setup, the Nine Inch Nails profile is totally square and totally worth a plug. It’s NIN, through and through.

Radiohead - Its theme coincides with the In Rainbows release, so of course it looks great. Love the darkness, people. Love the darkness!

Smashing Pumpkins - How to summarize…. It has an elaborate headdress with plenty of band stamps to go around. Thumbs up for intelligent design.

U2 - Compared with the first half of this series, the U2 page is, in terms of the band’s global impression, woefully inadequate. But that’s this Irish quartet, for you. MySpace just isn’t cool enough for Bono and his Chanel shades. The thing is, the profile still amounts to an appreciable contribution to the network. How’s that for a finale?

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First strike, although it doesn’t affect users in the U.S., international iPhone owners may be disappointed in the library of available content. Unless you’re a huge fan of Naruto, which seems to make up all of the Anime video section. Many services encounter problems when trying to pick up international distribution rights for all types of media. Pandora is one high profile example, as is Hulu for video. That doesn’t mean there won’t be more content available in future. The Xbox Live Marketplace has brought video to Canada and other markets, albeit behind their American launch.
(more…)

It’s a long road to a victory in the browser wars. Just ask Firefox. The open source browser which launched in 2004 just cracked the 20 percent threshold of the market share for November, according to Net Applications, pushing it a step closer but still miles away from IE.

Recently a few new players have also thrown their hats in the ring, including Google with its much-hyped Chrome and the lesser known, Mozilla-based social web browser Flock, which released its 2.0 version this past October. But do these newcomers even stand a chance?

The Basics

Firefox is gaining ground for good reason: it’s simple, reliable and secure. Its tabbed browsing led to a similar remodel in IE and it has a slew of add-ons that give it a leg up over the competition. It’s slowly becoming the new standard with a steady audience, and that will be hard to beat anytime soon. And its open source platform leaves room for alternatives and experimental niche browsers like Flock.

Flock 2.0 is basically a Firefox with a lot of perks and pre-installed add-ons for those heavy into social networking.  Think of it as a FriendFeed of the browser world, which brings all of your friends from 23 various networks together in a sidebar. It is also one of the first browsers to incorporate media feeds for photos and videos.  Flock is all about sharing what you find on the web as you surf, and it allows you to accomplish this pretty easily by dragging and dropping them either into an email or onto a friend.

Chrome is the polar opposite of Flock, and its big advantage is that it’s even simpler than Firefox, or any other browser out there right now.  The search bar is also integrated into the address bar, which seems to be the wave of the future, at least for those who swear by Google search and don’t need any bells and whistles. Unfortunately, Chrome’s only available for PCs at the moment.

Usability

Chrome wins hands down on getting the job done.  It’s quick and painless with a clear focus of searching for information using Google’s engine.  Dynamic tabbed browsing is a staple now, and if anything crashes, only that tab will go down, not your entire session, which is nice. But if you want a richer web browsing experience stick with Firefox or Flock.  There’s also no easy way to subscribe to RSS feeds from the search bar as there is with Firefox.

Flock can feel a bit overwhelming at times with all of the sidebars of information, but once you get everything set up and get the hang of it, it’s pretty convenient and preferable to keeping a million tabs open for sites like Twitter and Facebook. The drag and drop interface is great.  When you just want to email a YouTube video or picture it’s much easier than copying any URLs, although it does also seem a bit too easy to share something that you might not want shared.

The only other problem with the social networks is that you can’t really fit all of that functionality into a sidebar.  It’s a good way of consolidating friends, but it’s more like a giant address book than anything else. Simple things like posting tweets are a bit confusing, with no clear box for entering in text. When a friend adds content, however, it will open up the profile in the main browser in full view, so you still need to go back to the source.

Speed

Despite the extra features, Flock is surprisingly just as fast as Chrome or Firefox, at least on a medium grade PC.  Looks like they’ve improved upon this concern in the latest release. And Chrome seems to have Firefox beat in this category but the difference isn’t anything drastic.

Privacy

Incognito — aka “porn mode” –  is the new way to surf, as every browser is picking up on this private surfing option that Safari first initiated.

Chrome has faced some privacy concerns at launch with its Omnibox monitoring and recording too much information, but this can all be prevented by changing the default settings and going Incognito.

Expandability

Chrome doesn’t support any extensions or add-ons yet, so Firefox still dominates in this area.  But if you are looking for simple, you probably don’t want much more than Chrome already offers.

Final Thoughts

Firefox is here to stay, but there will always be a long tail of niche alternatives like Chrome and Flock.  When Chrome moves into Mac realm it could pick up some market share from Safari.  Flock will be there for social network junkies who want to try something new, but the first step to making Flock mainstream will be for more of the social networks themselves to go mainstream. Twitter is on track, but still has a long way to go before it’s a household name. If you’re only on Facebook or MySpace, you probably don’t need to worry about the extra sidebars and features.

---
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Flock CEO Jumps Ship
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When you integrate Disqus (pronounced “discuss”) with your WordPress blog, you create a new Disqus community that mirrors the post/comment activity on the blog. The blog post becomes the start of a new discussion and the comments are the subsequent thread. Members can also post to the community that you create. This is a great way for readers of your blog to start discussions with you and all of your readers.

As a Disqus user, all the comments you post to other Disqus-enabled blogs will appear on your profile page (you don’t need a blog to have a Disqus account). This is a nice way for others to see all your words of wisdom that you have shared on other blogs. It is also a good method for finding other users and communities you may be interested in following.

Disqus also plays nice with the built-in WordPress commenting system. Existing comments will be imported into Disqus and when comments are posted onto Disqus they are kept in sync with your WordPress blog. If you change your mind later and you no longer want to use Disqus, you can simply uninstall it. You don’t have to worry about losing comments that were posted through Disqus.

To install Disqus on your Wordpress blog:

• Create an account on Disqus.
• Download the Disqus for Wordpress plugin.
• Place the contents of the archive in your WordPress plugins directory.
• Activate the plugin and navigate to Comments > DISQUS.

  

• Enter your Disqus login credentials and proceed with the installation process.

  

• If you would like to import your existing WordPress comments into Disqus, select Advanced Options and click Import.

  

For further installation details, you can visit the Disqus integration page and view the Disqus documentation for WordPress.

When a blog is converted to use Disqus, individuals that commented on the blog prior to the conversion can claim their imported comments. When users claim comments, verification links are sent to the email addresses used to post the comments. The Disqus users can click the verification links to associate comments on the converted blog with their profiles.

Disqus also automatically subscribes commenters to any responses to their comments. They will receive the responses at the email address they provided with the comment. The best part of this feature is that they can respond via email! There’s no need to revisit the blog post and respond there, as it can all be done by replying to the email.

Disqus also allows non-Disqus members to post comments just as they would normally on any WordPress blog. Users just provide their name, email address, and post the comment. Responses to their comments are sent to their email address and they can reply by email just the same as Disqus users.  Comments by non-Disqus comments are basically treated the same as imported comments.  If non-Disqus commenters do eventually sign up for Disqus accounts, they can also claim their comments to associate them with their new account.

Unfortunately, WordPress is the only well-documented platform for Disqus at this time. The Disqus help page states that MovableType, Tumblr, Blogger, and TypePad are also supported, but the help links just go to a “coming soon” page.  They also have a JavaScript interface in the works (which would allow you to integrate with any platform), but again there is no documentation for it yet.

Fortunately, there is a well-documented Disqus API. That means that developers can integrate Disqus on other platforms that are not officially supported, which is good news for users (and potential users) on the following platforms:

• Drupal
• b2evolution
• Graffiti
• Joomla
• RubyGem

If your blog does not use one of these platforms or uses one of the undocumented platforms that Disqus claims to support, then IntenseDebate might be a better option for you. IntenseDebate can use JavaScript to display comments, so it can be easily integrated into any blog.

However, IntenseDebate does not have the community features and profile pages are only limited to the last 5 comments posted. Disqus makes all comments you’ve made available from your profile, not just the last five. If you’d like to see Disqus comments in action, here are a few blogs that implement them:

• louisgray.com
• VentureBeat
• obscurely famous
• The Eagle-Tribune

You might want to also check out some Disqus profile pages:

• Louis Gray
• Duncan Riley
• Daniel Ha

What do you think of Disqus and other commenting systems?   Which one do you prefer?  Do you use Disqus on your blog?

Jorge Sierra is a geek that enjoys working with Linux and other free software and operating systems. He also enjoys programming as a hobby and has developed several iGoogle Gadgets. By day, he works as a Six Sigma black belt and by night he occasionally blogs as GeekLad.

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Find out how much your Twitter profile is worth & check out the Twitter profiles with the highest values. The value is calculated with a Ph.D algoritm that is based on the public information available on your Twitter profile. For those who like to show off they even provide you with a few badges.

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TweetValue | How much is your Twitter profile worth? via kwout

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Visit our Free Industry resource center today to browse our selection of 600+ complimentary Industry magazines, white papers, webinars, podcasts, and more.

However, there are a couple free Web analytics programs that are easy to hook up and use. One of the newest is Microsoft adCenter Analytics. Because the site says it’s a limited Beta, you have to register and then wait for an invitation to join the program. It typically takes a few days to hear back from them, but when you receive your invitation you can follow their simple instructions to create a profile and add the script to your site.

The thing is, their instructions don’t address what to do on a SharePoint site. So that’s where we come in. I’ve seen a few blog posts and videos out there about how to add other analytics scripts to a SharePoint blog, but they all seem either light on detail or leave out a key piece of information, so I shot my own video, Add Microsoft adCenter analytics to your SharePoint blog home page.

As the title suggests, I show only how to add the script to your home page. This will capture lots of great numbers about home page usage, but does not capture information about individual posts.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics

Learn about the latest adCenter AnalyticsBeta features and enhancements, including ten different customizable reports. This free, on-demand web analytics solution helps you easily understand user engagement and online marketing campaign performance. Today, we invite you to join our program: Microsoft adCenter AnalyticsBeta—formerly Project Gatineau.

Understand User Engagement
Track audience behavior—from click to conversion—all in one place. The application’s dashboard and advanced report graphics help you view your data at a glance, so you can make key decisions quickly and efficiently.

Gain Control—Tailor for the Right Audience and the Right Time
You can even assess performance of your other pay-per-click programs—including Google and Yahoo. Easily track ROI, conversion rates, revenue of banner, email, and direct response campaigns so you can monitor web site performance and better control the return on your marketing spend.

Gain Customer Intelligence and Insight
You can rely on adCenter Analytics to help you understand your site traffic, customer intent, behavior, and campaign performance. Build your own customized dashboard and review which campaigns are working well. This next-generation web analytics system puts key data at your fingertips, including: Dashboards
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Twitter Classification Script for Greasemonkey

One of the most effective ways of quickly gauging the quality of someone you discover on Twitter (maybe you got a notice that they were following you, for instance), is their follower count.  Now almost every account grows its followers over time, so the ratio of following to followers can be a nice metric.  Michael Klier of Splitbrain created a really neat script for Greasemonkey that displays the ratio above each profile you visit.

There is a scale to determine just how good each user is in terms of their “crowdsourced” quality.  If a user is following a lot of other users and has very few followers, the label at the top will tell you that they are a spammer.  If the converse is true, they are a “twittercaster.”  You can use the script to set goals for yourself or simply add a little more information to the profiles of those you are following.

Twuffer - The Twitter Buffer

Sometimes you’re sitting at your computer and think “Man, I need to send some tweets out today, but this is the only time I’ll be at the terminal.”  Well if you don’t want to spam out your entire day’s tweets in a single burst, try Twuffer.  Twuffer provides a kind of buffer for your tweets so you can spread out your updates.

Also, it can be programmed to send out tweets hourly, weekly, or on any date in the future.  The interface is slick and Ajaxy so it’s a nice user experience.  It stores your personal preferences in a cookie (I believe), so keep that in mind.  You will be asked for your password, by the way, so if that freaks you out, Twuffer might not be the one for you.  It is required for the API though, so it’s not their fault.

I love how one of the suggested uses is “appear to never sleep.”

iTweet

I really like iTweet.  Talk about slick interfaces, this Twitter rehash has it ALL.  The standard tweeting functions are all there, but they are based on an Ajax system so everything flows smooth as silk.  Links and @replies are linkified, but so are hash codes, for easy searching.  In fact, the search feature is very well done.  It doesn’t even require a page-load.  Retweeting, favoriting, and @replying all have their own buttons.  Another nice feature is a feed of all your followers, so you can catch up with some of the people you may not want to follow full-time.

One word of caution.  Each time you “do” something on iTweet, the server has to call Twitter’s servers and it uses up one of your API requests.  There is a handy counter on the front panel to keep track, but you’ll be amazed how a little bit of hardcore twittering will use up all your calls.  Don’t worry too much though, they reset at a regular interval (every 30 minutes at the moment).

Twitt(url)y

With the advent of URL shorteners like TinyURL, a lot of links are obscured in Twitter until you click them.  This unique service seeks to alleviate some of the irritation shortened URLs cause.

Simply enter any user’s name onto the end of this address (my own address, “loyaleagle,” is a placeholder and a preview) and you’ll see a reworked list of everything they have EVER linked to.  The page layout is superb and there each link’s title has been retrieved from the page it goes to.

You can also see which links have got a lot of attention recently and who linked to them.  It’s almost (dare I say it?) the Digg of Twitter!  I mean there is an obvous social bookmarking aspect to it, you can tweet any link with the click of a button, and each link has a very comprehensive history of it’s use throughout the entire history of Twitter.  Don’t underestimate this one!

Mr.Tweet

This last webapp is a new one to me.  I stuck it on here because it has a nice, clean interface (in fact this whole list faired pretty well in that respect) and a simple function.

Mr. Tweet is a Twitter bot that follows you after you follow it.  Once you do so, it begins to analyze your history and followers.  Once it is ready, it messages you.  Mr. Tweet offers up a list of people in your extended network that you might consider following as well as people who are following you that deserve a second look (assuming you gave them a first one).

What I really like about Mr. Tweet is the added data about each user.  It shows not only their follower count and such, but also if they are likely to reply to non-followers and if they typically follow people who follow them.  When you are trying to grow your account, these are excellent statistics to know.  Better yet, Mr. Tweet will show you quite a few posts from their feed so that you can preview their content without having to click through (which can become quite tedious).  Try it out and if it doesn’t do much for you, unfollow and you’re done with it.  So simple!

There are so many new Twitter applications popping up every day, it can be hard to keep on top of them.  Recently we’ve got a few people saying we talk about Twitter apps too much.  If you like lists like this one, let us know (in the comments)!  We’ll probably be scaling them back a bit otherwise. We really do listen to you guys, we swear.

Oh one last thing, if you can spare a follow (don’t want to mess up your ratio!), here is MakeUseOf’s Twitter account and here is my lowly Twitter account. Follow the rest of the MakeUseOf authors as well if you like!

(By) Jimmy Rogers is a biology major at George Mason University and an avid freelance tech blogger. Check out his blog, Mason Tech Beat.

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Voice Search plus the First Speech Recognition mashup to Facebook, Myspace, iTunes. Voice Tech Group, Inc. announces that in it’s first few months of availability more than 40,000 people have downloaded the free version of tazti (pronounced “tasty”) speech recognition.

tazti is the first Speech Recognition software to include robust voice search of more than 16 important web sites and search engines as well as speech recognition navigation of Facebook and  Myspace and voice control of the iTunes music player. In addition users can create their own speech commands, search their bookmarks by voice and search the iTunes music store by voice.

Voice Search: tazti enables a user to “talk to their PC” to perform searches, local searches and “spellsearches” of Google, Yahoo!, MSN, ASK, AOL Video, Wikipedia, YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, and even Google Finance (for stock market data). tazti also allows users to voice search the USA government information website  usasearch.gov. Users can also search the iTunes music store by voice.

tazti mashup to Facebook and Myspace: tazti enables a user to log into and navigate Facebook and Myspace “by talking to their PC.” Speech commands include: “go Facebook profile”, “go Facebook friends”, go Facebook inbox”, “go Myspace home”, “go Myspace mail”, “go Myspace music forums”, “go Myspace favorites”  plus 27 other speech commands.

tazti mashup to iTunes: tazti enables a user to control the iTunes music player application when it is installed on their PC, via 35 speech commands.  Speech commands for iTunes includes changing tracks, searching  iTunes music store and controlling most music player capabilities, all by talking to your PC.

Create your own Speech Commands: tazti allows users to create their own speech commands and associate a web page, file or program to each new speech command. Your new speech commands can be anything from “Who’s the boss now?” to “Play Star Trek trailer”. Use your creativity. Many users create speech commands to play their favorite music tracks when they speak the name!

Available from http://www.tazti.com, tazti speech recognition software is a free download.

tazti Video Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1tt_aeIAM8

tazti AltSearch Video Demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3Po6PPdMtQ

tazti German Video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-7OUZCkZrE

Road warriors using a notebook PC, Mobile Internet Device or Ultra Mobile PC can use  the speech recognition  voice search - local search capability and other features in tazti wherever they can get connectivity. They can search for a coffee shop in a particular city or zipcode or for anything else on the internet, by voice.

tazti versions are available for Windows Vista and  XP, XP Pro, & XP Tablet operating systems. tazti can also be installed on  Intel based Macs running Parallels or other similar desktop environments.

The real news, here, is the fact that the NYTimes is running a huge story about Facebook Connect in its printed edition. To the majority of the general public the concept of Connect - a two way platform which enables web sites to connect with Facebook and allow their users to communicate with their Facebook friends on these sites and away from Facebook itself - is probably quite vague. However, social networking is obviously now mainstream enough that a platform connecting social networks is big news.

Incidentally, Facebook currently doesn’t work for me: I can’t login, and I’m annoyed - too annoyed. Being connected with my friends on Facebook or some other social network soon might become a crucial part of my Internet experience; social networking is shaping up to be the first really, really big thing that came out of the web 2.0 phenomenon. Through platforms such as Connect it will become truly ubiquitous, an invisible layer covering the entire world wide web. Whoever controls the biggest piece of the user data/identity pie will be on top of the socnet food chain, and Facebook seems to be doing everything right lately, and this includes getting big press coverage.

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

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Facebook Blocks Google’s Friend Connect. There Goes the Open Web.
Facebook Connect Launches with 24 Partners Including Digg and Six Apart
Citysearch Integrates Facebook Connect and Enters Hyperlocal Review Race
Facebook Counters MySpace; Will Let Users Port Profile Data
Face the News: Everything You Love And Hate About Facebook
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