Just as Facebook is adding more and more Twitter style features and acquiring things like FriendFeed which collates Twitter activity, so more and more Twitter apps are enabling users to control their Facebook pages.

Probably the best of the bunch is Seesmic which today has announced an upgrade to its Facebook capabilities. Seesmic started out as a video based website, but then the company snapped up Twitter API company Twhirl and launched the very useful (over 2.5 million downloads so far) Seesmic Twitter app. It works in a similar way to our favourite Tweetdeck in displaying Twitter updates, replies and searches etc in a very easy to use grid format. You can also use Seesmic to update your Facebook page too. It also has very good web and mobile based services too.

The latest Facebook revamp - version 0.6 - is great news for people who control Facebook fan pages, What the app enables you to do is manage activity on Facebook's fan pages as well as personal profiles, so you can update them at the same time as you update your Twitter accounts. It'll be interesting to see how Seesmic's rivals, like Tweetdeck, respond.

Here's a comparison between Tweetdeck and Seesmic

You have apps on your PC and apps on your mobile. Now how about apps on your digital radio? Well Pure has made a very smart move by introducing a new model called the Sensia, which not only includes a 5.7inch 640x480 screen but also offers access to a growing set of custom apps. Among those lined up already are Facebook Twitter and weather and news channels.

As the unit has Wi-Fi on board it also tunes into internet radio stations while at the same time enables users to stream music from a PC. There's no news yet on apps for Spotify or Last FM, but they would be the cherry on the cake if they were added.

Pure is also very proud of its touch screen which it is billing as the most sophisticated ever seen on a radio, Apparently it enables the user to scroll and spin through lists, tap to select modes, slide control and swipe to change views,. In practice this means controlling menus for information about stations, album artwork and more.

Other features include 30W RMS of stereo sound, an input for an iPod/MP3 player, an alarm, a sleep timer, a headphone socket, a remote control and an optional rechargeable PURE ChargePAK

The Sensia, which goes on sale before Christmas for £249, is available in four colours: Bright red, vivid yellow, sleek black and cool white. It also comes with a moulded stand that allows the user to angle the radio to where they think it looks and sounds best.

I bet Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has had a pretty broad grin on his face this week. For at the TechCrunch 50 conference in San Francisco the company announced it had reached two major milestones. Firstly it has passed 300 million worldwide members and secondly its monthly revenues now covered its costs and the company was starting to make money.

Zuckerberg had predicted that Facebook would be profitable by 2010 so it is starting to create income a few months ahead of scheduled. Making money in a period of economic downturn and, let's not forget, the most depressed period ever for online advertising revenue is itself a very impressive feat.

Nick O'Neill of AllFacebook.com told the BBC "If the company can cover the cost of scaling to one billion users and still manage to break even, there's no doubt that the company will have a great opportunity to rake in billions."

It ought to be added that while Facebook is now making more than enough to cover its costs, that doesn't include the money pumped into the site such as the £300 million it took from Russian investment vehicle Digital Sky Technologies.

Facebook has also had a huge growth spurt this year attracting another 50 million members in the last 75 days.This does of course beg the question - how big can Facebook get? Well much of its recent growth has been in its core markets of North American and Europe. Its levels of growth outside those spheres have been less impressive. There are some hot spots such as Indonesia, but in many big emerging country markets Facebook's growth is limited.

One of the problems it faces is that in key territories there are already local social networking sites that have a Facebook style stranglehold already. In Korea Cyworld, with its 24 million members, has managed to keep Facebook and its rivals at bay. In Central America the big player is Sonico and further south in countries like Argentina Hi5 sets the agenda. There are also problems for Facebook in China where the authorities apparently perceive the site as very western and a unwanted influence on its people. Ironically Friendster, the original social networking site which predates Facebook and Facebook, is now performing well in Asia.

They key then to Facebook's growth could prove to be India and its surrounding countries. It has been suggested that much of the reason for the launch of Facebook Lite last week was to push the social networking site in the region.

Zuckerberg and his team's other big problem is keeping notoriously fickle Westerners coming back to his site. The acquisition of FriendFeed and the move to incorporate Twitter-style micro blogging elements on the site show that Facebook is ready to meet challenges to its hegemony head on.

It is worth remembering though that every big social networking site so far has peaked and then started to fall. In the UK Friends Reunited had spectacular fall from grace. Now even MySpace is struggling to reconnect with its audience.

Facebook's one huge advantage over its rivals is the huge amount of content and data that users already have on their pages, so it makes it much harder for users to move to another site.

Overall though there may be a few wobbles in the Us and Europe in the next couple of years but with new markets emerging all the time Facebook is clearly going to continue to grow for sometime yet.

The trouble with this shiny new digital world is that the information we create online tends to get scattered all over the place (email, Twitter, text, Google etc). Wouldn't it be better to have all your online chat (that sounds a bit Alan Partridge) in one place?

Well providing that type of online receptacle and more is the mission of a new French start up called Silentale which went into beta testing this week. It aims to keep all you digital conversations in one place, and I mean all of them. Once you sign up it aggregates everything you write from your email messages, Facebook updates, Twitter posts and even your text messages.

So why would you want this? Well you have probably had at least one occasion when you have been searching for an email from someone and not found it. Then later on you realised that you actually sent them a message via Twitter or even text from your mobile. Well the really smart thing that Silentale does is that it creates profiles for your contacts in an address book and then aggregates all the messages you sent them together. In other words you will be able to see at a glance all the different ways in which you have had a conversation with them.

The information will also be displayed in a timeline too so you will be able to search for a specific day and read the conversations you had then, or just see how busy you had been today.

The bit that has me most excited though is the service's Firefox extension. So when you are looking at social networking sites this automatically it detects who you are looking at and voila all your recent correspondence, as well as contact details of the person, pops up on the page. The extension currently works while browsing Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Viadeo, Hi5, Gmail, Hotmail/Live Mail, Yahoo Mail and AOL Mail.

The service will launch for free to begin with, but the catch is that you'll only be able to see two months archive at a time. If like me you want to go further back expect to pay a yearly subscription of around £30.

To me Silentale sounds like it has massive potential. It is one of those ideas that when you think about it you are shocked that it hasn't been done before. Like the best start ups it meets a very definite need and also has a very clear route to making money. If the technology works well Silentale could be huge.

Silentale is still in beta and invites are hard to come by, though you could always email them. There's a load more on TechCrunch Europe.

Not long ago a Guardian writer claimed that the UK tech scene was being read its last rites. Well, according to the paper today that is a long way from the truth. The Guardian has published a list of what it sees as the top UK 100 tech companies along with a feature from TechCrunch UK editor Mike Butcher in which he claims there has never been a better time to create a start up.

As for the hot 100 you can see the list here. There aren't too many surprises in the top 10, though I know of a few people who will be highly irritated to see Seatwave make the top spot. The big winners include Spotify (hey the iPhone app is here), Moo (who make those ever so cools cards) and Mindcandy (cool multi player online games).

Most of the other 90 are either industry type start-ups like pioneering ad company Skimlinks and image search specialist Pixsta. The key consumery companies that make the list include VOIP service Truphone, music identifying service Shazam, virtual record company Slicethepie, Twitter aggregator Tweetmeme and online community builder Webjam.

One of the reasons why I love Posterous so much is that I find it hard to say anything of any merit in 140 charactars on Twitter. Posterous enables me and others, to at least add a few words of our own to a link or a story which it then publishes on Twitter and Facebook for us.

So in theory I should be very excited about a new site that launched this week called Woofer. Woofer, however, is really just a practical joke albeit a rather good one. Instead of the 140 charactars that Twitter offers with Woofer you get 1400 charactars. However the fun bit is that if you don't reach 1400 charactars it won't let you post.

And while it may be a bit of an online gag at the moment, maybe it does have a use or two. The most popular post on there at the moment is called 'Four score and seven years' and is an inspiring segment of a speech from US President Abraham Lincoln. Some smart people have also nicked bits from speeches from the likes of Martin Luther King and Thomas Jefferson and even a para or two from novels by the likes of Charles Dickens. There are albums reviews and the odd rehashed blog post too. Of course a lot of what has been posted on Woofer is completely unreadable, but in some ways that's half the fun.

Just maybe the Woofer crew are on to something here. Maybe there is space for a Twitter type site where people add slightly longer posts. How about come classic bits of comedy? Some cool song lyrics? Anyone got any other cool ideas.

Here's a site that has great potential. Justbought.it combines everything that's regarded as cool on the web at the moment: Google Maps, social shopping and Twitter/Twitpics. Or according to the blurb, "it's a location based social shopping that allows you to share photos/tweets." On paper it sounds like a winning combination, a vertitable internet supergroup especially if you trust other people's recommendations when it comes to buying stuff (I don't). Just one problem. It's very difficult to get excited about it - yet.

Google Docs, the world's most successful online word processor, is to get a redesign, or revamp, or rejig. Well it'll be one, other, or most probably, an almalgm of these.

The 'pre-announcement' announcement on the Google Docs Blog (which isn't very interesting), comes hot-on-the-heels of Microsoft unveiling its plans for Office 2010. Plans that include a new web-based component, designed to directly take on Docs.

Google's counterpunch comes in the form of a promise that their redesign will make sharing more intuitive. The practical upshot of which is that users might notice some malfunctioning modules over the next couple of days.

Do you think that Office 2010 will claw back the market share they've lost to Docs? I'm writing this article, about Docs, on Docs, which is frankly, not as weird as it sounds. Will you be moving back to Office? Answers in the comments chums.

(Via TechCrunch)

A Facebook engineer has been spotted tweeting from an application called Penguin FB, as you can see in the picture, and it doesn't take a genius to work out that the FB probably is probably short for Facebook.

So, putting two and two together combined with denials from Facebook and the removal of the tweet by engineer Ross Blake, there's a very good chance that this was a test of a Twitter application on Facebook which allows users to tweet directly from the world's biggest social network.

The move would be in line with Facebook's drive to get in on the act in some way, whether that be by aping Twitter or, in this case, by trying to hold on to a lot of the traffic through the API. Doubtless, we'll hear more about it soon.

(via Facebook Insider)

US stack 'em high, sell e'm cheap tech mega store Best Buy recently put out a job ad with a difference. Applicants for the role of "senior manager - emerging media marketing" were required to have two years plus of mobile media experience, one year plus of blogging experience, a bachelors degree and 250 Twitter followers.

Before you start applying - popular web 2.0 people that you are - the position has already been filled, but it's certainly a very interesting ask in this day and age. For a senior social media manager, I'd say it was probably a far enough demonstration of an experience and understanding of the most important social app of the moment. Besides, the head honcho of Best Buy, Brian Dunn, has 1,679 followers himself.

Even if you're not in marketing - if, perhaps, a journalist - then one might consider it equally important. It's rather like a contacts list. Essentially, how many eyes can you attract to whatever it is that you do. How many people can you draw to the work that your company does?

So, is this something that we're going to start putting on our CVs? Is that how people should be viewing Twitter? What do you reckon? Let me know in the comments below. You can also boast about how many followers you do/do not have.

(via Brand Republic)

TweetDeck and Seesmic are desktop clients designed to make communicating on Twitter and managing your accounts easier.

Here they go, head to head: TweetDeck version 0.26 versus Seesmic version 0.4.

Look & Feel

Both TweetDeck and Seesmic are built using the Adobe AIR platform, and have a similar look and feel.

Seemsic appears to have more subtleties designed to make it easier to decipher tweets from multiple accounts at once, yet neither application is hugely customisable when it comes to the overall look.

If you only run a single Twitter account then seeing how applications handle multiple accounts won't matter to you, but if you're a "power user" handling two or more active accounts, you'll find Seesmic offers more options for handling them.

Both applications let you view columns for each account's tweets, replies, direct messages and so on, but Seesmic also allows you to view a single stream of messages from all your accounts at once, ordered by the time tweets arrive.

Whether this works for you depends on how you like to view accounts, but at least you have the option. TweetDeck (currently) doesn't offer this.

Ever wanted to hear your dulcet tones on the Internet but didn't know where to start? Read our handy guide to recording, editing and hosting your podcast and you'll be there in no time.

We can't guarantee you'll be popular, but at least you won't stay silent.

1. Get the right hardware

It's fairly obvious that if you want to record yourself speaking you'll need some way of getting audio on to your computer.

There are plenty of ways of doing this, but you'll want to get the best quality piece of kit you can afford if you want to sound good and minimise the amount of tidying up you'll have to do later.

Podcast Pick:

My absolute favourite mic for podcasting (and indeed many other uses) is the Blue Microphones Snowball USB mic. At around £85 it's not the cheapest option but it's used by professional broadcasters and podcasters alike. Simply plug it in to a spare USB port and you've got a quality audio recording device for vocals, instruments and ambient sounds.

Genuine nudists and naturists have a social network to call their very own after an enterprising team set Skinbook up on Ning.

Karl Maddox and friends from Manchester set up a forum a while back after coming across a nudist beach in Wales. They lost interest in the project but when they went to delete the space, discovered 247 registered members.

Now a social network in its own right and very much in the design mould of Facebook, Skinbook has a 6,000 following and has had 25,000 applicants. Presumably, the unsuccessful 19,000 were just after a bit of free porn.

I'm not sure how much money one makes out of such an enterprise but, if you fancy a crack at creating your own web 2.0 niche, then head over to Ning.

(via Metro)

Google has added real estate search to Google Maps in Australia and New Zealand. Properties for sale or rent can be viewed on the existing maps with additional photos and details available with a click of the mouse.

Private users' listings are added via sites such as homehound and myhome and there are also estate-agent based listings available as well.

House-hunters input the area they are interested in and advance options such as type of properties, price range, floor area range, number of bedrooms, bathrooms and parking spaces.

The system was developed by workers at Google's Sydney office and it is expected that the service will be expanded to the US first and then the rest of the globe.

With many individuals already using Google Map's streetview to look around areas and particular streets that they are interested in, the move to include real-estate listings is a logical one.

(via The Age)

Spotify is offering Chris Anderson's new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price,
narrated by the author himself, free to all UK users.

It's the first time Spotify has made an audio book available although they're keen to stress that it's only a trial - for the time being at least. "We're going to trial it, see what people think and who knows, maybe this is the start of something new for us..." said Andres Sehr of Spotify.

Chris Anderson, the author of the hugely successful The Long Tail and current editor-in-chief of Wired is the perfect guinea-pig for the experiment. He is hugely influential in terms of the internet and web-culture and Free should appeal to a large number of Spotify users.

It's quite a coup for Spotify as well. Free has only been available for a few days in hard-copy and is sure to be a best-seller. It tells the story of new world where the old economic certainties are being undermined by a growing flood of free goods as the result of new technologies, such as the internet.

If you did want to buy Free in its hard-copy format, it's available on Amazon for a bargain £8.54. The Long Tail is available in paperback for £6.69.

(via Spotify)

YouTube has launched a new channel - The YouTube Reporters' Center (yep Center, American's are more important than us, everybody knows that).

The channel aims to take advantage of its unique position in terms of user content when it comes to world events. The current situation in Iran has highlighted its importance in terms of showcasing first-hand events - particularly with the tragic case of Neda Agha-Soltan whose death was captured on video and posted onto YouTube.

The channel's aim is to improve the citizen journalism currently on show on YouTube. There are plenty of instructional videos from the experts such as learning how to prepare for an interview with CBS' Katie Couric, tips on how to be an investigative reporter from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward or how to report on a humanitarian crisis from Nick Kristof of the New York Times.

The service sounds like a great idea for budding journalists or just ordinary folk who are interested in reporting on news-worthy events in their community. As usual with Google the timing is spot on as well.

(via Google Blog)

London 6pm saw thousands gather in a flash mob tribute to Michael Jackson with a mass moonwalk in celebration of the life of a legend. Word spread in the afternoon on Twitter and all over the web just hours before the meet at Liverpool Street Station.

Billy Jean, Thriller and Bad played out in the streets as peoplle danced with white gloves made of A4 paper pointed into the air, hung from lampposts and stood on phoneboxes or any place to get a better view of the party below.

It may not have been as underground and unfettered as flash mobs of old but there was more passion in the crowd than ever. Michael, I hope you were watching.

Here's a rather curious case of public relations. Habitat, the UK furniture shop, has been spotted abusing popular Twitter search terms in order to get their products and offers seen by more people.

The company's social media arm has been hashtagging their tweets on sales and promotions with #mousavi and #iPhone amongst others and is now being seriously frowned upon for taking advantage of the situation in Iran as well as misleading Twitter users in general.

Habitat has since deleted their tweets such as #iPhone Our totally desirable Spring collection now has 20% off!www.habitat.co.uk/pws/Home.ice and #MOUSAVI Join the database for free to win a £1000 gift card http://bit.ly/2wPLO (expand) ? Now!! but you can still see them here.

The incident's being cited as how not to use social media but then, here I am writing about and I wouldn't have known about their £1,000 gift card. Will more people remember this transgression than'll sign up to their database and spend money in their sale?

Not a trick Habitat can or would repeat twice but an interesting way of spamming Twitter in general. I wonder how long until ViAgRA salesmen start doing the same?

Brand Republic

Rumours doing the rounds in Hollywood suggest that David Fincher - who has been responsible for some absolute belters including Se7en, Fight Club and err...Panic Room - is to direct the upcoming Facebook movie.

The film will be based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. Aaron Sorkin - creator of The West Wing - is all set to write the screenplay apparently and Kevin Spacey is said to be involved in producing the film.

So, who's going to play Mark Zuckerberg? I'm no casting agent but I reckon Michael Cera has got to be a shoe-in. Not only does he look the part - he's also got the gawky, nerdy and nervous act of to a tee.

(via Slashfilm)

Pre-order your copy of Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal from Amazon today.

Related post: Second Life - the movie

MySpace is ditching two thirds of their international staff and closing down at least four of their offices in a global restructuring strategy. The move will see 300 jobs lost outside of the US, leaving London, Berlin, and Sydney as the regional hubs and Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden and Spain offices all ominously "under review".

MySpace chief executive officer Owen Van Natta said:

"As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace's staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions. Today's proposed changes are designed to transform and refine our international growth strategy."

Half of MySpace's traffic comes from outside the US but it's in America where the network has been strongest, only being surpassed by Facebook a few weeks ago. A smaller wage bill isn't going to help growing traffic any but it's clear that the once darling of the web 2.0 world needs to start trimming the fat as their power continues to wain.

I'd still like to think that MySpace has its place - in the music world if nowhere else - but I'm sure it'll see numbers tumble a long way before it levels out again.