Below you’ll find my (Darren Rowse - ProBlogger.net) latest update on how I make money blogging (this is something I post about every few months - although it’s been a over six months since I last did it ).

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AOL has acquired social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. AOL CEO Randy Falco (left in picture) sent an email to all AOL employees this morning. Allen Stern’s press call notes are here. (TechCrunch) read more

Apparently, the unresolved question of AOL’s ability to effectively monetize Bebo’s audience via customized ads (based on behavioral data) centers around patented technology purportedly owned by Modavox Inc.  With over a billion dollars spent on their new business model, AOL seems to still not be in control of this vital element. Stay tuned.

Yahoo! is moving in the right direction, and a very exciting one for all parties involved, and here’s why.

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What Does Social Networking Do For You? If you can’t answer that quickly and calmly, here’s your chance to gain some clarity personally, as well as helping social networkers in general!

…the first comprehensive survey of how people use social networks to manage personal and professional relationships. Are social networks delivering the value you expected when you joined? Whether you use social networks for business or pleasure, your perspective is vital to the success of this unprecedented study…produced by My Global Career on behalf of Gigaom’s Found | READ

TAKE SURVEY NOW!

Of the most popular social networking websites, Bebo is today named in a report as the top performer, beating its rivals Facebook and MySpace. Computing Which? publishes the results of an independent test assessing the 10 most popular sites for ease of setting up and using the site, the range of features, and the way the sites protected privacy and security, including how easy it is to remove personal details.read more

Flock is one of those things that I actually discovered months ago and thought… “hey, cool…that’s different!” …downloaded it… installed it… then just a few minutes ago, finally started really taking a look under the hood. I owe it all to Veronica Belmont of Mahalo Daily…she inspired me with the video below…to take a closer look…at Flock, that is:)

An open source browser that innovates on the Mozilla architecture, Flock was built on the idea that people use the Web in very different ways than they did ten years ago. Self billed as “The Social Web Browser”, Flock was the winner of Mashable’s 2007 Open Web Awards for “Judge’s Choice for Applications and Widgets”.  CNET also calls “Flock One of the Top Web 2.0 Hits of 2007“…and Webware even created: A Newbie’s Guide to Flock. On the other hand, one reviewer from FastCompany.com described Flock as having “too damn much going on…a frenetic window full of potential distractors.”

What can I say besides “Different strokes. . .”, “One man’s junk. . .”, and now. . . “What the Flock?”

Flock has picked up some steam lately, with a new version that’s more stable than before, and is filled with tons of social networking goodies. We headed over to their HQ to find out what makes this browser so different (and fun).

Tags: Flock, Mozilla, Firefox

Image - News.com

In the seemingly waning days of the U.S. government’s antitrust review of the Google-DoubleClick union, consumer groups are lodging a last-minute plea: don’t forget about privacy.
That was the message during a conference call with reporters Tuesday morning hosted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy. read more

Google’s latest videos released that cover some very specific privacy issues on a product-by-product basis. They join some other video content to help grow the Google Privacy Channel on YouTube that was created last month. read more

Viewed by some as a meticulously constructed image campaign waged by Google to overcome lingering user privacy concerns, it’s probably no coincidence that the Don’t Worry Be Happy messages propagate resolutely as the FTC winds up it’s antitrust review of the controversial $3.1 Billion megamerger of Google and Doubleclick.

The future of social networking is coming into focus and it looks like Facebook-ish features will be increasingly be integrated into your everyday applications. To wit: Yahoo and Google are looking to integrate social networking into their email applications, reports Saul Hansell at the New York Times. Yahoo is ahead…read more

sub·sume: to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive : encompass as a subordinate or component element (yw:))

The New York Times published this FIVE page story almost 48 hours ago, yet only 10 (ten) people have Dugg the article as of this posting…amazing. Maybe holiday shopping has a ring in everyone’s nose (and I do not mean as in body piercing). Or maybe people aren’t considering this to be an epic confrontation that could significantly impact their lives. Ever see the 2004 fictional mini documentary video “Epic 2014: A Futuristic History of the Media“? It contains some amazing similarities with the status quo thus far…definitely worth your 15 minute diversion. Oddly enough, in the video, the NY Times Inc. is posed as the final opponent of “Google-zon”

The growing confrontation promises to be an epic business battle. read more

P.S. Interesting…found this blog post from MG Spiegler four (4) days prior to the NY Times article above. His slant is that the Facebook vs. Google/Opensocial confrontation is just a microcosm of the larger Microsoft vs. Google war.
The Escalation of the Social Networking Proxy War