Tuesday Microsoft announced a series of radical changes to Windows Live, turning it into what many critics are dubbing “a Facebook competitor.”

The overarching goal is to simplify Live. Windows Live’s new dashboard is an effort to integrate all of Window Live’s services, including photo sharing, calendar, video editing. It will aggregate content from more than 50 different sites, including Wordpress, Flickr, Padora, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yelp, and you can keep all your email accounts in one place.

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In the Web 2.0 Summit panel The Web and Politics, New York Magazine’s John Heilemann, compared the 2008 presidential election to Kennedy’s 1960 campaign, the first in which television, then a new medium, influenced election results.

Web and Politics panelists were SF mayor Gavin Newsome, Huffington Post editor Arianna Huffington, and media consultant and political analyst, Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign, the first presidential campaign to make significant use of the Internet.

While the Internet first showed its potential for politics in the 2004 election, this election it began to show its full power. Huffington believes that if it weren’t for the Internet, Obama would not have even won the Democratic primary, let alone the presidency.

The most interesting idea floated in the panel was the idea that the Internet spells the end of the two-party system. With Web 2.0’s outreach, the ability to build a grass-roots army, Omaba was described as effectively independent. Trippi believes that this will give the office of the president unprecedented power over Congress.

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Certainly not in any case at the Web 2.0 Summit, held at this very moment in San Francisco. Surprising, since it is with this same conference that it all began in November 2004. We expected Tim O’Reilly, and the speakers of the summit, to discuss the future of this great movement, the participatory and collaborative Web. And we came in great numbers to hear the good word: more than a thousand. It’s packed!

Well, no. The only Web 2.0 is in the name of the “summit.” They talk about energy, notably John Doerr, head of Kleiner Perkins (the investment fund behind Google), with Al Gore or Elon Musk (the head of Tesla, who makes electric sports cars for millionaires….). There’s a lot of talk of politics, and Obama’s election of course, with just about everyone, in fact. Even the mayor of San Francisco made the trip. And they talk mostly about the appointment of the US CTO and the new administration’s technological program. There’s even bicycle talk with Lance Armstrong … for example.

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“Today is Election Day. Go Vote .”

That is the statement on Facebook’s Welcome Page today. An entire Election 2008 page has been created especially for the months leading up to now, and even on its last active day there are useful elements to encourage the gigantic number of newly registered voters to follow through. As a special, last-minute push, the site has made this the default start page for signed-in users.

“Be sure to take the time to vote! Use the map below to find your polling place and what time the polls in your state open and close. You can also see the nearest Ben and Jerry’s where you can get a free ice cream cone on election day.” Election 2008 provides a simple Google Map interface with links to coverage, election maps, and mobile alerts.

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Social networking has been shaping online retail for some time, but Facebook fan pages are emerging as the new popular promotion tool. Representation on other sites such as MySpace and YouTube show a presence of 26 or 27 percent of respondents from a Vovici poll of US Online Retailers in August, 2008. For Facebook, the representation reached to nearly one-third.

A September 2008 study by Rosetta, via eMarketer , focused on the top 100 online retailers in the US. Of these, 59 had a fan page on Facebook, up from 30 in May. Since then, of the 29 retailers that had built pages were companies such as Best Buy, Toys ‘R’ Us, Kohl’s and Wal-Mart.

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One of the main themes at last week’s Online Market World 2008 was how businesses can best use social media. This was oft discussed, but best summed up by Bill Hanekamp, CEO of The Well Inc. Advertising. In discussing strategies for viral marketing, Hanekamp gave a succinct summary of how to “let the customers spread the word about you for free.” I’ve fleshed out his list with some ideas offered by other presenters.

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Online retailers are following under-30s shoppers to social sites like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube. “Generation Y online buyers” participate in Internet activities more than any younger generation, and this influences their online spending habits.

The Society for New Communications Research study entitled, “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” confirms the importance that this demographic holds for online rating systems, discussion forums and blogs.  These sources of information seem to be divorced from traditional marketing strategies, and therefore have more credibility.

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Recent interest in People Search sites has created many options, but seldom a success. One such success is Pipl.com - its motto, “The most comprehensive people search on the web.” This holds true thanks to its unique method of using content from Facebook, Amazon, Friendster, etc. via what it refers to as the “Deep Web.” Pipl.com’s Deep Web page defines the term as “a vast repository of underlying content, such as documents in online databases that general-purpose web crawlers cannot reach. The deep web content is estimated at 500 times that of the surface web, yet has remained mostly untapped due to the limitations of traditional search engines.”

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Upon first look, Ziggs.com appears to be just another social networking site, a knockoff of Facebook or Myspace. But after a closer look, Ziggs services are unique and revolutionary.

With a free account, Ziggs will supply details about who is searching for you on virtually all major search engines. Ziggs immediately emails an alert to you at the moment someone looks you up. Additionally, the Web site provides a map location of where the search was administered, along with the search terms, the IP address and the time of the search.

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Facebook’s new hompage can be seen at www.new.facebook.com. The former tagline was “Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you”. They switched for “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” They still won’t get out of the closet and say that they are a social networking site!

Beside the clean and boring interface with a map and dots, I looked up the different versions in several countries and here’s how Facebook describes itself.

The French version says:
“Facebook vous permet de partager des informations et de créer un environnement ouvert et connecté au monde”, which (if I translate properly) means: “Facebook allows you to share information and to create an open environment and connected to the world.”

The Spanish version says:
“Facebook te permite compartir y te ofrece un mundo más accesible y conectado”, which (if I translate properly) means: “Facebook lets you share and gives you a world more accessible and connected”

The Japanese version says:
“Facebookは、情報共有の場を提供することにより、よりオープンでつながりのある世界の構築をお手伝いします。”
Now I would go easy on the Japanese translation, and would accept any help with this one: “Facebook, to share information by providing a place for a more open world and to help create connections.”

My favorite boring new version is the English-Pirate, clickbelow.