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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Developed by San Francisco’s Radar Networks, Twine is being billed as “the first mainstream semantic application.” Those are big words, and a lot is resting on them. Semantic capabilities have long been seen as the underpinnings of Web 3.0, but, to date, the technologies have been their developmental phase, and the semantic web has remained largely theoretical.

Twine is a social bookmarking site that uses statistical analysis, natural language search, and semantic search; the three complement each other well. Twine was running a bit slow when I used it, but once I had created my profile and entered my interests, the results were impressive.

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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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On the MUNI this morning, I overheard a guy (I think he built medical buildings) say that he really liked recessions, because they destroy all of his competitors. He’s one of the happy few, I guess. There’s only one of him, but many who will become his competition.

When the first Valley Bubble broke, the Web was still essentially a frontier. In the years since, practices have been set – online buying and banking is the norm, Wikipedia.com and Ask.com answer all our questions, social media brings people together from around the world.

The last few years have been ripe for startups. People now understand the Internet, they know what to do with it, and they are open to new ways of interfacing with it (see: the Twitter craze). As little as two months ago there was a notion that tech was going to go through it untouched. In this short time, that optimism has begun to fade.

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Audiences for Twitter (twitter.com), a San Francisco-based microblogging Web site, continue to grow, and politics appear to be the service’s latest influence. The White House, Utah, Kentucky, and Colorado governments all have Twitter accounts. Twitter appears to be recognizing the vibe. Recently, the company launched Twitter Election 2008, which focuses exclusively on the upcoming presidential election.

From the Twitter Election platform, users add to public opinion quickly and easily. Navigating is also just as simple. Users can view tweets by topic or by candidate—vice presidents included. It appears that many prefer the service to blogging, as well as politicians.

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“What are you doing?” Would you answer this question if you are a reporter at a funeral?

Three-year-old Marten Kudlis was killed last week in an accident involving cars plowing into an ice cream shop in Aurora, CO. The parents allowed press coverage of the funeral, and Berny Morson of Rocky Mountain News liveblogged from the chapel and burial site via 27 Twitter updates. Since then, controversy has sprung up about the nature of on-site blog practice, the professionalism of the newspaper and the journalist, the morbidity and inappropriate coverage of the funeral… all aspects of the basic question: Is it okay to Twitter a funeral?

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Yammer took the top prize last night at TechCrunch 50. This business-oriented microblogging platform creates networks for companies, mimicking the structure of Twitter. Erick Schonfeld says , “Anyone with a corporate email can sign up and follow other people in their company. But if a company ants (sic) to claim its users, and gain administrative control over them, they will have to pay. It’s a brilliant business model.”

For a tool focused on communication and productivity, the word “yammer” seems to be a poor choice (though not as bad as Drivl). However, the system is easy to use for anyone accustomed to Twitter, to a clone-like degree: “What are you working on?” is the Yammer prompt, and the service integrates itself into SMS and instant messaging services.

As for differences , “It is free to use for employees, but if a company wants to claim their network and get administrative tools to remove messages and users, set password policies, or set IP ranges for who can use it [a fee applies].”

There were five runners-up chosen from the 52 start-up demo pit:

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It appears that a prudent safeguard to the Web 2.0 environment is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. On Monday, August 11, Google users across the United States, Canada, and India were unable to access their online e-mails and documents for about two hours. Upon logging into Gmail, users received a 502 error. Todd Jackson, Gmail Product Manager, attributed the problem to a temporary outage in their contacts system. As of 6 p.m. ET on Monday, the issue has been resolved, according to Gmail’s official blog.

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This morning, Michael Arrington, co-editor of TechCrunch.com, started his blogging day by complaining and mixing up the meaning of “interest into someone’s content” and “friendship” on a post. He claims the need to fake being someone’s friend to better use Twitter. Not to worry, this is very common in online social networking, especially with egocentric personalities.

The website talked about is the popular Twitter (www.twitter.com), which provides a way for people to express themselves about anything, as long as the message fits into 140 characters maximum. You can choose to follow anyone and monitor all of their messages.

So what Arrington complains about happens a lot in social networking sites. It’s when “following” someone or “subscribing” to someone’s list equals for a lot of people the same thing as being “friends” with this person, taking the true meaning of friendship to the bottom level. If it is not reciprocated, frustration and pressure come into place.

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NowPublic.com released Tuesday its second MostPublic index, showing the 50 most influential people in Silicon Valley/San Francisco. “The MostPublic Index is a detailed (and transparent) barometer of who’s [sic] voices are most heard in the digital landscape as new channels—Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and the like—transform how media is created and spread.”

The Vancouver-based participatory news network rated the individuals based on four measures: online visability; presence on user-generated content and social networking sites; interactivity and accessibility; and what they call The “R” factor, presence on microblogging platforms like Flickr, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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