Social networking services have been popping up all over the place, with most of them presenting their own take on the social networking game. Of course, with so many services out there, features are bound to overlap one another.

One social networking service that’s trying to catch people’s attention is the weirdly named ooVoo. It’s a social video call app that is available for both the Android and iOS operating systems. OoVoo is getting very popular. More →

Have you ever played any of Zynga’s multiplayer enabled games and had trouble compelling your friends to play with you? Or maybe you’ve been playing Cityville and you want to increase the number of people you interact with? It was relatively difficult to find like-minded players before. Apparently, Zynga also thought so.

Zynga has now addressed the actual social aspects of its games by announcing the creation of Zynga With Friends, a social lobby where players of Zynga’s many games can meet and play regardless of the social network they’re using or the platform on which they play. More →

Zynga has decided to up the ante on its hit social multiplayer game Draw Something. The company has released the game in 12 different languages, which includes Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese and both simplified and traditional Chinese. Most of the new versions offer user interfaces that have already been translated to the supported language along with the accompanying dictionaries to truly enhance the gaming experience with the preferred language. More →

Viddy is quietly but also surely dominating the social video segment of the market with its easy to use app. It is on its way to becoming the Instagram equivalent for videos. Alongside its growing number of endorsers and influx of investor money, Viddy recently announced a major new update for the Viddy app.

The new update features a lot of new changes and additions to Viddy. One of the new features is an option to choose the thumbnail cover art for the videos you’ve captured. This makes the video thumbnail more beautiful to look, providing the thumbnails with an Instagram-like look because of your chosen image in place of the dull first frame of the video (which was the default thumbnail before). More →

Among location based social networks, Foursquare is arguably the most popular so a move like what it did at the Mobile World Congress will surely be noticed and talked about.

In the said event, Foursquare not only announced that it will start using predictive technology to offer suggestions to its Foursquare members but that it will also explore new corporate partnerships as it tries to strengthen its hold on the location market. One of these new partnerships was announced in the event. FourSquare announced that it will stop using Google Maps and will instead start using OpenStreetMaps. More →

One sign of a service’s popularity is the proliferation apps related to that service. Take for example Twitter. The microblogging social service is so hugely popular that many companies have developed their own apps that will allow users to access their own Twitter accounts and read others.

But even if Twitter apps for mobile devices are very convenient to use, the whole user experience is still quite different from using Twitter in its original environment – your browser. One of the best reasons to use Twitter using your browser is the personalization you can apply to your Twitter page. If mobile devices have apps for accessing Twitter. The desktop PC also has online services that allow the user to personalize his Twitter page. More →

Zynga is very intent on strengthening its already secure position as the top provider of casual games in the world. The company, who makes highly popular games like Words With Friends, has announced that it has recently bought four different mobile game companies over the last few months.

The acquisitions Zynga made, as told to Reuters, include Gamedoctors, a German company and the maker of the hit game ZombieSmash. Zynga also said that it has bought Astro Ape Studios, a New York based company. More →

Mobile phones bring a lot of conveniences for everyone. Gone are the days when you have to desperately look around for a phone booth (you still remember those?) if you need to call someone. Mobile phones allow people to reach us wherever we are. It’s a great benefit, but also one that has become a great annoyance, as attested by anyone who has attended a dinner party and everyone’s more busy playing with their phones than talking with the people in the same room. More →

Twitter is arguably one of the biggest and most successful social networking services on the planet. The ability to microblog, be heard by potentially millions of people and find out what other people are doing, thinking or sharing – whether they’re famous or not – is a winning combination.

If you’ve been a Twitter user chances are you don’t use any of the Twitter applications for the desktop PC, mobile devices or tablets. Majority of Twitter users still use the Twitter web site to access their accounts. Anyone who’s used Twitter online knows how drab the Twitter site is. It’s a very Spartan affair. It may reflect the Twitter philosophy of “less is more” but it would be cool to actually personalize your personal Twitter page. More →

Yahoo might have scored big time with its recent deal with Zynga, the company responsible for popular Facebook games such as Farmville and Mafia Wars. The two companies have reached an agreement that will see the integration of Zynga’s social games through Yahoo’s global network.

For Zynga, this could be a viable alternative to its Facebook presence, especially since Yahoo claims of more than 600 million users worldwide across all Yahoo sites. But the question is would users be open to the idea of getting their game on via the Yahoo platform?

Most of those users who play Farmville and Mafia Wars are into these games while at the same time maintaining their social networking profiles and connections on Facebook. Most of them play these games to while away time as they wait for their friends to go online, post updates and links. In short, Zynga games on Facebook are added functionalities for a site which has social networking as the main purpose.

Comparing these to Yahoo which doesn’t have a social networking site. Users go to Yahoo to find/search for information not to socialize. So, I don’t really see these Zynga games easily fitting into the demographics of  Yahoo users.

Still, Yahoo is pretty positive that this deal would be both beneficial to both companies. Hilary Schneider, Yahoo America’s Executive Vice President tells us:

“Zynga will bring top notch social game experiences to Yahoo!, including through our open platforms such as Yahoo! Application Platform and Yahoo! Updates. Yahoo! will also continue to work with other partners, developers and publishers to bring compelling innovations and experiences from across the web to our users.”

And with this deal, Yahoo have finally laid down its social strategy and adds up to its previous partnership with both Facebook and Twitter. Would this finally bring some good tidings to Yahoo as a whole? That we will have to wait and see.