While it was expected that Google would use Gmail accounts as the center of users’ social graphs, the new Google Buzz makes it pretty obvious. Will Google eliminate Twitter or Facebook with this new service? Definitely not, however if you exchange emails with the majority of your contacts, Gmail could become a more efficient conversation aggregator. The one problem with Google Buzz will be the issue of combining email overload with social content overload.
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Merchants, are you tired of losing online sales because you only take payment by credit card? Mobile First, a provider of premium SMS text messaging services, just announced their Mobile Payment processing solution. Your online customers can now make purchases using their text messaging-enabled cell phones – a method that Mobile First claims has at least 8x the conversion factor, at least in the USA.
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OfferPal – the social media advertising and monetization company that allows users to gain virtual currency by participating in offers, surveys and more – has announced a new method of monetization: Tasks.  Specifically, they are utilizing Amazon’s Mechanical Turk artificial intelligence system to source the tasks.  Amazon’s MT system enables people to do small tasks that can’t be completed by computers themselves, and the broker of the transaction (here, Offerpal), receives a bit of compensation for the task.
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Hi-Media Payments, a leader in Europe’s virtual currency and microtransaction world, recently opened up an office in San Francisco to start its American version of the Allopass payments system. The Allopass payments system is a large platform in Europe, servicing 250,000 merchants and seeing 7 million transactions a month, with 15 million Euros changing hands.  With their initial client list including mostly other offer and monetization providers like Peanut Labs and Sometrics, we can see that Allopass is positioning itself as a uniter of currencies, and attempting to be a large player in the virtual monetization game.
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While Google has been strategizing ways to fend off the Facebook threat for the past couple years, the company has been accelerating efforts in recent weeks. The company began recruiting a number of social web advocates including Chris Messina, Will Norris, and most recently Joseph Smarr who previously worked for Plaxo to create a new “Social Web Team” . Tomorrow, it is expected that Google will take things one step further by launching a social stream within Gmail according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Coinciding with recent announcements by Playfish that they were going to bring an EA brand to Facebook, Peter Moore just announced that “Madden NFL” will be released for Facebook.  The details are sparse, but Moore stated on Bloomberg Television that “we have to make Madden’ more accessible,” and “you’ll see us on Facebook going forward.”
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A new application for the iPhone and iPod touch from WeeWorld will allow customizable avatar creation and integration for fans of the popular teen-based virtual world. The application, called WeeMee Avatar Creator, can be downloaded onto the user’s iPhone or iPod touch and the distinctive cartoon WeeMees can then be created, edited, and shared.
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If you’ve ever spent a night at a local pub, you’ve probably heard of Golden Tee Golf, the arcade cabinet first released in 1989 and one of the first golf arcade games in existence.  Following up on their 2000 launch of Golden Tee Fore, where players could participate in tournaments from around the United States, developer Incredible Technologies released Golden Tee Live, which took the tournaments to a whole new level, with coordinated leaderboards and available prizes.  Recently, the games have introduced two social elements, Facebook Connect and Youtube Uploads.
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Zynga – the leading developer of Facebook Applications and the company with 230 million Monthly Active Users  - announced a partnership with MSN Games that allows users to play Farmville on the site using Facebook Connect.  Farmville, Zynga’s largest game with 75 million Montly Active Users, will be playable through the MSN Games area of the MSN network, and its use of Facebook Connect means that gamers will be able to interact with all 75 million other players no matter which site they log into.  This is the first time that Farmville will be available anywhere other than Facebook and the FarmVille site itself.
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Kwedit, a Mountain View – California based startup, wants to simplify the purchase of virtual goods for teens. The company plans to allow teens to buy virtual goods on Facebook games such as “FarmVille” and “Café World”, if they commit to pay later at 7-Eleven stores or send in money via mail.
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