Multiply, the social network for families, has completely relaunched its website this week. And at the center of the relaunch is a new take on the news feed, which was already a key component in Multiply’s feature set.

Reformatted to function much like your desktop email client (i.e. Outlook), the news feed is your central point of information-sharing within your Multiply network. There are folders on the left-hand side, which act as filters for the type of information displayed in your news feed. Custom filters are also a new option for your Multiply news feed, in order to ensure you’re receiving the content you want to see.
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Can you build a community around a Facebook Public Profile, and will that help in your own blogging endeavors? Wibiya has created a service that is banking on the ability to do so, which has become an easier task given the continued updates to Fcebook’s platform, namely Facebook Connect.

Leveraging an existing fan base/community from Facebook in order to drive traffic and build up your own blog is a concept we support here at Social Times and AllFacebook, as it goes along with the marketing ideas put forth in some of our articles. But recent updates to Wibiya mean that the process of utilizing Facebook for your own purposes could be made that much easier.
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Social Times, Venturebeat, and DEMO have put together a last minute meetup in Washington, D.C. This Thursday (tomorrow), we will be hosting up to 100 entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and interested parties at Hudson Restaurant and Lounge. The venue is located a couple blocks south of Dupont Circle at 2030 M St NW. Venturebeat and DEMO are covering the first 30 people’s drinks. In order to determine how many people are interested in attending we’ve set up an eventbrite page.

Please go fill out your basic information so we can keep track of how much interest there is. It’s definitely last minute but there’s never a bad reason to take some time out to network with fellow entrepreneurs and investors. Go visit the eventbrite page. Also Venturebeat said they are good for the first 30 drinks.

After acquiring AddThis last year, Clearspring set out to grow its own web presence and make its media-sharing tools as accessible as possible to social media users across the globe. We’ve received an update from Clearspring, following up on its acquisition. So far, the follow-up looks good, and provides an encouraging look at Clearpring’s swift integration of the AddThis distribution platform for sharing web content.

Clearspring cites the April comScore report showing a great deal of growth, reaching over half a billion people. That’s up from the 200 million web users Clearspring reached prior to the acquisition of AddThis, more than doubling its web presence.
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Whether for business or personal, building a brand on the social web can be a great way to spread the word about your product or service, as well as engaging consumers in order to garner useful feedback. But I hear a lot from newcomers that they have trouble reaching the tipping point. Here are the to obstacles I’ve encountered and witnessed others encountering, with some suggestions for helping you get over that hump.
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You may want to think twice before you send that next email out. We all face an ongoing battle with our email inbox. While there are countless systems for getting down to inbox zero, success is ever so fleeting and the next day you are back at it again. It’s become part of the daily grind and the worst thing is that we’re all frequently causing pain for the person on the receiving end. So what does any of this have to do with Whuffie and what the hell does Whuffie mean?
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Twofish, the company that provides micropayments for applications, is announcing a few new products for its service. The new products mainly revolve around analytics and easier ways in which to get set up with Twofish. With these updates, Twofish is really looking to appeal to the developer community, gain new users and provide better ways in which to utilize the data it provides through its microplayment platform.

From its Easy Element product, the core service for Twofish, comes a new tool called Currency Starter. This is closer to a turnkey solution for developers that want to get started right away with a virtual currency option for their applications. Some of the options that come with Currency Starter include Google Analytics integration, and all the other basics needed for setting up a payment gateway for virtual currency. Twofish has a one-click purchase option for users, which saves their credit card information, along with account history which users have access to.
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Many have tried to start a company that puts your Twitter status updates on a tee shirt, but the end results have been largely dismal. It’s a tricky concept to pin down in a revenue-generating model when you’re merely a third party service.

But Threadless may have figured something out. In partnership with Twitter, Threadless the company that made t-shirts social, launches Twitter Tees today. And the best thing about this new project is that it keeps the community around Twitter and Threadless intact.
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Word-of-mouth marketing company BzzAgent is launching a new product today, seeking to create a better way for brands to engage consumers. Called BzzScapes, the new tool acts as a social media tool as well as an extension o the company’s client services.

So what is a BzzScape? It’s a web-based, social destination where people can create a page for any given brand, and add information about that brand as they see fit. A mix between a product review site and Facebook public profiles, BzzScapes aim to provide an open forum for consumers and brands. While anyone can create a brand page on BzzScapes, brands also have the ability to have one created, or to claim one that has been created for their brand. BzzAgent will offer a series of BzzScapes-specific tools for brands to use for things like market ressearch and managing their brand online.

Below is an interview with BzzAgent Founder and CEO Dave Balter, who speaks on the objectives for BzzScapes, as well as how it fits into the social media conversation.
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Drop.io has been very busy lately, and its latest release is designed for web collaborations. Present.io uses drop.io’s real-time XMPP media sharing foundation in order to provide real-time, web-based presentations in a very simple interface and process.

What makes this so simple? No downloads, no installations. Just sign on, invite others to join you, and you’re all set to go. Drop.io will give you a custom URL where you can select “presentation mode” in order to get started. As the presenter, you’ll be able to run your presentation as with most other web demo products.
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