Given my position as a long-time denizen of the dot-com world, with dozens of contacts in new media and venture capital and all of the numbered Webs (1.0, 2.0 and maybe even 3.0), I'm quite frequently invited to things. Some are valuable networking tools, like LinkedIn; others are fun and a bit useful for keeping track of my virtual colleagues, like Twitter. Still others, like AIM, are vital for day-to-day working life.

And then there are the sites where my so-called "friends" hang out. It seems quite ironic that many of the former colleagues and distant contacts who invite me to "keep up with what he and your other friends are doing" were never what I would categorize as "friends." Vexing rivals? Quixotic bosses? Difficult customers? Unhappy underlings? Probably more like it. While I understand that social networking sites like Facebook.com and StumbleUpon and, to a lesser extent, MySpace and del.icio.us and the rest of them, are the rage right now -- and are used by many legitimate corporate types for actual work purposes -- well, I'm highly uncomfortable with the rampant use of the word "friend."

Let's face it: even if I'm pleased because Brian in Legal delivered that contract to me quickly, he's not actually my "buddy"; nor is the receptionist you just hired ready to be asked to join your "circle of friends." Plenty of people with whom I could happily carry on pre-conference-call banter, while I'm sure they're quite lovely, just aren't friends. Flickr gives us a break and lets us designate lots of "contacts," while Twitter has recently changed its nomenclature to count those you are following, and those that follow you. This makes sense to me! This is not presumptuous or uncomfortable.

Just because my name is in your contact list, Mr. and Ms. New Media Executive, it does not mean that you are my friend.

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) purchased Mybloglog.com for $10-$12 million according to different sources. Mybloglog.com of Orlando, Florida started out as a statistical data service for web page and blog owners -- which is when I first signed up -- but then launched its Communities service and evolved into a blog social network. Today, MyBlogLog enables readers and writers of web pages and blogs to communicate, building social networks and communities much like News Corp's (NYSE:NWS) MySpace.

MyBlogLog only started its Communities not too long ago, but it grew quite fast with the help of a few A-List bloggers such as TechCrunch and Lifehacker who signed up for the service. Currently, MyBlogLog is available on about 45,000 blogs and has about 33,000 registered readers. The service looks at about 1 million readers of blogs a day, with technology and real estate subjects among the most popular.

While the social network part is more valuable to future growth according to both Yahoo! and MyBlogLog, Scott Rafer, CEO of MyBlogLog, thinks that given his company's statistical monitoring service, it could also sell information to advertisers about where to advertise what. This can become more significant as the company grows.

My ongoing question is whether Yahoo!'s strategy of buying small businesses such as del.icio.us and MyBlogLog as opposed to buying large, established networks such as Facebook is working for the Internet media giant. It's a strategy that worked well with Flickr, but del.icio.us is still growing and I guess we'll have to wait and see MyBlogLog's eventual contribution.

[Here's the announcement in Yodel.]

Yahoo!, Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has launched an effort to help its customers organize their web bookmarks, which are easily and rapidly becoming the "stuffed closet" of the digital age. If you're like me, just managing bookmarks and keeping folders organized for your most commonly visited websites is a real chore. What if you access the web from multiple locations like home, work, school and library? How do you keep your bookmarks with you at all times?

Yahoo!, Google, Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and many others have provided free web bookmarking services for years. But Yahoo! also sees the consumer need for a simplified way to store and access web bookmarks -- with a single click. Yahoo! has introduced a new toolbar that gives customers one-click access to web bookmarks.

Yahoo!'s attempt here is part of a carefully-orchestrated plan to convince millions more of its customers to share what they learn on the web -- using bookmark tools -- with friends or colleagues. Sounds like a business model for del.icio.us, the social bookmarking company recently bought by Yahoo!. This may be, in fact, the stretching out of del.icio.us to Yahoo!'s billion-customer base on a more broad level -- and it may keep Yahoo! customers more "sticky" to the Yahoo! network.

With Google and the Mozilla Foundation -- who makes the popular Firefox web browser -- being best buddies, Google has bypassed the 85%-plus  marketshare of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and has launched a feature intended to work solely with the Mozilla Firefox web browser. This new feature, called "Browser Sync", allows a customer to synchronize settings across Firefox browsers on different computers in different locations. What is the point of all this, you may ask?

Well, for starters, those who like to use home and work computers like they are the same machine are in luck. Google Browser Sync copies cookies, bookmarks, saved passwords and other preferences across multiple (more than two) Firefox installations. This is so that the customer receives the same web browsing experience no matter where they are. Of course, the Firefox browser must be installed at all locations. But to those who even take Mozilla Firefox with them on a USB keychain drive, you can sync your Firefox installation with the "portable" install sitting on your USB drive as well. Any PC in the world then becomes your own personal Firefox machine.

This is a feature I see as highly innovative -- Google is again giving customers what they want and what will keep them using Google's services. A customer needs a Google account, of course, to use Google's Browser Sync. But, to have the same experience in the web browsing world among different computers is no small matter, as long as you're careful using this service across publicly-accessible PCs. But, Google Browser Sync can encrypt your settings that are shared across the network as well, which is a requirement in my opinion.