Goldman Sachs (GS) was among the first banks to show interest in social networks with its effort to buy into Facebook. It seems the idea is catching. Now, JPMorgan Chase (JPM) began its own fund called the Digital Growth fund, according to the Financial Times.

The fund is in talks to buy 10% of Twitter for $450 million, according to the report. That would value Twitter at $4.5 billion.

There is quiet revolution taking place in communication. It's PC telephony. It's been around for years, but is catching the imagination of users around the world. The key driver of PC telephony is cost. Skype offers free online phone calls to any receiver who also has Skype.

Such calls require a microphone and desktop speakers. In a business setting where cubicles are adjacent to one another, the noise can be distracting.

The market for streaming video calling is exploding. An estimated 13.2 million people worldwide will make video calls this year, up 400% from last year. By 2015, it is estimated that 155.1 million calls will use streaming videos.

Skype is a leader in low-cost phone calls. Calls to other people who have Skype are usually free. Now Skype is offering video calling for as low as $8.99 per month, with up to 10 people on the same call. Skype accounts for 25% of international calling traffic, up from 13% in 2009.

According to the Financial Times, the Chinese Ministry of Information and Industry Technology called for a crackdown "on illegal VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) telephone services" and is collecting evidence for legal cases against them.

China is a big player in most markets; however, when it comes to technology, powerful local companies hold sway. Last year Google (GOOG) fought a battle to keep its website in China. A couple of years ago, China set rules whereby all Internet content had to pass through censors before being approved.

Google (GOOG) has a new service, as reported in Reuters. Starting now, you can make free calls in the U.S. and Canada from you Gmail account. Calls to other countries will be as cheap as two cents per minute. Google's stock was up $3.22 Wednesday to $454.62.

The process is real simple. Just click on the "call line" option on the chat buddy list in Gmail and type in the number. You can also enter a contact person.

eBay's (EBAY) purchase of Skype for over a billion dollars years ago was seen by many as obtuse and strange. Did eBay really expect its auction buyers and sellers to want to speak over the Internet (or video conference, for that matter)? Part of the allure of online auctions is the relative anonymity both sellers and buyers have. No "meeting in the parking lot" Cragislist-ish type of meetings in most cases.

But Skype has not paid off like eBay would have hoped. While the purchase of PayPal was the best acquisition eBay ever made, the planned synergies never materialized with Skype. While still a popular voice and video service around the world (ultra-cheap as well), Skype may be posed to bring voice and video calling direct to flat-panel television sets near you soon. The "videophone" concept has never really been that popular, mostly due to the kludgy ways past products have been designed and marketed.

Look, 2009 was a "flush" year. Market rallies were constrained by the low baseline set at the end of 2008, unemployment was high and caution defined nearly every corporate decision. The travel market sucked. The art market sucked. The financial industry labored on with the support of taxpayer money while 140 banks were forced to call it quits. So, we turn to the new year, as yet undefined, for excitement of the type we want ... and it seems likely to deliver. As Nero played from the rooftops, the social media industry inched forward to the climax we hope to see this year -- the initial public offering.

The action hasn't really begun, and the signals emitted are open to various interpretations. Nonetheless, Facebook's new dual-class stock structure is hard to miss, as it would protect the influence of early entrants to the company -- either as investors or options-compensated employees in the event that the 350 million-strong social networking site brings ownership opportunities to the public.

Look for eBay (EBAY) to more than hold its own this holiday season, which is one major reason I'm reiterating my buy rating for the company, first recommended on May 14, 2009, at a price of $16.84. If you bought EBAY in May, you're up about 40%.

Earlier this year, eBay sold a 70% stake in Skype for about $2.75 billion, enabling the company to focus on core operations at eBay and at PayPal.

BT Group, which virtually owns the UK telecommunications market, isn't waiting for Google (GOOG) to launch a full attack. The company probably expects to be under assault from the search engine (and advertising and e-mail) giant, so it's taking early action. Google Voice is still being tested, but words like "free" and "powerful" and "internet-based" are bound to inspire fear in even the most established of companies.

To protect itself from the eventual attack from Mountain View, BT picked up Ribbit Mobile, and testing is in progress. Ribbit's technology has some overlap with Google Voice and even beats it with a few capabilities, according to Bloomberg. Ribbit just launched its beta product this month. It allows either the user's current phone number or a new one from Ribbit -- which is no different from Google's alternative. The product suite is generally the same, with phone- and web-based voicemail retrieval and automatic transcriptions that can be sent by text message or e-mail. For an extra fee, BT's Ribbit does provide human transcription, though it is free during testing. And, calls can be taken directly from a computer, using a microphone and speakers.

Online auction giant eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY), a business that counts Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) as related companies, was not popular in Wednesday's after-hours session. The third-quarter report just didn't do it for Wall Street, so Wall Street decided to make some trouble and bring the per-share price of the stock down by 4.5%. Oh sure, the company beat earnings by the most famous amount there is -- the proverbial penny -- but, according to this Bloomberg piece, guidance was not so inspiring.

The top line was actually pretty cool. Net sales saw an increase of 6%. Unfortunately, the bottom line couldn't take advantage of such growth. On an adjusted basis, net income dropped 16% to 38 cents per diluted share. And, as I just said, that was one penny ahead of the analysts.

AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) has seen massive negative publicity come in from earlier in the summer to know in regards to its policies on the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone it currently has an exclusive on. After all, that $99 or $199 purchase was not giving customers complete control over over the freedom to do what they wanted with those precious iPhones.

When the AT&T/Google/Apple situation flared up recently, it caused the microscope on AT&T's strict controls on the iPhone to become even more intense.