1.   Oleole.com
Oleole.com has managed to bring the football community closer on the web. It was created in 2006 and has stayed active to witness and hold discussions on all major football Cups. The World Cup section offers live scores, travel info, and interesting facts about the game and matches. More than anything else, you have an ultimate community for football lovers to hold discussions which is full of football-driven content. You can join fan clubs for Football Leagues, podcasts, wallpapers, blogs and videos about football.

2.   Southafrica.info
We have seen South Africa tourism steer towards the World Cup as their new tourism mantra. World Cup 2010 is expected to be a turning point for South Africa in terms of tourism and development. Southafrica.info, a site which gives information for investors, tourists, citizens and South Africans abroad, has an exclusive page for the World Cup – www.southafrica.info/2010/. It includes an SA 2010 Fan kit which gives information about African culture and football, informative articles, match schedule and news about the World Cup.

3.   Twitter
Who could miss this one? There’s an official profile for FIFA World Cup 2010 with over 70,000 followers. It gives instant updates on the matches and comments on performances. Twitter has also come up with FIFA backgrounds for users. There’s also another profile for FIFAWorldCupTM, which gives unofficial FIFA soccer world cup tweets. This user has much more followers than the original profile with over 100,000 members following so far.

4.   Livesoccertv.com
I was so smitten by the crystal clear coverage of live action on Livesoccertv.com that I don’t regret not making a trip to South Africa to see the matches live. It also provides updates on scores, schedules, video, interesting info about various teams and even includes info on the best Soccer Pubs in the USA and Canada.

5.   Last, but definitely not the least, World Cup Songs on YouTube
Waka Waka and Wavin’ Flag are infectious! Whether it was Shakira’s moves or K’naan’s powerful lyrics, it spread like wildfire on the Internet. Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) is the new football anthem that was written and performed by Shakira. The song captures the spirit of Africa and the football festival, and with its rhythmical African sounds, the song represents the vitality and energy of the host continent.

Wavin Flag (The Celebration Mix) has been chosen as the official song of Coca-Cola for their 2010 FIFA World Cup. K’naan, who had composed the original song to show his support for the Haitian earthquake relief effort, has collaborated with artistes from various countries like Spain, Brazil, Egypt, Indonesia etc to produce new versions of the song for different regions. David Bisbel, Skank, Nancy Ajram, David Guetta and many others feature in these videos.

These examples show us that you can take a universally celebrated event, optimize the idea, and convert it into better traffic for your site. They have managed to get non-football-fans like me excited about the World Cup after all! If you know of any more sites that have used a simple idea like this to make it big, share it with us in the Comments section.  Also, don’t forget to mention the team who you think will win the Cup this time!

Apple hates Google. Who would have thunk it! The one-time bosom-buddies, who even joked about merging the companies and naming it AppleGoo, have now turned not merely rivals, but enemies engaged in a fierce battle for supremacy. If you are about to compare this to the battle of wills and copyrights that Apple and Microsoft engaged in for years, you’d better stop, because you’d be way off the mark. Apple, it seems, is waging a very personal war on Google.

Apple (read, Steve Jobs) believe that Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who served on their board of directors for a number of years, has not merely betrayed their trust by venturing into the mobile technology business arena, but that he may even have drawn ‘inspiration’ for their future products from the many iPhone discussions he was part of. (Surely, Steve couldn’t be accusing the Google CEO of corporate espionage? Or could he?)

The growing rift between Apple and Google was first suspected in August of 2009, when they mutually decided that Eric Schmidt would give up his position in Apple’s board of directors, because his continued presence on the board would undoubtedly lead to conflicts of interest as Google was encroaching on more of Apple’s core business areas with Android technology and Chrome OS. (Not to put thoughts in anyone’s head, but does Google’s advancements in these core areas coincide with Schmidt’s stay at Apple?)

Things went steadily downhill after that.

The rift (only) grew wider when in November 2009 Google acquired AdMob, a leading mobile advertising platform that Apple had its eye on. Google apparently paid a premium of 25% just to keep Apple from going after it. Jeeze, Google, competitive, much?

The web, the world even, got a fair picture of just how strained the relationship between the two giants was in January 2010, when at an internal Apple town hall meeting, Steve gave vent to his growing frustration and displeasure with Google, going as far as to say that Google’s motto, ‘Don’t Be Evil’, was nothing but ‘a load of crap’. (That’s harsh, Steve! But I agree it is a touch too sanctimonious for a corporate motto.)

But things really came to head in February, exactly one month after the Google Nexus One was released, when Apple filed a lawsuit for 20 patent violations against Nexus One maker HTC. If I claim that this was an indirect hit at Google, a deliberate plan to stall further developments in the Android space, very few who will disagree with me. That won’t make it true though, because Apple’s motives still aren’t clear, and my claim, in spite of its popularity, will have to be seen as informed speculation.

Industry experts say this rivalry may not necessarily be a bad thing, that in their efforts to best the other, they can drive more innovations. Don’t blame me for being excited, but that means there will be just one clear winner to emerge from this battle – we, the consumers!

The other shoe has dropped. Google has officially made a foray into the realm of social networks. (No, now is not a good time to bring up Wave, which Sergey insists is a success – yeah, whatever you say, Sergey.) On 9 February 2010, they unveiled Google Buzz – “a Google approach to sharing”. And apparently, the only solution for the problem of ‘oversharing’ of social expressions on the web. It is but the natural course of events, considering Google’s we-need-to-have-a-finger-in-every-pie attitude. And web domination is not (quite) web domination without a social networking tool.

Coming back to the topic at hand, what exactly is Buzz? From what I can see, it is a robust, not to mention ambitious, email application masquerading as a social networking platform, which also doubles as an aggregator – of status updates, images, videos and links – all in the name of social curation.

Now, how does it work? In a clever move that almost makes up for the mess that is Wave, Google has released Buzz directly into Gmail. So, the next time you log in to your account (this is when I interrupt myself  to say that only Gmail users get to use Buzz), you may just find yourself with a spanking new Google Buzz account. No need to sign up anew, no installation of any kind required. Just click on the Buzz tab beneath the Inbox tab and you can get Buzzing. As Google reports on their official Buzz page, they are still in the process of rolling out this service, and it may take a couple of more days before it is active in all Gmail accounts.

When Buzz is active in your account, you’ll be taken to such a page when you log in.

The Buzz tab, as you can see, appears right beneath the Inbox tab. You can’t miss it.

An active Buzz user profile appears like this.

This is what a typical Buzz post box (box where you post, get it?) looks like. Like said, you have the option of posting Publicly or privately, you can click on the drop down arrow next to Public to choose the Private option.

Buzz profile of a friend will look like this.

This is the screenshot of a Buzz in the inbox – the interface is exactly the same.

According to Google, Buzz has five key features that make it different from the other leading social networking platforms.

1. Auto Following – With Buzz, you can say goodbye to the hassle of setting up a network from scratch, Gmail already ‘knows’ who your friends are and will follow them automatically. (Years of indexing experience must have come handy, but the feature doesn’t exactly scream cutting edge)

2. Rich, Fast Sharing Experience – Buzz allows you to share photos, videos, links to websites, basically, content from around the web with your network. It has a custom photo viewer that will allow you to view pictures ‘the way they are meant to be viewed’. (This is pretty neat, I admit)

3. Public And Private Sharing Options – Buzz has two sharing options. You can either share Publicly, which would mean your Google Profile will be automatically updated, which, as Google go on to explain, means, it will be indexed real-time and made available to anyone and everyone searching for it on the web. Or you can share Privately with your friends. Wow, Google, those are some groundbreaking options there!

4. Inbox Integration – Google Buzz notifications aren’t just static emails, they posses the same properties of Buzz, which means a Buzz notification mail looks exactly like an actual Buzz, and allows you to respond to it right from the inbox – you can view pictures, like or dislike comment and even have comments updated in real-time. Yes, certainly cool, but I think, totally unnecessary. The Buzz tab is right there in your account, in fact, just beneath the Inbox tab. How long does it take to switch to the other tab, really now?

5. Just The Good Stuff – Google is not a search giant for nothing, they will use nothing less than an algorithm to rank the streams on Buzz. (That’s right, and soon SEOs all over the world will be working at optimizing Buzzes to rank high on Buzz streams, and a whole new power game will ensue.) So, this algo will ensure that you get ‘just the good stuff’ by ‘recommending’ good buzz, ‘collapsing’ bad buzz. Meddlesome much?

So, if we are to believe Google, Buzz is the social media messiah, come to save social media and the ‘signals’ from a preponderance of ‘noise’. Just like Google search swooped in and saved the day with its relevant results. Don’t believe me? Check out the launch video.

Pretty ironic when you consider that Google essentially is a social media upstart. With Buzz, they presume to resolve the ‘relevancy and ranking problem’ that is plaguing the social realm. Buzz apparently, with its ‘open’ source platform, will save the social realm and champion the cause of social information, both of which are really at threat from the ‘closed’ social communities that are so popular now.

At this point, I can’t muster up much enthusiasm for Buzz, Wave-likeness aside, as a social networking tool, it has very few original aspects. ‘Followers’ and ‘@reply’ are features it has generously borrowed from Twitter, with nary a nod in its direction, and don’t even let me start on the endless similarities to Friendfeed. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, Buzz has distanced itself from any association with Facebook. The ubiquitous Facebook Connect is missing and none of its features make an appearance either. This could be because Goggle sees Facebook as the only true competition to Buzz. But with over 400 million users in its kitty, as opposed to the 179 million subscribers Gmail has cornered, Facebook has nothing to worry about.

Back to the matter of whether Google Buzz will be able to keep buzzing, we just have to wait and watch how great the algorithm is at keeping the ‘noise’ out.

My reaction to this revelation, though, is largely that of indifference, it doesn’t affect me one way or another. Probably because my activities on Facebook have never been network based, I have always taken care to set my privacy settings at ‘Only Friends’, which ensures that only the people on my friend list have access to my profile and the contents. And to be honest, except for the fact that it could possibly indicate the geographical location of a user, I’ve found the concept of regional network rather useless. In my defense, even Facebook admits (sort of) that these networks turned out to be pretty useless, apparently only 50 percent of the users ever joined regional networks.

Facebook first mentioned of a change in status quo in their 03 June post on their blog:

“…To make the site easier to understand, we’re taking the first step towards removing these regional networks…since they did not adequately reflect a world where people choose exactly the audience with whom they wish to share…made sense for those who wanted to be more open when Facebook was small, but they lost their utility as the site became global…”

In addition to frequently publishing posts regarding the matter on their blog, over the months, they have also maintained an active discussion thread for users to comment, air views and give suggestions.

On 2^nd December, Mark Zuckerberg was definitive when he revealed on the blog that the plan was to do away with regional networks completely and to create a privacy model that would allow users enough flexibility to choose what content they wish to reveal and to whom.

In essence, it’s Facebook’s success that has made the concept of regional networks redundant (There is an irony in there somewhere). There are just too many people on each regional network for a privacy setting based on it to be even considered practical. Why would I want to share personal profile contents with several hundred thousand strangers just because they happen to be on the same network as I am? I might as well share them with the rest of the world.

So, the reason cited makes immense sense, to me at least. But I am just one among the 350 million people who call Facebook their virtual home. The (Facebook) public opinion is divided on this – there are users who welcome this move, also ones who vehemently oppose it.

“It’s about time! The privacy settings based on Geographical Networks make no sense. I live in New York and that network has hundreds of thousands of people! Give me one reason why I would want to set privacy settings for that network. I think geographical networks should be eliminated altogether because they are useless and I am glad Facebook is headed in that direction,” commented a user on the Facebook blog. I am guessing, that’s the kind of response Mark Zuckerberg hoped to garner when he sent out his open letter.

Bet he didn’t anticipate this move would antagonize so many of his loyal patrons. Read on.

More than anything, the users who oppose the move are worried the removal of regional networks will hinder them in their effort to connect with those from their city or country. It will eliminate the option of regional network-based search and since not everyone publishes his or her location details on the profile, this will prove to be a big cause for concern; so, some have been rather vehement in their protestations. “This is the worst idea ever. If they were going to eliminate regional networks, why did they bother making them in the first place? I moved a lot as a kid and never went to college so the ONLY network I can use is regional,” bemoans a user. Facebook’s response to this: they’ll eventually move information about those networks to the profiles For example, “If a user’s regional network is a city, it will be listed in the “Current City” field. If it’s a region or country, it will be listed in a new “Current Region” field.”

Then there are users who think this content-based privacy update will make Facebook unnecessarily complicated. And they may not be entirely wrong to think so. Just thinking about managing individual privacy settings for all the content on my profile is giving me a faint headache. In light of all this, I can’t but ask this question: what if I don’t care to change the settings, or more likely, forget to change them? Will the default setting beam all the contents of my profile to, you know, ‘everyone’?

Dear Facebook, a post addressing all the various (hidden) privacy concerns would be appreciated, thank you.

In the middle of all this, TechCrunch has speculated (though they appear to be a tad unsure) that this may be another step towards the ‘twitterification’ of Facebook and that if it presses people to use the ‘everyone’ option in the privacy settings, it could end up making a lot of private data public without the user quite realizing it. Short of Facebook successfully brainwashing 350 million odd people, with recommendations, of all things, I don’t really see that happening.

Historically, people haven’t taken the changes on Facebook well. Almost every update it’s had has caused users to get up in arms and demand that Facebook revert to its previous avatar, in vain of course. So, not surprisingly, this latest change in status quo has shaken the user base, yet again. Once again, I don’t blame them. Facebook has changed its interface and features (even its domain name once) so many times since its humble birth in that Kirkland dorm room, it could practically qualify as a shapeshifter. There have even been threats (from users) about quitting Facebook altogether:

“I’m done with Facebook. Aside from the reasons listed, they’ve messed so many things up already. The friends list pages are gone, friends are no longer in alphabetical order so it’s hard to look someone up…. it’s so complicated for no good reason at all. Eliminate networks, make it just a simple site with private profiles, or public profiles. Until you fix your stuff, good bye Facebook.”

I am pretty sure they won’t make good on these threats, but it’ll be quite interesting to see how Facebook handles such challenges & powerful user reaction. Maybe Mark Zuckerberg will write another open letter, since he is turning into quite the PR pro.