As the saying goes “ Money Talks and ………”, this has just been proved by the giant software company in the world Microsoft with their acquisition of Skype Global and internet communications company for a stunning $8.5 billion. 

According to tech analysis’s called it the biggest acquisition in history of tech world and so far the biggest from Microsoft empire.

Skype is estimated to have over 663 million global users and with the combination of Microsoft, will extend Skype's world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft's existing portfolio of real-time communication products and services.

According to Steve Ballmer the Chief Executive of Microsoft said “Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world. Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”
Skype will now become a new division within Microsoft, and Skype chief executive Tony Bates will continue to lead the business, reporting directly to Mr. Ballmer.

Skype's software allows users to talk for free online using messaging, voice and video and can also connect them to a land line or mobile phone for a fee. Users will now be able to connect to Microsoft offerings such as Lync, Outlook and Xbox Live, while Skype will support devices such as Xbox and Kinect, the companies said.

Get connected today on skype by downloading it here ...SKYPE IT

Twitter late on Valetine's day (14th/Feb/2011) launched a translation Center a product that is a major step toward making Twitter more easily accessible by people around the world.
The Translation Center allows crowdsource translations from passionate users so as to launch Twitter more quickly in other additional languages.

In addition to the original English version, users can already access Twitter in French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Italian, but the company still lags behind Facebook, which offers many more translation options.

While Twitter has relied on users in the past to help translate parts of its site, the new Twitter Translation Centre is unique in that it invites everyone to participate in this process and even involves an active recruiting drive aimed at attracting volunteers.

How does it work?
The new Translation Center allows any Twitter user to sign up, choose a language and begin translating immediately. Translators can now help localize twitter.com, mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone and iPad, Twitter for Android, Twitter Help and the Twitter Business Center. We also improved the Center’s search functionality, added phrase tagging, created special translator profiles, enabled commenting on phrases and much more.

At this time, we have opened up the Translation Center to users who speak French, Indonesian, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. If you speak any of these languages, you can start helping us translate! Head over to twitter.com/translate and follow @translator for the latest updates.

Facebook, rumored for some time to be planning its own email service, may finally be on the verge of doing so in a move that would send a shot across the bow of Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft.
Sources believe that the social network plans to announce a Web-based email service complete with @facebook.com addresses at an event in San Francisco next week.

According to Techcrunch, Facebook's planned Web-based email service is part of a secret project known as "Project Titan" that is "unofficially referred to internally as its 'Gmail killer.

Facebook boasts more than 500 million members around the world and offering a personal email service would lay down a powerful challenge to the established email giants -- Microsoft's Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and Google's Gmail.

Why Facebook Email Service will be a killer:-

- It has a potential instant size.

- It has a natural advantage at making mail more useful by showing you the email you are actually interested in.

- Since Facebook knows how you interact with all your contacts, they would be able to perfectly separate what is important from what is not.

Facebook and Skype are working on a deal that would integrate Facebook Connect with Skype accounts, according to reports.

The deal, which is expected to be announced in the next few weeks, would enable Facebook users to have a voice chat and video chat with their Facebook friends using Skype services, according to the Wall Street Journal reported.

Once you connect Skype (Skype) with Facebook (Facebook), you’ll be able to SMS, chat with or call your Facebook friends directly from Skype. You should also be able to log in to Skype with your Facebook credentials

Similarily to AIM, the new features should go live on Skype 5.0 when the new version goes out of beta in a couple of weeks.

According to analyst, "Facebook is all about communicating with friends, but they've fallen behind other services, like Google and Yahoo, when it comes to things like audio and video chat. Skype is a mature and fully featured service that can give Facebook even more functionality than their competitors."

If the rumored move comes to fruition, Facebook would be firing back at Google, which announced last month that it would offer the ability to make phone calls over the Internet via its popular Gmail service.

Google's move was a blow to Facebook, whose core service is pulling in users who want to connect online. It also was a slap at Skype, which has long dominated the market for Internet phone service.

However, if the new deal goes through, both Facebook and Skype would be able to compete vigorously against Google.

"There's a lot in this deal for Skype," Olds said. "It would open up their service to all 500 million Facebook users and give them an easy way to get used to using their computers as phones or video phones. Skype offers computer-to-computer communications for free, but there are a lot of users who will opt for a paid account and the ability to call regular landlines, too. This could generate a large set of new paid accounts for Skype."

You can continue to be informed on skype page on facebook. http://www.facebook.com/Skype

Apple of recent decided to make all the critics of its social network service PING go silent when it upgraded it with music posting features.  This feature has truely raised it's social networking hooks that could make it wildly successful.

Ping now allows users to both post the music they're actually listening to and "like" other music that friends/colleagues/random internet strangers are listening to. It's a simple tweak that's made easily accessible via a sidebar that pops up within iTunes whenever one starts rocking out to a song.
Provided Ping/iTunes can recognize the song in question, the service will immediately ask you whether you want to "like" the track you're listening to—which automatically posts it to your Ping feed without any further input required—or whether you want to post the track to your feed with the option of leaving additional comments to accompany it. That's it.

According to critics, ping has only one problem "it's being locked to iTunes only". However the update done update is a solid first step to revive Ping from its early grave.

From PC Magazine