Today Microsoft has launched today a new product - Global search engine. It's called Bing (still in Beta version). It's aimed to compete with Google.

All 3 previous attempts of Microsoft to beat Google failed. Nowadays Microsoft controls only 8% per cent of this market in comparison with Google per cent - 64,2%.

Bing is a vertical semantic search machine. It's developed on a basis of technology of a famous company Powerset, which Microsoft bought last year for 100 million dollars. (news source Yandex News)

So I guess very soon we'll have another tool for Marketing and new ways to monetize our traffic at Dating and Social Networking sites.

Social Networking sites are becoming more and more powerful due to a fast media exchange ability and uncontrolled user generated content! This fact is more evident due to the latest events in China!

As BBC News reports, that China, ahead of the 20th anniversary of the suppression of the Tiananmen protests, has blocked several social networking websites: micro-blogging service Twitter, Hotmail accounts, business social network Facebook (according to Vz.ru) and the photo-sharing service Flickr.

In such a way China bans discussion of the events in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Generally, Thursday 4 June is the 20th anniversary of the crackdown, when troops quelled weeks of protest by students and workers. China has never released a death toll from the suppression on what it says was a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Hundreds are believed to have died in and around the square.

The BBC's James Reynolds in Beijing says that as the anniversary of what China calls the "4 June incident" gets closer, the Communist Party appears to be in a particularly vigilant mood - it wants to make sure that there is no mention of the subject whatsoever. So, access to Twitter was denied shortly after 17:00 (09:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

As you can see, now social media networking and niche social networks are taken into account on a government level as they are so powerful in uniting people, sharing news and planning actions. Does it mean that very soon Huge social networks will be powerful enough to start protests all over the world if necessary? Anyways, we wanna be part of it. I think it's time to start my own social network...

According to Hitwise, MySpace and Bebo continued to dominate the UK social networking category in April 2007, with 67% of category visits. Whilst MySpace maintained a slight lead over Bebo in April (less than 1%), Bebo looks sure to overtake MySpace in share of UK internet visits in May, ranking #1 each of the past three weeks.

The two social networking leaders continue to grow at a rapid pace, with UK Internet visits to MySpace increasing nearly two and a half times from April 2006 to April 2007 and visits to Bebo increasing 3 times.

Facebook, which opened up to accept all Internet users in September 2006, has seen its share of visits soar, up 9-fold since September. Previously it had been limited to those with a college or high school email address and more recently to business addresses.

Social networks are derided by some as last years fad, however UK consumers are showing that demand continues to rise, commented Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK. Social networks are increasingly part of the flow of internet traffic, highlighting the importance for brands and advertisers to build a presence in these communities.(news source net4now.com)

As the recent trends show, Social Networking is still rising and new niche social networks gain more popularity.