New social networks from Google, Yahoo

The Blog world is abuzz with rumours that Google and Yahoo are working on new social networks.

According to Elinor Mills, a blogger on CNET network, Google has sponsored a project at Carnegie Mellon University's Human Computer Interaction Institute that was designed to "rethink and reinvent online social networking." Quoting Google's Operating System blog as source, Mills wrote that Dubbed "Socialstream," the service would be similar to a unified social network that would allow users to have accounts on multiple services but centralized contacts at a unified location.

According to Tech Crunch, the search giant's rival, Yahoo too is working on a similar project called Mosh. The posting was updated with a job description for a summer intern spot at Yahoo on a "cool new social network product." According to the post, Yahoo's looking for someone with lots of friends on MySpace and Facebook and who is "damn funny."

Mills wrote that representatives from Google did not immediately return an e-mail seeking comment on the report. A Yahoo spokeswoman said, "We recently gave our employees the chance to test out an alpha service, which will help people benefit from the social web. We do not have any other details to share at the moment, but we will be sure to keep you apprised of our efforts."

The software giant Microsoft has talked about several strategies, including making Windows Live Messenger more social network-like as well as building meta social network where people could centralize multiple existing networks. Wallop, a start-up spun out of Microsoft research lab, is launching the test version of an online social networking site. Wallop brands itself as ‘the exclusive social experience,’ and is technically a separate company, a startup that’s based on technologies developed by Microsoft Research.