Tired of the ads you see on social networking sites? If Microsoft gets its way, soon you’ll be able to make your own ads which may be seen by all your friends. (more…)

Facebook has just made it easier for its over 350 million users to limit and protect who sees their comments, videos, photographs and other personal information by introducing more options for privacy settings this past Wednesday. (more…)

More brands are taking advantage of the short form, viral power of the microblogging site Twitter. This holiday season several brands are hoping to extend their reach with the addition of the social sharing feature. (more…)

Bayonetta is the new action packed, femme fatale video game developed for SEGA by PlatinumGames Inc., a Japanese based independent video game development company known for its stylistic and inventive artwork. Earlier this week SEGA of America, Inc. announced the launch of Bayonetta Re-Envisioned, a user-generated art contest. (more…)

Microsoft’s search engine Bing, advertised as a decision engine that finds and organizes the answers you need to make faster more informed decisions, is launching a video jingle contest. The Bing Jingle contest will make use of its new YouTube channel in hopes of finding the perfect user-generated “Bingle” from within the social network community. (more…)

Microsoft Windows is sponsoring a new show on justin.tv called PC Hook Up hosted by Christian Lander and is looking for three web filmmakers to share their own short films online. The show is all about how your digital dreams can come true with a little knowledge and the right PC. (more…)

The newly launched Bing search engine wasted no time in entering into the user-generated content (UGC) contest foray for user attention and retention. Bing is the latest incarnation of Microsoft that in the past has produced the search engines MSN and Windows Live. One purely aesthetic yet defining aspect of the Bing user interface is the constantly changing background image; it will be this image that is at the heart of the contest. (more…)

Microsoft has just launched a user-generated content (UGC) contest to beef up its promotional campaign for Internet Explorer 8 with Create Your Own PSA. The contest, which comes after some criticism of their initial drive, is looking for funny PSA announcements showcasing what the new browser can do better. (more…)

Microsoft says it can’t compete with online wikis and is therefor shutting down its long running Encarta program. Encarta was launched in 1993 and was the primary online research tool for students and classrooms throughout the 1990s.

The decision was made by Microsoft to shut down the Encarta project after the company could not sell its latest offering. Encarta Premium was launched in 2009 and contained over 62,000 professionally written articles and thousands of trusted Web links. Microsoft had the virtual encyclopedia retailing for only $29.95 and was still unable to move the product.

Microsoft attributes this drop-off in sales to the popularity of user-generated online encyclopedias, namely Wikipedia. As of March 31 Wikipedia had 2,818,976 articles contributed by users of the website. Wikipedia is also a free service that is accessible anywhere in the world. Hitwise, the Internet tracking company, showed Wikipedia with 97 per cent of the online encyclopedia market in the U.S. and Encarta with 1.27 per cent.

Microsoft has hinted that the Encarta material may be used in the future for a wiki style research website but details are still unclear.

Next week, for two days, some of the best online communicators from Canada and around the world will be in Toronto for MeshCon09.

Mesh Conference, or MeshCon, is a conference for professionals and entrepreneurs working with social media in fields such as advertising, marketing, public relations and journalism. Among the topics to be covered are managing communities online where Keith Bilous, President of ICUC Moderation Services (parent of snoo.ws) will be part of a panel alongside Mark Relph of Microsoft, George Tsiolis of Agoracom and Howard Chui of HowardForums. (more…)