ReadWriteWeb

Flock, the "social" Web browser formerly built on top of Mozilla's Firefox, has just made a radical change. It's now powered by Chromium, the same technology found in the underpinnings of the speedy (and rapidly growing) Google Chrome.

Long decried among many early adopters as slow, busy and buggy, Flock today aims to change those former perceptions with the launch of its overhauled browser. The company describes the new Flock as "simple," "clutter-free" and "lightning fast."

A year ago, we covered the global mapping of social networks by Vincenzo Cosenza, a public relations specialists and former Microsoft Italy marketer.

Almost a year to the day later, Cosenza remapped the global use of social networks.

When Google announced the launch of the new Buzz API yesterday at the Google I/O developers conference, I spotted an application in their partner lineup which hadn't yet crossed my radar: Vinehub. After having initially spotted their logo in the Google blog post containing details regarding the official announcement, I clicked through to the Buzz Featured Apps page to check it out. But here, the service was nowhere to be found.

A visit to Vineub.com satisfied my curiosity, though. It appears that Vinehub is a new social network aggregation application, in the same line as FriendFeed or even Buzz itself, except with one major difference: it doesn't just pull in updates for liking and commenting, it sends them out too.

Based on a patent filing that was published by the USPTO today and first discovered by Patently Apple, Apple could soon enter the location-based social networking market. The patent, which was filed in September 2008, describes a scenario where a group of users with mobile devices like the iPhone come together at an event like a concert, wedding, political rally or trade show. Normally, you would have to collect personal information from all the attendees you meet and then transfer this data manually into your existing social network if you want to stay in touch with them. Apple's patent, however, describes a system where all of the devices in a specific location can automatically become part of a new social network based on their location. The patent filing refers to this service as iGroups.

When MySpace announced earlier this week that they had now established themselves as the number one social networking application on the Android platform and the number three download overall, needless to say, we were a bit shocked. After all, (with no offense to MySpace intended), there are more Facebook users than MySpace users in the world. It's just a simple fact.

So how did this happen? Is the MySpace Android app that much better than Facebook's? Are Android users more interested in MySpace for some reason? Are they younger than other mobile users and therefore choosing MySpace over Facebook?

As it turns out, the truth is that measuring the mobile downloads of official applications may not be mean anything when it comes to measuring the success of social networking sites.

Forget building your own iPhone app, you can now build your own mobile social network! Two companies - Shoutem and Socialight - are offering platforms that allow anyone to design, develop and launch their very own social networks for mobile devices. Although neither service will likely lead to the next creation of the next Twitter or Foursquare, the tools they offer are perfect for design a niche site for a select group of users. Whether it's a closed network for you and your friends, a fan-based network for celebrating a favorite TV show, a one-time use network for a particular conference or event or even something designed for use within a particular company, these services have you covered.

A recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones. And what are they doing there? Educating themselves, conducting business, managing finances, instant messaging, emailing? All of the above, as it turns out, and then some. But perhaps the most interesting finding from the new data is the fact that more people are using the mobile web to socialize (91%) compared to the 79% of desktop users who do the same. It appears that the mobile phone is actually a better platform for social networking than the PC.

Remember POGS? Don't feel bad if you don't - you've just dated yourself, that's all. These round collectible discs were used to play a children's game (also called POGS) back in the 1990's. Thanks to the incredible popularity of these little tokens, collecting POGS became a generation-defining fad for the demographic group known as the millenials. Where baby boomers had baseball cards and Generation X had Garbage Pail Kids, the young members of Gen Y had their POGS.

Now prepare yourself for POGS' return - POGS 2.0, if you will. Except this time around, the chips have been wired for the digital age. And today, the "game" is a social network called FaceChipz instead of a old-fashioned variation on marbles.

How badly do people want Google Buzz fixed? Enough to submit over 7,000 votes in the first 24 hours since the launch of a Google Moderator page called "How to Fix Google Buzz." Google Moderator, for those that don't know, is one of the unsung heroes of Google's online services. Launched back in 2008, the tool offers a simply designed interface that lets participants vote ideas up or down. In this case, suggestions for Google Buzz features and bugs in need of fixing are the fodder for this new Moderator site.

The irony of the situation is that the new "How to Fix Google Buzz" site was created by Jyri Engeström, a former Google employee who was at one time tasked with "making Google more social."

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this morning, Facebook announced Facebook Zero, a new stripped-down mobile version of the popular social networking site. Zero, which will go live within the next few weeks, will allow users on slow connections and basic phones to access the service through a very basic version of the site. By default, Zero will not feature any images or other bandwidth-heavy features. Facebook also plans to offer a more feature-rich version of Facebook Zero through deals with select mobile carriers.