The other day I came across a new micro-blogging platform called Poodz. This startup was originally launched in France last year and in recent months, it shows steadily increasing its user base, mostly the French-speaking users. Poodz, in the first glance, functions like Twitter in which allowed users to post latest updates, but have great potential for improving the user experience in terms of richness such as the likes of Pownce (updates, files, conversation, and etc.) as well as Twitxr (Micro-blogging with image). Instead, Poodz allowed their users to use their mobiles or PCs to post messages with videos, pictures, sounds and publish them anywhere. For the mobile users, they can simply send their ideas, or latest news to share with their friends by MMS or emails. Or for the PCs users, they can record their messages in video clips by using the Webcams, or audios using the microphones and record them on Poodz’s platform. Too many options can be used on Poodz, as Poodz’s team believed that one of a key drivers behind a good user experience is the flexibility of using various tools in posting the recent updates.

The recent development of Poodz showed their seriousness in this field, as now they are compatible with CamTwist, a Mac software package that let users add special effects to the video chats. In addition, Poodz also migrated their database to a new and better server, and released their public API.

Facebook has notched up a new record by launching two European versions of its site in this month. Firstly, it launched the German version, and now unveiled its French version. According to Facebook, more than 2000 German-speaking users on Facebook have helped to translate the site to the local language in less than two weeks. And for the Facebook French, the site was produced with the help of its 4,000 French users. The launched of these two local sites is a positive development for Facebook, as they’re now targeting to expand into the Europe market.

However, as I said several times before, distance still a matter. For instance, the hottest social networking platform in Germany is studiVZ, leading the industry with reported 5 million of users.

In February, Facebook has also launched its Spanish version, as stated by Facebook, there are more than 1,500 users participated in the project mainly helping to translate the site from English to Spanish. Additionally, Facebook has more than 2.8 million active users in Latin America and Spain and the Spanish site will thus strongly engaging the people there.

Facebook German Version

Facebook French Version

Facebook Spanish Version

If you want to find out the hot 20 European startups that will feature at Plugg, the Web 2.0 conference on March 19 in Brussels, here’s the list. These 20 finalists are selected out of 65 submission from 18 European countries by the Plugg’s jury. Also, if you want to register and get some ticket discount, simply key in the coupon code “PLUGGFRIEND” will get you 25% off from the ticket, as reported by Web 2.0 in Belgium.

via [Web 2.0 in Belgium]

Amazon S3, which stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service has reached a new milestone, by doubling its size of objects stored to 10 billion objects, compared to 5 billion objects in April 24, in addition to expanding the hosting service to the European. The increase in objects stored also reflects the growing number of developers that used Amazon S3, the user group of developers have grown from 240,000 in April to more than 290,000 as at today.

Amazon S3 was introduced in March last year, has been a hosting provider of choice for developers for its scalability, reliability and cost-saving features. Presently, objects is allowed to write, read or delete up to 5 gigabytes (GB) and the number of objects that can be stored is unlimited. On the other hand, developers can made the object they stored private, public, or assign rights to a specific user and the objects can also stored and retrieved via a unique developer-assigned key. Currently, Amazon S3 is offering the standards-based REST and SOAP interfaces.

Amazon S3 employed pay-as-you-go scheme hosting solutions for developers to store their data without any up-front investment. Developers pay only for the space they consume and there is no minimum fee. $0.15 per GB of storage per month and $0.20 per GB of data transfer in the US. However, in the Europe, the pricing scheme is much different, as storage is $0.18 per GB and data transfer in is priced at $0.10 per GB, and so on.

A UK-based social networking site called SAGA Zone has officially launched today. Like any other social networking sites that can be found on the Web, the users of SAGA Zone are allowed to build their own profiles with their photos, participate in the blogs or forums, join groups, message each other and etc. Their membership is offered without any charge but the only requirement for a potential user to join this SAGA Zone is the person need to be above 50 years of age. Imagine you first come across their membership requirement, you probably find this new social networking site would not able to make it on the Web, as online social networking activities are more likely associated with the younger generation. However, the outcome are not.

There is a distinction between what we thought and the actual fact; that is, SAGA Zone has more than 13,000 users so far, after the site has been tested in the market for four months, and the oldest user of this site is 87, reports SAGA Group. If they continue growing from now on, as we try to understand the basis of their success, it’s not that difficult we recognize the theory of “one size does not fit all” in the social networking industry.

The other day I came across a new startup that launched about two weeks ago. It was called BAAGZ that founded by a French search engine Exalead and the site is built on Ajax, feeds, with some mature social search and semantic technologies which include search and information access, content tagging and evaluation.

BAAGZ is a new form of social network that allowed its users, they preferred the name “Baagerz”, to easily store their favorite things online in a file format, or a folder called “baagz.” Since it was powered by the social search technology, it’s not surprise that the semantic search will suggest their users on the things they like, and eventually connect the users with a common interest in an interest-oriented groups. With the shared folder, i.e. baagz, users can share with their group members their favorite Web pages, articles, links, blog entries, pictures, videos, etc. Perhaps the most important BAAGZ’s approach is the capability of indexing the baagz for social search and the ability to notify its users when something new appear on the network. In other word, users can find social recommendations they want through the tagged content stored in a baagz created by other users, or simply waiting for the notifications. A bit acted like the social bookmarking approach. Moreover, Baagz can be publicly viewed, shared only with an user’s friends, or in private.

Currently, BAAGZ is still in private beta and only supports Firefox 2+ and Internet Explorer 7. I will report back on this BAAGZ when it officially available to the public. Stay tuned.

A vertical flight search engine dohop has launched its Turkish version today. This site is organized in a fully localized service, with Turkish language and the pricing information is in Turkish Lira. The availability of Turkish version represented the gander ambition of dohop when comes to the European market. It was initially founded as a great search engine that would leverage the technology for fast and efficiency and a commitment to the European. As you can it on their site, now there are more than 10 European languages of vertical search available on dohop’s site. Czech, Danish, English, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish (Castillano), Catalán, and Swedish languages are there for the users from different European countries.

Meanwhile, Dohop Ltd. is also announcing a partnership with TAV Airports, the largest and the only fully integrated airport operating and aviation services group in Turkey. The group manages three major airports in Turkey: Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport International Terminal (IST), Ankara’s Esenboga Airport (ESB), and Izmir’s Adnan Menderes Airport (ADB).

eBay is doing extremely well in the UK at this moment, and they are reported to launch an SMS alert service to its users. The SMS service will be provided by mBlox with the technology collaboration of dynetic, an application service provider based in Germany. This service, which will be similar as launched in Spain last September, will allow eBay UK users to monitor or re-submit their bids with the SMS. Moreover, it also help the users to receive alerts when they have been outbid on an auction, and thus provide an option for them to re-enter a higher bid if they want to do so.

However, this service will be provided as a premium SMS service, where users will be charged at 12 UK pence plus VAT per message.