Gearfuse

NousTube is a cool little plug-in for Yahoo! Messenger that allows you to watch YouTube movies with your friends as you converse through IM simultaneously. This is a nice alternative to sending your friend the URL and waiting for them to watch the movie. This is how YouTube SHOULD be as a social networking tool. You can even pause and fast-forward the video while still keeping the videos in sync. Yahoo! makes it clear that Zync is only a prototype, so don’t be surprised if the plug-in feels a little beta-ish. — Andrew Dobrow

Link [via]

We’ve never stopped and thought about stuff like this. With social networking running rapid online, what other ways can we show social networks? After analyzing data from one high school, scientists have come up with this chart. Showing how sluts and pimps connect those whom otherwise wouldn’t be connected. As you can see, the largest area of the chart is most likely the result of the ‘popular’ clique in school, while the smallest one, between only two people, is most likely high school sweethearts (every school’s got them, no matter who disgustingly cute it might seem). Though unlike adult groups similarly surveyed, there was no “core” group of sexually active subjects. Only a certain amount of students connected any link to the other student community. While sexual promiscuity ran rapid, only a few of these charted students seem to have shared partners. James Moody, professor at Ohio State University, compares the chart to the likes of a rural telephone network, while most adult charts resemble something like an airport communications hub.

On the scientific signifigance:

“The students in this network are not unusual. They are just average students, and not extremely active sexually. So social policies that could help some of them protect themselves from STDs could break a lot of these chains that can lead to the spread of disease.�

The charts show that broad based intervention, rather then one-on-one conversations, would be the best way to quell high school STD transfer, despite previous claims. My one and only question is: Where the hell were all these girls when I was in high school? — Andrew Dobrow

Researchers Map The Sexual Network of an Entire High School [OSU Research News]

What a wonder it would be to be able to have a social networking platform such as Second Life, mixed with the sketchings and locations of Google Earth. That’s exactly what is traveling through the rumor grapevine right now. A Googleized version of Second Life.

The satellite imaging technology of Google Earth is rumored to be in development as a foundation for a new social chatting world, much like Second Life. 3D sketching program SketchUp, bought by Google last year, would also have a huge roll to play in the sketching of a 3D world.

As TechCrunch points out, the only pieces missing from the conversion are avatars and a working economy. Yet with the new eyeing of several advertising platforms, Google is on the right track to create its own Universe.

Though, for now it seems that their are so many missing chunks from the big picture. The sketch mapping of Google Earth is not nearly as graphically sophisticated as would be needed for a avatar based social world.

There’s no doubt about it. Google has thrust itself into every competing faction that has unveiled its self within the last few years. Many of Google’s applications are now looked at as top of the line for usability. Is avatar networking the next hill to conquer for the big G? — Andrew Dobrow

Google’s Metaverse [TechCrunch, via New Scientist]