If you have an account at Flickr or LiveJournal, chances are you know how powerful and useful social networking software can be. With the increasingly growing popularity of Facebook and all the targeted applications for it, several industry giants have begun to take notice and work on complementing (and competing) networking software.

Google is stepping into the social network fray with their OpenSocial initiative "to make an open platform for social applications on the web". Six Apart, the people who brought you MovableType, TypePad and Livejournal have just posted an article explaining why they have joined forces with many of the other leaders - such as Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, LinkedIn, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING to name a few - to help keep the social web evolving and relevant for users.

As well, MySpace has announced a new SelfServe product. It's described as an ad targeting platform, enabling anyone to create meaningful business and promotional campaigns through the vast friend networks they've built on the MySpace platform. SelfServ by MySpace will allow users to create customized advertising through a tool - they can choose demographics/geographics/interests and then track the ad's performance.