Atleast two mainstream media houses have signed up for using the widget: The WashingtonPost and The Guardian. The election site is co-presented by the Washington Post.

Today the BBC is collaborating with the site by sponsoring the feature called “the 12second challenge”, a daily question that users reply to. Users get to reply to the question “Economic downturn – how bad can it get? Give some examples.” The replies may then appear on BBC TV.

Further, 12seconds.tv today announced to its users plans to involve them in extensive coverage of the US election day.

In an email to the service’s users, the 12seconds team writes:

Citizen Journalism is pretty important for the health of a democracy. For this reason, we’re going to put a lot of effort into Election Day. Where appropriate (and legal) we’d like 12ers covering reactions, parties, exit polls and emotions on November 4th all over the world. We’re assembling a team of people and will feature their content on Election Day.

News Manager Olivia M calls out:

So here’s where I turn to you guys for help! If you see examples of fellow YouTubers doing great work in journalism and reporting, please let me know. If you’re a citizen journalist yourself, tell me how YouTube could better serve you. I want to hear how you guys envision news on YouTube and what you’d like to see. My ultimate mission is to make the site a go-to destination for news on the web.

A good ambition, for sure. But after 18 text replies, Olivia hasn’t yet got back to the users commenting her post. And with comments as this one, dated May 26, I feel it’s urgent that she should, if she wants this effort to be taken seriously:

We are very concerned about YouTube’s implementation of geolocational censorship in Thailand and elsewhere. How do you intend to distribute real news to its intended audience without being compromised by YouTube’s secret agreement with Thai government? Freedom Against Censorship Thailand (FACT)

Wishing Olivia and the YouTube the best of luck with the initiative, and hoping to see a bit more interaction with the users.

Annika Lidne compares Facebook to AOL, the walled garden approach.
- The walled garden didn’t work for them, and it won’t work for Facebook either. It’s a mindset that says “we’re not really interested in our users”.
She also critisizes the lack of data portability, that you cannot extract your information from Facebook.
- I am not going to log into a bloody site three times a day to view something. It’s not built for being more than a FunWall.
There was a good discussion in the backchannel. Many people brought up the Events as one of the good points of Facebook. On top of that, I think status updates and the fact that your non-early adopter friends are there is what keeps me returning.

Jonas Nyvang from MySpace talked a bit about MySpace apps and Open Social.
- We give 100% of the revenues you can get from the app you develop. We’ve been pioneering the monetization of social networking.
Like when Arna and I met him in september last year, he doesn’t want to see Facebook as a threat. He makes this distinction between MySpace and Facebook.
- Facebook is more about the social graph, while MySpace is more about your interests, what you strive for and your passions.
His/MySpace’s view of how the web is evolving isn’t new. It is becoming more personal, more portable and more collaborative.

• Be intellectually honest about your motivation. Solve a real human social inefficiency.
• Choose a technology that works, with an eye on the future.
• Don’t compete, but rather build on other players. There’s a good basis available to build upon.
• Build something that’s good enough today. It needs to solve a real problem.
• Social networking needs to be all-inclusive, and work for everyone. Follow the least common denominator approach when finding your target audience.

- Execute a killer product strategy, don’t plan a killer app, David Haddad says.

He then answers three questions.
How will the mobile look like in the future, i e in four years?
- The Nokia N95 is targeted for the early adopters. Down in four years time, the phone that’s going to be in everyone’s hands is going to be similar to what you have now. The N95 is a good indicator.

How will social networking look in the future?
- If everyone in this room has an N95, how will that affect my experience with for instance Facebook? There are three things that differ from our current experience.
- The social networking will become concurrent, cirkumstantial and fundamentally socially impactful.

David Haddad thinks the adding of friends on social network sites will be automatic, by for instance bluetooth. News feeds will be more realtime.
Like Jaiku! : )

What can we do today to change the social networking environment?

• Pick your development environment.
• Choose your method of connectivity.
• How do you want to position users? There are many different technologies.
• How will you make money? Find a business model.
• Who are you going to partner with?

He believes in combined solutions for web and mobile units.

In the q&a a few interesting issues, including privacy and more on killer product strategies came up, but unfortunately there were network problems… and I didn’t catch much. I’m sure others have more, though.

Here’s what the post on Nettby says (my translation):

If you have a suggestion for a Swedish name on a service like Nettby, send it to us! We will pick the top 10 suggestions and reward them with a 6 month Nettby Max subscription and Nettby t-shirts.
The person making the suggestion we decide to use will receive an Ipod Touch!

Marc Andreessen explains the concept as similar to Facebook’s, but without the constraints. Any social networking system can be a container, and any application developed with the Open Social standards can be included in any of these containers.
One thing that seems promising is that it’s all HTML and javascript, making it easier to build applications.

Andreessen writes:

If you recall how I previously described the Facebook platform as “a dramatic leap forward for the Internet industry”, you’ll understand why I think Open Social is the next big leap forward!
Open Social takes the Facebook platform concept and provides an open standard approach that can be used by the entire web. Open Social is an open way for everyone to do what Facebook has done…
…including Facebook itself, potentially

He has also published some screencasts and screenshots.

Dave Winer is more sceptical:

Standards devised by one tech company whose main purpose is to undermine another tech company, usually don’t work.
In this case it’s Google trying to undermine Facebook.
And I don’t think it’s going to work.
What would be exciting and uplifting, a real game-changer — Internet companies giving users full control of their data.
When Google makes their announcement on Thursday, the question they should be asked by everyone is — How much of my data are you letting me control today? That’s pretty much all that matters to anyone, imho.