Simpson said location-based social networking software like Foursquare or Loopt helps marketers, advertisers and participants with the bigger picture.
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Its purchases this year include Slide, which makes social-networking software, and Social Deck, which makes social games for mobile devices.
In the biggest deal, No. 46 Yammer, a maker of business social-networking software and a competitor of Jive Software, agreed in June to be acquired by Microsoft Corp.
In areas like Internet search, social networking and smartphone software, Microsoft holds the humbling position of an also-ran.
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Enterprise social networking company Jive Software just posted first quarter 2012 earnings and revenue numbers that topped Street estimates.
He described Google as part of a group of companies, which also includes video-streaming provider Netflix, that haven't traditionally integrated social networking into their software.
While much innovation and new investment in the US has moved to software driven areas such as social networking, hardware is the base that this software runs on.
These sites, with names like Prosper.com, Zopa, Lending Club and GlobeFunder, use social networking tools and other software to simplify the borrowing and lending of capital between strangers and even family and friends.
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Rawn Shah is a business transformation consultant in the Social Software Adoption team in IBM's software group and is the author of Social Networking for Business: Choosing the Right Tools and Resources to Fit Your Needs, newly published by Wharton School Publishing.
Usually, chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie shows off a range of stuff from his 800 scientists, from data center software to social networking toys.
Benioff believes aspects of social networking will become key elements of business software.
Upstarts Yammer and Jive Software are selling similar social networking tools for businesses.
With USA Today reporting that Delta Airline, JetBlue and American Airlines are considering following suit with similar social networking functions, and The New York Times noting that tech start-ups are piling into the market for software that matches flyers on the basis of personality, career and interests, social networking (and, as an extension, matchmaking) is seeping ever deeper into the fabric of our everyday.
In a presentation at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas on Thursday, Patton explained how a piece of free software he'd created can automatically comb social networking sites, collecting and aggregating data based on keywords or other information like contact information, friends, and personal history.
"Our allies might be big software systems that want to add functions, or social networking companies, " says Renert.
He also announced a partnership with Dell, which will soon come loaded with Microsoft's Windows Live suite of software, and links between Windows Live and the social-networking site, Facebook.
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The software will be hosted at OpenEco.org, a sort of social-networking site for businesses designed to foster communication about measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Spanning multiple computing, communication and entertainment platforms, Logitech's combined hardware and software enable or enhance digital navigation, music and video entertainment, gaming, social networking, audio and video communication over the Internet, video security and home-entertainment control.
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The size and scope of Apple's developer program remains a bit of a mystery, but Apple has already shown off demos from online auctioneer eBay, mobile social-networking start-up Loopt, blogging service TypePad, the Associated Press and game developer Pangea Software.
The size and scope of Apple's developer program remains a bit of a mystery, but Apple has already shown off demos from online auctioneer eBay (nasdaq: EBAY - news - people ), mobile social-networking start-up Loopt, blogging service TypePad, the Associated Press and game developer Pangea Software.
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