As you probably know, Facebook rolled out its own chat application earlier this year, allowing users to send instant messages to each other when logged on. Adding chat was a no-brainer for Facebook – even if only a small subset of users log-on regularly, it adds millions of minutes in overall time that their massive community is spending on the site.

Hoping to create a similar effect for niche communities, white label provider ConVerdge has hooked up with Userplane to integrate chat into their customer’s social networking sites. The look and feel is very similar to Facebook chat. Login and you see a minibar at the bottom of your browser window, alerting you to how many of your friends are signed online, notifications (friend requests, comments, etc.), and the option to update your status.

Once you send someone a message, the experience is a bit more full-featured than what Facebook currently offers. Beyond simple text messaging, there’s video chat, VoIP calling, and games, for example. These are standard features in Userplane’s Webchat2 and Webmessenger2 products, but with the ConVerdge partnership, are now integrated with your existing userbase so members can use the same usernames and passwords.

If you want to check the features out for yourself, you don’t have to look far: we’ve actually integrated them here on our My Mashable social network, making us the first site to use the new tools. The partnership between ConVerdge (disclosure: a Mashable business partner) and Userplane (an AOL company) will be officially announced tomorrow.

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Userplane Splits Revenue With Facebook App Developers
Userplane to Offer White Label Video Uploading to Web Publishers
Userplane’s OpenSocial APIs
Userplane Offers Exportable, Interactive Chat
Userplane Hands Out $500,000 in Rev-Share
AOL Buys Userplane to Expand AIM
Userplane Plug-Ins Now Support WordPress, Drupal, and More.

Online travel network TripAdvisor, an operational subsidiary of the Expedia network, has just announced its acquisition of two other online travel resources, VirtualTourist and OneTime, for undisclosed amounts. With these acquisitions, TripAdvisor is looking to expand its reach and influence as a dominant online search tool for nearly every aspect of trip-planning.

VirtualTourist features similar user-generated content contributions as TripAdvisor, so this particular acquisition appears to be a direct expansion of the first-hand traveler guide format. OneTime, on the other hand, is a price comparison and booking tool, aimed to present the best prices for your trip.

TripAdvisor has indicated that there are no plans for integrating the companies or the Web domains, so for now the expansion of the travel network will likely see its biggest benefit in reach and advertising. While both VirtualTourist and OneTime will remain their own separate entities, I don’t see why there couldn’t be a future potential for integration of data and resources amongst these three travel tools. Especially as the online travel sector begins to get more specific and fleshed out as an industry, tapping into various outsourcing models and social media data pools. TurnHere and Everyscape have embarked on various aspects of both of these models, and others like Travature and Kayak take the integrated approach of combining search data from across the Web, professionals and user-generated data as well.

Other larger networks, however, have taken a far more integrated approach with their travel-related acquisitions. Microsoft’s purchase of Farecast resulted in a niche segment of its LiveSearch. This is perhaps a more necessary integration for a company like Microsoft, as its larger specialty isn’t directly tied to travel search and online resources. Need more travel resources this summer? Check here.

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INSANITY: Facebook App Sells to TripAdvisor for $3 Million
TripAdvisor Getting a Makeover
TripAdvisor: Facebook App Acquisition “Untrue”
TripAdvisor Adding More Social Features
Where I’ve Been: TripAdvisor Hasn’t Bought Us
TripAdvisor and ProfileFly Launch Facebook Apps
Iloho Launches Community for Airfare Search and Travel Reviews

Pay no mind to the not-so-catchy nomenclature chosen by Rock the Vote and MySpace for their new voter registration drive, dubbed “DemROCKracy,” a competition that enables any and all musical groups with pages on the network to encourage fans and followers to prepare themselves for the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.

The DemROCKracy Band Competition, as it’s known in full, will run through July and end at 12:00 AM EDT, August 14, and will function like so:

The first 25 bands to convince 150 MySpace members to register to vote through a widget embedded on the bands’ pages will have their music listed in a Rock the Vote playlist distributed through 30,000+ TouchTunes digital jukeboxes located nationwide in restaurants, bars, and retailers.

The band which make it to the top three by 12:00 AM ET on August 14 will be put up for a 24-hour popular vote on MySpace. The resulting winner will be given the privilege of opening the Rock the Vote “Ballot Bash” concert on August 25 in Denver, Colorado in conjunction with the Democratic National Convention. The winner will also take away a heritage cherry-toned Gibson SG Standard six-string and SG Reissue bass guitar. Second- and third-place finishers will be given Gibson SG Specials.

The effort to drum up activity on the voter registration front by way of prizes for bands is certain to increase numbers tallied by Rock the Vote. While networks like Imeem and Buzznet have gained considerable ground as of late, with millions of members being added to their respective rolls, MySpace remains the largest on the Web with a strong interest in bringing the long tail of the music industry to a potential listenership many millions strong. And with band promotion being one of the chief advantages offered through the website, it’s logical that an awards program such as DemROCKracy will be quick to gain attention among the MySpace music demographic.

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MySpace Settles with TheGlobe for Spamming Users
MySpace Sex Offenders Reaching 30K
MySpace Community To Coauthor Environmetal Handbook

Continuing our Mashable social voting and bookmarking journey, we’ve put together a list of our 30+ most popular posts on Mixx.

Below is an eclectic assortment of Mashable posts from helpful toolboxes to startup news and reviews and more:

Digg Pics Gets its Own Application - Announcement of a separate application from Digg Labs for Digging images that pass through their system.

Best of 2007: Top 7 Coolest Web Apps - A list of our favorite Web apps for 2007, including Mixx.

65+ Online Calendars and Calendar Tools - A toolbox listing just about every calendar application that you’ve ever heard of, and probably some you haven’t.

Best of Mashable: Productivity & Organization - A compilation of our most popular toolboxes for organizing your life.

11 Resources For Learning Guitar On The Web - A list of resources to help you learn how to play guitar on the Web.

Digg Townhall #02 Amounts To You Knowing They’re Working On Things [wrapup] - A recap of the second installment of the Digg town hall meetings where Vernors Ginger Soda was discussed an amazing three times.

AOL Joining the OpenSocial Consortium - News that AOL was joining with the Google OpenSocial movement.

Best of Mashable: WordPress - A roundup of our news stories and toolboxes related to WordPress for 2007.

The Daily Poll: Is Google Losing its Focus? - Adam Ostrow wanted to know if our readers agreed with a pundit on CNBC that Google was losing its focus on its core search business by investing in things like the wireless spectrum.

Newer Gmail Accounts Getting Disabled? - In an unexplained situation, some GMail accounts were disabled, but they did eventually come back to life.

Plagiarize Mashable Stories and Make Money with Associated Content - Amazing that people think that they can get away with plagiarism in the day of the search engine.

Open Web Awards - Vote for Your Favorite Social News Site - We were looking for voting in the early stages of the Open Web Awards, and Mixx fans were looking to vote up their favorite site.

Open Web Awards First Finalists - Vote Now! - The first round of voting on the finalists in the Open Web Awards.

Top 5 Websites of 2007 We’re Tired Of - Even we here at Mashable can overdose on some of the websites we have to cover, and these were the five in 2007 that just made us groan every time we saw their names.

Bebo Hires a Bank. Looking to Sell? - Were they hiring a bank to get funding or looking to sell. At the time of this article, no one knew it was AOL knocking at the door.

Google Talk And Windows Live Messenger 9 Get Friendly - News that Microsoft was working on integrating Google Talk with MSN as well as ICQ and AIM.

2007 In Review: Best of the Best - A collection of our best articles in 2007, giving you a complete overview of the year that was.

Buddy Media Acquires Five Popular Facebook Apps - Buddy Media bought five of the popular Facebook apps developed by ChipIn Inc.

Advertisers Increasingly Eying Niche Social Networks - News that advertisers were starting to think it was a better idea to target their advertising on smaller social networks than the behemoths like MySpace and Facebook.

Video Podcasting Coming to TiVo and Thus Mainstream Audiences - News that TiVo was bring video podcasting was coming to the DVR system.

Who Broke the Interwebs? - For some reason in January of 2008, it seemed like every major Web app was breaking down. Our Adam Ostrow wanted to know who broke them so he could send them to their room without dinner.

Mochila Offers RSS Atom API for Premium Content Widget - Mochila added new features that allow you to sort the results down even further so you can narrow the content that displays in their widget to better fit your site’s needs.

Stuffable is Show & Tell 2.0 - Kristen Nicole takes a look at Stuffable and how it not only lets you keep track of your belongings digitally, but also allows you to sell the ones you no longer want.

Tamar Weinberg Joins Mashable - Even news of our new hires can sometimes be popular.

Popularo. Can You Beat Digg by Getting Rid of Comments? - Yet another challenger to Digg popped up, but was it worth its salt?

Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album - First news that Nine Inch Nails was going to follow Radiohead into the digital distribution realm.

30+ Online Tools For The Perfect Wedding - A list of tools to get any engaged couple started down the road of planning their upcoming nuptials.

10 Unusual & Original WordPress Themes - 10 examples of some of the unusual theme designs that WordPress can handle while still being used as a blog or magazine.

Wikipedia Passes Another Milestone: 10 Million Articles - The Hungarian version of Wikipedia is where their 10 millionth article appeared.

MashMeet LA Caught on Tape! - Stickam was at our MashMeet LA, and they got a lot of video out of the deal.

Announcing Aux Interactive’s Partnership with Mashable - Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins has a lengthy conversation with Eric Litman of Aux Interactive about the history of technology, as well as how his company can aid others with finding their place in the social media space.

Mashable Announces SecondBrain Beta Launch: Win a MacBook Air - Who wouldn’t like a free Mac? Apparently Mixx users thought it was a good idea!

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Digg Clone Mixx Gets Funded
Mixx Wants Everyone to Play Nice, and Delete Your Stupid Comments
Look Out Digg: Mixx Public Beta Coming on Tuesday
First Look: Mixx’s Digg Alternative
Mixx Launches Facebook Application
LA Times Invests in Social News Site Mixx
Mixx Solves The Breaking News Problem

Amazon, following the launch of its Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine apps in March, is introducing another option to install within your Facebook account, this one centered on community rankings. What does this mean? Lists, lists, and more lists. Lists aplenty. Over 20k, according to the company’s latest count.

The title of the new application is UnSpun by Amazon (a carry over from Amazon’s original service of the same name), and it’s an altogether simple item. You can browse Amazon Lists, create your own, and share with friends. Put through the rigor of social comparisons, you’ll likely find many things to war and debate over with your personal network of contacts. Like the best music of the year. Or best technological inventions. Or top beers — American, European or otherwise. Anything goes.

That’s all there is to it, really. No links to product pages. No overt sales pitches. Just some customizable lists to add to your discussions among your diverse supply of contacts. You don’t even have to be a registered Amazon customer to use it. Looking at the usage counts for the previous two releases by Amazon for Facebook users, it’s evident that relatively few are employing those services at any given moment. Suffice it to say the same will likely be the case for UnSpun. Still, it seems casually amusing nonetheless.

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Amazon Launches Digital Music Store
Amazon Is Down. Very Down.
Zlio Cut Off by Amazon
Amazon Launches Software Download Store

The big finale on the U.S. Summer Tour is the one and only, New York City! We’re going out with a bang and have some big surprises in store that you won’t want to miss. Trust me! The guest list continues to grow, but that means nothing until you’ve added your name to it. We’ll have plenty of Mashable love to go around for all as Pete Cashmore, Adam Hirsch, Adam Ostrow, Karen Hartline and Tamar Weinberg will be ready to meet you. We’ll also have music to get you moving, food to keep you going and drinks to just make it all the more fun. Get ready for your close-up and we’ll see you in New York City!

Check out the other cities on the U.S. Summer Tour:
Seattle | San Francisco | Los Angeles | Austin | Miami | Boston

When: August 7th, Thursday, 7:00 - 10:00 PM
Where: Touch 240 West 52nd Street, New York, NY 10019
What Else?: Big surprises for the big finale!
RSVP?: Tickets will be released through Eventbrite, 21+ Only
Socialize: Facebook, MySpace, Meetup and Upcoming
Press Passes: Please inquire through events [at] mashable |dot| com for Press Passes

Local Sponsors:

‘KickApps helps web publishers gain rapid audience growth and incremental ad inventory by enabling a wide range of on demand social media experiences. Its SaaS platform features social networking, user-generated content, online video players and viral widgets, tightly integrated with media and member management. For more information, please visit www.kickapps.com and www.kickdeveloper.com.’

‘moneyStrands is Common-sense money management for the smart consumer. Automatically organize all your accounts. Get an instant snapshot of your finances. See how you compare with others - anonymously. Save money with personalized offers and tips. Time to let your money get smarter.’

‘ffwd is a San Francisco-based startup whose mission it is to provide a personalized service that helps viewers more efficiently navigate the web video explosion, while increasing audience and engagement for the entire video entertainment ecosystem.’

Local Media Partners:

“Bernardo’s List is an email newsletter about upcoming events for entrepreneurs, investors and tech execs in New York and other cities nationwide. Signup is free at http://www.bernardoslist.com!”

‘Social Radius is an award-winning social media marketing firm, specializing in SEO/SMO, thought leadership platforms/social media creation, viral/syndication, outreach and strategy.’

Gary’s Guide is the #1 resource for Technology, Internet, Web 2.0 and New Media professionals for Events Calendar, Directory of Companies & Services, Job Listings & more in and around New York City.

Tour Sponsors

The Sun(TM) Startup Essentials program is designed to help startup businesses off the ground by providing access to industry-leading systems at deep discounts, free world-class software and web-based training, discounts on partner hosting services, and more.

Yoono’s mission is to make the social web accessible, easy and fun for everyone. Its newly expanded service socializes your browser, helps you manage your digital life and brings the best of the web into one single browser-based application. Today, 1.3 million users are leveraging Yoono.

MySites is a single place for all your online needs. You can create and customize a website, save and share any media, decide who can view it, embed anywhere, and use any device.

Touring Video Partner

Launched in February 2006, Stickam emerged as the first and largest Web site dedicated to live interactive video streaming. Stickam’s cutting edge technology delivers millions of streams each day, reaching over two million registered users. They are continuing on the path of social interactive TV by adding features that nurture its growing community and tech-savvy broadcasters. Whether you are famous for 15 or 150,000, Stickam.com is where you will find your friends and fans. See and be seen at Stickam.com, The Live Community.

Exclusive Ticketing Partner

“Eventbrite is the world’s largest self-service online ticketing site. Eventbrite makes it easy for anyone to sell-out an event.”

Tour Media Partner

“Thrillist is a free daily email that sifts through the crap to bring you the best of what your city’s hiding. Each day, you’ll get one quick email with info on the best food, drinks, gear, services, and events. Whatever it is, we promise it won’t suck. Get on the list.”

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Mayor Bloomberg Announces NYC Seed Fund to Kick-Off Internet Week
Announcing SummerMash New York City
Boston: Mashable’s US Summer Tour 2008
Mashable’s Ready to Celebrate in Boston
SummerMash New York City

Editor’s Note: If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion in “The Startup Review” series, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: Web of Fate

20-word Description: Web of Fate is a semantic analysis engine that extracts meaning from historical, present and future events and draws connections among them.

CEO’s Pitch: The Web of Fate semantic analysis engine can visualize and uncover hidden relationships among historical, present and future events allowing people to:

- Study the flow of events and decision paths chosen by historical figures.

- Take snapshots of the exact state of when a predictive event is made. So future generations can understand why certain choices were made.

- Identify trends, locate anomalies, detect threats and track multiple/alternate futures with FutureGraph.

Web of Fate also provides semantic web services, allowing users to integrate semantic and decision analysis into their own products and services.

Mashable’s Take: On the one hand, Arizona-based Web of Fate sees itself as a “semantic analysis engine.” Pay a visit to the service’s homepage, though, and you’ll see the phrases “social experiment,” “collective intelligence,” and “uncover hidden relationships among future events.” This mix of keywords might seem peculiar, yes? But look at the the site’s most outstanding and most active feature, its menu of predictions, and you’ll see it’s no great mystery. In fact, if you spend enough time digging beneath the surface, it proves to be a very interesting place to browse and perhaps even contribute to.

Leaving aside the service’s odd front page dressing (the ethereal graphic shown below the options tabs at the top of the page appears corporate and unnecessary), Web of Fate’s primary device — the column where predictions, goals, time capsules (a blank page at the moment), and quotes are all displayed in linear fashion — is something that’s admittedly entertaining to peruse.

It’s simple and intuitive to understand. Users write headlines for things they foresee happening in the future, be it a newsworthy event or a personal goal or whathaveyou, and those things show up for users to agree or disagree with, comment on, or challenge. It has clearly been influenced by the type of structure popularized by Digg. Only, this one has a focus on the days/weeks/months/years ahead, rather than the present.

The site’s features operate quite well. Links take you where you need to go. No major surprises. If you’d like, you can choose to see entries mapped out in a cloud-like visualization, where floating points of various sizes are all connected to to be viewed as a literal Web of links. Most users, however, will presumably stick to the site’s main components. And my sense is that registered users will be quite pleased with what they’re offered. Given enough members, this place could become a real hotbed for forecasters.

If nothing else, Web of Fate is well built to spark substantial discussion and debate about the course of world events. Keep in mind, though, there’s a good balance of serious topics and silly positions to make it a fun place to hang around.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Vois, the social network that started out as an online forum for the mature crowd, has been expanding and tweaking its approach to attract a wider range of users and provide more useful applications within its network, such as media reviews, greeting cards and an e-commerce section where users can take advantage of their Vois profiles to sell products.

The latest feature Vois is launching, however, has more potential impact than any of the applications Vois has added since its launch last year. Vois is getting into the outsourcing and off-shoring industry with a new segment of its network. This new feature won’t go live for another few weeks, and Vois is keeping pretty tight wraps on access, so no one has seen firsthand how this new feature will work.

This social network is hoping to introduce social commerce to a global audience that promotes freelancers as well as on-demand manufacturing services within an online market. With Vois as a facilitator for this online outsourcing market, it’s a true experiment in a new concept of social commerce. Founder Craig Arganoff hopes that its “revolutionary new features will help the world conduct business efficiently in a social way that has never been done before.”

The concept of creating a network that gives freelancers a marketing platform isn’t new–there are established networks like Guru and newer networks like CrowdSPRING already entertaining this model. Fully integrating it within an existing social network is a different approach that’s been difficult to implement in other markets because of issues concerning the convergence of outsourced work with a social network initially designed for basic communications amongst solidified relationships.

So will it work? In terms of the commerce aspect of Vois, this appears to be an extension of what the company has been working on with its Shopping section. Aside from establishing a social online market where individuals can leverage such a platform to combine social and commercial aspects of the networking world, Vois is also creating a niche where these individuals can have a place to form their own career paths in a way they see fit.

We’ve seen the success of LinkedIn, and we’re well aware that the Web has enabled people from all over the world to better take advantage of the global market. So combining the social, professional and commercial aspects of networking is a concept that’s been a long time in the making. I think the presence of an all-inclusive network is going to become a standard of some sort, whether it’s directly through the network or through some third party service that combines various attributes of multiple networks out there.

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Publicly Traded Social Network Vois Raises $1M
Open Web Awards Finalists: Mainstream or Large Social Networks
Open Web Awards Finalists: Photo Sharing
YouTube Is Turning Into a Shell Company
MashMeet NYC Insanity Caught on Tape

DEMO is the launchpad for emerging technology. During two exciting days of rapid-fire, six-minute presentations, you will be the first to see the most innovative, market-defining products unveiled for the very first time.

With more than 20,000 technologies reviewed and 1,500 companies selected to launch on the DEMO stage over the past 18 years, DEMO has an incredible track record of success.

From the first launch of Palm, Java, TiVo, E*TRADE in mid/late 90s to Salesforce.com, VMware, Six Apart, OddPost, IronPort, GrandCentral and Glam Media in more recent years, DEMO delivers real products ready for market. Only the best-vetted products and companies are chosen to present in a show-me-don’t-tell-me format that demands each company seize the moment and convincingly crystallize their market opportunity.

The results have been astounding… Past participants such as WebEx, VMware, iRobot, Linden Labs, Six Apart, and Roku have single-handedly defined or redefined their industries. Companies who have launched product at DEMO over the past 4 years have gone on to raise well over $2.5 billion dollars. Plus, more than 40 of these companies have been acquired by tech giants, such as Adobe, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Symantec, Viacom, Yahoo!, and more.

Bottom line, if you want to be where the brightest innovators, savviest investors, biggest buyers and most sought after press meet to experience innovation as it is unveiled for the very first time, you need to head to DEMOfall 08.

Mashable readers are invited to attend DEMOfall 08 at a special rate of only $2,395 – a $600 savings off our regular rate. Click here to learn more and register: http://www.demo.com/F8mashable

First of all, if you think the name fringAdd-ons is a bit clumsy, you’re right. We didn’t make it up: that’s the official name for add-on applications that can be integrated with the already quite powerful mobile IM/VoIP client fring. If you aren’t familiar with fring, suffice to say that it’s the instant communication swiss army knife for your mobile; besides supporting nearly all flavors of instant messaging, it also has support for Skype and Twitter.

fringAdd-ons are powerful little apps, too: the first three add social networking, video streaming and email notification options to fring. The social networking add on enables users to receive continuous, real-time updates to what’s happening on Facebook and Orkut. Yes, for some reason MySpace is nowhere to be seen although it’s vastly more popular than Orkut.

The next fringAdd-on is VTap, a video search and streaming service, while the last one is a Google Gmail notifier which will alert you of incoming Gmail messages. The only thing you need to run all these is the latest version of fring, and, of course, a mobile data plan which won’t make you cry for every kilobyte spent.

From the user’s standpoint, fringAdd-ons are completely free, and one only needs to enable them to get them to work. If you’re a developer, you can use the new fringAPI to create one; it’ll only take some basic XML/PHP knowledge, and you can find all the tools you need over at developers.fring.com.

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Fring Now Supports ICQ for Integrated Mobile Chat
Fring Makes Twitter Free
fring Releases Open API to Enable New Mobile VoIP Apps [Israel Media Tour]
LoudTalks is IM with Voice
TweetVolume Shows How Many Times Your Name is On Twitter
Twits to Go: Top 12 Twitter Apps for Your Phone
Google Search Now on Windows Mobiles, Too