If you live in close vicinity to a Target retail outlet and you happen to manage a fairly busy library of digital images at the outright enormous Photobucket service, there’s a new development between the two parties that you might like to consider. They have unveiled a partnership that allows Photobucket users to order photo prints through a Target store nearby.

Though all of Target’s stores are not yet involved in the execution of this new option, the national retailer says most are equipped to carry out orders for customers. The cost of prints runs as little as $0.20 for 4” x 6” prints, the conventional size for personal purposes, though the per-image costs increase considerably for larger dimensions. 5” x 7” prints, for example, are $1.49, while 8” x 10” are $2.89 apiece. All are produced on a standard glossy format paper type.

As many familiar with post-production of digital images — everything that comes after the shutter clicks and the in-camera sensor does its tricks — know quite well, digital photo processing which results in a physical print is generally done one of three ways: at home, through a personal printing device; direct mail, through Web-based services; or through brick-and-mortar based locations, either via stationary kiosks or through partnerships with online services.

Direct mail is perhaps the most streamlined and easiest of all. Yet, a more timely option, and one which doesn’t require investment in a print machine all one’s own, is the physical store-based option. That’s particularly the case when it is conducted with a promise to package a set of prints in the space of a single hour (during business hours, of course). Therefore this arrangement between Target and Photobucket really just enables both partners and their consumers — the casual type, especially — to bridge the cloud and tangible media in a more convenient and (slightly) more profitable fashion.

Target, it should be said, isn’t new to this sort of connection to the Web so far as photography is concerned. It has involved itself with Shutterfly and Kodak Gallery in the last year and a half. The bridge to Photobucket, however, is perhaps Target’s most promising match-up. The online photo service is one of two ultra-popular names currently sitting atop the market managing billions of photos, with many millions being added each and every day. The traffic that such a vast pool will deliver could prove fairly busy quite soon.

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Remember when MySpace announced it had 100 million users, exactly two years ago? It was a big deal, but critics pointed out that many of those user accounts were inactive, and active users are what really counts.

Facebook, on the other hand, has always claimed they don’t sugarcoat their user numbers; they only count active accounts. If you choose to believe them, then today’s unofficial announcement - taken from Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook status update - that Facebook has 100 million users is perhaps even more significant than MySpace’s two year old milestone.

Yes, MySpace got there first, but they had no platform and they had no clear vision - not when it comes to monetization, and not when it comes to organizing the chaos that is MySpace into something meaningful. Facebook hasn’t been the first or even the second social network, but they’ve managed to build this huge user base despite fierce competition; furthermore, their platform (although not without flaws) shows that they know where they want to take it from here.

So, which one would you rather have: A user base that has grown spontaneously, virally, and largely because of sheer novelty, or a user base which you’ve carefully groomed, which is active and using your service because they find it better than the competition? Sure, MySpace has its advantages, like its enormous music community, but I’d say that Facebook’s got the upper hand when it comes to what’s really important: Vision. Their 100 million users may not yet justify the $15 billion valuation they’ve been blessed (or cursed) with, but it’s definitely more than just another meaningless number.

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Animoto launched in beta last year as a way to create professional-looking videos based on a user’s set of uploaded images, as an alternative to other slide show creation sites or professional software packages used for editing purposes.

A year later, Animoto is emerging from beta, with a reported 4 million unique videos having been produced on its platform. Along with the official public launch of Animoto, there are a handful of new features, including the ability to select a cover image to accompany your video, improved handling of logos and panoramic images, as well as iPhone viewing capabilities.

In the past year, Animoto has received funding and gone on to do a good amount to further its service as a viable alternative to other options out there, making itself a platform for a number of different use cases and appealing to a variety of users. With a certain focus on the musical association for each image-turned-video, Animoto has extended its value to artists seeking channels through which their work can be distributed. To that end, Animoto has also released a number of distribution options, including YouTube uploads, so that users can easily send their finished Animoto content to other media-sharing sites across the Web.

Some of the more specific features Animoto has begun to offer are geared towards business users, and more recently, towards teachers, for uses in professional presentations as well as the classroom. While Animoto has a free service, the company is reporting that about 10% of its users are paying for premium services, and these premium services are even offered to teachers of grades K-12 for free, similar to Google’s initiatives for the education administrators that use Google Apps. Looking at Animoto’s past year of development, it would appear that the company is heavily targeting true professional uses for its service, but I also imagine that a directed course towards furthered integration with other social media sites is also in the works.

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Multilingual social network XIHA Life publicly launches today, debuting its international approach to connecting users across the world. With neighborhoods in its online network, XIHA offers a unique way in which users can communicate with each other, selecting the languages in which they’d like to connect online. Initially designed as a way in which travelers and immigrants can experience a multilingual network while in other countries, XIHA has since grown to be more encompassing as a new way in which a social network can take on global expansion, with a focus on multicultural media-sharing.

This is exemplified with one of XIHA’s new features–its Music section. In this Music section, you’ll find all sorts of music from around the world, vastly expanding your access to the longtail of international music. It’s likely to eventually provide more variety than what you’ll find on more mainstream longtail music sites like Last.fm. So while XIHA music isn’t quite yet a streaming music recommendation service, it is building out a platform of sorts that enables users to share their disparate musical tastes in a global online environment.

In terms of promotion, XIHA is hoping that this approach will eventually provide the tools necessary to help global artists raise awareness and help spread the word about their own content, beyond their own respective countries. I’m interested in seeing how this format can become an alternative to other social network localization efforts, which don’t provide many ways in which different localized demographics can easily communicate with each other. Though still limiting to those that are rather fluent in more than one language, the global marketplace that XIHA can provide will be notable.

XIHA does intend to expand this marketplace beyond music, into other media types. And being based in Finland, XIHA is also looking to grow its user base in the U.S. over the next few months. I wondered at the marketing and advertising potential of such an international network, and how XIHA could offer targeted content and ads for its users. XIHA CEO Jani Penttiten informed me that XIHA doesn’t rely heavily on its ads placed throughout the site, but through premium content offered to end users. This also ties into XIHA’s marketing strategy, which is based on organic growth and rewards for referrals, so this will be used for its U.S. growth strategy as well.

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JumpTap, the white label mobile search service, has just announced its series D round of funding, amounting to $24 million. This brings the total amount of funding raised to $72 million. This series D round was led by AllianceBernstein L.P., with all existing investors participating in the round, including General Catalyst Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Valhalla Partners, and WPP.

The face of mobile browsing and advertising is a rapidly changing sector, and is growing all the time, so there are some key aspects of its white label mobile search solution that JumpTap will be focusing on in regards to the allocation of this recent round of investment funding. One area in particular is the technology behind its white label solution, so that it can provide a reliable network for the delivery of ads, the ability to collect pertinent data based on mobile search parameters, and provide the necessary analytics to advertisers and carriers alike. Additionally, JumpTap will be using the funding to continue to grow its sales force, as well as to further its global expansion into many of the Western European countries.

Given the recent Verizon-Google deal making Google the default search engine for Verizon, it’s even more important for JumpTap to invest its funding in the right aspects of its company, as it is going up against large search engines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. So JumpTap is focusing on these three areas, technology, sales and global expansion, to provide better tools that allow all parties involved to monetize search and advertising on mobile networks. JumpTap works directly with carriers for its advertising solutions, giving it a broad reach, especially when you factor in its existing international presence, reportedly partnering with 17 mobile carriers, reaching over 150 million mobile subscribers worldwide.

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hi5 mobile has arrived. For all of those that have been waiting patiently for this social network to have a dedicated and optimized version of its service on your mobile device, here it is. And for a bit of boasting on hi5’s end, the social network’s mobile presence spans 26 different languages upon launch, setting out to create a new precedent for a global reach on the mobile front.

This makes a great deal of sense for a network like hi5, that has a large international user base, which translates into a need for ready mobile access, as many other countries use their mobile phones more often than a PC.

So what can you do on hi5’s new mobile network? Send messages, update your status, share photos, and add new friends, to name a few features. As far as media-sharing goes, users are pretty well covered, though I’m interested in seeing how networks will continue to push the boundaries in regards to third-party applications and advertising therein. As hi5 already supports OpenSocial, and has just announced its added support for Widgetbox’s OpenSocial applications, it’s clear that hi5 is ready to offer more options to both its developer community and user base at large.

From other ends of the spectrum we’re seeing development from services like Frengo that are setting out to make third-party applications more adept and integrated into mobile devices for broadened support, and such efforts could fit in well with hi5’s focus and desire to really promote its mobile offering as a full-on alternative to PC users on a global scale. Supported mobile devices include the iPhone, Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.

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I’ve looked at Shelfari several times over the course of its existence, and it always seemed like a cute project that’ll never make it big. Sometimes, however, it’s not only about the size of your community; the big players in your corner of the market can make a big difference.

Thus, Shelfari has been acquired by Amazon; probably not because it has a huge community, but because Amazon needed a book-oriented social network and acquiring Shelfari was the easiest, fastest, or least cash intensive way to do it.

I’m not usually thrilled about acquisitions like these, but in this case I think that Amazon will actually help Shelfari to grow. It’ll be much easier to build a community for book-lovers if you’ve got Amazon’s huge user numbers and book inventory to help you.

As far as Shelfari’s many competitors are concerned; some of which you can see at the top of one of our lists, this acquisition is a tough pill to swallow. It’s tough enough to build a niche community as it is; if you have to compete against a giant like Amazon, it’s 100 times tougher.

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Virtual stock trading is nothing new; there are hundreds of services that offer it, and many online brokers have caught up, too. But, if you - like me - are knee deep in the wonderful world of Web startups, perhaps you’d like to try your hand at Startup Exchange, a virtual stock trading application focused only on Web startups.

The premise is simple: you get 100.000 virtual dollars, buy and sell startup stocks, and try to earn money. It’s created by TradeVibes, which leverages its existing community to determine the valuations for startups. In their own words, “the prices of the companies in the exchange represent the community’s view on the valuations for these companies,” which pretty much means that the stock prices go up and down randomly - just like in the real stock market.

So, if you’re the gambling type, and are sick of losing real money on the stock market (it’s ok, you can admit it), Startup Exchange might be a welcome change for you.

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MapQuest today launched its new homepage design that aims at reducing the amount of time you spend surfing through the site’s pages and keeps you doing more of what you want.

According to the company’s Vice President of product development, Mark Law, MapQuest has received countless messages from users asking execs to revamp the site and make it a more useful tool for getting work done quickly and efficiently.  And in order to do so, MapQuest’s latest design (which, right now, mostly impacts the homepage) tries to take the site from a “directions and map service” to a “location-centric” service that provides mapping and directions.

The improved MapQuest homepage now features a map that displays the location you input into the box above it.  MapQuest said that most of its users — about 48 million unique — simply didn’t want to move from page to page when searching on a map and it decided to make the front page the place to get practically everything.

Included in that map, the new MapQuest homepage will allow you to get gas prices and see where construction is going on in a cleaner interface than before.  On top of that, it will feature a Weather section and available live cams (in certain cities) to show you what’s happening on the ground.

MapQuest is also using its AOL ownership and will now display different AOL properties at the bottom of the page, like City Guide, which lets you search for point of interest and practically anything else in the city you’re viewing.

More importantly, MapQuest is using the bottom of the page to see if users want the information to be included in the maps.  Want to find the best burger in New York with City Guide on MapQuest maps?  If so, tell the company that you want to do it and if enough people agree, it’ll integrate that into the maps.

MapQuest claims getting directions will be easier too.  Instead of offering two search boxes like it does now, the new MapQuest homepage will leave the directions box “greyed out” until you decide to search for directions.  Once you do, it’ll work just as it does now.

I had the opportunity to see the new MapQuest homepage in action and it does look much cleaner and generally more useful than its predecessor.  That said, I don’t know if it’s really enough to make Google Maps users switch and MapQuest was quick to note that this is just the beginning of much more to come.

The company wouldn’t tell me any more than that, but as more of its pages are revamped and it improves its offerings, it’ll be interesting to see what will come of it.

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DriverSide, the Web-based service for helping you keep tabs on your car health and maintenance, has announced its acquisition of fairBenjamin in order to expand on its own technology and access to local mechanics in a given area. The amount of the acquisition has not been disclosed, but both services are fairly new, having been launched in 2007, with DriverSide raising an undisclosed amount of funding earlier this year.

You may recall that DriverSide offers a Web-based tool to help you keep track of your current car’s needs, but it’s also a localized search engine that helps you find reliable and trusted mechanics in your area. One of DriverSide’s main objectives is to connect users with mechanics, offering points of comparison for everything car related, from the prices of various automobile parts to the maintenance schedules of your vehicle according to the manufacturer versus actual maintenance reports.

An important part of DriverSide’s growth on this end is its ability to offer an easy-to-use platform for sharing things like actual maintenance data so that consumers can have a factual set of information to work from, while also connecting them with the mechanics in their area. fairBenjamin has a patent-pending process for connecting these consumers with local mechanics, and its this access that DriverSide finds valuable in its long-term goals.

This acquisition will help DriverSide provide better estimates to consumers for repair costs, and offer overall value to end users. When it’s all said and done, the most useful car maintenance site will be the one that presents accurate information in a format that lessens the amount of time a given user will need to spend doing the research, and DriverSide has acquired fairBenjamin in an effort to move towards this direction.

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