The Social Web weekly: MySpace mobile in Europe; Joost on Mac; White label SNS faceoff; OpenID; and more

The Social Web weekly is a quick-fire roundup of some of the news, announcements and conversations that have occurred throughout the week, in the social software and media space.

• MySpace goes mobile in Europe.Following similar deals with Helio and Cingular in the US, Vodaphone's European customers will soon be able to access MySpace from their handsets, including publishing updates to the site and uploading photos. Cellphone operators clearly see social software as a great opportunity to sell more data-usage to their customers. Last year the video sharing sites, YouTube and Revver, both struck exclusive partnerships with Verizon.
• Webjam opens to the public. Webjam which I described as Netvibes meets Vox, has gone live; users no longer need to be part of the private beta program in order to access the site.
• The battle of the white label social networks. It all started off with Om Malik posing the question of whether, in a post-MySpace era, social networks should be considered more as a feature, rather than a product in themselves (which in most cases, I agree -- see my 'Five ways Digg could be more social'). Marc Canter wasn't happy because Malik didn't mention his People Aggregator. Then Ben Werdmuller weighed in noting that the open-source Elgg didn't make the list either, even though - according to him - it's a better product than People Aggregator. Canter then responded, refuting Werdmuller's claim -- and getting a few facts wrong along the way, which Werdmuller was happy to point out. I'm exhusted already, but it does highlight how competitive the white label "MySpace in a box" market is -- as social networks are fast becoming a commodity.
• Joost releases Mac alpha. The P2P online video project Joost - previously known as The Venice Project - released its Mac alpha earlier in the week to a select few Beta testers. I was lucky to get hold of a copy (thanks to NewTeeVee) and my first impressions are that it's a slick application with picture quality comparable to some channels on cable television. I've probably said too much already - I clicked through a Non Disclosure Agreement - but, when I have the go-ahead, I'll be posting a proper review.
• YouTube owners cash-in. Chad Hurley and co. are selling some of the Google shares that they acquired when Google purchased YouTube. Who said that there would never be another "two guys in a garage"? (OK, there were three).
• Microsoft to support OpenID. Bill Gates has announced that Redmond will work with the "web 2.0 crowd" to support OpenID. OpenID is an open and decentralised system that allows users to log-in to multiple sites via a single user-name -- something which I've previously argued would go someway to combating social network fatigue. But what's in it for Microsoft? Gates said that in return it hoped OpenID would support its own CardSpace standard.