AOL said Monday that it has closed the $850 million purchase of Bebo and has put Bebo CEO Joanna Shields in charge of the newly acquired social network, AIM and ICQ.

Shields will be in charge of a new AOL unit dubbed “People Networks.” The general theme (Techmeme): Integrate social networking throughout the AOL network and its 80 million users. Shields, who landed at the AOL via the Bebo purchase, will report to AOL president and operating chief Ron Grant.

As part of the move, AOL said it will focus on three areas: The advertising network, publishing and people networks. The goal: Figure out a way to monetizing social networking, a challenge that has befuddled monetization kings like Google.

Among the items on AOL’s social networking to-do list

• Integrate AOL IM, chat and email into Bebo. Users will have common screen names.
• Integrate other AOL acquisitions–Goowy Media and Yedda for instance–into the People Networks unit. AOL will also cross-distribute content on these properties. In short, you’ll see Bebo’s original programming across multiple properties.
• Monetize this social fiesta with open media platforms and content screening.

Internet company Yahoo said on Sunday that it was considering a “number of value maximising strategic alternatives” and would evaluate any proposal made by Microsoft Corp..Yahoo recently rebuffed a $33 a share takeover offer from Microsoft. Microsoft said earlier on Sunday it has proposed an alternative deal to Yahoo rather than a full acquisition.

In a statement, Yahoo said it had confirmed with Microsoft that it was not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of the company, but it was considering alternatives and remained open to pursuing any deal in the best interest of stockholders.

The board “will evaluate each of our alternatives, including any Microsoft proposal, consistent with its fiduciary duties, with a focus on maximizing stockholder value,” it said.

I’m not an advocate of asking random people on the Internet to help you with your personal problems. But if you think there’s value in crowd-sourcing solutions, there are plenty of question-and-answer services on the Web to help you. One such service, Fun Advice, brings social networking aspects to the mix, and allows you to connect with members whose advice you trust.

Most question-and-answer services, such as ShouldI, allow you to pose your questions to a community, sit back, and wait for answers to roll in from people who have been in your situation and want to offer their help or just have an opinion to share. At ShouldI, you’re allowed to rate the trustworthiness of a member and the helpfulness of the answers they provide. Fun Advice doesn’t really allow you to rate members and responses, but you can add members that you trust or know as friends and keep track of the questions they’ve asked and the answers they’ve provided to others.

If you want to ask the Fun Advice community a question, sign up for a free account and ask away. Select the appropriate category for your question, type in your question, and submit it. Your question will be available for members to answer instantly. Answers show up underneath the question (along with some ads), and featured questions make it to the front page.

The answers tend to be conversational, and the answers are entirely based on people’s opinions–as opposed to fact or research. This makes the service great if you’re just curious what people think about a specific issue, but not if you want technical or specific advice on a certain topic, troubleshooting a problem, or research leads.

Fun Advice has a strong social-network backbone underneath the question-and-answer service. When you sign up for an account, you can customize your profile with location information and a blurb about you and your life. You can upload photos for your Fun Advice account, and comments from other members appear on your profile. Your Fun Advice friends, questions they’ve answered, and other friend activity also appears on your profile, as well as the questions you’ve asked and answered.

Fun Advice is simple, but it has a relatively robust social-networking engine built underneath it. The community at Fun Advice may be growing, but because the site’s strength is social networking, the question-and-answer functions take a backseat to traditional social networking features: Members spend more time commenting on each other’s profiles, making friends, and sharing photos than they do asking and answering questions.

Finding your friends while out on the town on a Saturday night often means lots of “where r u?” text messages or phone calls with so much background noise it’s impossible to hear the response.  For consumers looking for an easy and fun way to find their friends, Useful Networks introduces sniff™ (Social Network Integrated Friend Finder), the latest in location-based systems with social networking integration.

sniff is a permission-based application that lets consumers locate their close friends in real-time, automatically, anytime and anywhere with their mobile phone or from Facebook.  Additionally, sniff is the first ever Facebook application to automatically locate friends in real-time using mobile location technology. With seamless Facebook integration, finding friends is just a few clicks away.

Once consumers receive permission from their friends, using sniff is as simple as sending an SMS text message.  sniff provides consumers with a detailed map view of their friends’ locations – making meeting up easier than ever before.  sniff is already wildly popular in Sweden with over 80,000 users since its recent launch and growing rapidly.

“There is inherent value in allowing your close friends and family to know where you are, but only when you want them to,” said Useful Networks CEO Brian Levin.  “Friends can now ‘sniff’ each other out easily and quickly – that is, if they want to be found.  You can easily become ‘invisible’ if you’d rather not be ‘sniffed’ out.’”

Privacy is the most important aspect of sniff – the user is always in complete control of who can locate them, and when.  The sniff privacy model is based on the fundamental principles of user notice and consent.  sniff has varying levels of privacy so each user can determine if they want to be found and by whom.  sniff also provides multiple confirmation notices to new users reminding them they have joined the sniff network so all users are aware of their status and permission levels.

“We are very mindful of our users’ privacy,” commented Levin.  “With varying permission levels, sniff allows consumers to manage if, when and how their location information is shared with other parties.  In addition, users have the ability to set-up notifications via SMS of key events such as being located or invited by another user to be part of the sniff network.”

sniff’s popularity is largely due to providing consistent coverage and user experience across mobile carriers and handsets.  “Users don’t know what mobile carriers or phone models their friends have, nor should they have to,” added Levin.  “With sniff, any user with a text messaging plan can sniff their friends.”

sniff and its companion Facebook application are currently launched across mobile carriers in Sweden and Denmark, and will launch in the United Kingdom next month. The U.K. has the largest and most engaged Facebook population in the world with over 8.5 million users – 2.2 million in London alone.  sniff will be available through four of the largest U.K. carriers – covering over 65 million subscribers.

Through the sniff Facebook application, consumers can easily invite, connect with, and sniff their Facebook friends.  Registration for sniff is free and “sniffing out” friends is charged on a “per sniff” basis.  Billing is seamless, as sniff is the first Facebook application to apply premium charges to customers’ mobile bills.  Standard text messaging rates apply.

sniff will be released on major wireless carriers in the United States, Canada, and France in the coming months. To find more information on sniff or to begin “sniffing out” friends today, visit www.sniffu.com.

For more information on Useful Networks, visit www.useful-networks.com.

About Useful Networks

Useful Networks is a Denver-based company that delivers innovative mobile location technology products to end users via the Internet and mobile carriers. Founded in July 2006, Useful Networks powers cross-carrier location aggregation for both carriers and content providers. Their platform helps carriers reduce costs, time to market and complexity in launching location aware products.  Useful Networks is a privately held subsidiary of Liberty Media. Liberty Media Corporation owns interests in a broad range of electronic retailing, media, communications and entertainment businesses. Those interests are attributed to three tracking stock groups: the Liberty Interactive group, which includes Liberty’s interests in QVC.com, Provide Commerce, Backcountry.com, BUYSEASONS, Bodybuilding.com, IAC/InterActiveCorp, and Expedia, the Liberty Entertainment Group, which includes Liberty’s interests in the DIRECTV Group, Inc., Starz Entertainment, FUN Technologies, Inc., GSN, LLC, Wildblue Communications, Inc., and Liberty Sports Holdings LLC, and the Liberty Capital group, which includes all businesses, assets and liabilities not attributed to the Interactive Group or the Entertainment Group including our subsidiaries Starz Media, LLC, Atlanta National League Baseball Club, Inc., and TruePosition, Inc., and minority equity investments in Time Warner Inc. and Sprint Nextel Corporation. For more information, please see http://www.libertymedia.com.

It’s emerged as one of the most popular ways to connect with friends, family and long-lost acquaintances, but nearly 25% of Canadians believe Facebook has played a more negative than positive role in society, a new poll suggests. The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey, conducted March 27 to 30, asked more than 1,000 people about the social networking site’s impact on society.

While 40% said Facebook was a positive force, 24% said it played a more negative role.

The remainder declined to take a stand.

“There’s no question it looks, to a certain number of people, as something that can be used as much for negative purposes as for positive purposes,” Harris-Decima spokesman Bruce Anderson said from Ottawa.

Since launching as a university-only website in 2004, Facebook has exploded into a cultural phenomenon claiming to have more than 70 million users worldwide.