The diamond water paradox ought to be revised.  These days a couple hundred shares of stock in Google or perhaps Facebook next year, can be worth more than a good sized diamond and may in certain ways be as essential as the water we need to continue living.

Of course, we haven’t reached the point where you’d actually have to log-in to your Twitter or Facebook account to buy a bottle of water at a convenience store.

image from http://www.posmarket.com.au

Then again, there may actually be companies that are planning to integrate or have actually integrated Point of Sale systems (a.k.a cash registers) with either social networking websites.  The idea behind this is that when you purchase something from these companies, your purchase shows up as an update on your social network and that will perhaps, for a time, have an impact on the “conversations” you think you may be having with the world.  It’s kind of like Foursquare in a way but more directly tied up with actual purchases.

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Yahoo today rolled out a new series of Facebook integrations across various Yahoo services including the companies homepage and Yahoo Mail service.  The announcement moves the company one step closer to being a major playing in the social networking aggregation field. The search portal also announced a fresh new look for Yahoo Pulse profiles, although the changes at Pulse.yahoo.com have yet to be made live.

In a Press Release, Cody Simms, Yahoo’s senior director of Social Platforms and Yahoo! Developer Network Guru said that Yahoo has made their recent changes in an attempt to ensure Yahoo is:

“uniquely positioned to provide people with all of the mainstream methods of content discovery – social, search, communications, and editorial,”

The statement comes at a time when Yahoo is desperately in need of a focus for the companies properties, focus that has recently emerged as they have worked to gain momentum in the social networking field, signing a 5 year deal with Zynga (makers of Facebook favorites Farmville and Mafia Wars) and announcing various other partnerships.

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