When Jose Luis Antunez showed me in person how YouAre worked, the first thing I felt was tremendous envy because I was looking at an application that I would have loved to conceive and build myself.

YouAre is a great example of a social application, the basis of which are the connections of the users and the communications between them.

The main idea behind this service is microblogging, complemented by the possibility of linking photos and videos directly, which makes YouAre a site which aggregates multimedia content apart from text messages.

Related to the function of microblogging in YouAre, they have added two aspects which make up for a perfect complement and going by the trends that we have seen in other applications of this kind, it seems that they will eventually prevail. On the one hand, there are the professional profiles, a kind of CV on the lines of LinkedIn that give much more information about the user, something very useful if you want to use this application for networking purposes.

The second feature that complements the site is what they call Web Life, which consists of lifestreaming that enables aggregation of information that we generate in other applications like Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube, …

With all this, one can see that YouAre is a service that’s much more complete and better thought out than Twitter. Now that it has launched, the big challenge is to create a community that converts these services in something completely addictive for the users.

More information about YouAre in Blogsmedia.

Let’s take the example of UnAplauso (literally “AnApplause”) to guage the evolution of the directories of Grupo Intercom. What began as a simple database or directory of professionals for the entertainment industry has now become a portal with multiple functions.

The principal mission of UnAplauso is to find artists to hire for acting in a show, but as we can observe now, it is much more than just that. Apart from the information on artists, they have now added the possibility for the artists to upload videos and audio, which has strongly boosted the total amount of content on the site.

Besides, they have created a blog dedicated to the business of entertainment shows, which is bound to attract people interested in the sector. Also an important point to take into account is the presence of the portal in more than 10 countries in Europe and Latin America.

I think it’s a very good evolution for a directory and as mentioned before, they are doing it for other GI sites as well. Surely we will see this evolution in other projects like Jefe de Compras (Chief of Purchasing) and Mi Constructor (My Builder).

Noel Martín is the founder of Neuronsup, a game of questions and answers created in a community format, where the questions and answers are selected through a voting system.

Neuronsup will get built gradually thanks to the participation of the users, be it by engaging in the games and becoming a part of the rankings or contributing new questions on all kinds of topics.

The site is in launch phase and to stimulate participation amongst users, they will be gifting an iPod Touch to the most active user in the community.

Sincerely, I wasn’t expecting that Viadeo would jump into buying communities or social networks in Spain and I think it’s good news to continue to stimulate the market.

Viadeo acquired ICTnet as announced by Pedro Sanchez Pernia, their country manager in Spain.

ICTnet has 300.000 users which will from now on be a part of Viadeo, which means an important thrust to the competition with Xing and LinkedIn.

How much did Viadeo pay for ICTnet? As per the valuations in the purchase of Neurona and Econozco, I would say somewhere around 3 million euros.

More information in the web of Viadeo (in Spanish).

Lingus.tv is an initiative of the company Las Buenas Lenguas (The Good Languages) that offers a videoblog with a series of tagged episodes in video for learning Spanish.

I think what stands out the most about Lingus.tv is that it doesn’t limit itself to being a videoblog with a series of lessons for learning Spanish, but rather it seeks to entertain in each of the episodes while taking much care in the educational aspect.

Also we must mention the business model of this project: apart from advertising revenues, they have prepared a system to obtain income from premium accounts where they offer teaching content associated to each program. They will also be selling user licenses to schools teaching Spanish.

More information in the interview carried out by La nueva industria audiovisual (The new audiovisual industry, interview in Spanish).

The most influential blogs about internet businesses are echoing the news of the entry of Red Karaoke in the American market and I think that we all need to take example of this initiative because this is something we haven’t seen a lot from hispanic projects.

We are accustomed to seeing hispanic projects coming out in English as well as in Spanish or sometimes only in English and doing all they can to stand out in the international media and blogs by sending out their news and press releases, but it’s not very common to have a clear strategy of taking the business to the United States, and even hiring a Country Manager to develop the business over there. As for Country Managers, we know of them because of foreign sites having one in Spain, but the other way round, how many projects do you know of that have done something like this?

Another interesting aspect to emphasize is the interest to competer in their sector, talking clearly about who is their competition and how they are going to work to become the leaders of their industry.

Ruben Colomer, Juan Luis Hortelano and Mariano Amartino present us their new project, Media Reload, an advertising network specialising in blogs, social networks and the new media.

It’s very interesting to read the principles upon which Media Reload is based with regards to the support and the advertisers. The principles are the ones that we all look for when it comes to advertising on our blogs, but unfortunately do not always coincide with the principles followed by the advertising agencies. Hope that at Media Reload, they will always maintain these ideas and that the work that they do from now on will help improve the business of advertising in the world of blogs.

Right from the start, Media Reload can count with two blog networks, the social network Catodicos and two important blogs: Online and Celularis.

From Loogic, I wish them lots of success to these three entrepreneurs, whom I also consider to be friends, and I know that they will do a great job with this new company and that we all will benefit from it.

Jonathan Muszkat talked to me the other day about the launch of Neositios. I didn’t want to write about it until I was able to try it out, and now that I have, I must say that the application caught my attention.

Neositios is an application to create corporate web sites with multiple options of management, apart from email service and the possibility of maintaining one’s own domain name. The options just mentioned will be available in a premium version. With this premium version and the well executed application, we are looking at a project with a solid business model.

Neositios, in a way, reminded me of Picnik, referred to as the online Photoshop. In this case, we are looking at the online Dreamweaver, except that the functionalities are much reduced, of course.

I think it’s worth it to register to see the multiple options that Neositios offers at the time of creating and managing a website. I shall leave you with some examples of sites created with this application so you can glimpse the possibilities it offers: Wallart and Mundo Bebes demonstrate that the application also serves for developing online retail outlets.

The project is also mentioned in Visualbeta where the reviews are equally positive.

The mobile version of Tuenti was the theme of the conversation on Tuesday in Seville with the friends of Flowers in Space. It was Bernardo Hernandez himself who talked to us about it and we immediately turned to our mobiles to try it out.

The first thing that draws your attention the moment you enter m.tuenti.com is that it asks you what you are doing at the moment, which means we are talking of microblogging or a Twitter within Tuenti.

If you continue surfing, you see that you have access to your profile, to see your list of contacts and to the messages in your inbox. Clicking on the profile of your contacts, you can see the photos they have uploaded, and as Javi Hernandez puts it, this could be a danger for the productivity in classrooms because of students browsing photos on their mobiles.

Another topic that I find very interesting is the phone list, from which you can access those contacts who have entered their mobile phone number in their profile information, so now there could be people who have their phone list in Tuenti.

I would like to know if, with the launch of the mobile version of Tuenti, there would be an increase in flat-rate contracts for internet connection on the mobile. I have the impression that with time, many young people would want to go for a flat rate to avoid seeing their mobile phone bill shoot up with the use of m.tuenti.com

Ana Belen Ramon, better known as Missha in the world of web design has informed me about the launch (in the “preview release” phase) of Wolpy, a social network for travellers to share their travel experiencies.

Missha is responsible for the design of Wolpy (I love the design, congratulations Missha) and the programming has been done by Miguel Abad.

Having launched in “preview release” for now, Wolpy only allows you to create a map of the places you have visited in your trips and to carry out reviews of the places mentioned. As in all social networks that take pride in themselves, you can share these places with your friends and get to know the places that they have visited.

Once the launch phase is over, the next step would be to allow users to upload photos and videos of their trips besides being able to recommend other users on the places to visit.

The ultimate goal of Wolpy is to become a collaborative travel guide on a global scale.