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User-generated content (UGC) can be a highly beneficial addition to company websites if it is properly used, a web design company has advised.

Speaking at the Internet World Conference in London, the managing director of Fortune Cookie Justin Cooke said UGC is a ‘great’ way of building a business as it allows the users to ‘do the convincing’ for the company.

Writer Frank Bell identified the key points that make UGC so popular in an article published in Entrepreneur.com.

He said that increased bandwidth, better tools for posting content, better internet penetration and connectivity and the rise of social networking were all contributing factors.

Mr Cooke said: ‘We are seeing more and more of our clients adopting more of a managed user-generated contents and strategy.’

However, he advised that a ‘huge’ amount of content may start failing and that it needed to be controlled by businesses in the same way they would monitor their websites.

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The number of people participating in online social networking is booming, a report has found.

There are currently 9.6 million people in the UK who belong to a social networking site and that number is forecast to nearly treble in the next five years, the report by Datamonitor revealed.

Although driven by the younger age groups, many older generations have now begun to be drawn in.

A report by Hitwise/Experian Integrated Marketing found that the role of social networks would be bigger than ever in 2008. It said that no business or government could afford to ignore the role these sites played in people’s lives.

Datamonitor’s consumer markets analyst and author of the report Matthew Taylor said: ‘Consumers are creating and joining existing social communities which, if harnessed correctly, can be an important marketing tool.’

The UK has the highest social networking membership in Europe and has been quick to embrace the technology. According to the report many start-up networks are only available in the English language.

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Search engine Google has announced a new open source development platform for mobile phones.

The Android platform, a result of collaboration between Google, T-Mobile and Motorola, among others, will allow developers to create software for a wide range of mobile devices and comes after much speculation over the rumoured launch of a specific Google phone.

It comprises an operating system, middleware and a user-friendly interface and applications and has been launched with the aim of lowering the cost of mobile handsets and other gadgets for both businesses and consumers.

A total of 34 companies have joined to form the Open Handset Alliance, with the first handsets utilising technologies from the initiative set to launch during the second half of 2008.

‘Today’s announcement is more ambitious than any single ‘Google Phone’ that the press has been speculating about over the past few weeks,’ commented Google chairman and chief executive Eric Schmidt.

‘Our vision is that the powerful platform we’re unveiling will power thousands of different phone models.’

The announcement came shortly after Google announced the release of its OpenSocial platform, which will allow developers to come up with social networking applications for use across the web.

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Search engine giant Google has announced that it is to allow developers to create applications based on its own open system.

The OpenSocial system will enable developers to come up with applications, which will potentially be able to be used across a number of different social networking websites, using three application programming interfaces.

Google’s new initiative follows in the footsteps of Facebook’s highly popular system, where developers can create numerous applications that users can install on their profile pages.

About a dozen OpenSocial partners have been signed up by Google so far, including Friendster, Orkut and LinkedIn.

‘The distribution message is really useful for developers in getting their applications spread across multiple sites,’ Google product manager Joe Kraus told eWeek.

Google was recently trumped by Microsoft in the race to secure a stake in Facebook.

Microsoft eventually paid $240 million (£115 million) for a 1.6 per cent holding, valuing Facebook at $15 billion.

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