Fotolog, a fast-growing social networking website, has become the latest target of larger internet media players, according to people close to the company. …

Users can exchange thoughts and feedback around uploaded photos, and a deal with AOL this month added chat, instant messaging and video messaging. It has more than 8m account holders and a broad global reach. It is adding nearly 1m members a month. Fotolog sees itself as part of a new micro-blogging trend where users are opting for simpler and shorter inputs into their own personal home pages.

Twitter, which was created by a 10-person start-up in San Francisco called Obvious, is a heady mixture of messaging; social networking of the sort associated with Web sites like MySpace; the terse, jittery personal revelations of ''microblogging'' found on services like Jaiku; and something called ''presence,'' shorthand for the idea that people should enjoy an ''always on'' virtual omnipresence.

Only micro-blogging today. It's Sports Day. Oh, can I make a date with you all for about this time in the year 2012? By that time my offspring will be, I trust, all grown up, loaded with achievements and equipped with stratospheric levels of self-esteem. I will then feel free to tell some very funny stories about the egg and spoon race back in 2002.