Microsoft’s social network Wallop which was spun out at the beginning of the year just landed $10M in VC money. It’s biggest differentiation factor vs. Facebook, MySpace and others is its business model: making money out of “mods”, i.e. games, animated backgrounds, slide shows, videos, etc. that can be purchased for a few dollars and added to your personal page. Korea-based’s Cyworld has built a great business on a similar model which is closer to a videogame than a pure web site. I’ll try to get invited to the Beta version…

What it means: another major technology player is investing in this space. Put on your watch list.