Seeing as how Web services today are becoming more and more multi-faceted and multi-functional, particularly in the social networking and social media space, it really is open to debate what is and what is not part of a specific segment of the market. Where blogging starts and where networking ends, for instance, is a gray area that has grown ever larger with time. Mobile utilities in particular have evolved to contain powerful assets that accomplish several tasks at once. Perhaps nothing better exemplifies this fact than the items which can now be found within Apple’s App Store, where the supply of downloads for the iPhone (and its slightly-less-phenomenal sibling, the iPod touch) expand with each passing week. So we focus today on that very storefront, to determine which applications now available can help to best enable mobile blogging in all its myriad forms and purposes, wherever cellular, Wi-Fi, and/or GPS signals might be found.Good ol’ run-of-the-mill blogging: TypePad and WordPressIf we burrow down to the core of the blogging world, there are several platforms which sport robust frameworks, and many of them are free to use. WordPress, TypePad, Blogger, Live Spaces, are just a few that sport mass userships and audiences. But only two currently reside as native, officially-released applications within the iPhone/iPod touch paradigm. They are, as we noted recently, TypePad and Wordpress.

WordPress arrived with its own utility after TypePad had introduced itself to users. Both have received good reviews so far. And why not, really. Both aptly manage the basic tasks of posting and editing blogs, and each enables the user to upload photos from a library or take new images via the iPhone’s onboard camera.

I have already offered my own impressions about both applications, and happen to favor TypePad’s application a bit more than the WordPress release because TypePad provides support for English and French, but both essentially get the same job done similarly well. Neither path will lead you astray. Quite honestly, as I said before, one’s choice of application will naturally fall to whichever platform one prefers as it appears on the desktop, and whether one has invested much time in either setting.Micro-bloggingThere are even more choices in the microblogging realm, and if photos are one’s main source of intrigue, the list is even more voluminous. So let’s dig in. To start, there are the Twitter-specific applications: Twitterific, available for free and ad-supported [iTunes]; or as a paid-for premium version [iTunes]; Twittelator [iTunes]; and Twinkle [iTunes].

My experiences, coupled with feedback from others tells me Twitterific is the most pleasant, as it has the benefit of housing a browser within. If you’re one to click on URLs posted by friends, this is definitely a convenient feature. And in my trials, it has proven quite reliable. It is most useful due to the fact that it makes any transfer out of Twitterific and into Safari Mobile unnecessary. Once you’ve taken a look at whatever webpage you were directed to, you can close the browser and immediately carry on with reading incoming feeds. No need to repetitively enter and exit applications.Twinkle is aesthetically pleasing, no doubt, and it adds a location dimension to facilitate conversation among users within a given area. But the application has been known to crash regularly. According to Tapulous, Inc, the creator of Twinkle, an update should arrive this Friday, July 25, to fix bugs and “other minor problems.”Miscellaneous and (even more) multi-functionalHere’s where it all comes down to personal tastes and desires. Some applications will connect you to numerous services for easy, synchronized posting. Others will help you satisfy only your tendencies as a photo blogger. Some will help you connect with friends, micro-blog a bit, and even post duplicate hellos and how-are-yous to Twitter. That’s because… well… it all comes back to Twitter, doesn’t it? Without further adieu, here are some items for your consideration listed in no particularly prearranged order.LifeCast [iTunes]: Manage your day’s events in organized fashion. Want to keep what you do for work and for play exclusive? No problem. LifeCast is about keeping things tidy. Also, non-English speakers will enjoy its slightly multi-lingual reach. French, German, Italian, and Spanish are all supported. Also, if you’d like to post text to Blogger, you may. The same goes for Tumblr (photos, too). Geo-tagging comes with.

Bluepulse [iTunes]: We gave this a brief review some days ago. And while it wasn’t my personal cup of tea, it’s something that others have shown an affinity for. If you’d like something Twitter-esque (with a Twitter connection, to boot), albeit in a way that allows you to message multiple people of your choosing — rather than, say, everyone on your friends and followers list(s) — this one’s a treat. The layout may take some getting used to, though. It appears designed to make existing Bluepulse users comfortable when making “the switch.”

ShoZu [iTunes]: If this one were to be described in a single word (not yet recognized by the grammar police), it would no doubt be “awesomeness.” You need only look at the list of supported sites and services to get a grasp on what this ShoZu is all about. It is the Swiss Army knife of online social interaction (so far as photo uploads and status updates and things are concerned, anyway).

Pownce [iTunes]: Despite what the heads at Pownce say, this one’s original intent was most definitely to give Twitter a little slap-slap. Which seemed like it might’ve been possible, until it didn’t. For what it’s worth, it’s still a nifty service. If you want it on your iPhone, the download is available.

Kyte [iTunes]: Mobile photo blogging is super cool, for sure. But mobile slideshow blogging is exponentially more kick-ass. Kyte makes that happen. For this one you might need to take a few minutes to craft something nice, but it’s worth it.

Clowdy Photo Blogger [iTunes]: The name says it all. It also lets you see photos taken “nearby” to where you stand. A number of downloads currently available in the App Store do this as well, but Clowdy works the photo realm exclusively. It’s free, and it’s all of 0.1MB large.

Graffitio [iTunes]: This operates with the same location-based concept as Clowdy, but it’s text-based. The best way to explain it is to offer an example. Say you’re at a restaurant. You can check Graffitio to see if a Facebook-like “wall” has been created for the place. If so, you can post a public message to it. If a wall doesn’t exist, create one. If enough people participate in the experiment and visit various locations regularly, it starts to become a rather interesting series of whiteboards.

Speaking of Facebook, the Web’s largest social network (arguably) has its own application [iTunes], as many have already learned, and in some respects, it’s about blogging, too. If you’re one to routinely update your status, and your friends do too, what’s to say you all aren’t blogging? And with the recent update to the application, introduced late last week, you can post to your own wall as well as those of friends. Upload photos seamlessly too.

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Though it is late to the scene relative to its competitor, TypePad, WordPress has now unveiled its own application for iPhone and iPod touch users for mobile management of blogs built upon its platform. And while it is somewhat generic-looking in presentation — TypePad’s own welcome mat is a bit less drab and more original in design — the WordPress download is off to a reasonably good start. First-comers are already speaking quite warmly of it.

Within the realm of desktop Web browsers, WordPress has largely reigned supreme as far as utility is concerned. Its support for plugins is pretty much unmatched by any other. But in the mobile realm, particularly when sized up against its rival TypePad on Apple’s mobile platform, Wordpress has been playing catch-up.

Today’s WordPress release touts a number of similar features found in TypePad’s application. A highlight is WordPress’s ability to recover posts in the case of unexpected telephone calls. Still, where TypePad appears to one-up its competitor is in its multi-lingual support. WordPress arrives only for English-speaking users. TypePad, meanwhile, is compatible both with English and French. A nice option, given the iPhone’s now international reach.

Of course, which application you use depends almost entirely on which platform you’re most familiar with. Some iPhone and iPod touch users have surely adopted the TypePad application and started a blog fresh. But for the most part, I imagine most operate their mobile devices as extensions of their desktop or laptop machines, and thus will tend toward what they are used to. If you’ve managed a WordPress blog for a considerable period of time, today’s launch is clearly the optimal option to take. The same for TypePad use.

However, discounting any habits or loyalties or whathaveyou, if both applications are to be taken on technical merit alone, I’ll venture to give TypePad the edge. With blogging being the global activity that it is, the more languages supported is simply a better card to play.

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News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin told company investors today that, “If you look at virtually any Web 2.0 application, whether its YouTube, whether it’s Flickr, whether it’s Photobucket or any of the next-generation Web applications, almost all of them are really driven off the back of MySpace.” MultiChannel News is reporting that Chernin said there is no reason why News Corp. couldn’t build parallel businesses, targeting YouTube in particular. “Given that most of their traffic comes from us,” he said, “if we build adequate if not superior competitors, I think we ought to be able to match them if not exceed them.”

What didn’t get discussed in the coverage of Chernin’s talk to the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference today is the steps the company has taken that have made it more difficult for outside companies to spread their presence inside MySpace, like blocking external links in Flash widgets. Could more hindrances like that be forthcoming? While competitor Facebook won accolades for opening an API to outside developers, it’s understood that there is probably zero chance of such openness from MySpace.

It’s unclear what more MySpace could do by way of features alone to compete with YouTube. The MySpace video player has embedding, related videos, top videos and viewer comments. Chernin said that MySpace’s video efforts have been small so far and estimated that between 60 and 70% of YouTube’s traffic comes from MySpace. That may become less the case as the YouTube community develops its own stars who use MySpace pages as static points of reference, at most.

Chernin also said that the company was looking to put more of its own commercial video on MySpace. “You’re going to see us starting to play more aggressively on the entertainment side of that site,” he said. Commercial video on YouTube has been a big gamble, with some of it well received and some of it eliciting a very hostile response from users.

To summarize: the COO of News Corp. says that Web 2.0 is leaching traffic off of MySpace, that they can build their own services to compete with any of it and that there’s going to be an increasingly aggresive commercial push on the site. That sounds both dangerously arrogant and like a real validation of fears that MySpace dependency is too risky for outside developers.

Om Malik had a piece in Business Week yesterday titled Suddenly Everything’s Coming Up Widgets, where he said “Everyone’s a winner here: MySpace, because it becomes stickier; YouTube and Slide, because they get the traffic; and the user, because he or she gets it all on one page.” It sounds like MySpace’s owners may not want to play a game where everyone wins.

I hope we hear from others at Newscorp who have something different to say, or that Chernin’s statements are qualified. The innovation that comes from many different organizations swapping data and allowing users to port information from one platform to another is key characteristic of what’s called Web 2.0. Chernin’s statements may make business sense, but they don’t bode well for innovation. If you want to get a hint of how cool cross site widgets can be, check out Typepad’s approach or the new widget marketplace Widgetbox.

I guess no one should be surprised. Perhaps all the outside developers who hate MySpace’s dreadful code will feel a new sense of freedom.