Robert Scoble has been riffing on a theme of late, namely where on earth – heavens to murgatroyd – are we supposed to have social conversations now they are split up between Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Blip.pl (ok admittedly that last one is a Twitter clone in Poland – but you get my drift. Hey, the Poles like it…).

Robert seems to think that Google+ is better for conversations than Twitter or Facebook because of one word: “SEARCH!”

Here’s the skinny:

Google’s so-called first “Google Store” has caused something of a kerfuffle in the media, since the store broke Friday. However, everyone needs to calm down and take a chill pill. The store is in fact just a 285 square foot space within a PC World outlet on Tottenham Court Road, famed for its tech shops in London. An Apple store this is not. Plus, it will only run for a few months until Christmas.

Do we think this “low-key experiment” in real-world retailing has legs? Google UK’s head of consumer marketing Arvind Desikan was quoted as saying: “It is our first foray into physical retail. This is a new channel for us and it’s still very, very early days. It’s something Google is going to play with and see where it leads… People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.”

You may not have heard of 1C.ru, but this leading Russian software company publishes 1C:Enterprise, the most popular ERP software for small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. With such a lock on a large market, that means 1C reported sales turnover of more than $600 million in 2010. And the sales are expected to increase by 20% in 2011.

So it’s not entirely unsurprising that the company has now received $200 million in return for a 9% stake from private equity firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) reports newspaper Vedomosti.

BLiNQ Media and visual.ly created creating the below infographic comparing Facebook in the U.S. with Facebook in the U.K. It seems we’re more obsessed with Facebook in the UK than in it’s cournty of origin (49% penetration against the US 48%).

I recently attended the European Pirate Summit in Cologne, Germany. Held in a sort of art-house scrapyard where artists sculpt out of old cars, and ravers dance into the night, the venue itself was a fitting place for what many began to feel was a sort of re-birth of the tech startup scene in Europe. Suddenly we all realised what was happening: Europeans are as mad as hell that they’ve been branded cloners and ‘copycats’, and they’re not going to take it any more.

In fact, the event featured the literal burning of a effigy of a startup clone. This was a gathering of Pirates, the kind of startup Pirates who ascribed to the philosophy laid down by Mike Arrington only last year.