Archives: July 2010

Google Developing A Rival To Facebook

Though Google hasn’t directly admitted that they are developing their own social network site to rival Facebook, the pieces are starting to fall into place that serve as evidence. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Google is currently in discussion with several online game makers. The goal of these talks would be to develop a social networking site with broader capabailities than Facebook. The expected site would have a much larger variety of abilities than their already existing Google Buzz. Learn more by reading the article here.
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Many Facebook users will be relieved to know that the ability to hyperlink to names and pages in status updates will return shortly.
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Facebook has taken a rather surprising tactic with the launch of Facebook Questions – for now at least, the questions and answers on the service are not indexed on search engines. The content on Facebook Questions can only be viewed by logged-in Facebook users, making them invisible to the likes of Google and Bing.
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Exhibiting poise, insight and respect, Nigerian President Goodluck Johnson has risen to the top of the list of politicians using social media effectively. Johnson set up a Facebook account a little over a month ago and has posted at least once a day since. However, it is not simply the number of posts that makes his account one to watch for interested politicians and pundits, but rather the content therein.
Read the rest of this entry on Social Times »

Facebook has raised the bar for application developers – creating new rules for applications with more than 5 million active monthly users. Previously the additional requirements only kicked in for applications with more than 5 million active daily users.
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With over 500 million users logging in to Facebook regularly, the site has become a global phenomenon. With that success, Facebook has entered into practically every country with internet access. With over 100 dialects and languages on the site Facebook is truly a global network. One of area that Facebook has focused heavily on is the Like button, which is now translated into every language. Today we’re bringing you on a tour of the “Like” button from countries and languages around the world.
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This is a guest post from software developer Chris Bucchere. He is CEO of Mojo — a game where fans compete to unlock badges and earn point awards on their favorite websites. Currently a Dogpatch Labs resident entrepreneur, Chris has lived in San Francisco since 1981.

The media scandal du jour relates to how WikiLeaks leaked all this classified information about the war in Afghanistan, but let’s not overlook this extremely irresponsible piece of reporting that MSNC published earlier this week about an alleged Facebook privacy breach.
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Bloomberg has published a story suggesting that Facebook shareholders shouldn’t expect an IPO from Facebook any time soon. In fact, they should wait until 2012, when Facebook is more likely to go public. The public offering, which many in the media have been actively anticipating, has continuously been delayed as Mark Zuckerberg has felt no need to go public in the immediate future. The revelation, which was published earlier this morning, is not exactly much of a revelation.
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One of the less discussed aspects of Mark Zuckerberg’s interview at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View last week was a comment he mentioned about the impact that privacy settings have on engagement. While Facebook is known for providing a series of advanced tools for managing privacy, the company’s metrics have revealed that in the broad sense, less privacy settings results in increased engagement. This could explain some of the push for making information public by default. It could also explain the new embrace of Facebook Questions.
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Facebook is sticking to its guns over its decision to remove support for application boxes on user profiles.

Members started reporting their profile boxes had disappeared earlier this month, but there appeared to be a reprieve after a slew of complaints. At the current time, some users still have application boxes on their profiles, but the feature is disabled for new accounts.
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