Archive for the ‘News’ Category
Facebook Announces New Languages
Thursday, May 15th, 2008Over a week ago I wrote about Facebook launching their service in 3 new languages. Over the past 24 hours I have received countless emails notifying me of the news yet again. I’m not quite sure why Facebook waited so long to make a press announcement. Additionally, Facebook hasn’t even included all of the languages that they’ve added in their announcement.
Over the coming weeks Facebook will announce a number of new languages as they finish the translation process with the Facebook translations application. If you are in another country and use another language as your primary language then it’s time to get excited! Facebook is also in the process of launching a new profile design which makes it easier for users to communicate effectively no matter what language they are using.
As Facebook expands internationally, maintaining a clean interface while providing a multi-lingual platform is extremely challenging. Facebook has emphasized their dedication to building a highly efficient communication platform.
Myanmar Photos End Up On Facebook
Thursday, May 15th, 2008If you hadn’t been paying attention to international news, Myanmar is bordering on a humanitarian crisis. This is the result of a cyclone which swept through the impoverished nation and the government’s decision to prevent aid workers from entering the country. Western journalists are also being prevented from entering the country. The result? Images are sneaking their way on to Facebook. According to ABC News, “Relief workers and survivors inside Myanmar, formerly Burma, are sending e-mail updates and photos to friends and contacts outside the country to be posted on Facebook.”
Fortunately for the people in the country some relief materials are being accepted from the UN and INGOs but much more is needed. I have previously written about the global impact of Facebook and social networks and their ability to connect people worldwide. The brunt of my prior post was that Facebook has focused on developing a platform which is effective for hosting political (and non-political) discussion.
The people that are currently sending out information via phone, email and instant messaging are risking 10 to 15 years in prison, torture and the well-being of their families. Myanmar is also well known for the protests led by monks against the Junta which resulted in a backlash of violence and the deaths of thousands of citizens. Facebook has been used as the platform for people to spread the message out about what is going on inside the territory.
One group you can currently view and join is called “Support the Relief Efforts for Burma (Myanmar) Cyclone Disaster Victims“. Our hopes and prayers are with the people of Myanmar. Unfortunately the pictures can only help tell the story of tragedy, but hopefully enough of a movement can be created to bring about change.
Kongregate Launches Platform on Facebook
Wednesday, May 14th, 2008Today there is big news from Kongregate, the social gaming website. On Monday Kongregate will be launching the Facebook Challenge Platform. Kongregate is an indie gaming site with over 4,000 original user-uploaded Flash and Shockwave games. Kongregate has decided to launch a platform which enables users to challenge their friends to compete for Kongregate points in one-on-one, asynchronous challenges.
Players using the platform can compare their high scores with immediate friends, others in their network, or across the entire Facebook network. Individuals can also play alone if they’d like. I often times get sucked into playing Dolphin Olympics 2 for a couple hours. While I currently do not leverage all of the features of Kongregate.com, which includes personal accounts with points and achievements, the system synchronizes accounts on Facebook to accounts on the website for those that use it.
For developers there are new APIs that make it easy to port games to the Kongregate Challenge platform with little effort. While not all of the games will be launching initially, the platform will launch with Dolphin Olympics 2, Filler, Particles, Ragdoll, Avalance, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), Super Crazy Guitar Maniac Deluxe 2 and others. This new platform is a direct competition to Zynga and SGN both of which already have plenty of active users. It will be interesting to see if Kongregate experiences the same explosive growth that many of the Zynga and SGN games did during launch.
Below are some screenshots of the games running on the Kongregate Facebook Challenge Platform from within Facebook.
Dolphin Olympics 2
Guitar Maniac
Jumpcat Challenge
Breaking: Facebook to Launch Jabber/XMPP Support for Chat
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008Facebook will announce momentarily via their developer blog support of Facebook chat via Jabber and XMPP. These are two of the primary standards for instant messaging protocol on the web. The new format will enable developers to integrate chat within their applications both internally and externally to Facebook. This update will also enable developers to update a user’s status via the new protocol.
While a number of instant messaging desktop clients have already figured out a way to access Facebook’s chat system, this will enable anybody to access Facebook chat more efficiently. By providing Jabber/XMPP access to developers, Facebook also hopes to further extend the reach of Facebook as a mainstream instant messaging platform.
This is a great move by Facebook. It helps to emphasize Facebook’s dedication to using open standards to provide access to developers. It will be interesting to see what types of creative applications we see integrate this new chat platform.
The Facebook Stalking Tool
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
So a bored individual sent me an email yesterday notifying me of a small glitch in Facebook that lets you see who you are stalking. I hadn’t tested it out until this morning but it may just be accurate. My profile showed up 5 individuals who I apparently stalk regularly. One of them is Caroline McCarthy, three other of them girls and one guy who’s a friend of mine. While I don’t know what the equation for determining who you are stalking is, it is definitely interesting.
It appears to have some sort of moving average because I’ve been stalking a few people recently who did not show up in my results. If you want to check out who you’ve been stalking, head over to the search box and click the down arrow two times. If that doesn’t work press up twice and it will eventually display. Facebook apparently knows about people stalking other users and this is a great way to see who you’ve been stalking.
So who have you been stalking lately?
Update
Apparently I wasn’t clear enough on how to do it. Here it is:
Step 1: Go to Facebook
Step 2: Click inside the Facebook search box
Step 3: Click down down on your keyboard. If that doesn’t work press up up.
The people you are stalking will now appear.
Update 2
Facebook is going to remove the “stalking tool”. Here is their response:
“Facebook tries to surface the people we think are most important to users to make it easier and faster for them to navigate the site and find what they are looking for. The search drop down is not a list of those that have searched for the user. It is also not a list of people whose profile the user has viewed the most or who have viewed the user’s profile the most. To avoid any confusion, this will no longer appear.”
Update 3
I’ve been able to get it to work by using the spacebar in the search box. Anybody else having similar results?
The Facebook Prom
Tuesday, May 13th, 2008Last night was the official Facebook Prom for all the employees. Valleywag has the scoop with some not so clear photographs of the beginning of the event. Facebook rented out the 4th floor of the Metreon. So why did they hold a prom and not a formal? Apparently the company would like employees to feel like they are still in high school to keep them youthful and creative. Whatever the rationale behind the event, it went off apparently without a hitch.
Julia Allison was also invited but ended up deciding not to roll to the event. Perhaps it brought back memories of those awkward years that many people don’t want to remember. One of the potential reasons of hosting the event was the sponsorship by Sony Pictures who is promoting their upcoming movie “Prom Night” on Facebook. One of the other partnerships was with Sears.
No, Facebook employees are not scrambling to find mobile houses, they are instead looking to have free prom dresses thanks to the new prom dress sharing application that Sears created. 2008 is the year of high school graduation for Facebook and now they’re all going to college so it’s time for the team to grow up. That means management changes, employees leaving the company and internal tension. At least the company can have one last fun night before Facebook Connect jumps into full swing.
Facebook Launching With Google Friend Connect
Monday, May 12th, 2008Google has made its official announcement about Friend Connect, the service launching at tonight’s Google Campfire event. According to the press release, Google Friend Connect enables “any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.”
Members of Friend Connect include Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more. Yes, you heard that right, Facebook is one of the launch partners with Friend Connect.
Read more at the Social Times.
Update
Just got off the Google conference call and apparently Facebook isn’t affiliated with this announcement. I’m not sure why they put it on the press release and it’s interesting that both companies are calling their program “Connect”.
Facebook’s Growing Server Demand
Monday, May 12th, 2008Last week Facebook reportedly borrowed $100 million in venture debt to pay for new servers. The company has continued to have a high demand of servers as it has become the largest site for sharing photos and has also opened up the ability to share videos as well. According to Facebook’s VP of Technology, the company is currently using over 10,000 servers including over 1,800 MySQL database servers.
The money will be used by Facebook to purchase another 50,000 servers. While this sounds like a large number, Google is currently consuming over half a million servers each year whereas Microsoft is consuming 200,000 servers each year. Facebook’s new server acquisitions will enable the company to run safely for at least another year or two according to a BusinessWeek article from last week.
Henry Blodget thinks that the reason that Facebook raised money was because they couldn’t sell anymore stock at a $15 billion valuation. In my opinion this is simply speculation. Using debt to acquire new servers makes a lot of sense. This is a typical practice for fast growing startups. As Blodget points out, “The owners of Facebook common stock, for example, now have at least $350 million of claims that have to be paid out of whatever Facebook is ultimately sold for before they get a dime.” That shouldn’t be a problem though if Facebook has a public offering at anywhere near the $15 billion valuation Microsoft placed on the company.
I think this news emphasizes a thriving company that needs capital just to keep up with their growth. This is a textbook definition of the type of companies that VCs love to invest in. Hopefully Facebook doesn’t need to buy another 50,000 servers anytimes soon!
Facebook Privacy Preferences Sparks Confusion
Monday, May 12th, 2008I got an email from a Facebook user today who had noticed that some of their privacy settings had been adjusted. The new change was the removal of the online status privacy setting within the user’s privacy settings page. The online status has now been moved to chat toolbar. While you can toggle your online status on and off, the one setting that isn’t there is the ability to differentiate your online status for friends and those that you aren’t connected to.
My guess is that the online status has now been limited to friends only. Whatever the case is for the new settings, a number of users started a discussion about the new privacy settings. I have a feeling that most of these individuals simply don’t understand the settings. As the platform continues to evolve, privacy settings will be adjusted and for a few people this will create confusion. Facebook should provide users with a description on how to adjust their settings given the new modifications.
This also emphasizes how users leverage their privacy settings to have different interactions with different people on the site. Many people use the settings so that they can protect themselves from having unwanted access to their profile by people they don’t know. Have you ever been confused by Facebook’s privacy settings? Are there additional settings that you think would be useful?
Facebook CTO Jumps Ship
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
We’ve heard a lot about the Google executives leaving the search giant to go join Facebook but we haven’t heard much about people quitting Facebook. Kara Swisher is reporting that Adam D’Angelo, Facebook’s CTO, will be leaving the company. Over the past few days I have been hearing an increasing amount of buzz about increasing tension among executives over at Facebook.
Much of the tension revolves around the hiring of the new Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg. According to one source I spoke with, Chamath Palihapitiya used to be the number two in command and in any important decisions which Zuckerberg needed support on he would turn to Chamath. Sheryl has since replaced Chamath as the number two and it has created some interesting unresolved tension among the company execs.
While we don’t have many more details about what’s going on over at Facebook among the execs, Kara Swisher states that “Facebook will not be replacing the CTO role, sources said, but has a search underway for a VP of Engineering.” Facebook has non-stop changes taking place among the top brass and I would imagine that this will continue as Sheryl Sandberg tries to make some changes within the organization. It’s ironic that this news takes place while Mark Zuckerberg is travelling abroad. I think we all know who’s leading the company when he’s not around …
Check out Eric Eldon’s post for his take on things.
