While Facebook didn’t make any major announcements last week, there was plenty of Facebook news to cover. Between new patents published and granted to Facebook and the integration of Facebook Page updated into Google’s real-time search, it was still another big week for the company.
Facebook Releases New Platform Migration Tools
Earlier last week, Facebook announced a new tool for developers to help them migrate new changes that are pushed out to the Facebook Platform. While not all changes will take advantage of the new migration tool, those that do will most definitely help Facebook developers that have spent the past few years staying up late at night (or morning) to fix features of their applications by changes pushed out by Facebook.
Facebook Pages Become Part Of Google’s Real-Time Search
Following their integration of Twitter and MySpace updates, Google announced last week that they will now integrate Facebook Page updates into their real-time search results. While Facebook Page updates are merely a fraction of all updates on Facebook, it’s an important milestone in the ongoing real-time search wars.
Facebook Announces Austin Office
This week Facebook announced a new Austin Office that is expected to have upwards of 200 employees, making it the largest office outside of California. News about the company opening up operations in Germany was also revealed, however the company is currently limited to a few sales employees in Hamburg.
Facebook Awarded News Feed Patent
One of the most discussed stories of the week surrounded a new patent Facebook was awarded for the news feed. While the impact of the patent continues to be debated, the patent is for “dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a social network”. This is primarily limited to implicit actions of a user’s friends. This news also followed information about a newly published patent application for measuring a user’s affinity toward applications.
Developers Prepare For The Death Of Notifications
Tomorrow will be a big day for developers, given that at 10 AM PST, notifications will officially be removed from the communication channels that developers have available to them. While the impact it will have on applications is unknown, developers have been on edge for months while they wait to learn about new communication channels. We’ll have to wait to determine the overall impact, but tomorrow is the day that most developers have been anticipating.
