Here’s why Apple will welcome Facebook’s App Center with open arms
Facebook announced its App Center early last month and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it will be available to the world sometime today or tomorrow. There’s a lot of talk about how this could compete with Apple, if Facebook were to launch its own phone, but they’re missing the point completely.
We know that Apple and Facebook are up to something, as hinted by Tim Cook’s recent comments at the All Things D conference. By its own admission, Apple isn’t very successful with social endeavors and features. Remember Ping? Me neither, let’s move along. Read more...
Merging Facebook With Search, Microsoft Rolls Out “New Bing” To All Of U.S.
Earlier this month, Bing, the other white meat search engine, revealed its big redesign, which put a heavy emphasis on social search. Today, Microsoft announced the new version of Bing.com is now available to all U.S. users. Nothing has changed between then and now, but if you regularly visit Bing.com to perform searches (ha, right?) then you’ll definitely notice a big difference. The new search interface opts for cleaner search results, a three-column design, and deeper Facebook integration. Read more...
Family robbed after teen posts photo of money on Facebook
On Thursday, a teenage girl posted a photo of a "large sum of cash" on Facebook. About seven hours later, two robbers arrived at her family's home. Unsurprisingly, this incident prompted local authorities to issue a warning about the dangers of posting photographs online. Read more...
Facebook needs Opera – to rescue it from dependence on Apple
Facebook is reported to be interested in buying Scandinavian browser company Opera Software.
The facts are few, the sourcing criminally light, but the story arrives as Opera is also reported to have instituted a hiring freeze that some claim is a harbinger to putting itself up for sale.
Both firms refused to comment on the reports when contacted by The Reg.
Why would Facebook want to own its own browser, especially when Opera has minuscule market share and is better at generating publicity than desktop growth?
Facebook is also interested in buying Face.com and, again, preparing its own phone having poached six iPhone engineers and one from the iPad team at Apple. Read more...
Facebook bolsters efforts to build smartphone
Facebook is revitalizing its effort to create a smartphone, recruiting engineers who have experience with mobile devices, according to a story in the New York Times Sunday.
Facebook has kept its renewed effort to come up with a smartphone quiet, avoiding putting ads on public sites, according to the article, which cited unnamed sources inside the company, people briefed by the company and people who had been the target of recruitment initiatives.
Facebook wants to release a smartphone by next year, and has picked up former Apple engineers who had worked on the iPhone, as well one who worked on the iPad, according to the article. Read more...
Twitter users rally for suddenly unemployed game industry workers
After Curt Schilling's game company, 38 Studios, failed to make a payment on its business loan to Rhode Island on May 1, today's announcement that the entire 350+ person staff had been let go didn't come as much of a surprise. What has the industry talking today is how Twitter is being used to quickly snap up the suddenly available talent from the studio. Read more...
Morgan Stanley may refund some Facebook investors
Morgan Stanley, the lead investment bank in Facebook's troubled initial public offering, will compensate retail investors who overpaid when they bought Facebook's stock in Friday's IPO, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The person said the firm is reviewing orders its retail clients placed for Facebook stock, and will make price adjustments if the clients paid too much. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The person did not say what amount constituted overpaying for Facebook's stock. Read more...
Full circle: MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson becomes advisor for Facebook casino app
Even Tom from MySpace knows that Facebook’s app platform is a powerhouse, and has joined a company called RocketFrog as an advisor.
The company has launched what it calls the “largest free to play online casino app” on the Facebook platform. I’m not a social games kind of guy, but there’s no doubt that people love to play around on Facebook, just ask Zynga.
RocketFrog’s founder, Brett Calapp, has a past chock full of gaming, including a stint as the President of the Ultimate Blackjack Tour. Here’s what he said about the app’s release today: Read more...
Korea’s K-Pop music industry joins Facebook and Google+ to extend global reach
Have you heard of K-Pop?
Two years ago the answer would almost certainly be no, unless you were living in Korea and other parts of Asia, but today the Korean music genre is increasingly followed the world over, thanks TO its online reach, which just got extended further still.
The Korean pop (K-Pop) industry has taken two significant steps towards growing its already impressive online footprint after industry-wide content pages were established on both Facebook and Google+. These moves will help bringing stars, music, news and multimedia to millions of existing and potential new fans across the planet.
Social networks and the Internet are opening the world like never before and K-Pop, a genre of pop music from South Korea, is fast becoming an example of the international opportunity that the Web can offer. Read more...
British hackers get jail terms
Two separate and very different cases in the UK saw hackers receive jail terms of twelve and eighteen months. In one case a 21-year old British man, Gareth Crosskey of West Sussex, plead guilty to hacking into a US citizen's Facebook account and gaining access to that person's email account in January 2011. The Metropolitan Police Service's Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) was informed of the breach via the FBI and arrested Crosskey in July 2011 under the Computer Misuse Act. The PCeU says that "By taking swift action" it was "able to quickly detain Crosskey thereby preventing further disruption to the victim", and says it hopes the prosecution acts as a deterrent. Read more...
Want Facebook Shares? HK’s 8 Securities Offers $200 Worth If You Join Its Trading Platform
With Facebook announcing its ballsy stock price of $38 yesterday and all eyes now on what will happen with the social network when it finally goes public today, a new trading platform in Hong Kong, 8 Securities, is seizing the moment to boost its own profile by offering customers US$200 of Facebook shares if they sign up to trade on 8 Securities’ trading platform in the next month.
The offer indirectly serves a couple of other purposes, too: it gives non-U.S. citizens a relatively easy crack at a bit of stock in the most valuable tech IPO ever, and it raises Facebook’s Asia profile even further as people continue to wonder how Facebook might finally address one of the biggest markets in the world, China. Read more...
European Activists Could Force Facebook’s New Privacy Changes To A Worldwide Vote
The European activists “europe-v-facebook.org”, led by a group of Austrian students, say that they have reached the 7,000-comment threshold on a Facebook privacy proposal, first raised last week, which would force the company to take the revisions to a worldwide vote. Perhaps not the best timing for Facebook, but great timing for those looking for more profile on the whole issue of privacy and how it is approached by Facebook.
Specifically, if you go to Facebook’s English-language Data Use Policy page where it has detailed the new proposals, there are now over 9,000 comments on the post. The proposal, you can see, has some XXX’s at the top: that’s because it is due to close this evening, at 5pm Pacific Time (yes, more business as usual at Facebook, despite the fact that it also happens to be going through the biggest IPO ever in tech history). Read more...
As Facebook grows, millions say, ‘no, thanks’
Don't try to friend MaLi Arwood on Facebook. You won't find her there.
You won't find Thomas Chin, either. Or Kariann Goldschmitt. Or Jake Edelstein.
More than 900 million people worldwide check their Facebook accounts at least once a month, but millions more are Facebook holdouts.
They say they don't want Facebook. They insist they don't need Facebook. They say they're living life just fine without the long-forgotten acquaintances that the world's largest social network sometimes resurrects. Read more...
Facebook raises IPO price as offering nears
Already expected to be the largest-ever initial public offering for an Internet company, Facebook is making its IPO even bigger.
The world's largest online social network on Tuesday increased the planned price range for its stock to $34 to $38 per share in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That's up from its previous range of $28 to $35. At the upper limit of $38, the sale would raise about $12.8 billion. Read more...
Facebook Takes A Cue From Instagram, Redesigns Mobile To Make News Feed Photos 3X Larger
If you’re sick of interrupting your news feed reading to open and load photos, you’ll like a new Facebook mobile site, iOS, and Android app redesign rolling out today that makes photos three times larger. Shares of single photos now look a lot like Instagrams, as they appear full width so there’s less need to stop and open them. Meanwhile the bigger previews of photo albums will help you instantly assess whether to dive in or breeze past.
As Facebook’s user base shifts to mobile where it can’t show as many ads as easily, it will need to keep mobile session length and return visit frequency high. Making the news feed less tiring to browse should keep us scrolling for longer as we ravenously peer into the lives of our friends our friends. Here’s the before and after photos…of photos. Read more...