Google and Facebook have launched rival technology platforms that can be used to infuse websites with trendy social-networking features.
A Facebook Connect service that was tested for months with selected partners is now available to anyone interested in transforming static websites into interactive communities of users.
Internet colossus Google picked the same day to unveil a beta, or test, version of Friend Connect software aimed at “any webmaster looking to add a dash of social to his or her site.”
Online communities and user-contributed content are core aspects of the evolution of life on the Internet and the superstar California companies are evidently jockeying to be the preferred platform for websites…
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Facebook launched its Web-wide sign-on system, Facebook Connect, on Thursday — and let me tell you, this thing has the potential to simplify and enrich social networking in a revolutionary way.
The Comparisons
Facebook Connect lets you use your Facebook ID and password to sign-in to third-party sites. It’s kind of like another Web-wide sign-on protocol called OpenID in that regard, but Facebook strikes me as having far greater potential of taking off on a large scale.
The reason? It’s easy to use, understand, and control — and users won’t have to do any extra work to find it or make it function. OpenID, if you’re not familiar with it, lets you use a single username and password to sign-on to numerous sites. But let’s be honest: How many average, non-techie-type Web users are even aware OpenID exists? Odds are, most people have an OpenID-linked account somewhere. But does the typical Internet surfer even know what it is or how it’d be used?…
Read it at PCWorld
Go on the Internet to make friends — and world peace. That was the message Thursday from a New York conference on the potential power of Internet social networking tools like Facebook to counter terrorism and repressive governments.
“New technology gives the United States and other free nations a significant advantage over terrorists,” US Undersecretary of State James Glassman told Web entrepreneurs and human rights activists at New York’s Columbia University Law School.
An extraordinary example of e-power was the success on February 5 this year of a grassroots march organized on the Internet against Colombia’s FARC leftist guerrillas…
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An Australian father who made his 5-year-old son walk 13 km (8 miles) to school every day to discipline him has inspired an appreciation group on social networking site Facebook.
Sam Burt made headlines last week when Australian media reported that he and his son Jack woke up at dawn each day to walk from their home in a remote town in the Northern Territory to school.
The punishment was meted out because Jack had been kicked off the school bus for hitting the driver in the head with an apple core.
Fellow Northern Territory resident Renee Elliott was so impressed with Burt’s approach she set up “The Sam Burt Tough Love Appreciation and Support Group” on Facebook, the world’s largest online social network…
Read it at Yahoo!
If you are an internet entrepreneur and think your superhot Web 2.0 company is going to become the next Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), or your Web media company a 21st-century Time Inc., here’s a bit of advice inspired by recent headlines: Think twice. Literally.
Among the many dislocations of the current economy is the slowing of the growth in spending on Web advertising. While traffic is good and plenty of ads are being served up, the price of generic, run-of-the-site ads is falling…
Read it at Forbes
An appeals court in communist Vietnam on Thursday upheld a blogger’s two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for tax fraud in a case media watchdog groups have said was politically motivated.
The Ho Chi Minh City People’s Court confirmed the September verdict and sentencing of Nguyen Hoang Hai, who uses the weblog name Dieu Cay and is a member of the online Free Vietnamese Journalists Club.
“After several hours of debate with his lawyers, the court upheld the first instance sentence of two-and-a-half years imprisonment for Nguyen Hoang Hai on the charge of tax fraud,” court official Phan Tanh told AFP…
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The Internet is often called a network of networks, and–to be specific–there are a collection of about 45,000 autonomous networks (officially called autonomous systems) that make up the Internet and that are free to directly connect to each other if both sides so choose. Those interconnections are done either for free or for a fixed payment from one network to the other.And that gets to the heart of one of the abiding mysteries of the Internet: Why do some networks–and not others–pay? …
Read it at Forbes
Streaming Web video just might be one of those services that will come into its own during this economic downturn. Only a week ago, Google’s YouTube launched YouTube Live, which streams video channels via the Internet.
Today, social network MySpace Mobile has claimed the title of the first social portal to launch video streaming (albeit in beta) for mobile phones. MySpace’s cell-phone users will now be able to view videos they’ve uploaded or have marked as a favorite, as well as channels including TMZ, National Hockey League, National Geographic, The Onion and College Humor. Eventually, I’d expect MySpace and other content providers to stream longer-form programs and movies onto cell phones as well…
Read it at BusinessWeek
A social-media giant that has been wooed by the likes of Yahoo and Microsoft is now looking at an emerging social-networking play. Facebook recently held acquisition talks with micro-blogging phenom Twitter, according to a report in the Financial Times.
The Times cited people familiar with the matter who confirmed that Facebook offered to acquire Twitter in an all-stock deal.
Twitter is a service that lets users stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one question: What are you doing? It’s a real-time messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices, including PCs and smartphones. And Facebook would reportedly love to add it to its social-networking services.
Last year, Microsoft offered Facebook $15 billion to become part of Redmond’s growing Web 2.0 assets. Facebook declined, and now it appears that Twitter is offering the same response to its social-networking elder.
The Valuation Question
Despite the rebuff, there is lingering conversation over Twitter’s value. Twitter isn’t reporting any revenue just yet. The two-year-old company is still building its user base, yet this darling of Silicon Valley has reportedly been valued at $500 million…
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Whether or not ArticleOnePartners.com, a patent-busting site, is a resounding success, founder Cheryl Milone owes a debt of gratitude to PeerToPatent.org, a nonprofit site that serves as a clearinghouse for pending patent applications. (See “Facebook For Patent Trolls.”)
The brainchild of a New York Law School professor, PeerToPatent just completed its pilot first year under the close watch of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. (Funding for the site comes from tech giants like IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) and Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), along with Nathan Myhrvold’s patent portfolio vehicle Intellectual Ventures.) The USPTO was so pleased with the results of the project’s first 12 months, it agreed to allow the site to run at least through next summer…
Read it at Forbes
