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Google to bring social networking to a website near you12th May 2008 3:45 pm Facebook MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (May 12, 2008) – Tonight at Campfire One at the Googleplex (http://code.google.com/campfire/), Google Inc. will announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect, a service that helps website owners grow traffic by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors. Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), 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. Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more. To illustrate, independent musician Ingrid Michaelson has added music features from iLike with Google Friend Connect and is now able to run the iLike OpenSocial application on her official website (www.ingridmichaelson.com). As a result, starting tonight, fans who visit Ingrid’s site can connect with their friends without having to leave the site. Visitors will be able to see comments by friends from their social networks, add music to their profiles, see who is attending concerts, and enjoy other features of the iLike application, all at Ingrid’s website. With Google Friend Connect, people will be able to enjoy their favorite features with their friends on any website across the web. “We want to bring ourselves to every eyeball, not bring every eyeball to us,” said Hadi Partovi, President of iLike. “Friend Connect is a significant opportunity for iLike, artists, and fans. The iLike Artist Dashboard™ will be the first content-management system that allows artists not only to post their songs, concerts, and videos to every leading social network from one dashboard, but also to simultaneously manage the content on their own websites.” Google Friend Connect has been developed to lower two barriers to the spread of social features across the web. First, many website owners want to add features that enable their visitors to do things with their friends, but the technology and resource hurdles have been too high. Second, people are tiring of needing to create new logins and profiles and recreate their friends lists wherever they go on the web. Google Friend Connect offers a solution to both these issues. Read more information at Google’s press centre : Google Friend Connect: Website owners can make any site social Would you like to know more about social networking? If so, contact Hit Search, SEMPO accredited Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Rumours fly of Microsoft making $15 billion bid for Facebook8th May 2008 1:00 pm Facebook The internet news feeds are resounding with the latest rumour in the Microsoft takeover mill. This time it’s Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook that’s attracting their attention. Whether this is a genuine bid or merely a stalking horse for the seemingly dead in the water takeover of Yahoo! it remains to be seen. Interesting times however. According to The Times : Microsoft is believed to have approached Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, over a possible acquisition of the social networking site. It is believed that Microsoft has sought to gauge Facebook’s level of interest about a potential bid after $47.5 billion (£24.3 billion) takeover talks with Yahoo!, the online search engine, failed on Saturday. It is not thought that there are any active talks between Microsoft and Facebook. In October, Microsoft took a $240 million stake in Facebook, which valued the site at about $15 billion. Although Mr Zuckerberg has resisted selling the entire company, indicating instead that he would prefer to float the group, it is not known what his response to Microsoft has been. Read the whole article here : Microsoft looks at $15bn takeover of Facebook Would you like to know more about Social Networking? If so, contact Hit Search, SEMPO accredited Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Israeli soldier jailed for Facebook photo24th April 2008 1:36 pm Facebook According to a report from the BBC Israel has sentenced a soldier to 19 days in jail for uploading a photograph taken on his military base to Facebook. The story published on the BBC website says that the Israeli military has declined to comment on the nature of the image, but said the soldier was serving with an elite intelligence unit. Local media say it is the first such conviction for an Israeli soldier. The case follows widespread reports about the potential security risk of soldiers posting photos on the web. The Israel Air Force has recently instructed all servicemen under their command who are serving in sensitive units to remove any photos they may have uploaded to Facebook, the Haaretz newspaper reports. Facebook rolls out it’s chat program23rd April 2008 12:13 pm Facebook A move that liable to delight users and annoy bosses in equal measure Facebook has made it’s news chat program available to all it’s users. According to a post on their blog “This week marks the launch of Facebook Chat—a new way for you to communicate with your friends in real-time. The Wall and Inbox have been the primary ways to communicate, but when more immediacy is necessary they might not be enough. Chat aims to fill this gap.” The program fits neatly and discreetly onto the bottom of the Facebook page and doesn’t disrupt your normal day-to-day operations. It just flashes red to alert you when a user replies to you. It is primarily based around a watch new online user count, individual chat windows can be opened from there. The application was demoed recently for users of selected geographical networks but has been rolled out system-wide today. Would you like to know more about social networking? If so, contact Hit Search, SEMPO accredited Search Engine Optimisation and Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Women sues over Facebook Beacon privacy violation21st April 2008 11:04 am Facebook A Texas woman has begun a lawsuit against Blockbuster, the video rentals corporation, over it releasing her video rental history to Facebook’s Beacon marketing system. She claims her rights have been violated under the Video Privacy Protection Act and claiming $2,500 (around £1250) per violation. The act was a bill passed by in 1988 and was created specifically to prevent wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records. Facebook Lexicon: A practical example16th April 2008 6:47 pm Facebook This week Facebook release a groovy new tool that will allow users to see to see what people around the globe are searching on facebook. The official blog comments that “Lexicon pulls from the wealth of data on Facebook without collecting any personal information in order to respect everyone’s privacy. The Wall is a really interesting place to look for buzz, because when one person writes a post on a friend’s or a group’s Wall, tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people might see it; those viewers may read, digest, and pass on that information, spreading it virally.
How are these numbers calculated? We have a cluster of computers that count the number of occurrences of every term (for example, “juno”) across profile, group and event Walls every day. The system strips out all personally identifiable information so that there is no way to track a mention back to a specific person. Try it for yourself http://www.facebook.com/lexicon/index.php?q=christmas Telegraph : Government guidelines to protect children on social networking sites2nd April 2008 9:36 am Facebook The Telegraph today released details of government guidelines it has obtained pertaining to internet child safety. The article states “A copy of the draft guidance, obtained by the Telegraph, shows that the Home Office wants sites like Bebo and MySpace to display adverts for the emergency services to encourage children to call the police directly if they think they are being targeted by people who might be trying to abuse them. It also suggests sites should take steps to make it more difficult for children to lie about their age and gain access to sites aimed at older users. These could include offering free software which parents could download to enable them to restrict the websites children visit and the amount of time they spend on them. Millions of children are using social networking websites intended for older users, according to a study by the media regulator Ofcom. More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds claimed to have a profile page on a social networking website, despite nominal age restrictions aimed at preventing pre-teens from using such sites. This means a significant number of Britain’s 11.5 million children may be seeing inappropriate material. Read the full article here : Facebook, MySpace to carry 999 link Another report featured in the The Times today said that the Home Office will announce a code of conduct for social networks. A key feature will be that when under18s set up profiles by default they will be set to a high privacy. Would you like to know more about social networking? If so, contact Hit Search, SEMPO accredited Search Engine Optimisation and Google adWords Pay Per Click specialists, on 0845 643 9289. Remember, its a big world out there, make sure you become visible. Subscribe To Our RSS Feed! 
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