Google races Facebook to simplify its Friend Connect platform
Call it feature envy. Google is simplifying the process for developers to use Friend Connect on their sites, just two days after Facebook essentially did the same for its competing Facebook Connect identity platform.
Instead of uploading files to activate Friend Connect, a developer can now just use their site name and URL.
Both companies are in a race to have their log-ins be a person’s primary identity for destinations across the web. For example, if you… Continue Reading
Russia’s DST raising stake in Facebook at $6.5 billion valuation
Russia’s Digital Sky Technologies is boosting its stake in Facebook by buying from existing shareholders, Reuters is reporting.
Offering the same $14.77 a share it put forward earlier in July, the Russian investment firm is turning to shareholders who aren’t Facebook employees to raise its holdings by up to $100 million. DST held a 3.5 percent stake in the company after a $200 million direct investment plus $100 million it spent purchasing current and ex-employee shares… Continue Reading
Is Facebook speeding up while Twitter slows?
On the heels of Twitter’s latest fundraising round valuing it at a reported $1 billion, data suggests the site’s growth may be slowing. Twitter.com’s marketshare of visits peaked in June then declined into this month, according to analytics service HitWise.
The deceleration would also come as Facebook’s user growth speeds up — the rival saw 300 million users this month, accumulating 50 million users in two months’ time. After copying Twitter features like the site’s stream… Continue Reading
Facebook: Twitter is “in the rear-view mirror”
Twitter may still be the media darling of the day, getting all kinds of attention amid its huge user growth earlier this year. But Facebook, once considered Twitter’s most fierce competitor because it also wants to let users post bite-sized updates online about their thoughts, apparently no longer thinks of Twitter as a threat.
Facebook’s executives aren’t really thinking much about Twitter these days and see it as a niche site which is unlikely to grow… Continue Reading
Incorporating social media: There’s no magic bullet
Searching for help in determining how to incorporate social media into your business can be a frustrating process. A Google search for ‘social media consultant’ returns over 20 million results – and most of them offer very similar, one-size-fits-all suggestions based around the adoption of popular (and often faddish) tools and services.
Successful social marketing isn’t as simple as installing a set of apps and regular Facebook updates. There is no magic bullet. Determining the right… Continue Reading
Flock browser beefs up Twitter, Facebook support
Flock version 2.5, released on Tuesday by Redwood City, Calif.-based Flock, is designed to let social network addicts spend their entire day in a single browser window.
Flock, an enhanced version of the open-source Firefox browser, streams status updates from Twitter and Facebook in a sidebar that can be popped open or shut without shuffling windows around a computer screen.
The most impressive enhancement is drag-and-drop support for posting multimedia content to Facebook. The browser automatically handles… Continue Reading
Tinker: sanitized Twitter for advertisers, money-maker for micro-bloggers
Popular microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook and Friendfeed will let you find and follow friends, celebrities, and anyone else who interests you. But Glam Media wants to let you follow events, too. It’s just launched Tinker.com, a micro-blogging platform that collects real-time conversations from Twitter Facebook and Friendfeed and sorts them by subject. Tinker users can select events that interest them from a predefined list — including options for sports events, TV shows, and breaking… Continue Reading
Appssavvy makes it easier for advertisers to navigate the demographics of social networks
Appssavvy, a sales company that helps advertisers cull through the thousands of social network applications hitting the web to find the right match, is close to releasing a dashboard tool to make the process that much easier. The New York-based company, which we’ve covered before, sees itself as a bridge between app developers in Silicon Valley and advertising agencies on Madison Avenue.
And so far it seems to be doing pretty well. After only seven months’ in… Continue Reading
Google-led gang to take on Facebook — Google’s OpenSocial to launch
Updated
A host of Silicon Valley companies led by Google are ganging together to take on Facebook — the social networking company that is the toast of the town right now.
A group of Facebook’s cross-town rival, including Google, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning, are apparently responding, in an effort to see if they can stop Facebook from running away with the lead in social networking.
The OpenSocial project is introducing common standards to allow software developers… Continue Reading
Microsoft invests $240M in Facebook, as Facebook develops ad product
Updated
Microsoft has snagged a deal to invest $240 million into popular social network Facebook, valuing the company at $15 billion — a 1.6 percent stake. Microsoft has also agreed to advertise on Facebook in international markets.
We listened in on a well-staged official press conference call that the two companies did this afternoon — you can read most of the same information in the press release. Here are some highlights: Microsoft needs the international ad agreement… Continue Reading
Facebook didn’t dip: Comscore, Quantcast, Compete all wrong?
When respected traffic measurement company Comscore released data several days ago showing that Facebook’s U.S. visitors dropped more than 9.3 percent last month, it sparked widespread disbelief among bloggers and others. Facebook is hot, and growing. The data must be wrong!
Comscore has just published data showing Facebook worldwide unique visitors are up, to 73.5 million from 69.2 million, suggesting not all is too bad afterall.
So what’s with the earlier national numbers? Well, to everyone’s relief, there… Continue Reading
Myspace to open developer platform — good for web startups
It’s official: MySpace, seeking to defend its status as the leading social network, will open up its platform to third-party developers over the next couple of months.
The news was confirmed tonight at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, where News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe were featured guests.
Like rival Facebook’s move six months ago, MySpace’s move will let developers build applications within MySpace and make money from them.
The full significance of this… Continue Reading
Google’s sneak attack? Adsense for Facebook
Is Google-the-Goliath sneaking into the Facebook building — via the basement?
Google is actively recruiting third-party developers with applications on Facebook to run Adsense ads within applications pages, VentureBeat has learned.
These aren’t just any old Adsense ads, according to our sources — developers have been inserting plain-vanilla Adsense into Facebook applications since the developer platform launched in May. Now, Google is specifically building this network for advertisers who want to be on Facebook, and will let… Continue Reading
Roundup: Yahoo’s Chinese stake, AT&T spectrum acquisition, Facebook app fund and more
Plenty of moves by big companies in today’s action:
1) Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal
2) AT&T buys up $2.5 billion worth of 700mhz spectrum
3) Facebooks FBfund chucks initial applications
4) Twitter’s first attempts to monetize
5) More details on Google’s plans for Orkut
6) E.ON blows another $1.4 billion into wind power
7) Vlaze may be today’s MTV
Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal Alibaba – As China’s Alibaba.com prepares to go public next week, Yahoo has invested… Continue Reading
Funding Facebook apps, homerun or ho-hum?
On Tuesday, I’ll be moderating a panel about how developers of Facebook applications can get money from venture capitalists.
Venture capitalists are looking for big hits and it’s not easy to please them. This panel features the leading investors in Facebook apps. If you’re going to get the skinny on funding, this is the place. The panel features Luke Nosek, Lee Lorenzen, Jeff Clavier and George Zachary.
The Graphing Social Patterns conference is offering VentureBeat readers a… Continue Reading
Digg revamps profiles — introduces feeds, copies Facebook
Digg, the popular news-ranking site that is trying to extend its popular beyond its young geek-oriented audience, has significantly revamped its user profile section. The changes are aimed to give the service much more of a community feel, letting you share Digg stories with friends, and giving more profile to your most recent activity and favorite articles.
More significantly, the changes appear to be a direct response to Facebook, which has exploited its sharing features to… Continue Reading
Who founded Facebook? Aaron Greenspan says he came up with the idea first
Harvard student Aaron Greenspan says he came up with the idea for Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg founded the popular company of the same name.
Greenspan’s claims, backed up by emails, are the latest salvo in the controversy surrounding the true origins of the social networking company. His claims have surfaced before, but in a New York Times story just published, Greenspan goes to greater lengths at proving his case.
In 2003, Greenspan sent an email to Harvard… Continue Reading
Facebook’s first acquisition: secretive start-up Parakey
updated
Facebook has acquired Parakey, a Mountain View, Calif., startup that had been working on a new way for people to work seamlessly on applications while online and offline.
Founded by former Mozilla Firefox browser developers Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt, Parakey had worked in secrecy for two years on a project it hoped would make online life much less complex for regular people. They called their PC download “a personal operating system.”
Notably, Parakey is Facebook’s first… Continue Reading
Introducing “Causes on Facebook”
updated
Serial entrepreneur Sean Parker’s new philanthropy focused company, Project Agape, launches tonight, with a special version of its software tailored for Facebook users.
It is called Causes on Facebook.
Just as significant as its launch, however, is its intent to showcase the strengths of Facebook’s new “Platform,” a set of tools to allow developers to build applications upon Facebook. More on that in a second.
Project Agape is the most ambitious social network we’ve seen that lets people… Continue Reading
Facebook growing, but more roadkill coming?
Facebook is growing quickly, adding between 100,000 and 150,000 new users per day, the company tells us, with the highest growth rates coming from abroad.
Particularly noteworthy is its traction in Canada, where it has more than 2 million active users, around 11 percent of the site’s total. A remarkable 20 to 25 percent of Toronto’s population is using Facebook, with more than 500,000 users. Ontario even banned the site in governmental workplaces because it was… Continue Reading