Facebook site grows businesses
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Facebook has become such a popular social networking site that some companies are betting their businesses on it.Participants in a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit conference in San Francisco Thursday cited the impact of Facebook."We looked at the Facebook platform before it launched and came away with the conclusion that this could be the greatest paradigm shift in technology since the Internet itself," said panelist Ali Partovi, CEO of the iLike music discovery service.iLike bet close to 100 percent of its business on Facebook, he said."We made a very big bet. We basically decided to halt work on our own Web site and spent the next [several] weeks that we had building a Facebook application," Partovi said. iLike's own Web site, meanwhile, is used to drive traffic to the Facebook application, he said."Literally, within the first 24 hours, our Facebook registrations exceeded the rest of our Web site," by a dramatic amount, he said. In the first 12 hours, iLike signed up 10,000 users, followed by 10,000 more in the next three hours and 10,000 more in the next two hours, he said.Facebook application developer Slide is probably allocating 35 percent of its efforts to the site, said Slide Vice President Keith Rabois. Slide decided to invest in Facebook because it created an open environment that encouraged developers to make money for the first time."That has been a sea change," Rabois said.Facebook opened the floodgates for a raft of innovations, said Seth Goldstein, CEO and co-founder of SocialMedia, which also has developed applications for Facebook. Facebook has 2 million users, half of whom use it daily, he said."There's a level of engagement," inside the Facebook platform, he said.Another panelist noted Facebook widgets. "The neat thing about the Facebook platform is you can actually talk to friends through widgets, thorough the APIs," said Lance Tokuda, CEO of the RockYou photo-sharing site.
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IT investments in Web sites, combined with greater acceptance of online shopping on the part of consumers, will drive the growth.
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The local merchant social network brings some complementary elements to Citysearch's offering.
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Company attributes "remarkable year" to growth of its Web site network.
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Fatdoor.com has launched a social network that focuses on letting users communicate with neighbors and local businesses.
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New social networking site lets users share photos, videos, and more.
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Facebook.com, the No. 2 U.S.   social network site that is quickly expanding beyond its   college student base, has been met with a sudden privacy   backlash by users after it made design changes this week.
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Blog: Bay Partners is launching a special program for Facebook entrepreneurs.
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Blog: Interested developers and entrepreneurs get together to talk about what they want to do with the Facebook Platform.
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New site doses social networking with literate lists. Plus: Is
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The long-rumored site, dubbed "Mash," lets people create profiles for their friends.
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Social-networking Web site Facebook  said on Tuesday it has expanded to enable anyone with a valid  email address to join the service.
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Facebook.com reveals even more than its online exhibitionists want.
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The new Facebook application for the Rhapsody music service shows some of the advantages of integrating powerful applications into Facebookâs environment.
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Blog network, which began as a single celebrity-gossip property and has since expanded to a whole set of women's lifestyle titles, is adding a social-shopping site.
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By Johanna D. Wilson, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C.  Jun. 16--An increasing number of restaurant owners are orbiting cyberspace to boost their customer base, visibility and profitability as their industry heightens its Internet savvy.
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Social networking site Facebook has acquired Parakey Inc., a start-up run by the founders of the Firefox Web browser project, with the goal of entering the business of Web-based operating systems.