Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook
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An alliance of companies led by Google plans to roll out a common set of standards to allow developers to write programs for Googleâs Orkut and other social networking Web sites.
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Company joins heavyweights Google, MSN, and others in desktop search fray.
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Both companies are starting to see the benefits of friendship, particularly when it comes to adding Google's goodies to Apple's signature new gadget
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By RACHEL METZ  NEW YORK - Fingers all tired from typing Web addresses from Bebo to Zebo to hit all your social networking and media sharing sites?  Daniel Graf believes he has an all-in-one solution - one you can put in your pocket.
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Facebook Inc., the fast growing  Silicon Valley social networking site, said on Thursday it has  acquired Internet start-up, Parakey, run by two of the  co-creators of the popular Web browser, Mozilla Firefox.
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A fast-growing organization that aims to help users share their personal contacts between different social media and other Web 2.0 services and includes Facebook, Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn and Plaxo has signed a more traditional heavy hitter up to the cause: Microsoft.
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Plaxo, Google, and Facebook now have members in the relatively new consortium to promote social-networking interoperability. Don't expect to see immediate results any time soon, though.
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InfoWorld - Facebook has become such a popular social networking site that some companies are betting their businesses on it.
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Facebook is the latest entrant into the online video battle -- an effort to gain ground on social networking rivals.
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For Google, buying a piece of Facebook would have been, well, nice. But for Microsoft, sealing the deal was an absolute necessity.
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Facebook Inc, the social-network  site that has enjoyed explosive growth in new members over the  past three months, said it plans to let users tell the rest of  the world how to find them on the site.
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MySpace has an impressive lead today, but things can change quickly in the fluid world of mass-market social networking sites. Just ask Friendster.
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Google Inc. on Friday will join the crowded field of services registering Web site addresses in a move aimed at encouraging more usage of the online search leader's free software products.
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College parties met business e-mail on Wednesday as Facebook said it is adding its social-networking platform to Research In Motion Ltd.&#39;s BlackBerry devices.T-Mobile will be the first carrier to build a Facebook application into the BlackBerries it sells, but BlackBerry users on any network will be able to download the application starting later Wednesday, Facebook Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz said in a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless IT&#160;and Entertainment show in San Francisco.In the keynote, Moskovitz demonstrated taking a photo with a BlackBerry Curve device, adding tags to it and posting it to Facebook without even starting up the Facebook application. Other features include the ability to set special ringtones for Facebook events and invite friends to join Facebook through BlackBerry e-mail. But it&#39;s the open nature of Facebook&#39;s platform, which allows third parties to add new applications, that sets the company apart, Moskovitz said.The tie-up brings together the highest profile social-networking player, with almost 50 million active users, and an enterprise mobile pioneer vying for market share against Microsoft, Palm, Symbian, Apple, and other device and OS vendors. Executives of the two companies met at the CTIA Wireless Show in March in Orlando and agreed to work together, Moskovitz said. Openness is the key factor they had in common, he said.Starting from a base of thousands of colleges and high schools, Facebook last year opened its network to anyone, and members over 35 years old are the fastest-growing segment, Moskovitz said. RIM has its roots in corporate e-mail tied to specialized enterprise servers so the partnership could help Facebook grow right where it&#39;s catching up.The announcement came amid reports on Wednesday that&#160;Google and Microsoft are wooing Facebook.Facebook also announced a few other advances in the mobile arena, where it expects to have 4 million active users by the end of this month. There are Facebook services available on most major U.S. and Canadian carriers, and Moskovitz announced its first carrier deal outside North America, with O2 (U.K.) Ltd.One extension announced Wednesday lets users add information from third-party Facebook applications as a box in their mobile profiles. As an example, Moskovitz showed a user&#39;s profile that listed two causes he supports. Another extension lets organizations text-message Facebook members to send a text message in support of a cause. The member&#39;s support is immediately reflected on Facebook on the Web, he said.
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It joins the battle for mobile users with Google.
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Today's announcement from Facebook is the reason why Google announced OpenSocial last week. They must have gotten a leak from one of the companies that stood with Facebook, so they knew what was coming. They weren't scared of Facebook's technology, because they didn't respond with technology. They were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does. They are getting ready to offer some very premium web real estate that (pay attention now) Google can't compete with. And advertising is Google's bread and butter, advertising is to Google as operating systems are to Microsoft. They can't let somebody appear to be better than they are in advertising. Yet that's what Facebook is, better than Google in advertising. Here's what Facebook can do.  Let's say I bought a Wii and I like it. They can tell all my friends "Dave bought a Wii and he likes it." That's a lot more likely to result in a sale  than an intrusive ad like this one, that was displayed next to an email I sent to some friends about their New Networked Living Room. Google thinks I might want to buy Moroccan Lamps, or something called a Unique Shabby Chic (huh?) or Crate & Barrell bedroom furniture. Of course I tune that shit out, I don't even see it. It has zero impact.   Anyway, I was talking with Doc Searls a few minutes ago and he mentioned OpenSocial and I told him it was just a lot of noise meant to distract people from what Facebook was doing in advertising. He hadn't heard anything about it even though he was at a tech conference in Denver today and yesterday. I said there you go, Google's strategy worked. But to no effect, longterm, because Facebook has the momentum and Google, try as hard as they want to stop it, will not be able to, any more than Alta Vista or Infoseek were able to stop Google once they figured out that their lunch was eaten. Google will be around for a long time, I'm not saying they will go away, but Facebook will be around too. And Google will have a hard time catching up to them.  Long-term, however they both have problems because advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information. And that's good!  8/3/06: "Information is welcome, advertising is offensive."
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Like rival lovers, Google and Microsoft are intensely courting Facebook as the social-networking upstart picks petals off a flower -- &quot;she loves me, she loves me not&quot; -- and tries to decide which of the two will be allowed to buy a minority stake in the company, according to press reports.