The Scoble scuffle: Facebook, Plaxo at odds over data portability
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When a popular blogger revealed that Facebook had banned his account, the Web erupted in speculative chatter. But where should they really be pointing fingers?
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Plaxo, a site that helps users  keep their friends' contact information up to date, is  considering a sale of the company for as much as $200 million,  media reports said on Thursday.
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(200 sec.) Will Facebook's aggressive strategy make it look like MySpace?
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Performance monitoring group WatchMouse tracked load time and error tallies for 104 social media sites, and has deemed Facebook the top culprit for poor performance. But it's just one survey, and results may be suspect.
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Facebook launched a platform for operators designed to make its social networking application work better on portable devices.
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Social network firms reveal tools and technologies that aim to make the sites more than places to keep in touch.
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A page on the official developers' wiki hints that the social network will be offering data storage space for applications hosted on the Facebook Platform.
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Itâs like the browser wars all over again: Two vendors are battling to win the hearts, minds, and debit cards of users and developers. The browser wars were really platform wars, based on the assumption that the browser would be the nexus through which users would access data inside and outside their companyâs walls. The battle hymn is sounding once more, only this time itâs a ring tone. Iâll get to the connection between the browser wars and the enterprise mobility race at the end.
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The EOS combines multimedia delivery services, a social network platform, and tools for service providers.
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Flawed ActiveX controls used to upload photos on the popular social networking sites Facebook and MySpace can be used by hackers to snatch control of Windows PCs, according to security researchers.
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Researchers learn that social network users are willing to sell their personal data for site features.
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Facebook's advertising system provokes questions about how companies share data.
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While Web platforms and tools providers over the past decade have been opining at length over the potential ubiquity of Web services that perform simple and specialized data-fetching tasks for individual customers, Facebook today tried a completely new spin on the old message: actually doing it.
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Never mind your profile. Social networking sites are tracking what you do and buy, and the you they see may not be the you you really want everyone else to see. From Wired magazine.
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Ready to rule crumbling economy A flush Facebook nudged Rackable Systems' revenue higher during the fourth quarter.â¦
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Facebook wants to make the data its members enter into the social network&#39;s profiles portable, so that they can move that data to other online services if they want, the company&#39;s CEO said Wednesday.That Facebook doesn&#39;t let them do this today is &quot;a flaw in the system&quot; and something the company wants to fix, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.&quot;It&#39;s the users&#39; data. We want to [make it portable.] That&#39;s the goal,&quot; he said during a keynote speech in which he fielded questions from moderator and conference chair John Battelle and attendees.However, when pressed to provide a timetable for when Facebook might do this, Zuckerberg refrained from making a deadline commitment. &quot;I don&#39;t know,&quot; he said.The massive response from outside developers who have built, to date, about 6,000 applications for Facebook has been &quot;incredibly humbling,&quot; he said.Because&#160;Facebook chose to open up the platform&#160;at an early stage of its development, instead of refining the program internally for several years, the company is learning as it goes along, he said.That is partly the reason why the wording on the terms of service for developers may be read as giving too much power to Facebook over the third-party applications on its platform.However, Zuckerberg said Facebook isn&#39;t interested in &quot;yanking&quot; popular applications so that it can build them itself.While Facebook has to reserve the right to build whatever application it deems core to its social network, it doesn&#39;t plan to trample on its developers and steal their thunder.&quot;It wouldn&#39;t be good for us if we did that,&quot; he said.Opened to external developers in May, the platform is seen by many as containing well-designed tools and offering developers generous revenue opportunities, despite the terms of service language that Battelle highlighted and that has concerned developers who are investing time and money in creating Facebook applications.Still, Facebook has already had to step in and curb the behavior of some applications which, designed with self-promotion features intended to spur their adoption, annoyed users with unsolicited e-mails and intrusive message displays.Zuckerberg said it may take many years for the Facebook platform to reach a level of maturity, and in the meantime, the company will work hard to continually improve and refine it.He remained tight-lipped when asked about rumors that the company is in the latter stages of securing financing from a major Internet company, like Google or Microsoft.&quot;How&#39;s the financing going?&quot; Battelle asked him. &quot;Very well. We&#39;re almost all wrapped up,&quot; Zuckerberg answered, declining further comment.Facebook will likely more than double its staff of 300 to about 700 in the coming year, growth that Zuckerberg acknowledged is intense. Many of the new hires are referred by employees, he said.Asked if Facebook is contemplating hiring an experienced CEO to run the company, as fast-growing startups often do, Zuckerberg said that the focus is on &quot;developing a really good team,&quot; in part because there aren&#39;t many seasoned CEOs experienced in social networking.Zuckerberg also suggested that the company may be developing its own advertising platform, but declined to offer details, keeping mum when asked if the ad platform will syndicate ads outside of the Facebook site, thus becoming a potential competitor to networks from Google, Yahoo and others.Asked about the investigations from some U.S. attorneys general offices into Facebook&#39;s operations and policies regarding objectionable content and the presence of sexual predators among its members, Zuckerberg said the social network gives users very granular control over what data they share, how they share it and with whom.However, he acknowledged that he&#39;s not very familiar with how the company complies with civil and criminal investigation subpoenas.Founded in 2004, Facebook&#39;s popularity has been ballooning for the past year or so. Its user ranks have increased to 47 million active users today from 12 million in December. Over half of its active members return to the site daily.Web 2.0 Summit ends Friday.&#160;
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(InfoWorld) - It may seem like tilting at windmills, but Wallop Technologies expects to shake up the social networking market, currently dominated by entrenched players like News Corp.'s MySpace, Facebook, and Friendster. Wallop is betting that a slick platform based on Adobe Systems' Flash multimedia system, an absence of ads, and a community of third-party developers will set apart its social networking site, which it will announce on Tuesday at Demo Fall in San Diego. A private companyÂ spun off from Microsoft's research unit, Wallop hopes its service will primarily draw people between the ages of 18 and 25 who value its "high-end" yet intuitive user experience, said Karl Jacob, the company's chief executive officer. Wallop's Flash platform is open to developers, so that they can create modules for members to dress up and enhance their social network profiles. Some of these modules will be free. Wallop will share revenue with the developers from the sale of others. Goowy Media, a San Diego startup, will offer several modules for Wallop, and, at least for now, all will be free, said Alex Bard, the company's president and CEO. For Goowy, offering modules for Wallop is a way to promote itself and its Flash-based Webtop application, which includes e-mail, calendar, contacts, games, instant messaging, file storage and optional add-ins. This is the first deal of its kind for Goowy, whose executives decided to feature its work on Wallop after being impressed with the service's user interface, Bard said. "They have created a great new experience," Bard said. "They're not taking a me-too approach to social networking, and that's very smart." To address the privacy and safety concern affecting MySpace, Wallop will provide very granular access features so that members can control who has access to their profiles. Wallop also impressed Jupiter Research analyst Joe Wilcox. "It's a very different type of user experience. Instead of interacting with static Web pages, there's a lot of motion and fluidity in it. It's more alive." Now, it remains to be seen if Wallop will be able to attract a critical mass of people and if enough of them will be willing to spend money on purchasing modules for their profiles, Wilcox said. "It's not just about having a great place. You need to have people there," Wilcox said. Another interesting issue will be whether Wallop ends up competing with Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces blogging service, which has been adding social networking features. Jacob believes Wallop will appeal to a younger, more specific demographic group than does Live Spaces. Microsoft owns a stake in Wallop, which is also backed by investors like Norwest Venture Partners, Bay Partners, and Consor Capital. More information isÂ available here.