Facebook's awesome product announcement 'could be video chat'

Facebook’s product announcement happening today could be the launch of the highly-anticipated video chat feature.
Several technology websites have been making the prediction that a Skype-style service will finally launch on Facebooklater today.

Pundits are divided at to whether Facebook has indeed partnered with Skype, which has recently been acquire by Microsoft, or built its own product in-house.

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and chief teased journalists on a tour of the company’s Seattle office, that the site’s engineers were going to launch “something awesome" this week.

He declined to give more details of the coming release but speculation has been mounting in technology circles for the last few days.

The other suggestions doing the rounds are that Facebook's long-awaited app for Apple's iPad could be finally ready to launch or that the social network will unveil a dedicated photo-sharing app for smartphones. The 40-strong Facebook Seattle office is the only offshoot away from the company’s Palo Alto headquarters where any engineering or product development for the site happens. The Seattle satellite team have been largely responsible for the company’s mobile site.
A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.
A live stream of the one hour-long launch can be watched hereand will begin at 6pm UK time from Facebook’s HQ.
So far more than 70,000 Facebook users have signed up to view the feed

Mark Zuckerberg: we are planning ‘awesome’ launch next week

Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has said his company is going to launch “something awesome” next week.

Mark Zuckerberg told journalists, during a visit to Facebook's Seattle office, that the social network plans to “launch something awesome” next week, Reuters reported.

He declined to give more details of the coming release but speculation has been mounting in technology circles that Facebook's highly-anticipated app for Apple's iPad could be ready to launch or that the social network will unveil a dedicated photo-sharing app for smartphones.

The 40-strong Facebook Seattle office is the only offshoot away from the company’s Palo Alto headquarters, where any engineering or product development for the site happens. The Seattle satellite team have been largely responsible for the company’s mobile site.

A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on the reports.

Mr Zuckerberg is likely to be keen to draw attention to continuing developments at Facebook in a week that has been dominated by the launch of Google's social network, Google+. While still open to only a small number of invited testers, Google+ has received broadly positive reviews and its design has drawn comparisons with Facebook's own look and feel.Last week Carl Sjogreen, product manager for the Facebook Platform, told The Telegraph that Facebook was focused on becoming an internet platform rather than just a single destination site. This strategy he said will stop the social network suffering the same ‘fad’ fate as MySpace and is the reason why the service has continued to grow.
“Any destination site has limited potential. It only contains the features that the team can build as quickly as they can create them. Being a platform allows your Facebook identity to become a service for the whole web…We are not going to be able to build everything – but if we can create an eco-system – as we are doing around our service, it will make continuing coming to Facebook a more interesting experience. There is now a whole industry built on our platform which is invested in Facebook’s success

Facebook Credits violate antitrust law

A public interest group called Consumer Watchdog has filed an antitrust complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook Credits, arguing that the virtual currency used for purchases such as assets in online games is anticompetitive.
Specifically, the group objects to new terms for using the credits that go into effect Friday. The group argues in the 28-page complaint (PDF), "The new Facebook Credits terms will enable Facebook to maintain and extend its monopoly power over the market for virtual goods purchased in social games."
In addition, the complaint argues, the new terms prohibit game developers from charging lower prices for their games on a rival social network. Because of that," the complaint said, "Facebook is wielding its monopoly power to dictate prices; this term directly undermines competition outside the Facebook platform, i.e., in the market, and forces users to pay higher prices."
Sweeping remedies are needed, Consumer Watchdog said.
"FTC investigation and enforcement is necessary to prevent Facebook from destroying competition in the market for virtual goods purchased in social games, and eventually in other markets for purchasing goods or services on the Internet, to protect existing businesses from being unfairly boxed out of the market, and to allow new businesses to enter the relevant markets, and ultimately, to protect consumers from higher prices," the complaint said.

Google+ could be Google's latest enterprise weapon

If Google adapts social network for the enterprise, as analysts expect, it will target both Facebook and Microsoft
Google's new social networking service just a day old, but analysts are already wondering how long it will be before Google+ is refocused for the enterprise.

On Tuesday, Google launched a social networking service dubbed the Google+ project, that is clearly a direct advance on Facebook, the world's largest social network and an increasingly serious competitor with Google.

Analysts say, though, that Google didn't go through the effort and expense of creating a new social network just to compete with Facebook, whose 500 million users put it leagues ahead as the race begins.

"We all know that eventually what we're seeing here [Google+] will find its way into the enterprise," said Brad Shimmin, an analyst with CurrentAnalysis. "I don't see this as just competing with Facebook, but I see this as another move into the enterprise. This is necessary for them to really compete in the enterprise."

Google has already been trying to work its way into the enterprise with its hosted Google Apps suite of office applications.

Google has had some early success in that effort, but now faces increased competition from its other main rival, Microsoft. Just this week, Microsoft officially launched its own cloud-based Office 365 suite.

Now, according to Shimmin, Google can use its new social network - with a few enterprise tweaks -- as a collaboration platform that can pull all of its office-based efforts together.

"The one major downfall of Google Apps has been a lack of a unifying social experience," he added. "They've had some social tools inside different products but they haven't had anything to sort of bring them together. This is a very necessary and long-overdue step."

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said it makes perfect sense for Google to rework Google+ at some point in the near future and redirect it toward the enterprise.

Companies are increasingly looking for more social-based ways to make their employees more productive, and this would fit that bill, he added.

The Circles feature in Google+ would enable people to more easily communicate with and share documents with different work groups or project teams, for instance. And the platform's Hangouts feature could allow users to hold video conferences with multiple geographically-dispersed co-workers.

"Google+ could probably use a more businesslike front end, but I could see this work," said Gottheil. "It would be a rebranding, giving it a more serious interface and incorporating it into Google Apps."

And he added that this could be a big threat to Microsoft and its own attempts to offer cloud-based products for the the enterprise.

"Google Apps makes it tough on Microsoft but adding an adaptation of Google+ to Google Apps, would make it tougher," said Gottheil.

That means with one move, Google has struck out at two of its main rivals - Facebook and Microsoft.

Google surely would love to take a bite out of Facebook's user base, but the company also sees Google+ as an important avenue into the lucrative enterprise market where it battles Microsoft.

Security firm will update your Facebook status while you're on holiday

Not so long ago security firms were urging holidaymakers to buy a timer switch for their home’s lighting: it was claimed burglars would think people were in if they saw a lamp on in the evening. Now a British firm is offering a new, equivalent service for the Facebook generation.

Chelmsford-based Precreate Solutions claims a number of its clients had announced holiday plans on Facebook or Twitter and then had their properties broken into. For a small fee, the firm will now also run “virtual updates” while clients are away.

Company director Gary Jackson claimed that “Putting up a Facebook posting of photographs on a beach to 300-400 ‘friends’ is like leaving an advert on your door to a burglar telling him when you will be out.”

The service will use pre-approved messages, updates and tweets, and then schedule them while the client is away.

Mr Jackson claimed that “It’s getting to the point now when insurance firms are going charge higher premiums for social media users”. The Association of British Insurers said it had never heard of insurers asking customers who use social networks to pay more, and said it would not be practical to do so. A spokesman, however, warned people to think twice about advertising that they were away.

Aaron Sorkin, the writer of The Social Network, has left Facebook

Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the Oscar-winning film The Social Network, which tells the story of the founding of Facebook, has left Facebook.Mr Sorkin, who made his name as the writer of the television show The West Wing, described himself as "this side of being a Luddite", and said he had been on Facebook while he was making the movie, but had since quit.

Speaking at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, at a session called "Thinking Inside The Box [The Golden Age of TV. Everywhere]", alongside The Wire's producer and writer David Simon, Mr Sorkin said that social media has changed the way people absorb news. "I know Twitter can be interesting - the night we got Bin Laden, the president came on TV about 11.30, but we all knew that this was happening because of social media", he says.

But both he and Mr Simon said that there are problems: Mr Simon says that Twitter has taken news "to the extreme of immediacy... I can find out everything faster, as a headline. But there’s no depth. Life is complicated. You need to able to explain complexity." Mr Sorkin agreed: "I have a lot of opinions on social media that make me sound like a grumpy old man sitting on the porch yelling at kids."

The fact that Mr Sorkin had left Facebook attracted the attention of Piers Morgan, the CNN broadcaster, who tweeted:

Interesting news - Aaron 'Social Network' Sorkin has quit Facebook. #CannesLionsless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry® Favorite Retweet ReplyPiers Morgan
piersmorgan

Mr Sorkin is not the only name involved with The Social Network who has shunned the social network. It was revealed in October last year that Jesse Eisenberg, the actor who won an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg, has stayed away from the site. He said at the time that it "freaked him out", saying: "I joined under a fake name and was sent a message from Facebook suggesting people I should befriend.
"One of them was a girl my sister was friends with in high school. I don't know how they found her, no idea. I signed off right then."

MySpace surrenders to Facebook in battle of social networks

MySpace has finished being a social network and a direct rival to Facebook, according to its chief executive, Mike Jones.Talking to The Telegraph at the Monaco Media Forum, Jones said the bold statement: “MySpace is a not a social network anymore. It is now a social entertainment destination.”

The troubled site, which saw its UK audience halve to 3.3 million monthly visitors in July earlier this year, is pinning its hopes of renewed success with a return to its music and content roots.

Two weeks ago, the redesigned MySpace, which focuses a lot more around content, rather than social networking, launched in the US and will go live in the UK in mid November. Everything has been changed; right down to the logo – which is now the word 'My' and an extended underscore to represent the ‘Space’.

MySpace, founded in 2003, at its peak had more than 100 million registered and active members, but its audience has been declining since the rise of Facebook in 2008.

It has come under increasing pressure from its parent News Corporation, which bought the site in 2005 for $580 million (£351 million) in 2005, to reverse its ailing fortunes.

Facebook usage drops in Britain and US

The figures are being cited as sign that Facebook may have reached saturation point in the countries where it first enjoyed explosive growth.

Almost 6 million Americans abandoned the site in May, Inside Facebook said, based on Facebook’s own advertising tool. At the start of the month there were 155.2 million US users, compared to 149.4 million at the end, a drop of 3.7 per cent and the first time it has lost users month-on-month in the last year.

In Britain meanwhile Facebook lost more than 100,000 users. Norway and Russia registered similar slips.

And although the site continued to grow worldwide, the rate of growth fell for the second month in a row. Facebook gained 11.8 million users in May and 13.9 million in April. Both compared unfavourably to a typical month in the last 12, in which it gained more than 20 million new users.

“By the time Facebook reaches around 50 per cent of the total population in a given country (plus or minus, depending on internet access rates in that country), growth generally slows to a halt,” said Inside Facebook’s Eric Eldon.