facebook, social media

So Now Facebook Has Check-Ins — What About Twitter?

At an event on Wednesday, Facebook unveiled Places, their new location element that allows users to check-in to venues. Obviously, this mimics the core feature of smaller startups like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and dozens of others. The move of the big boys into this space was inevitable, but it is somewhat surprising that it has taken this long.

Senh: I’m glad that I currently don’t get too many check-in’s on my twitter stream. I don’t find them useful at all. I use Facebook to keep in touch with people, and Twitter as pretty much an RSS reader and marketing tool. It makes more sense on Facebook, but not really on Twitter. Still, now that Facebook is doing check-ins, I doubt Twitter will be waiting too long to launch theirs.

Facebook wants you to ask Questions

Facebook has begun the rollout of a new feature, Facebook Questions, which will allow users to get answers to their queries from the entire Facebook community.

Senh: Wow, now Facebook's doing that too. Since there's Yahoo! Answers, there might as well be Facebook Questions. It's all user-generated content, so I guess it kinda makes sense. But if I want to ask my friends a question, I would just post a status update.

As Facebook grows, can it profit?

Social-networking site seeks to leverage user data to boost ad revenue, raising privacy concerns.

Senh: That's the big question, they're growing fast, but can they become profitable. With click-thru rates on social networking sites being so low compared to content sites, can they find another revenue stream? Will targeted advertising work? They've been talking about it forever. We were never really able to make targeted advertising work for Rotten Tomatoes, mainly because the size of that audience becomes so much smaller when you target them. But Facebook is one of the largest sites in the world, so that might not matter. The only problem is MySpace has been trying to figure that out since they were the biggest social networking site in the world, and look where they went.

Facebook hated as much as airlines, cable companies

Facebook, the most visited site on the Internet, may also be the most despised: A new poll says the site scored 64 on a 100-point scale, which “puts Facebook in the bottom 5 percent” of private sector companies.

Senh: I guess the issues over Facebook's privacy settings affected people's sentiments about the site. Although what does this really mean though. They're one of the most hated companies, but they're also one of the most visited. Has the site became so indispensable that people are using it even though they hate the company? Or are they most hated just because they're one of the biggest sites on the planet, and therefore has a lot more complainers?

Facebook Hits New Traffic Record

Facebook has more users than ever, says comScore. With its most recent privacy backlash seemingly behind it, Facebook surged ahead to a new traffic record in the U.S. during the month of June. According to comScore, the social network pulled in more than 141 million unique visitors in the U.S. during the month, beating its previous record (set in May) by better than 11 million.

Senh: Impressive. I wonder if it's the social plugins that sparked the privacy concerns the reason for Facebook's growth for the last couple months. Myspace isn't growing anymore, but it seemed to have stabilized, which isn't too bad if the company budget accordingly. Twitter seems like its gotten as big as it could get. Maybe now they can finally focus on monetization.

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Yahoo's site mirrors Facebook in latest facelift

Yahoo Inc.'s latest facelift will include a Facebook touchup. As part of changes rolling out this week, Yahoo will import personal updates from Facebook's social network for users who want a bridge between two of the world's most popular websites. The Facebook link will need to be turned on by each Yahoo user.

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Facebook Rolls Back Some Key Privacy Changes

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg went in front of the world's media this morning and grudgingly announced roll backs on some of the biggest and most controversial changes to the site's privacy settings made since December. The default setting for most content published on Facebook has not changed. It remains public, unlike the private nature of the site when hundreds of millions of people signed up, but control over a few key settings are now being shifted back into the hands of users.

Facebook CEO Says New Privacy Controls Coming

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social network is planning new privacy controls that are simpler to use and will allow users to turn off all third-party services.

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After Facebook, Pakistan shuts down YouTube

Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube indefinitely in a bid to contain "blasphemous" material, officials said on Thursday.

Amazon Kindle To Get Facebook, Twitter

Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader is getting access to Facebook and Twitter, along with several other enhancements, as part of a software update being sent wirelessly to the devices.

In a posting on Amazon's site, the company says the new software will let users share book passages on their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The update will also let people sort books and documents into collections and lock their Kindle with a password. There also will be larger font options and the ability to zoom in on PDF documents.

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