Facebook’s recent announcement could expand the security threat landscape for the site, some say. The social network shared with eWEEK how it is dealing with that. – When Facebook announced its plans Nov. 15 for its Messages feature,
it opened the door to new questions about spam and security.
Once it is fully rolled out,
the new Messages interface will weave together not only Facebook
messages, but also chats, SMS (texts) and e-mails in a central
location…
Facebook Messages integrates Microsoft’s Office Web Apps, allowing both companies to attack rival Google on the productivity and communications fronts. – Facebooks revamped messaging platform deepens the
social-networking giants ties with Microsoft, and positions both companies to
attack their mutual competitor Google from slightly different angles. The new
Facebook Messages blends text, SMS, e-mail and Facebook chat into a unified
communications…
Google CEO Eric Schmidt Nov. 15 declined to proclaim Facebook Messages a threat to Gmail, opting for the company line that competition lifts the Web overall. – SAN FRANCISCO — Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Facebook’s Messages e-mail product was good for competition but refused the
bait cast at him in a question-and-answer session with media at the Web 2.0
Summit here.
Schmidt, who in an earlier keynote showed off near field
communications on an Android…
A Webroot survey reveals how social networking has impacted the security of cost-conscious businesses in 2010. – Research commissioned by Internet security specialist Webroot suggested
small to midsize businesses are becoming more vigilant when it comes to their
employees’ use of social networking sites. The survey of more than 1,000
businesses from the United States
and United Kingdom
with up to 500 empl…
News Analysis: Facebook, the world’s top social network, is offering a new messaging platform that will rival Gmail. Now it’s possible that eventually Facebook could best Google, at least in the e-mail space. – When it comes time to look at Google and its prospects for the
future, few see it as a company that should worry. After all, the search giant
reigns supreme in search and other online services and continues to expand its
empire in the mobile business. It’s arguably positioned more effectively tha…
UPDATED: Facebook Messages, which the company launched in invitation-only mode, enables people to communicate with their friends using any media or connected device they want. – SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, closing in on signing up its 600
millionth user, is already the No. 1 social networking service in the
world.
Now it wants to become the largest and most important real-time
messenger by combining the world’s most-often-used digital media: SMS
texting, e-mail, chat …
Gartner on Nov. 11 said social network services could replace e-mail for 20 percent of business users by 2014, spurred by the popularity of consumer social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Together, those two social networks have more than 700 million users, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a good majority of social networks users will eschew e-mail for those Web services in some cases. The number could be greater than 20 percent if Gartner were not accounting for large enterprises where the corporate mandate is to use officially sanctioned tools such as Microsoft Outlook or IBM Lotus Notes for collaboration. Yet a blurring of the lines is underfoot, with Microsoft and IBM providing hooks into social networks to let users socialize their e-mail and collaboration workflows. Of course, a lot of these transitional technology trends begin in the consumer sector, which is where the new RockMelt Web browser comes in. RockMelt is essentially the Chrome browser wrapped in Facebook platform. Users can find content they like and share it by messaging contacts in Facebook, Twitter and other social sources. Over time, it’s not impossible the RockMelt will become a trusted browser that businesses may install on corporate computers to let workers communicate. This is predicated on getting all business users in a company to join Facebook. In the meantime, check out the findings that Gartner unveiled at its Symposium/ITxpo 2010 in Cannes, France. – …
REVIEW: RockMelt is the ultimate Web browser for sharing Facebook and Twitter content. Searching Google with previews is a snap, too. But this needs more speed and less clutter. – After spending nearly a week using the RockMelt beta as my default browser,
I’ve come to experience enough cognitive dissonance to make my head explode.
In short, I love RockMelt’s concept and implementation, but the browser
needs to get faster and work out some of the kinks to be as fast or reli…
Facebook Nov. 15 will unleash Project Titan to challenge Google’s Gmail and other messaging solutions in the crowded market for Web-based e-mail clients. – Facebook Nov. 15 will launch a Webmail application to
challenge Google’s Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and other messaging
solutions.
Facebook sent out media invites to a 10 a.m. launch event
in San Francisco hours before the start of the Web 2.0 Summit in that city.
Facebook CEO Mar…
Two firings one of an employee posting opinions about her boss on Facebook and another of a Google employee for leaking pay info raise the question: What’s going on here? –
‘Tis
the season to not upset your employer.
Google
reportedly fired an unnamed employee who leaked a memo of the company’s recent
seemingly positive announcement of a 10 percent pay raise and a $1,000 bonus
for all employees, according to sources who spoke with CNN Money.
With
more than 2…
NEWS ANALYSIS: Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the search engine is giving out a 10 percent pay hike for 2011 and $1,000 in holiday bonus cash. Is the move largess, self-preservation or both? – Silicon Alley Insider broke the news that Google CEO
Eric Schmidt granted all of its 23,000-plus employees a 10 percent pay hike for
2011 and $1,000 in holiday bonus cash.
Schmidt said in a memo sent to employees:
quot;We want to make sure that you feel rewarded for your hard work, and we
want…
New $450 million facility will be located near Forest City in Rutherford County, about 75 miles west of Charlotte. – Facebook revealed Nov. 11 that it plans to build its second data center in North Carolina.
In a joint announcement with the world’s largest social networking Website, Gov. Bev Perdue said that the new $450 million facility will be located near Forest City in Rutherford County, about 75 miles west…
Gartner said social network services could replace e-mail for 20 percent of business users. RockMelt could facilitate this by letting workers message each other through Facebook or Twitter. – Thanks to the seepage of Facebook and Twitter in
enterprises, social network services could replace e-mail for 20 percent of
business users by 2014, Gartner said Nov. 11.
The researcher
noted that e-mail giants Microsoft and IBM are connecting with their e-mail
apps with social networks to make…
Google Nov. 4 started down a slippery slope that many believed unthinkable until the company took its bold step: The search engine tweaked its Gmail Contacts Data API terms of service to bar third-party companies from automatically taking Gmail contact data without also allowing users to export contact data just as easily. The TOS didn’t name Facebook, but Google did in a strongly worded statement accusing Facebook of leaving users in a "data dead end" because it doesn’t allow users to move contact info in and out of the massive social network of 500 million-plus users. Facebook declined to comment, but it has historically declined to let contact data exit its walled garden for privacy concerns. This is not a one-off move without precedent. Google has taken issue with Facebook’s protectiveness regarding contact data for the last three years since it joined the social software game with OpenSocial. Since then, Google and Facebook have duked it out over data in several forums. However, the new move is interesting because it appears to go against Google’s own Data Liberation Front tenets. Google is basically trying to strong-arm Facebook into sharing the contact data it so closely guards. – …
A small spat highlights a big issue: who owns your online identity?
SUCH is Facebook’s attraction these days that even Britain’s monarch has finally joined the 500m-plus users of the online social network. On November 8th Queen Elizabeth II launched a Facebook page to publicise the royal family’s doings. Within a day, it had attracted almost 200,000 “likes” from around the world plus messages such as “Hello Liz xxx”. But it had also turned into a forum for an acrimonious slanging match between supporters of the monarchy and its critics.
Buckingham Palace says that the Queen’s e-mail address, if she has one, is secret. But it will not end in gmail.com. That will spare her from another wrangle—a kind of digital trade war. On November 5th Google introduced a technical change that blocks its e-mail users from automatically transferring their electronic address book in one lump when they set up a Facebook account. It is part of Google’s efforts to defend its dominance of the internet from Facebook’s growing challenge (as is Google’s announcement this week giving all its 23,000 employees a 10% pay rise and a $1,000 bonus, which is an attempt to halt defections to Facebook). …
Facebook led Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and others in display ads, capturing nearly one quarter of all impressions in the U.S. as its 500 million users engaged with the social network. – Facebook led all online publishers with nearly one
quarter of all display impressions, a trend that should amplify fears for Google,
Yahoo and Microsoft that the social network is becoming a digital ad
clearinghouse.
Display ads include the graphical online ads that dot
Facebook’s Web pages, a…
Facebook Nov. 9 accused Google of being open where it is convenient. Google warned users who try to pull Gmail data into Facebook that they won’t be able to get it out. – It sure has gotten ugly between Google and Facebook with
regard to data portability, an industry catch-phrase used to describe the ability
for users to import and export data from Web services such as social networks.
Breaking its code of silence regarding Google’s
allegations that it is a close…
Readers have asked me several technical questions recently about Washington’s Blog.One asked if I had intentionally programmed it so that people could only print the first page of a post. I didn’t, and don’t know how to fix that.Another asked: Hey, I…
RockMelt Nov. 7 launched to limited beta its social Web browser that lets users connect to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. This connection lets users post status updates and share other bits of content right from the browser window. The idea is that users needn’t go directly to Facebook and Twitter to share or even Google.com to search. Flock had a similar idea in 2007, but failed to catch on with the bulk of users even as Google Chrome carved out an 8.5 percent browser market share. RockMelt is actually a lot like Chrome in functionality, offering an incognito mode for private Web browsing. There is reason for this. RockMelt is built on top of Chromium, the open-source project that backs Chrome. Navigating amid the different social tools in RockMelt was a breeze, and this is where RockMelt is a cut above Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari Web browsers. Check out our initial RockMelt set-up and tour in this eWEEK slide show. – …
Jimmy Kimmel has found his calling: Getting you to trim your Facebook friend fat. The knee-slapping comic and host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live has appointed himself the unofficial Sheriff of Social Media as the host of National UnFriend Day. He suggested that people take that day to go through their list and unfriend any [...]
