Facebook For Life

The new Facebook Timeline will allow you to promote your key life moments, from birth.  Whether this is a good or bad thing is very much a matter of personal preference, but given the global interest in genealogy they could be on to a winner. The new profile is clean and uncluttered in its design and usability.

Click here to see the promotional page and sign up.

Short Takes: Would You Like Skype With That?

The scenario goes likes this: Microsoft buys Skype and becomes a major shareholder in Facebook, Google tries gazzump Facebook by announcing the launch of Google+ which has integrated video chat, Facebook counters by announcing that it will be incorporating Skype video chat.

Not that this pairing should surprise folks as Facebook and Skype already share some of the same instant messaging tools.

Where Google+ still has the edge is its ability for group video chat whereas Facebook's video service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face.




The biggest winner out of all of this would appear to be Microsoft.

Related articles

• Facebook Expected to Announce Video Chat With Skype (searchenginewatch.com)
• Sparks, Circles and Hangouts - thedigitalconsultant
• The Unthinkable Happens: Facebook to Improve Chat, Jumps on Skype Bandwagon. (blogherald.com)

Mark Zuckerberg Is a CIA Agent

CIA's 'Facebook' Program Dramatically Cut Agency's Costs

Satire from The Onion: In which Facebook is praised for slashing the CIA's expenditure by making it easier to monitor all of the Earth's peoples.

Twitter evidently was less successful and should be closed down as "after 400 billion tweets not one bit of useful info was found"!

FarmVille, is credited by the Agency with "pacifying as many as 85 million people after unemployment rates rose dramatically."

There Is No Second

It is a truism that those companies who are first out of the blocks with an innovative idea are often the most successful. While 'first user advantage' doesn't last for long, it does set the pace for others to try and follow.

This is equally true in the wonderful world of social media. Those who come to the table late are left with the crumbs.

Witness AOL's purchase of Bebo for $US850 million . They dropped it from their company portfiolio this past summer for under $10 million.

Rick Aristotle Munarriz of the Motley Fool says that:

"MySpace is trying to do what Friendster, Tribe.net, Bebo, and any social network that squandered its 15 minutes has failed to do."

"I guess MySpace missed the memo. You only get one shot to matter in Web 2.0, and its time came and went. News Corp. should have either cashed out of MySpace when it was hot -- or at the very least, peaking. We're living in Facebook's world now, until that site somehow stumbles."

or one could take the Microsoft route and try to buy the most world's successful social media platform.

David Kirkpatrick stated in his book “The Facebook Effect” that Microsoft made an offer of $15 billion for Facebook:

"Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had flown to Palo Alto to visit his young counterpart twice. As Zuckerberg is wont to do, he took Ballmer on a long walk. Zuckerberg told Ballmer that Facebook was raising money at a $15 billion valuation. But Ballmer had come with something more sweeping in mind. “Why don’t we just buy you for $15 billion?” he replied, according to a very knowledgeable source. Zuckerberg was unmoved even by this offer. “I don’t want to sell the company unless I can keep control,” said Zuckerberg, as he always did in such situations.

Ballmer took this reply as a sort of challenge. He went back to Microsoft’s headquarters and concocted a plan intended to acquire Facebook in stages over a period of years to enable Zuckerberg to keep calling the shots. But Zuckerberg rejected all the overtures. What Ballmer finally agreed to instead was an advertising deal that included a provision for Microsoft to pay a huge amount, $240 million, for a sliver of Facebook, 1.6%. Microsoft’s investment gave Facebook an implied value of $15 billion.”

Microsoft's Senior Director of Corporate Strategy and Acquisitions Fritz Lanman  has since confirmed that this offer took place

Quite apart from acquisitions, companies are beginning to realise that social medai responsibility needs to be embedded within an organisation and not reside soley in the hands of a few specialist staff.

The New York Times for example have just eliminated it post of social media editor in an acknowledgement that such activity is a shared responsibility.

“Social media can’t belong to one person; it needs to be part of everyone’s job. It has to be integrated into the existing editorial process and production process. I’m convinced that’s the only way we’re going to crack the engagement nut.” says New York Times Social Media Editor Jennifer Preston.

Related articles

• Microsoft: Zuckerberg Nixed $15 Billion Buyout Bid (cbsnews.com)
• Zuckerberg pledges to donate most of his wealth to charity (newstatesman.com)

Mixed Reviews For Facebook's "Non-Email"

In an earlier post we revealed that Facebook has plans to launch a competitive email platform.

There have been very mixed reviews of Facebook's new "email" system since its announcement by CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

"Emailing by Facebook? Good luck" says the Guardian who describe it as fiendishly tricky.

Forbes describes it as a "big deal for business" and  social media in general as "the next big thing to improve productivity".

Gizmodo has the most practical analysis detailed the system as having every email, text, and chat in one place.

Facebook's stated aim is to automatically deliver messages where it thinks a user is most likely to see them, create a unified history of the messages, and filter the threads by relationship with the sender to create a Social Inbox.

But if the complexity of Facebook's new non-email system floors you, why not do the next best thing and follow comedian Jimmy Kimmel's advice in the video below; celebrate  "National Unfriend Day".




Related articles

• Emailing by Facebook? Good luck (guardian.co.uk)
• "Facebook Messages" Is Cool But Email Isn't Going Anywhere ! (techpluto.com)
• Why Facebook Messages Will Not Be My Primary Email (ghacks.net)
• In-Depth Review: Facebook's New Message Inbox Product (insidefacebook.com)

New Facebook Features

Facebook has released a series of new features which will be welcomed by most.

The groups functionality offers real opportunities for targeted communications as this video below explains.  It has always been a failing of Facebook that any communication went to every friend listed. This doesn't need to be the case anymore.



There are a variety of privacy settings that can be applied ranging from public to completely secret. Group chat is included.

A new privacy dashboard lets you see how apps are using your info in one page and you can change the settings.

You are now able to download your total uploads to Facebook in a zip file. It presents in an html coded format.

What's included in the zip?

 - Profile information
 - Your friends list
 - View of your wall
 - Photo albums
 - Videos
 - Notes you created
 - Events you have RSVPed “yes” to
 - Inbox messages

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