Filed under: Business, Social Software

Social networking giant Facebook just scored an intellectual property victory by patenting its News Feed, the constantly-updating stream of friends’ activities that users see when they sign into the site. The patent, uncovered by AllFacebook, also includes News Feed features like advertising, filters, and searching the feed.

The original application was filed by Mark Zuckerberg and half a dozen other inventors on behalf of Facebook back in 2006, but wasn’t approved until this week. Facebook hasn’t yet hinted at going after similar social networks for patent infringement, and it’s unclear how much power this gives the company.

The patent, which seems broadly-worded, to say the least, covers “generating news items regarding activities associated with a user of a social network environment and attaching an informational link associated with at least one of the activities, to at least one of the news items, as well as limiting access to the news items to a predetermined set of viewers and assigning an order to the news items.”

It seems a bit scary, but this is hardly Facebook’s attempt to build a Death Star, because what’s missing from the patent is status updates. The feed of news from your friends — including actions like adding friends, posting new photos, and making comments — is clearly covered here, but I don’t see anything about the Twitter-esque features of Facebook. If you’re worrying about an ultimate legal showdown between Facebook and Twitter over who owns microblogging, you can relax. This will probably not be it.

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Facebook snaps up a patent on its News Feed, but not status updates originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Utilities, Social Software, Android

Continue reading Recognizr brings amazing facial recognition to Android devices

Recognizr brings amazing facial recognition to Android devices originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software

Between December 2008 and 2009, the total time spent on social networks rose by a massive 82% — from an average of three hours a month, to almost six! To nerds like you and I, six hours doesn’t sound like a huge amount, but when you figure in the ‘casuals’ that bring the average down — like your grandmother — it’s a little scary.

And it’s all because of darned Twitter and Facebook! Yes, they’re to blame: other major social networks (MySpace, LinkedIn, Classmates) saw a decline in unique users throughout 2009. Twitter, bolstered by a humongous 579% gain from 2.7 million to 18.1 million unique users per month, saw the greatest percentile growth in the social networking sector. Facebook, with a minuscule 200% expansion in 2009, is still by far the largest network with 207 million unique visitors in December 2009.

While worldwide average growth for social networks came in at 82%, the U.S. in particular saw a 143% increase. Believe it or not though, Australia actually clocks up the highest average use of social networks: they spend almost 7 hours a month, while the US and UK spend a paltry 6 hours each!

For more stats, read the full Nielson report.

[via Brian Solis]

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Driven by Facebook and Twitter, time spent on social networks soars by 82% originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Social Software, web 2.0, Android

A big part of getting a location-based app right is — shocker! — providing an accurate location.

Gowalla is using that principle to get a leg up in its battle with Foursquare for location-based check-in supremacy. Gowalla now uses Skyhook in its Android app, which means it’s providing some of the best location data around.

The Android app is currently in beta, although it’s not highly publicized. You can read about it and download it from Gowalla’s Get Satisfaction page.

The Gowalla iPhone app was already Skyhook-enabled, and the developers noticed that it was a lot better at pinpointing locations than its Android counterpart.

Fortunately, there’s a Skyhook SDK that Android devs can use for their own location-aware apps. Foursquare hasn’t added Skyhook to its Android app, as far as I know, but the third-party Mac desktop app FoursquareX uses Skyhook to find locations via wifi.

Gowalla’s Android app is in beta, uses Skyhook for accurate geolocation originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Internet, Social Software, Ask DLS

Today I tried doing something which seemed really simple at first glance: I set out to get a list of Facebook status updates on my desktop. Just the updates. No pictures, no pokes, no Farmville. I kind of wanted to be able to post replies, but that wasn’t super-important.

And after spending quite a bit of time, I simply couldn’t find anything worthy. I found Seesmic and TweetDeck. Beautiful looking applications, each taking over 100MB of RAM. Woah. Then I thought, “there must be a Windows 7 Gadget for something like this!”. Looking through the (really lame) gadget gallery, I did find a few Facebook gadgets but they were all really lame. At this point I was so desperate I even tried installing the FriendBar Firefox add-on, which was just as cruddy I feared it would be.

And I know Microsoft has that Silverlight client which is supposed to be very cool, but again, it’s a memory hog and total overkill for what I need. I just want to see the status updates scrolling on my desktop — no more, no less. And I don’t want it to take over 30MB of RAM.

At this point I turn to you, dear readers. I’m looking for something which is Windows-native, minimalistic, and actually works.

Any suggestions?

Ask DLS: best desktop Facebook client? originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Fun, Social Software

… well, not really, but almost!

The title of this entry probably really excited you, eh? How sad is that…

Anyway, while you can’t actually update Facebook from your calculator (at least, I don’t think you can?), with ‘Funny Facebook‘ you can do the next best thing and pretend. The website has seemingly been crafted by someone with a limited grasp of English, and I’ve not heard of half the devices in the list…but who cares when you can update your status from Santa Claus?

I know what you’re thinking: how would you have made it through Monday without this awesome Facebook hack? I just don’t know…

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Update your Facebook status via calculator, PS3, or even Santa Claus! originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Business, Social Software, web 2.0

Facebook just acquired something called Octazen Solutions, a company that most people (myself included) had never heard of until yesterday. Even Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington had to ask “What did Facebook just buy?” Arrington and others talked to their industry sources, and the word around the web is that Octazen is an incredibly successful data-scraping operation, grabbing users’ social graphs from one service and porting them to another.

Octazen could certainly use their methods of avoiding the usual restrictions on scraping (stuff like API rate limits) for sketchy purposes, like selling users’ data, but Facebook might have more benign intentions for its new acquisition. See, Facebook wants as many users with as many friends as possible — it’s good for business! — and it’s easier to find your Facebook friends by connecting with some sites than others.

You can already find new Facebook buddies via major services like AIM and Gmail, but Octazen could use its mad scraping skills to make it possible for Facebook to determine user relationships on other social networks and email services around the web. We obviously have to wait and see what happens, but I suspect this move has to do with Facebook’s push for users to consolidate their web presence around Facebook.


[via GigaOM, via TechCrunch]

Facebook acquires contact-importing company Octazen originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 21 Feb 2010 14:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Security, Social Software, web 2.0

When Facebook revamped its privacy settings back in December, users gained the ability to control the audience for each individual item they published. Links, status updates, photos … all shareable with specific groups and people.

Unfortunately, there was still one big loophole: apps. They could publish stories to your feed with none of the privacy controls you’d get on a regular item. Facebook finally changed that this week, with a privacy update.

Now, whenever an application posts something to your account, you’ll see the lock icon that represents privacy settings, just like you would with a normal item. You can click on it to choose from Facebook’s four default levels of privacy (everyone, friends and networks, friend of friends, and only friends) or individually customize who you’re sharing with. Again, this is nothing new — the news is that it now extends to apps, too, making them less of a privacy risk.

Facebook introduces detailed privacy settings for applications originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Web services, Google, Social Software

A class action complaint filed in San Jose federal court alleges that Google Inc. broke the law when its controversial Google Buzz service shared personal data without the consent of users. Although Google quickly responded to the privacy concerns and disabled the autofollow feature that connects new Buzz users automatically to their most frequently-emailed contacts Eva Hibnick, a Florida woman, filed the lawsuit on Wednesday. It is a local class action lawsuit as Hibnick’s case seeks to bring the complaint against Google on behalf of all Gmail users.

The legal complaint accuses Google of breaking various electronic communications laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Google turned Gmail “into a social networking service and that’s not what they signed up for, Google imposed that on them without getting their consent,” said Kimberly Nguyen, consumer privacy counsel with EPIC of Washington, D.C. Nguyen is quoted as saying, “The bottom line is, users should have meaningful control over their information.”

Google declined to comment on the case, saying only “We haven’t yet been served, so we can’t comment on the suit until we’ve had a chance to review it.”

If you’re worried about your privacy and want to kill the auto-follow feature off see our article on how to turn off Buzz or our complete Buzz coverage here.

[Via San Francisco Chronicle]

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Google Buzz faces privacy lawsuit originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 08:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Video, Web services, Social Software

TinyChat has launched a new video chat service that’s very clearly inspired by the booming Chatroulette phenomenon. It’s called TinyChat Next, after Chatroulette’s “next” button, and offers a similar opportunity to chat via webcam with a random selection of strangers. TinyChat Next may not have the same level of wackiness and nudity that Chatroulette is quickly becoming known for, but it does have something CR doesn’t: a “room” feature.

TinyChat Next lets anyone start a room that other users can enter. Your selection of chat partners will still be random, but you’ll chat with random people in the same room. This sounds like it simulates the effect of going to a party or one of those annoying networking events and talking to the people you see there. Chatroulette seems like more of a fun, wacky, free-for-all than this room business, but grouping things up by topic helps give TinyChat more legitimacy, and might reduce your chances of seeing something unpleasant.

I can see why rooms exist, but they defeat the purpose of a Chatroulette-style service by narrowing down the pool of people you could potentially chat with. It’ll be interesting to see if this turns out to be a brilliant idea, or just an attempt to capitalize on the already-ingenious Chatroulette concept.

[via TechCrunch]

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TinyChat launches its own group version of Chatroulette originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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