Facebook Connect is missing from Apple’s new social network, iTunes Ping, after it was apparently working on Wednesday night. There seem to be mixed messages coming from Apple, according to interviews that All Things D’s Kara Swisher conducted with Apple honcho Steve Jobs and VP Phil Schiller.

Jobs said Facebook Connect wasn’t in Ping, and gave a dismissive “I guess we could do that.” Meanwhile, Schiller said you can absolutely find your friends on Ping using Facebook Connect. Both are wrong, though: Apple apparently DID do that, and now the feature is gone.

However, there are clues that Facebook Connect was meant to be in iTunes. If you’re following no one, you’ll see a message on your People page that says, “You are not following anyone. Connect with Facebook, search for people, invite friends, or follow recommended people to get started.” Facebook Connect is even mentioned in the Welcome to Ping email you get when you first sign up.

At this point, it’s a mystery whether Facebook Connect will be back, but I hope it will. Although Jobs says Facebook demanded “onerous terms” from Apple, using Facebook Connect is way faster than manually adding all your friends to Ping. Hey Steve, can we get a Twitter or Gmail connect, at least?

[via Engadget]

Facebook Connect pulled from Apple’s iTunes Ping originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Page views aren’t everything, though. Reddit’s ‘forum’ style (and lighter format) is conducive to fast, frantic communication — not to mention, Reddit users are actually having a conversation. I’m sure Reddit users hammer F5 more than their Digg brethren, too. Still, all talk of Reddit being the stumpy runt of social news aggregation should probably cease.

In terms of unique visitors, I’m fairly sure Reddit is still some way behind Digg, but at the same time there’s evidence to suggest that independent analysis of Digg’s traffic isn’t accurate. One thing’s for sure, though: if the titanic feces-flinging storm that surrounds Digg V4 continues, Digg won’t stay on top for long.

Digg exposes its monthly website traffic — turns out Reddit might be bigger originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Despite what you may have heard in the last two weeks, Digg is not dead. It is, however, a very different service than when it started. What used to be a great place to find interesting links and hilarious commentary has become, for almost all intents and purposes, a Twitter clone.

Digg isn’t about to shut its doors, but I do get the feeling that regular, loyal Diggers are looking to take their custom elsewhere. Judging by the ‘Reddit incident‘ on Monday, where Digg users revolted in favor of Reddit, it looks like a mass exodus might already have begun.


So, if you’re a disenfranchised Digger, or if you’re just looking for the best of the rest when it comes to social news aggregators and content discovery, take a look at this list of alternatives!

Continue reading 5 great content discovery sites which aren’t Digg

5 great content discovery sites which aren’t Digg originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Apple has finally unveiled iTunes 10, and it comes with Ping, a built-in social network for music. Based on Steve Jobs’ demo, Ping looks just like a Facebook/Twitter hybrid. The social graph connects the same way Twitter’s does — with a “follow” system, and a single on-or-off privacy setting — but the activity stream is very reminiscent of Facebook. Posting photos and comments and “liking” things are all part of the package.

The music side reminds me of a third social network: last.fm. It uses iTunes data to create custom charts based on the people you follow. Bands can have their own Ping accounts, too, where they can be followed and interact with fans. If you follow a band, you’ll get alerts when they’re playing shows near you, and you can click a button to indicate that you’re going. Of course, it’s all pulled off with Apple’s typical visual slickness.

The new iTunes 10 logo might be the bigger topic of controversy amongst design nerds. We all knew it was time for the CD to go (iTunes downloads now outsell CDs, anyway), but what do we think of the new glowing blue circle?

Share Tweet

iTunes 10 introduces Ping social network for music (and a new logo!) originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

This morning, I had the pleasure of chatting to a charming British expatriate currently living in Israel. We started with Skype but quickly moved to Rounds’ new Facebook video chat app. It took all of 60 seconds to be won over by Rounds and the cute, intimate conversations that it catalyses. In a single sentence, Rounds is video chat with a bunch of buttons that you can push to make things more friendly.

With that said, I don’t much care for the interface — it really feels quite cramped inside Facebook’s mega-narrow center column — but it’s easy enough to use with a bit of trial and error. Almost the entire UI changes as you mouse-over things, which is probably quite handy after you get used to it, but it’s confusing at first.

Back to the topic of friendliness: I have to admit, I was pretty dubious at first. Rounds is a Flash app, and my only prior experience with Flash-based video chat was a brief stint as an anonymous phallus on Chatroulette. But I needn’t have worried; the entire service seems to be about bringing people closer together, but without the massive spam of dribbly man bits.

Continue reading Rounds provides fun and intimate video chat via Facebook

Rounds provides fun and intimate video chat via Facebook originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 01 Sep 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Foursquare is a location-based application that’s available for Android, iPhone, Palm, and BlackBerry. Many of you are probably already familiar with it or, at least, have seen people showing you their location on your Twitter and Facebook pages. Foursquare serves both a social broadcasting and a business promotion purpose. For those who just want to let their friends in the electronic world know where they are, what they are doing, and how they feel about it, Foursquare is a great application. For businesses, it creates a new medium to spread the word about your products and services, specifically if you have a fixed location.

Setup in the Foursquare application is pretty straightforward. When you first open the app, it brings you to a home screen with three tabs: Friends, Places, and Me.

The Friends tab allows you to see where people you have connected with on Foursquare have most recently checked in. By touching any of these friends, you are instantly able to view their info, which includes where they were last seen and various options that they control so that you can communicate directly with them via SMS, email, Twitter, or phone. In my experience with using these contact methods, you are likely to find that many folks aren’t even aware that their information is out there on this application for the world to see. That being said, it is up to you to go to your homepage through the Web browser (not the application on your phone) and edit your privacy settings.

Continue reading App Review: Foursquare for Android

App Review: Foursquare for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Big changes for third-party apps on Twitter today: they can no longer require you to log in with your Twitter password. Twitter’s mandatory switch to OAuth authentication has finally happened, which means you have more control over which apps can access your account.

In case you’ve never signed into a Twitter app with OAuth, here’s how it works: you click to sign in, and get redirected to Twitter, where you’ll see “approve” and “deny” buttons. If you approve the app, you’ll be signed in, and the app will be added to a list in your Twitter settings.

The cool (and secure) thing about OAuth is that you can go to that list and revoke access from any app at any time. The apps you revoke never had your password, so it’s your decision whether they can get to your account. The only downside to OAuth is that some apps you use might not have implemented it yet, and those apps will be broken until they do. There should be a lot of updates going out today, so check all of your Twitter apps to see if new versions are out.

Just be careful about how you update TweetDeck! I’ll tell you why, after the jump.

Continue reading Twitter Tuesday — OAuth is here, password-based authentication is dead

Twitter Tuesday — OAuth is here, password-based authentication is dead originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

For folks who are sick of checking in at a favorite venue on Foursquare all the time, with no clue when they’ll finally become mayor, relief is here! Now, when you check in on Foursquare, you’ll see how many check-ins you have toward mayorship, along with your overall total. If you’re within 10 days of becoming mayor, you’ll also see how many days you have to go. If you need more detailed info about your empire of mayorships, try Mayorama for iPhone.

Don’t discount how much people care about mayorships, either. A recent study found that mayorship battles were one of the major reasons people use Foursquare’s “off the grid” check-ins, which give points while concealing your location from your friends.

Foursquare is becoming a bigger deal all the time, and it now has 3 million users worldwide. That’s compared to the 105 million that Twitter announced back in April at the Chirp conference.

Yeah, I know that Twitter has grown since then, but it does help put things into perspective, considering that Foursquare is a newer company. And Facebook Places hasn’t hurt Foursquare, either. In fact, Places launch day was Foursquare’s biggest day of signups yet.

Foursquare breaks 3 million users, now tells you when you’ll be mayor originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Everyone knows that users hate change, so it’s no surprise that the new version of Digg has got people up in arms. Despite new user registration for the site going way up since the launch of v.4, people have identified about a dozen separate issues with the new layout, from actual bugs to petty nitpicks. Digg’s Kevin Rose addressed them in a new blog post, explaining the reasoning behind some changes, and promising fixes for others.

Here are the key points:

The Upcoming section, removed because it got only a tiny percentage of Digg’s total page views, is coming back in some form. The bury button is also gone, but it’s not coming back. Rose says removing the button was a way of shutting down the organized “bury brigades,” who were systematically censoring certain viewpoints and topics on Digg.

There are a ton of bugs that Rose acknowledges and promises to fix, including issues with RSS feeds, third-party Digg tools, and missing favorites. It sounds like some people think the new design of the site ought to be filed as a bug, but Kevin’s response, apart from pledging to look into some specific usability issues, is basically that you’ll just have to get used to it.

New Digg has tons of issues, Kevin Rose responds originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here

Apparently, flashy features have been put on the back burner in favor of working on a system of intuitively deciding which groups have access to your information. It sounds like the four NYU kids who founded the project are taking the privacy angle seriously. That’s good, considering that the Diaspora concept arose in response to Facebook’s bungling of its own privacy challenges.

Diaspora, the open Facebook competitor, will launch on 9/15 originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

More: continued here