Facebook Patents News Feed
Facebook has secured a patent “Dynamically providing a news feed about users of a social network” for their news feed feature. The patent’s existence could mean stopping other social networks, such as Twitter and floundering MySpace, from allowing members to share news updates.
Google Adds MySpace Status To Search
Twitter status dominates Google’s real time search, and MySpace updates will now appear too. Will this be useful? Google also plans to include updates from FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca.
Google Buys Social Startup Aardvark
Google has acquired search startup Aardvark for $50 million in its latest attempt to beef up its standing in the growing social search market. Aardvark was founded in late 2007 by Max Ventilla, Damon Horowitz, Nathan Stoll, and Rob Spiro.
A description of what is Aardvark:
Aardvark is a new kind of tool that lets you tap into the knowledge and experience of friends and friends-of-friends.
Send Aardvark a question (from the web, IM, email, Twitter, or iPhone) and you’ll get a quick, helpful response from someone with…
- The right knowledge and experience to help
- Similar tastes
- Friends in common
Google Buzz Challenges Facebook And Twitter
Google Buzz makes Gmail social by letting users view media and status updates shared online by their friends. This format is popular with Facebook and Twitter. Status update through Buzz is not limited to 140 characters.
From Google Blog: Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google’s experience in organizing information can help solve. We’ve recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we’re taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.
Facebook Status Replaces Teen Blogging
A new study has shown that young adults are no longer interested in blogging to keep in touch with friends and now is opting for Facebook and Twitter to do the same function.
From Pew Internet & American Life Project report:
Since 2006, blogging has dropped among teens and young adults while simultaneously rising among older adults. As the tools and technology embedded in social networking sites change, and use of the sites continues to grow, youth may be exchanging ‘macro-blogging’ for microblogging with status updates.
Facebook Revamped Website To Celebrate 6th Birthday
Facebook celebrated its 6 years old birthday with a website facelift. This is the first major homepage revamp since last October.
From Facebook blog: …we’ve been testing several different designs of the home page to improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features…we started rolling out the most recent navigation updates to help you find what you are looking for on Facebook. Now from the top and left menus you can quickly get to what’s new and important.
Sun CEO Schwartz Tweeted His Resignation With $12 Million
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz is the first CEO that tweeted his resignation with a 140-character haiku:
Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more.
He walks out with $12 million and it is reported that take over giant Oracle CEO dislike him.
Astronauts Send First Tweet From Space
NASA Flight Engineer TJ Creamer sent the first Twitter tweet from space on the International Space Station. The ISS received a software upgrade where the astronauts will have personal access to the Internet and the World Wide Web.
Creamer tweeted: Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station — the 1st live tweet from Space! 
More soon, send your ?s
Bill Gates Now On Twitter
The real co-founder of Microsoft and previous CEO, Bill Gates, is now using Twitter. Check it out at: http://twitter.com/billgates
Privacy Groups Complain To FTC About Facebook
Users have complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about Facebook’s new privacy policies that violate federal law. Most of the complaints are directed at the default privacy setting on Facebook now opens users status updates to the entire Web, unless they proactively takes steps to modify the settings.
The new privacy settings has recently exposed personal photos of the 25 years old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
