Buzz’s was heavily criticized for its default privacy settings in the beginning which revealed names of Gmail contacts publicly or the exact location of a mobile user who posted updates on Buzz.

Google made the decision to retire Google Buzz shortly after the release of the new social networking site Google+. The decision was announced on October 14 that Google Buzz would be shut down along with the Buzz Api in a few weeks time. A Google Buzz help page explains the consequences of retiring the service.

Google Buzz is going away, but your posts are yours to keep

In a few weeks we’ll be retiring Google Buzz. At that time you won’t be able to create any new posts, but your existing content will remain accessible [..]

There are two locations where Google Buzz users can access their past messages and posts. First in the Google Profile under the Buzz entry

Here you see all posts of Buzz users as well as comments and likes if you are the owner the the Google+ profile.

The second option is to use Google Takeout, Google’s data exporting service, to download Google Buzz data to a local computer system. Google Takeout can be accessed here.

The service generates a file and size listing of the Google Buzz data. The scan may take a while depending on the number of posts a user has made on Google Buzz. A click on create archive prepares the selected data so that it can be downloaded to the local system in the end. Each post on Buzz is stored as a html document inside a zip.

Have you been using Google Buzz? (thanks Roman Sharp for the tip)

Some users on the other hand face a dilemma now with the rise of Google Plus: Time. Most users have accounts on Facebook and Twitter, which they spend some time on. Some may have the time to add a third social networking site to that list, others like me do not have the time to maintain three networking sites.

What will those users do? Will they use cross-posting tools to post their messages on all three sites, will they ditch one of the sites, or will they reduce other activities to spend time on all three sites?

If you look at the media coverage, you might think that it is all about a showdown between Google Plus and Facebook, and that Twitter is just another bystander. But is that really true? If you look at Google Plus, you will notice that the service is offering most, if not all, of the features of Twitter. You can follow and be followed, post public messages or messages to one or multiple recipients. Plus, there are not any size limitations and additional features like hangouts available.

Facebook on the other hand has a lot to offer that Google Plus is not currently. Look at games and apps for instance, which is surely one of the main reasons for the social networking site’s success.

As a webmaster, I have to use all three services, because it affects my business. Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search services are putting more weight on social metrics than ever before, and that is going to increase in the future. If you are not part of it, your site or service will be old news eventually.

This leads back to the title: Are you using social networking sites currently? If so, do you have plans to change the sites that you are using? Will you include Google Plus in your networking activities?

Twitter was originally a text-only messaging service but this didn’t stop users from utilizing third-party services to share photos. Twitpic, Instagram and yFrog are just a few examples of such services whose future is now uncertain. In an attempt to control the revenue stream and ensure a more streamlined, consistent experience for users, Twitter is also putting the “smack-down” on third-party client for photo-sharing services. The company has already acquired Tweetie and re-released it as the official Twitter client on OS X. Recently, it was announced that Twitter had acquired Tweet Deck.

His goal in acquiring these programs, says Costolo, is to encourage app developers to “move up on the value chain.” Citing an app the Red Cross is utilizing along with the app Klout as examples of his point, he talked about adding value to the Twitter ecosystem.

Costolo is the current CEO of Twitter, following Evan Williams, who stepped down as CEO last year after almost exactly 2 years in that position.
Not only is Twitter launching its own photo-sharing service; it’s also improving the search engine it employs. The goal is to have results become more personalized making search queries come back with different content depending on who the user is and which people are on their personal network. Twitter plans to have videos and photos come back on the results page, as well.

The company behind the scene, so to speak, is Photobucket which delivers the storage and infrastructure to host these photos. The new photo service is currently rolled out, users can expect it to become available in the coming weeks.

Twitter, developed in March of ’06 by Jack Dorsey and launched in July of that year, has gained popularity in leaps and bounds since its launch. In July of 2007 it had 400,000 tweets posted per quarter. In only a year, this number grew to 100 million posts per quarter and now, with an estimated user base of over 200 million people worldwide, users of Twitter purportedly issue around a billion tweets every six days. The company reports 13 billion API requests coming in every single day. Despite being censored in Iran, China, Egypt and South Korea, Twitter continues to see rapid growth and it is generally felt that this is due to the company’s commitment to keeping up with their user base and constantly striving to improve the service and its relevance to the user community.

The gender spread is broadly equal with 54% of Facebook users being men and 46% women.  The largest groups when it comes to income are people earning between $26k and $75k.  People earning less than this make up 13% of its user base.

General awareness of the services in the minds of the general public are excellent with 88% of people aware of Facebook and 87% of people aware of Twitter.

On Twitter 27% of users log in every day and over half of all users, 52% update their status every day.  Again the income levels of users are the same as for Facebook.

As for the user ages, there’s a broad range of ages of Facebook users up to the age of 54 when it tails off.  Twitter users tend to be older but they again tail off at 54.

There can be absolutely no doubting that the Internet is anything but boring.  There are billions of websites out there and so much fantastic content that it would be impossible to get bored.  Everything from games to videos, interactive websites, chat, education it’s all there and there’s so much of it.

The problem arises when you have to find this content.  How many of you, and feel free to comment below, generally tend to go to the same websites day-in day-out, week-in, week-out?  You’d probably be surprised just how many people don’t experience the broader Internet.

I would include myself in this.  I have a hard-core of about 30 websites I visit on a regular basis and outside of that I tend not to explore too much for fun.

So why is this?  The problem lies in being able to find and access that content.  Back in the early days of the Internet we had services such as Yahoo! and AOL.  These companies aggregated content into portals and delivered us chunks of the Internet that were vetted, relevant to their users and interesting.  There was frequent criticism though of these services, especially AOL, just giving people access to a small walled-garden, and not to the wider world.  Eventually they fell out of favour with the general public and companies like Google stepped up to fill the gap.

Google’s approach made a lot of sense to people, they would place at or near the top of their search results the websites that people used the most, that were the highest rated and linked to.  If you searched for anything on Google in the early days then you could guarantee to get the most popular websites for whatever category you wanted.

But then the Internet exploded in size and became commercialised.  Now for any search you perform you’ll have to wade through a mountain of sales, price comparison, fake search and other services to find the exciting and engaging content you want.

This is where services like Bing stepped in with its decision engine.  With Bing Microsoft attempted to make search smarter by predicting what it was you were really looking for and giving you that.  It is a popular approach and one that’s now often copied.  The problem with this approach though is that these heuristic search engines rarely work properly or effectively.  Whatever you search for you will still be bombarded with fake sites, search sites, price comparison and shopping sites and so on.

What the Internet needs, and needs badly, is a way to be able to aggregate the most fantastic content on the web so that you can find it quickly, efficiently and with the minimum of fuss.

To a certain extent social networking websites have stepped into the mould here and Facebook has been particularly successful at helping people to find and share engaging and interesting content.  Even Facebook now though is beginning to sag under their weight of commercialism and it’s turning people away.  I’ve seen regular Facebookers’ using the service much less than they used to as a result.

So what’s the solution?  One section of society already has it.  Young children have plenty of services tailored for them where not only the most appropriate content but also the most interesting content is aggregated from across the web.  These services aren’t free but they’re an invaluable extra for parents who want to keep their children engaged, entertained and educated, while at the same time keeping them safe from advertising and inappropriate content.

Could a similar service work for adults?  I’d argue that yes it would, and moreover that it would be something that a great many people would be prepared to pay for.

Heuristic technologies exist today that can deliver this.  Companies can use their own computer systems and black/white lists to block inappropriate content.  They can monitor what websites and content we like and enjoy, give us more like that and ask us with questionnaires what subjects we like and what types of experiences we want online.

Is this giving up valuable information to advertisers who can deliver targeted ads to you?  Is this giving up the freedom to experience a truly independent Internet?  The answer to both questions is yes, but I’m not sure how many people would be too concerned.

Another walled garden, or a choice of them, where we could easily find and experience the best on the Internet that’s relevant to us would be a very valuable service indeed.  In fact as social networking has to evolve into something I would argue that this is one distinctly possible future.

The Internet is simply too big to navigate on your own.  We’ll never find all the best stuff out there and the main search engines are all letting us down in this regard.

So bring on the walled garden, make the Internet fun and engaging again and keep us busy and occupied for years to come.  It wouldn’t be our only way to experience the web, just a portal website or browser plug-in that we could use.  We’d also still have Google, Bing and all the traditional ways of find our way around.  It would be an invaluable service for many however an I’d certainly pay something for that!

It shows clearly the lack of Facebook access in China and, frankly how many other countries around the world use the world’s largest social networking site.

He also has a series of other maps showing social networking across the globe dating back to last year.  You can view the maps at his website.

The social map shows the dominant social networking site in every country and on every continent on earth. The map, which is based on December 2010 data. Facebook is dominating North America, Europe, Africa, Australia and most of South America.

Other social networking site that dominate at least one country are Orkut in Brazil, QZone in China, V Kontakte in Russia and Mixi in Japan.

Little Katie said about the bullying “The first grade boys are teasing me at lunch because I have a Star Wars water bottle.  They say it’s only for boys.  Every day they make fun of me for drinking out of it.  I want them to stop, so I’ll just bring a pink water bottle.”

ChigacoNow first reported the story last week as part of an anti-bullying awareness week but since then the story has gone viral with over 1,700 comments and over 11,000 Facebook likes.  Users of Twitter then picked up the story using the hashtag #MayTheForceBeWithKatie and now the story has spread internationally.

A new Facebook event “Support Star Wars and Geek Pride for Katie” is urging attendees, of which there are currently almost 1,200, to “wear a Star Wars tee shirt or any other piece of paraphernalia to show that you support Katie” (at gHacks we’re happy to oblige with this photo of some very fetching lady Stormtroopers, click the image for the photo credit.)

While this story is light-hearted, it also makes an important statement about the web today and the power it can wield.  While thousands of people supporting Katie online will probably have little or no actual effect on the children bullying her in the playground, it’s a wonderful example of the public rallying around a story to raise awareness of a serious issue.  Bullying can have very unpleasant consequences at any age.

Katie is now carrying her Star Wars drinks bottle to school with pride though I can only wonder what would have happened should she open her lunch box to find one of these.

The research, for which 50,000 people in 46 countries were interviewed showed that Japan, probably the most tech-savvy country on the planet, is also the one where people have, on average, the least number of friends online.

The figures showed that Japanese people had an average of only 29 online friends compared to the top-rated country Malaysia where Internet users have an average of 233.  Elsewhere in the far east, the Chinese have an average of 68 friends. 

Some of the greatest numbers are, in second place, Brazil with 231 and Norway with 217.

The research, which is extremely detailed, found that people are now using social networking websites to communicate more than email and that access via mobile devices is increasing rapidly.

In the United States, 76% of people are online with up to 66% of those people accessing the Internet from a mobile device.  Of those people online 17% said social networking was important to them.

Compare this to the UK where 83% of people are online and, while the number accessing the Internet from mobile devices is broadly the same as the UK, 24% said social networking was important to them.

Announcing the news, understandably in a Tweet, he said Twitter had to “meet its potential as a profitable company”.  He will be replaced by current Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo.

Twitter, which was founded only four years ago now has 160 million users compared to only three million in 2008.  Mr Williams said though that “Growing big is not success in itself.”

“Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world. This is no small task.  This is why I have decided to ask our COO, Dick Costolo, to become Twitter’s CEO. Starting today, I’ll be completely focused on product strategy.”

Mr Williams took over as CEO from Twitter’s other co-founder, Jack Dorsey, in 2007 when Dorsey became the company’s chairman.

This is a sign that Twitter knows that recently they’ve just been treading water in social networking and that they need to raise their game in order to maintain their status and popularity.  It will inevitably mean a move to a more advertising-oriented business model, though how Twitter’s users will take to this remains to be seen.  There are also questions over the how advertising would best work on Twitter when a great many users only access the service through third-party software or a smart phone.

Will this mean that in a couple of years we’re all bombarded by Twitter Spam.  While this is unlikely, it’s clear that the future of Twitter will be very different from the service we all use today.

Now though the service has recorded it’s 20 billionth tweet from a graphic designed based on Tokyo known as GGGGGGo_Lets_Go.

The Tweet “So that means the barrage might come back later all at once.” was recorded at 1544GMT on Saturday.  Why is this important?  It goes to demonstrate how popular Twitter is becoming as, while it took the service four years to reach it’s 10 billionth tweet, the jump to the next 10 billion took less than five months.

GGGGGGo_Lets_Go was then inundated with congratulatory messages after it was announced he’d hit the milestone and he later responded, saying ”Looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I’m getting replies from people all over the world. It’s scary. What are the chances? Maybe I’m going to die.  Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke.”

The Japanese send almost 8 million tweets every day which is about 12% of the world total and puts the country just behind the US.

Later this year Twitter is expected to open it’s first dedicated data centre in Utah, US.  The company is hoping this will prevent service outages that have plagued Twitter in recent months.

Source : BBC

Peppermint Linux wants to be a “cloud-like” distribution that gives you a number of small, cloud-based applications that combine to make a fairly interesting desktop experience. And in this article I am going to introduce you to this “new” take on the Linux desktop.

Versions

When you visit the Peppermint Linux website you will notice two different flavors of Peppermint: One and Ice. The difference is that Peppermint ICE uses a Site Specific Browser (SSB) to work with Google Chrome to launch the cloud apps. What this means is that the SSB is launched but actually downloads the app from the web. Peppermint One uses a standard tab-based browser to bring about the same experience.

Features

Of course Peppermint isn’t JUST about the “cloud”. Besides the cloud apps, Peppermint does offer a number of solid (albeit fairly standard) features:

• Pcmanfm 0.9.7
• Openbox 3.4.11.2
• Xorg 1.7.6
• Lxsession 0.4.3
• kernel 2.6.32-22

Because Peppermint relies heavily on Google, you can imagine the Start > Office folder doesn’t contain the usual OpenOffice. Instead you will find an entry for Google Docs. Both One and Ice have plenty of other features to offer, but I want to focus on the “cloud” aspects of this distribution – more specifically the Ice take on this.

Playing in the cloud with Ice

Figure 1

I have to admit I was really skeptical about using such an operating system. I figured the “clouding” of the desktop would cause the thing to run slowly and be fairly unreliable. Peppermint Ice has proven me wrong – very wrong. Using Ice to open up web-based “apps” didn’t seem to even phase the VirtualBox instance I had of Peppermint Ice. It was fast, smooth, and predictable. Figure 1 shows Ice in action.

The only real issue I have with this take on the desktop is that instead of having a single browser open with all the sites I need open, I now have multiple (albeit smaller) windows open. I think for Peppermint Ice to REALLY become useful, it’s going to need to figure out a much better way to organize and display these windows. I could see a sort of side bar with tabs…or maybe they could be widgets?

Figure 2

One really nice idea that Ice presents is the ability to quickly and easily add cloud entries to the menu. To do this Ice uses a tool aptly named “Ice”. Click on Menu > Internet and you will the entry for Ice. When you click on this a new window will open (see Figure 2) where you only need enter a few details to create a new menu entry for a site you want to use in the Ice cloud app.

You can either use your own icon or download the sites favicon for the menu entry. Once you have this finished, click Apply and the menu entry will be created. You now have a new cloud app in your menu.

Final thoughts

With just a bit of tweaking on the desktop I believe Peppermint Ice has a real winner on their hands. It’s a unique idea that needs just a bit more work to make for the ideal social desktop.

Many people were expecting this to have been released with the new Office 2010 suite recently but news soon came that it might be some time before it was released.

The Connector provides a stream of information from SharePoint, Windows Live and Social networking sites.  The connector is built into Outlook 2010 but will be available to download as a plug-in for Outlook 2003 and 2007.

The forthcoming version of Windows Live Messenger will also feature social networking integration and this is a tool that can prove useful in the business space if utilised properly.

The Outlook Social Connector (OSC) should be available for download later today.

UPDATE : You can now download the Outlook Social Connector HERE.

I have covered Gwibber, which wis the Ubuntu default social networking tool. This time around I will focus on Pino. Pino is the default social tool for Fedora 13. And although it is very much in beta (whereas Gwibber is not), I find it to be far more stable than it’s competition. I will say, however, that Pino is limited to what it can connect to. It is best (in its current state) that you consider Pino a Twitter app and nothing more. That being said, let’s take a look at Fedora’s default social tool.

Installation

As I said, this is the default tool for Fedora, so there is no need for installation. If, however, you are looking for a Facebook social tool, you can either wait and hope the developers add Facebook to this tool or you can go ahead and install Gwibber (though when you see the list of requirements, you might change your mind).

Usage

Figure 1

You will find Pino located in the Applications > Internet menu. When you first fire up Pino you will have to add an account. This is simple. All you need to do is add your login/password credentials, select the Service you are adding (by default there is only Twitter, identi.ca, and Other), and click OK. This is wher eyou find the limitation of Pino. I have confidence that Facebook and other sites will be added in the future.

Figure 2

Once you have added your account you will be amazed at how quickly the main windo (see Figure 2) fills up with your “tweets”. That is where Pino really shines – it’s speed. Pino refreshes remarkably fast.

From this main window you can also view:

Home timeline: This will display all tweets from you and those you are following.

Mentions: Anyone that has mentioned you in a tweet.

Messages: All of your direct messages.

User information: Click on a user’s icon and their information will appear.

Preferences

Figure 3

If you are like me you use your Twitter account quite a bit. To that end I always like to make sure my app is running. With Pino you can have it start automatically to the notification are and have it live in your notification area whenever it is minimized. To do this click Edit > Preferences and then click on the Desktop tab (see Figure 3).  By default Pino is set to minimize to the tray, but not to auto start. Check the box for Starting up in tray and then click Close.

Now you will need to have Pino start at login. You can not do this through Pino itself, but through System > Preferences > Startup Applications.

Figure 4

When Pino is minimized to the notification area you will see the icon shown in Figure 4. I’m sure you can guess, the icon is the small Pine tree.

Survey says!

Pino is an outstanding app for Twitter status updates. It’s not nearly as feature-rich as Gwibber, but it won’t gobble up your CPU like Gwibber is prone to. If you are looking for a tool to post twitter status updates, and you use Fedora – look no further than Pino.

Facebook Lite on the other hand was not designed for mobile users who can access Facebook mobile to access the website from mobile phones.

Users had problems with Facebook lite in the past, for some a blank login page was displayed for instance with no apparent option to resolve the situation.

Facebook has now officially confirmed that Facebook Lite has been discontinued. Facebook users trying to access Facebook Lite will be redirected to the main Facebook page instead where they can login and use the site.

No reason was given for the decision. The message posted on the official Facebook page simply states that Facebook is no longer supporting Facebook Lite and that they have learned a lot from testing the slimmed-down site.

Users with slow connections who have been using Facebook Lite previously will notice increased loading times as the regular Facebook pages contain additional elements that the lite page did not contain.

Have you been using Facebook Lite? If so, what do you think about the discontinuation?

It is a social networking service to share updates, photos, videos and more with contacts. If you think Twitter, MySpace or Facebook then you got the general idea what Google Buzz is about.

Gmail users who have already been invited to the service by Google will see a notification the next time they log into Gmail.

If they chose to use Google Buzz they are redirected to a Gmail website that looks still pretty much like Gmail but comes with a few changes.

The left sidebar has been extended as it now contains a Buzz link which leads to the Google Buzz page in Gmail.

The Buzz page contains buzz posted by the owner of the account and by the followed users. This resembles Twitter. Google will automatically pick a few contacts that will be followed automatically and will post Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public albums, and Google Chat status messages automatically on that page.

It is furthermore possible to connect additional sites to the Buzz account. This includes websites that have been added to webmaster tools, additional Google services like Youtube or Blogger as well as Twitter and Flickr. All those services and websites can be added so that updates are posted automatically in Google Buzz.

It is possible to add buzz messages which can be compared to Twitter messages sans the 140 char limit. Links and photos can be posted in the buzz message. A link will automatically be resolved and added with the website’s description while photos need to be uploaded. They will be displayed as a thumbnail directly in the message.

Some links will also be displayed directly including Youtube urls that can be played directly in the message.

Messages can either be private or public. Private messages are only accessible to specific users while public messages are visible for everyone (meaning they will be indexed and accessible by all users, not just the contacts).

Messages that have been posted can be commented on. Other social features include emailing messages, “liking” them (yes you can like your own posts).

The messages that have been posted to Buzz are accessible in Google Profiles, a service that can also be indexed in the Google search engine.

Google Buzz will be a successful service. It is linked to Gmail and all Gmail users see the notification upon login. That’s a guarantee that it will quickly reach a critical mass of users.

The real question is if it can compete with Twitter or Facebook on the same level. The answer to this has to be no unless Google has an ace up their sleeve and plans to add more functions to Google Buzz.

Have you already had a chance to test Google Buzz? What’s your opinion?

One tool for this is the very powerful, open source Elgg. Elgg offers blogging, networking, community, news feed aggregation, and file sharing. And best of all, you can retain this such that only users inside your local LAN can log on and enjoy the site.

In this article you will learn how to install Elgg to create your own social networking site.

Preparation

For the sake of simplicity we will install this tool on a Ubuntu Server (building on our Ubuntu server articles) The first thing you will need to do is to download the Elgg tar file from the Elgg download page. Once you have this file downloaded move it to /var/www and then untar or unzip the file (depending upon which you download) with the command (issued from within the /var/www/ directory):

sudo tar xvzf elgg-XXX.tar.gz

Where XXX is the release number.

Now you will want to rename the directory to make it easier for your users. So issue the command:

sudo mv elgg-XXX elgg

Where XXX is the release number.

Now you are almost ready to begin the installation. But first a few small bits of housekeeping.

The first thing you need to do is to create a database for Elgg. I always suggest using PhpMyAdmin (see my article “Install PhpMyAdmin for easy MySQL administration“). Create the database “elgg” (no quotes).

The next step is to create a directory Elgg will use for files. This directory must be outside of the Elgg root directory, so create the files directory with the command:

sudo mkdir /var/www/files

Now you must give this new directory the proper permissions, so issue the command:

sudo chmod 777 /var/www/files

One other issue on permissions. During the actual installation Elgg will need to write to the elgg and the elgg/engine directory. If the installation process can not write to these directories it will then require you to create an .htaccess file and an engines/settings.php file. I suggest do this:

1. Take note of the current permissions of your elgg and elgg/engine directory (most likely drwxr-xr-x).
2. Issue the command sudo chmod 777 /var/www/elgg.
3. Issue the command sudo chmod 777 /var/www/elgg/engine.

Now you are finished with the preparation. You are ready to fire up your web browser and begin the installation.

The installation

Fire up your browser to the address http://ADDRESS_OF_SERVER/elgg which will open up a very easy installation wizard. Because of all of your preparation work, the installation will be painless. Once you are done with the installation you will want to go back and change back the permissions of the elgg and elgg/engine directories.

Figure 1

The first thing you will do, once installation is complete, is create an initial user. This initial user will be your administrator, so make sure you use a strong password. Once you have logged in as your administrator you can begin to add widgets for users profiles and/or dashboards (see Figure 1).

In order to add widgets you just drag them from the Gallery to either the Left, Middle, or Right section for either the user profile or dashboard. It’s very simple to set up.

Final thoughts

Elgg is an outstanding social tool that will allow you to create an intra (or even extra)  social network site. It’s easy to install and even easier to manage.

It is not clear at this point in time if FriendFeed’s service will continue to be offered or if the website will be shut down eventually.

Both parties involved seem to be very happy with the deal while many members of the FriendFeed community appear disgruntled. Two of the main concerns are related to privacy. One fear is that user data will be carried over to Facebook, another that Facebook and FriendFeed are being used to address different groups of people. Many use Facebook to stay in touch with close friends and family while FriendFeed was being used as a way to communicate with groups of users who shared similar interests.

Below is the official press release that was issued by Facebook and the blog post written by FriendFeed:

PALO ALTO, CALIF.—August 10, 2009—Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

“As we spent time with Mark and his leadership team, we were impressed by the open, creative culture they’ve built and their desire to have us contribute to it,” said Paul Buchheit, another FriendFeed co-founder. Buchheit, the Google engineer behind Gmail and the originator of Google’s “Don’t be evil” motto, added, “It was immediately obvious to us how passionate Facebook’s engineers are about creating simple, ground-breaking ways for people to share, and we are extremely excited to join such a like-minded group.”

Taylor and Buchheit founded FriendFeed along with Jim Norris and Sanjeev Singh in October 2007 after all four played key roles at Google for products like Gmail and Google Maps. At FriendFeed, they’ve brought together a world-class team of engineers and designers.

“Since I first tried FriendFeed, I’ve admired their team for creating such a simple and elegant service for people to share information,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “As this shows, our culture continues to make Facebook a place where the best engineers come to build things quickly that lots of people will use.”

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has 12 employees. FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being as the teams determine the longer term plans for the product.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not released.

FriendFeed blog post:

We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

What does this mean for my FriendFeed account?

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally for the time being. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team. As usual, we will communicate openly about our plans as they develop — keep an eye on the FriendFeed News group for updates.

My humble prediction is that FriendFeed will continue operations until the end of the migration phase. Any thoughts on this? Possible alternatives?

Consequences do not have to be job related though, think about using dating sites will in a relationship, posting untrue comments about people in bulletin boards or simply participating in the occasional flame war on a favorite forum. Those things usually do not backfire but if they do it can quickly become ugly for the offender. Many Internet users still think that the Internet is a lawfree environment where they can post anything they want without fearing consequences in real life. The realization that this is not the case usually comes when it is to late to change the cause of action.

The reaction of the company that fired the employee for the Facebook comment was a harsh one. Many would have probably asked the employee to remove the offending comment and most employees would probably comply immediately. It does serve as a prime example though as to what can happen if you are not careful about your online postings.

Some countries go even further than this. They make the website owners responsible for the content on their websites. This leads to some ridiculous situations where not only the poster but also the website owner face consequences for the data that has been posted on the website. Users should be aware that their online postings might come back at them at some time in the future in a non pleasant way no matter where they live or post.

Which leads to the question: Are you cautious about what you post online? Do you have any rules or guidelines that you follow? As a company, what would be your stance? Let us know in the comments.

Commenter reactive pointed out ping.fm, a website which in fact I use. ping.fm allows you to update one site, through a variety of means, which will then pass those updates on to 32 other websites.

ping.fm amazingly allows updates to be textual or graphical (you can set ping.fm to upload images to Flickr etc.). The ability to send videos is going to be launched soon.

The site will ‘ping’ most major social networking sites updates: Twitter, Pownce, FriendFeed, Facebook, MySpace, del.icio.us and Jaiku. Smaller ones like Kwippy are also supported.

Updates can be sent through instant messaging (GTalk, MSN, Yahoo! or AIM), unlike Twitter at the moment, from iGoogle, Facebook, an iPhone, WAP or SpinVox (a service which allows a voice to be converted to text on a phone). This is in addition to email (and therefore MMS, and on some carriers SMS) and the web.

With ping.fm it’s just as quick to update all your social networks as it is one. It is only one way however, and other peoples’ updates will not be received using it. Another similar service, which is a little more complex is imified.

The major changes in this release are again memory optimizations claiming memory reduction by up to 75%. The default Digsby client is using a little bit more than 10 Megabytes of computer memory which is 5 Megabyte less than the last version according to Joshua’s screenshots of the last release.

Other notable changes include more than 3000 code revisions since the last release, performance increases, connectivity improvements, LinkedIn support and full newsfeeds.

• RAM Usage: We optimized from the ground up and fixed memory leaks to lower RAM usage by almost 75%. This has been the number one complaint since our launch and we are proud to introduce this massive improvement.
• Performance: User interface elements draw twice as fast for better performance. We have made changes to the architecture that will improve GUI responsiveness and CPU utilization across the board.
• Connectivity: Every IM protocol automatically tries multiple connection methods and ports to improve the odds of getting through restrictive firewalls and proxy servers.
• LinkedIn: Digsby now supports LinkedIn in addition to the other social networks. Functionality includes a full newsfeed, alerts when new messages arrive, and the ability to set status right from Digsby.
• Bug Fixes: We have fixed hundreds of bugs, making Digsby more stable than ever. There have been almost 3,000 revisions in our codebase since the last release so there are too many fixes to list in our changelog.