Google building Facebook rival

Web world is abuzz with rumours that Google's Facebook rival is in works. The rumour mill began churning after Digg founder Kevin Rose posted a tweet last weekend (saturday to be precise), saying, "Ok, umm, huge rumor: Google to launch facebook competitor very soon 'Google Me,' very credible source."

Wondering how Google Me will really work? Experts believe that Google already has almost 30 different social properties that it has acquired or built including YouTube, Picassa, Google Profiles, Google Docs, Google Friends Connect and Google Latitude. So, the company largely has almost every component that it requires to built a Facebook killer. All it needs to do is a bit of organisation and create a common platform for all these networks.

However, so far Google is still to get a hit in the social networking space. Orkut, one of the pioneers in social network, today has little following except in Brazil and India. More recently, the company made another foray into social networking arena with Google Buzz, which aims to upgrade Gmail into a social networking hub from just an e-mail service. However, the service has been relegating to more of a Web 2.0 sharing tool than a social networking hub.

Several analysts also wonder if Google would really risk waging a full-scale war against Facebook, which has seen its fortunes soar in the past year.

Writes eWeek's Clint Boulton, "Google challenging Facebook in social is like Facebook challenging Google in search," he writes. "People are comfortable socializing on Facebook, which is where their friends (and their friends of friends are) and they are comfortable searching on Google, which is where all of the data about businesses, places and other facts live. Unless and until there are technological improvements on both sides, paired with practical user behavior shifts from consumers, never the twain shall meet."

While analysts may continue to debate the issue, the rumour has been further fanned by Adam D’Angelo, former Facebook CTO and now founder of Q&A service Quora (on Quora only).

Here's what Angelo wrote on Quora.

* This is not a rumor. This is a real project. There are a large number of people working on it. I am completely confident about this.

* They realized that Buzz wasn't enough and that they need to build out a full, first-class social network. They are modeling it off of Facebook.

* Unlike previous attempts (before Buzz at least), this is a high-priority project within Google.

* They had assumed that Facebook's growth would slow as it grew, and that Facebook wouldn't be able to have too much leverage over them, but then it just didn't stop, and now they are really scared.

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Posted in: engine,facebook,friend,Google,India,internet,networking,search,social,technology

Only 503 Microsoft Kins Sold?

Barely days after Microsoft s (in)famous Kin disaster wherein the company had to take the not-so-difficult decision of scrapping the entire project, here comes a shocker. According to one rumour, Microsoft, in all actuality, sold a total of just 503 Kins. That s including both the handsets.

While the 503 figure does seem unrealistic, this is what is the number claimed by John Gruber ofDaring Fireballs who in turn claims to have heard it from an unnamed source from Microsoft. There is a different twist to the story as well with Pocketnow pointing out another interesting stat. Pocketnownoted that the Kin, being a social networking handset, came with a Facebook application. The interesting thing about this app is that this app is specific only to the Kin and using it one can actually see the number of monthly active users of the application. Since this app can only be used on a Kin, a rough estimate of the number of Kins out there can be guessed by the number of users that are connected to Facebook using it. This number is way off the 503 mark and is somewhere close to the 8,000 mark. Having said that, even 8,000 isn't such an awe inspiring number but heck, it is anytime better than the 503 figure we first heard.

                                                                                               Kin One
                                                       
In a different twist to the story, according to Business Insider, the fact that even Microsoft employees weren't particularly impressed or hopeful about the Kin is somewhat evident from the sentiments from the blog posts at Mini Microsoft, a blog of sorts where Microsoft employees rant about their problems. The blog has interesting quotes from people who are either current Microsoft employees or had worked for the company and left it as well, looking for greener pastures. A former Danger employee (Microsoft took over Danger) calls Microsoft a "dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic". Another person commented, "I for one can't believe that no one has been axed over the Kin debacle. Billions of dollars were wasted, not to mention all of the smart people over there who spent 3 years with no return on the investment."

                                                                                             Kin Two

With the kind of things going on at Microsoft, looks like it is going to have a big task at hand ensuring Windows Phone 7 doesn't end up like the Kin.

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Posted in: facebook,internet,microsoft,mobile,network,networking,phone,social

How 100 mn Facebook users' info got leaked

The man who harvested and published the personal details of 100 million Facebook users has said that he only disclosed what was already public information.

Ron Bowes, a security consultant, used a piece of code to scan Facebook profiles, collecting data not hidden by the user's privacy settings.

The list, which contains the URL of every searchable Facebook user's profile, name and unique ID, has been shared as a downloadable file. Bowes said that he did it as part of his work on a security tool.

"I'm a developer for the Nmap Security Scanner and one of our recent tools is called Ncrack," the BBC quoted him as saying. "It is designed to test password policies of organisations by using brute force attacks; in other words, guessing every username and password combination," he added.

By downloading the data from Facebook, and compiling a user's first initial and surname, he made a list of the most common probable usernames to use in the tool.

In theory, researchers could then combine this list with a catalogue of the most commonly used passwords to test the security of sites. Similar techniques could be used by criminals for more nefarious means.

Bowes said his original plan was to "collect a good list of human names that could be used for these tests.” "Once I had the data, though, I realised that it could be of interest to the community if I released it, so I did," he added.

Bowes confirmed that all the data he harvested was already publicly available but acknowledged that if anyone now changed their privacy settings, their information would still be accessible.

"If 100,000 Facebook users decide that they no longer want to be in Facebook's directory, I would still have their name and URL but it would no longer, technically, be public," he said.

Bowes said that collecting the data was in no way irresponsible and likened it to a telephone directory. "All I've done is compile public information into a nice format for statistical analysis," he said

In a statement, Facebook confirmed that the information in the list was already freely available online. "No private data is available or has been compromised," the statement added.

Bowes supported the view by adding that harvesting this data highlighted the possible risks users put themselves in. "I am of the belief that, if I can do something then there are about 1,000 bad guys that can do it too. For that reason, I believe in open disclosure of issues like this, especially when there's minimal potential for anybody to get hurt.

"Since this is already public information, I see very little harm in disclosing it," he said Facebook has a default setting for privacy that makes some user information publicly available. People have to make a conscious choice to opt-out of the defaults. 

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Posted in: facebook,information,networking,privacy,profile,public,security,social

Google to block data from Facebook

Google Inc will begin blocking Facebook and other Web services from accessing its users' information, highlighting an intensifying rivalry between the two Internet giants.

Google will no longer let other services automatically import its users' email contact data for their own purposes, unless the information flows both ways. It accused Facebook in particular of siphoning up Google contact data, without allowing for the automatic import and export of Facebook users' information.

Facebook, with more than 500 million users, relies on email services such as Google's Gmail to help new users find friends already on the network. When a person joins, they are asked to import their Gmail contact list into the social network service. Facebook then tells the user which email contacts are also on the social network.

In a statement, Google said websites such as Facebook "leave users in a data dead end." Facebook did not immediately provide a comment on Friday.

While Google framed the move as an attempt to protect its users' ability to retain control of their personal data on the Internet, analysts said the move underscored the battle between Google, the world's largest search engine, and Facebook, the dominant Internet social network.

"The fundamental power dynamic on the Web today is this emerging conflict between Facebook and Google," said Gartner analyst Ray Valdes. "Google needs to evolve to become a big player in the social Web and it hasn't been able to do that."

"If people do search within Facebook, if they do email within Facebook, if they do instant messaging within Facebook, all of these will chip away at Google's properties."

Reciprocity 
Google said that while it makes it easy for other Web services to automatically import a user's contact data, Facebook was not reciprocating.

"We have decided to change our approach slightly to reflect the fact that users often aren't aware that once they have imported their contacts into sites like Facebook, they are effectively trapped," Google said in an emailed statement.

"We will no longer allow websites to automate the import of users' Google Contacts (via our API) unless they allow similar export to other sites," Google said.

Some technology blogs were reporting that Facebook still appeared to be allowing users to import their Google Gmail contacts into Facebook as of mid-day Friday.

A Google spokesman told Reuters that the company had begun enforcing the new rules "gradually."

Google also stressed that users will still be able to manually download their contacts to their computers in "an open, machine-readable format" which can then be imported into any Web service.

Google has coveted the wealth of information that Facebook's half-billion users generate and amass. Having access to that data could be especially valuable to Google, whose business model is based on allowing its users to find any information anywhere on the Web.

"Google is trying to use the leverage that it has to get as much access to the Facebook social graph (network of friends and interests) that it can, so it can provide the best search function that it can," said Wedbush Securities analyst Lou Kerner. "The more data Google has access to the better its search results are going to be."

Last month, Facebook announced a deal with Microsoft Corp allowing Facebook information -- such as Web pages that Facebook users have endorsed by clicking on "like" buttons -- to appear within Microsoft search results.

Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in September the company would add social "layers" to many of its existing Web products in the coming months, following its less-than-stellar track record of developing stand-alone social networking products like Orkut and the recently shuttered Wave service.

Google also has acquired a slew of small social networking companies in recent months, including Slide and social payment company Jambool.

Gartner's Valdes said access to the explosion of new types of data generated by Web services, such as location-based services, would provide further flashpoints between Google and Facebook.

"It's one skirmish among many to come," said Valdes.

Google's shares closed Friday's regular session down 81 cents at $625.08.

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Posted in: email,facebook,gmail,Google,information,internet,networking,social,web