At the first f8 conference, Facebook Platform was launched.
Tags: developers, location, Nbsp, over-the-status, privacy issues, project, service-offered, software tools
Twitter engineer Alex Payne tweeted over the weekend, “If you had some of the nifty site features that we Twitter employees have, you might not want to use a desktop client. (You will soon.)” Some took that to mean that Twitter was working on some new features for its own site, that would essentially render some popular third-party clients all but obsolete. The question is whether this is a legitimate concern for developers, or it has just been blown out of proportion. It could possibly be a combination of the two. Technology blog TechCrunch took the tweet and ran with it , speculating that Twitter “appears to be on the verge of some big changes,” and noting that the company recently hired a new “UI guru” (that’s User Interface) from LinkedIn. Following this story, Payne quickly reacted through his Twitter account, downplaying the threat to third-party developers, saying things like, “I just mean that our web client team is building cool stuff. It’s going to inspire desktop app developers. Same data, new perspectives,” and “It’s all stuff that’s available in the API, just a different view of it.” He also retweeted more than one tweet mocking TechCrunch’s reaction, such as this one from another Twitter employee: Still, TechCrunch’s MG Siegler may not be completely off base. Just because Twitter isn’t taking anything away from developers, doesn’t necessarily mean that users of certain third-party apps won’t just as soon use Twitter.com instead, when the features they enjoy start being integrated there. If nothing else, such features could keep new users from worrying about looking for apps that do these things, because their needs will already be filled. That’s not to say Twitter would be wrong for doing so. User retention has been a problem for the company in the past , and anything that makes Twitter more usable has to be good for usage. Twitter is expected to announce its new ad platform/monetization model this month (finally), and while nobody knows exactly how that’s going to shake out yet, it’s likely in Twitter’s best interest to have users going through Twitter itself. Twitter has not been shy in the past about taking ideas that were born from the community, and integrating them into Twitter.com (the retweet feature comes to mind). The much larger Facebook has certainly been happy to borrow ideas from Twitter , so if Twitter wants to secure a stable future in this social networking/microblogging space, it is going to help if it looks at the ways users use the service through third-party apps, and utilizes some of these functionalities on its own. As far as the developers are concerned, the more ideas Twitter takes for itself, the more innovating developers are going to have to do to keep their own apps relevant, and that can only be good for the Twitter community at large. On a sidenote, Payne’s original tweet on the matter appears to have been deleted (the URL linked to by Siegler, now goes to a “sorry that page doesn’t exist!” page).
Tags: api, cool stuff, desktop client, developers, Facebook, Linkedin, party apps, Review and Story, saying things, siegler, Tweet, Twitter, user-interface, verge
A little over a month ago, Google delayed the launch of two Android phones in China.
Tags: China, compromises, developers, free speech, gatherings, idg news service, its-principles, Nexus, singapore, taiwan
Facebook said today it will allow advertisers to pay for ads on its network using PayPal. The two companies have entered into a strategic relationship that will allow advertisers worldwide to use PayPal to pay for Facebook Ads through the company’s online advertising tool. The option to use PayPal makes it easier for advertisers, particularly small international companies, to run campaigns on Facebook. Facebook reaches 400 million people globally, with 70 percent of those living outside the United States. “Put simply, PayPal’s business is payments. We make it easier for customers to send and receive money online in 24 currencies and 190 markets around the world,” said Osama Bedier, PayPal’s vice president of platform and emerging technology. “We’ve always been an important part of the developer ecosystem on Facebook, and we’re excited to expand our relationship directly with Facebook to help grow advertisers’ and developers’ businesses.” PayPal will also become a payment option for Facebook Credits, which is currently being tested in a handful of games and applications. Facebook says the goal is to give users a fast and easy way to buy virtual goods on the site. In December PayPal launched a ” send money ” application on Facebook that allowed users to send money to anyone with an email address.
Tags: ads, currently-being, developers, ecosystem, facebook-paypal, handful, money online, osama, osama-bedier, payment option, relationship, relationship help, says-the-goal, vice-president
Yesterday at about 2pm PleaseRobMe went live. PleaseRobMe is a site set up by a few developers who want to spread awareness about how easy it would be for people to rob your home if you share too much information about yourself online, specifically your location…even more specifically through Foursquare. The site displays a list of messages asking people if they know the whole world has access to their location. All of these are drawn directly from the PleaseRobMe Twitter account. We asked Boy Van Amstel, one of those developers if they were concerned that followers of PleaseRobMe’s Twitter account could actually be interested in robbing people. Van Amstel responded, “With just the information [from] pleaserobme.com it would be almost impossible to do so. However as people share more information about themselves, such as their home address, it might become a possibility. We think it’s important to think about that and what it means if you share location information on services like Twitter…it’s very easy to get it, even directly from Twitter’s search page.” So far, Van Amstel says Foursquare is the only service it watches to determine who is sharing their location with the world. “It’s not about the service, it’s about the information that’s being shared. We think it’s important to realize that something you post on Twitter isn’t necessarily private. Everybody is able to read it, unless you protect your messages.” One can only assume that FourSquare isn’t entirely pleased with the launch of PleaseRobMe. That’s the second time the service has had a not-so-positive light cast upon it this week. Earlier in the week, there were reports of Foursquare cheating. This could have an effect on the decisions of businesses to give Foursquare users special offers, a practice that is becoming more commonplace. Regardless, PleaseRobMe bluntly delivers an important reminder to socially active people that just because they’re using the “virtual” world, that doesn’t mean it can’t potentially have real-world consequences.
Tags: decisions, developers, followers, launch, PleaseRobMe, post-on-twitter, reminder, second time, special offers, Van Amstel, week