Diaspora launched – should Facebook feel threathened?
November 25, 2010
Although Diaspora was expected to be launched on 15 September it seems that 24 November was the lucky number for its developers. What it is called “the open alternative to Facebook” has just hit the online environment and comes with a new approach related to users’ privacy, as a response to Facebook’s issues regarding this subject.
Created earlier this year by four US students, Diaspora is now opened for public, however only invited people can join it, at least for now. Should it be a threat for the most popular social networking – Facebook? Its developers say they are adding new features in short time and they are able to identify and fix and problem that might occur, thus taking care of it really fast.
Diaspora has been created with over $200,000 investment from funds raising and it came as a response to the users’ privacy issues found earlier this year on Facebook. Basically, this social network will allow users to control the information shared through social networks thus focusing on promoting their service through the privacy setting features.
A threat or not, Diaspora has had some security problems in September when they made their code publicly available, while it contained lots of security holes that could be easily taken advantage of ; HTML injection in comments vulnerability was one of those. However the developers said the feedback they got from making the code available was great and they could easily managed to secure the website and learn from their mistakes.
In conclusion, Diaspora puts lots of emphasis on the fact it protects better its users’ privacy with a concise reference to Facebook’s problems : “Diaspora doesn’t expose your information to advertisers, or to games you play, or to other websites you visit”. It must take some time though to really demonstrate their abilities of keeping users’ privacy information more secured than any other social networking available right now.
Mark Zuckerberg announced new email service from Facebook
November 16, 2010
With over 500 million users, Facebook is the most popular social networking website on the planet right now, rivaling with giants like Google and others. Recently, Marck Zuckerberg announced a new service that will rival with Google, Yahoo and other email providers’ services, the Facebook Message. This is a new approach of emails while it aims to create a single hub that gathers under its roof texts, chats and emails.
With over 193 million users, Gmail is seriously feeling threatened by this new service which seems as a perfect alternative to it. However Marck does not expect people to shut down their Gmail/Ymail accounts and jump into this new boat but in time, things are about to be changing, he added. On the other hand, AOL’s official Brad Garlinghouse disagrees that traditional email is about to be doomed while it is way more popular and useful than a profile on a social networking site, regarding on how big this last one is.
Basically, all Facebook’s registered users will benefit from an @facebook.com email address that will gather text messages, instant messages chat or email into one large feed named “social inbox”. Over 70% of Facebook users send messages regularly and this new technology can dramatically make things easier for those persons communicating through different channels, whether we are talking about emails or instant messaging.
This new service features three folders for incoming messages – one for buddies, one for important things like bank details and a junk folder for junk messages. All conversations will be kept in a complete archive. In less words, this new service is meant to rival with top 3 emails providers : Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, all three handling over 750million registered users.
Some users will definitely switch to this service, some will both accept this new email service and their previous one, whether it is Google or Yahoo, and others will still be afraid of the latest rumors regarding Facebook problems with users’ privacy. Only time will tell if this service will really become a hit among Internet users or even an email killer, as some voices are already mentioning it.
Internet Explorer 9 – The best IE ever?
September 15, 2010
Internet Explorer 9 – The best IE ever?
The popular dictum that necessity is the mother of invention is very much in evidence when you view the current browser marketplace with that dictum in mind. Microsoft recently gave a preview of the latest version of their browser Internet Explorer and one of the most vocal critics of Internet Explorer Google is now praising the innovation and technical excellence Microsoft Internet Explorer team put into Internet Explorer 9 to make it a fantastic browser.
The fast that Microsoft has been losing market share in the browser war may not be unconnected with the new technically superior IE9, at the moment, market share of various browser vendor world wide look like this:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 60.4 %
Mozilla Firefox 22.93 %
Google Crome 7.52 %
Apple Safari 5.15%
Opera 2.37 %
Others 1.62%
Microsoft won the browser wars against Netscape about a decade ago, Netscape basically disappeared leaving Microsoft Internet Explorer with over 90% of the market share but as the tale above indicated, the browser wars is back with Microsoft losing grounds steadily to competition, with Google crome the fastest rising of the competitions.
One of the most significant technology in IE9 is the way web pages are rendered, it is treated more like and application which Microsoft ways enable web pages to be displayed better and faster. Another new technology which is said to make IE9 a better performing browser is the fact that it blurred the distinction between a web pages and apps. IE9 renders graphics much better because it uses the graphic of the device using it to render graphics.
Microsoft Internet Explorer will be release for download from today Wednesday 15th of September. It is expected to be rolled out as upgrades in some Microsoft platforms, you can also download and install it as a stand alone application on your PC.
You can discuss IE9 and other internet related issues at UK webmaster forum.
Social Networks Eclipse Search Engines in Popularity
August 7, 2010
Social Networks Eclipse Search in Popularity
For many years, search engines has been the most popular websites online. Most Internet users start their online journey with a search engine thereby making search the most popular Internet destination, until the middle of 2010 that is. For the first time, Internet traffic to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter exceeded traffic to search engines.
Earlier this week, Twitter mark the occasion of its users sending the 20 billionth tweet. The much talked about 20 billionth tweet was characteristic of what some of the critics of social networking site called pointless gibberish. Gibberish or 20th billionth tweet if you prefer to see that way which was sent at 1544 GMT last Saturday by GGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a Tokyo graphic designer for an advertising agency. GGGGGGo_Lets_Go was inundated with congratulatory messages from around the world.
While twitter is the rising start of social networking, Facebook is the indisputable king at the moment, it attracts 55% of the social networking traffic in UK, making it three times the size of its nearest social networking rival; YouTube. Twitter is the 3rd most popular social networking force in UK. Given how fast Twitter is rising, it will not be a big surprise if it catches up with or even exceeded YouTube in the not too distant future. It took Twitter four years to reach 10 billion tweets, but five months after that, the number of tweet sent increase by 100%.
The combination of popularity of and phenomenal growth in in social networking has seen traffic to social networking site exceed search engine in May 2010 according to Experian Hitwise. A list of top 10 most popular websites in UK according to Alexa can be found below.
Top 10 UK Sites
- Google UK
- Google Dot Com
- YouTube
- Yahoo
- BBC Online
- Windows Live
- eBay UK
- Wikipedia
Facebook concerns about child safety and releases “panic button”
July 13, 2010
After some long time of of negotiation between Facebook and UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, Facebook recently announced the release of a “panic button” on the website aimed to children and teens. Although at the begining Facebook opossed this idea, it finally approved this button that, once installed, on the homepage the application will transmit that “they are in control online”.
The negotiations started in November last year with not only Facebook but also MySpace and Bebo, those latest 2 websites however added that button with concerns about children and teenagers safety online. This latest Facebook’s turn over to the panic button was enforced by a recent rape and murder of a 17 years old girl that stunned the communities. She met a 33 years old man on Facebook, posing as a teen and the rest of the sad story is history.
Sophy Silver from Facebook told BBC News that both sides are happy with the new application that once integrated will provide more safety and support for all teenagers and children using their social networking website. Moreover, in a short time a Facebook/Ceop webpage is prepared to be launched online, covering from music to exams topics and linking those popular topics to Q&A about online safety and online protection.
