While many Facebook users around the world are showing their resentment against Facebook Timeline, there is someone who can’t wait to have Timeline.

Automotive  company Lexus has rolled out its own Facebook Timeline-style app (page) instead of waiting for Facebook to do so for brands.

The automaker unveiled the new Timeline-inspired Facebook app called “Points of No Return” today, to connect with its fans on a more personal level.

The Points of No Return application focuses on the all-new 2013 Lexus GS (arriving in showrooms February 2012), and chronologically highlighting the companies milestones as well as other ground-breaking moments in social media, technology, and design.

The app takes Facebook’s “Like” one step further by taking advantage of Facebook’s recently unveiled custom Open Graph, giving fans to interact with the brand in new ways such as “I remember This,” “I Own This,” and “I Want This.” Each interaction is shared as a story on the user’s Facebook Timeline.

“We developed this application to empower Lexus fans to engage with the brand in a new way, leveraging Open Graph features to enhance user experience,” said Brian Smith, Lexus vice president of marketing at the launch. “We’re not waiting for the future. It’s all about innovating, including a ‘sneak peek’ of exciting things to come on Lexus’ Facebook page.”

Check out the all-new Lexus’ Timeline-inspired Points of No Return app.

Did you like what Lexus has done to their Page?

A new study released on Friday shows that the average Facebook users receives more than they give – whether it’s messages, “likes”, tagging, comments, requests, or even “pokes.”

The report from Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, shed light on how people use the site and what they get out of it.

The study was based on a phone survey of 2,255 U.S. adults and that was conducted in October and November 2010.

The survey responses were then matched with server logs of Facebook activity. The findings over a one-month period are as follows:

• 40% of the participants made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request.
• The participants pressed the like button next to a friends’ content an average of 14 times, while their content were “liked” an average of 20 times.
• On average, 9 personal messages were sent, while 12 messages were received.
• 12% of them tagged a friend in a photo, while 35% were themselves tagged in a photo.

According to survey report, most Facebook users get more than they give because of certain Facebook users, who they term as power users. These power users constitute about 20%-30% of Facebook users, and contributes much more content than the typical user skewing the average. Furthermore, these power users falls under different groups based on their activity dominance like – friending, liking, and photo tagging. Only Five per cent of them turned out to be power users in every activity that Pew logged.

“The more Facebook friends users have, the more they perform every activity that we explored: friending, liking, private messages, commenting, posting, photo tagging, joining groups and poking,” Pew said regarding the survey by its Internet & American Life project.

You can find the full report at here.

Which of these social activities are you more dominant: friending, liking, commenting, tagging, or poking?

London-based casual social games company King.com announced on Wednesday the launch of its popular ball-shooter game Hoop De Loop Saga for Facebook. This is the fifth game from its website to make the jump to the largest network.

The game comes with added social features and leaderboards.

“You have in Hoop De Loop, which you don’t have in the original version: You have time challenges, you have task time challenges, score challenges, you have survival mode,” King.com CMO Alex Dale spouts off to us. “Probably most important, however, is the social layer. You play alongside your friends, you track their progress, you get updates when you overtake them, etc, etc.”

If you like games like Zumba Blitz, then you will like this game too. Hoop De Loop Saga falls under the “ball-shooter” genre, where you shoot balls at an advancing chain of balls to create three or more matching balls. This game comes with a little twist.

In the game, players have to help Moxie Foxey, a young Cloud Fox, stop a runaway ball train by shooting balls to create three or more matching balls. The main objective of the game is to create as many jewels as possible and move them to the front of the chain. Jewels are created through combos or when you successfully eliminate multiple groups of balls with a single shot. You will come across several types of balls with different abilities as well as different types of jewels base on the number of combos you make.

Apart from trying to create jewels and collecting them, you will also have to meet certain scores and complete tasks to clear a level. You lose a life if you fail to reach the required level targets before the chain reach the hole. Lives are like energy on other Facebook games, and are incremented by one every half an hour. You can also request your friends to send one.

Upon clearing the level 12, your first craftable item, boosters, will be unlocked. You will be able to craft items called boosters using jewels. Boosters – a single use items with special abilities that you can use to help you in the game – are created with jewels that you create and collect. If you don’t have enough jewels, then you can always get them with Facebook credits.

Hoop De Loop Saga features 70 different levels and six game modes, enough to wet your appetite and hook you to the game.

(Play Hoop De Loop Saga game)

It wasn’t long when Indonesia surpassed the UK to become the country with the second largest number of Facebook users.

Indonesia achieved the feat in November 2010. As of February 1, 2012, India has dethroned Indonesia for the spot with a total of 43,497,980 Facebook users, and Indonesia with 43,060,360 Facebook users slipped to number three.

Facebook users growth in India

The U.S. with 155,701,780 Facebook users continues to be the largest Facebook Nation accounting for roughly 19% of the total Facebook users worldwide.

During the past 12 months or so, India recorded an impressive growth of 144%. On January 2011, India had only 16,915,900 Facebook users and was placed sixth.

Another country that showed a more impressive growth rate is none other than the largest South American country – Brazil. Brazil with 37,907,400 Facebook users is now the fourth largest Facebook Nation, with an impressive growth rate of 183% over the past year.

How long do you think India will take to become the largest Facebook Nation?

With Valentine’s Day just a couple of week away, people around the world including cybercriminals are getting ready, and Facebook with over 800 million users is a sweet place for them.

One of the earliest Valentine’s scam making the round this year comes in the form a Valentine’s Day theme for Facebook profiles according to computer security firm Trend Micro.

Like other scam apps, the attack starts off as a post (with a link) on affected users’ wall inviting other users to install a Valentine’s theme into their Facebook profile.

Credit: Trend Micro

On clicking the link, users are redirected to another page to install the theme.

“Clicking the install button on the page will prompt the download of a malicious file, FacebookChrome.crx which Trend Micro detects as TROJ_FOOKBACE.A. When executed, TROJ_FOOKBACE.A executes a script that is capable of displaying ads from certain websites,” Christopher Talampas, fraud analyst at Trend Micro, wrote in a blog post.

While, he believes that the malicious browser extension doesn’t seem to have information theft capabilities, it does have the ability to monitor the user’s browsing activities and redirect them to a survey page asking them for their mobile number.

He noted that the attack works only on Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browsers. Opening the Facebook link using internet Explorer will redirect users directly to the same survey bypassing the downloading steps.

“The fact that the attack itself is focused on Chrome and Firefox may mean that cybercriminals are targeting extension-compatible browsers, as well as going after more popular browser choices,” Christopher wrote.

“It fits the criteria of a clickjacking attack more, where it automatically ‘likes’ several Facebook pages as well as automatically posts a message on the affected user’s wall,” he added.

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, this scam may just be the beginning. I believe there are dozens of them out there already and many more to follow. So remember to use your judgement on Valentine’s posts/offers that prompt you to install something.

Facebook has finally given Ticker haters an option to hide the feature, after months of complaints since its launch last year.

With the help of plugins, Chrome users could get rid of the News Ticker. But now, Facebook has added a simple option to hide/show the News Ticker – good news for those who don’t use Chrome, the uninformed, and those who don’t go along well with browser extensions.

Apparently, the social network found that the ticker on canvas app pages was not driving enough traffic to games or apps as expected. Well, I guess that was bound to happen, because we humans are excellent at turning a blind eye to things we don’t like.

To hide/show News Ticker, click on the small arrow at the top right hand corner to toggle between hiding and showing it.

It’s good that Facebook has added this little option which can really give users a feeling of control, and check users growing feeling of hate.

Do you check out your Ticker often or came to a point where you don’t regard its existence? What do you feel about the added hide/show option?

A Facebook group with only 107 members has seal a new Guinness record by commenting on a post more than a million times.

Tracey Hodgson created a group “Ffgpioneers/gwr/attempt” specifically to have a go at the record with fellow fans of the online game Frontierville.

Tracey Hodgson’s Oct. 30, 2011 post received over a million comments over the last three months, breaking the previous record set by Italy’s Roberto Esposito (529,335 comments), according to Guinness World Records.

The record breaking post read, “hi all!!! , hope everyone is ok today , this is ‘the one’, please talk about anything you like here, whatever you want to talk about, change topic whenever you like also, just have fun , . so how are you all today?( please someone speak quick or i’ll have no nails left!!!) x x x.”

Most of the comments were just randomly typed letters, short words like “go”, emoticons, or every word of a sentence making up a comment each.

Matthews claimed in an interview with KTXL-TV in Sacramento that she is “leaving her mark on the world.”

NASA’s latest launch isn’t something into the space, but something right at your face, with the launch of a multiplayer Facebook game called Space Race Blast Off.

The game was created by Scott Hanger, Todd Powell and Jamie Noguchi of NASA’s Internet Services Group in the Office of Communications.

“Space Race Blast Off opens NASA’s history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media,” said David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for communications. “Space experts and novices will learn new things about how exploration continues to impact our world.”

Space Race Blast Off is a quiz game, where players knowledge is tested on various topics like Aeronautics, Astronauts, Earth, Math, Solar System, Spacecraft, Station, Universe, and Pop Culture.

You will get to choose from 14 avatars to start with. The game picks two other players to join you for each round. If no one enters the game within 15 seconds, you are placed in a solo game.

You will be presented with multiple-choice questions with three choices. Each round will have a total of 10 questions, for 100 points each. Each question will have to be answered within 15 seconds. The player with the quickest response gets a bonus 20 points. The winner (with a minimum of seven correct answers) advances to the bonus round.

Once you enter the bonus round, click on the “Spin” button to get your final question. Answering it correctly will earn you 200 points as well as a virtual badge, depicting NASA astronauts, spacecraft and celestial object. You can also exchange the points you earn for additional badges to complete sets and earn premium badges.

The game features game stats, awards, and leader board, where you can show off/check your progress.

Game graphics isn’t much to talk about, but Space Race Blast Off surely is packed with tons and tons of educational material with a lingering competitive element. It isn’t a casual game, and if you want to rule the leaderboard, you will have to do your homework well.

(Play Space Race Blast Off)

Facebook partnered with marketing agency Definition6 to launch a new app called Timeline Movie Maker, which turns your most-liked post into a really eye-catching movie, completed with special effects and music.

You don’t have to be someone with very creative mind to create awesome timeline movies. Using the app is pretty straight forward.

1. All you have to do is click on the “Make Your Movie” button.

2. Log in to your Facebook account. You can select how you would like to share the produce movie with others. You will have to grant access to certain account information for the app to work, which you can see in the image below (click on the image to enlarge it).

3. Install the app, by granting access to your account information.

4. Wait for few minutes while the movie is processed.

5. Your one-minute movie is automatically built for you. Enjoy the video!

You timeline video is made from your Facebook contents – the ones you have share with your friends and to public. The app identifies the most engaging and relevant life moments of your Facebook life and built a chronological story.

Once your movie is processed, you can choose from 5 soundtracks to go with the video, and also change photos, video, check-ins etc. until you are satisfied and share it with your friends.

Pretty easy right? How great a movie turns out will depend on your Facebook contents and your further editing. One downer though, is the inability to share to other video sites like YouTube, because some of your videos will be awesome and worth sharing just like mine

Hint: Upload some great pictures and feature them on your timeline, so that they feature in the video. Use a little bit of creativity while editing and viola, you have a darn good movie.

There is one thing to note. I recently cleaned out my profile, deleted and un-tagged a lot of my pictures before publishing my timeline. Timeline Movie Maker needs you to have at least 75 photos to create your movie.

Timeline Movie Maker is currently available in English, French, Spanish, and German.

Have you used Timeline Movie Maker? If not, will you try it out?

Timeline Movie Make.

More than 50% of Facebook users are worried about Timeline.

Over 4000 Facebook users participated in a poll by Sophos on what they think about Facebook Timeline, and the response wasn’t something Timeline would be proud of.

Check out the poll figure below.

Credit: Sophos

Sophos pointed out that the Facebook users who responded to one of its poll were most likely those who were more security-conscious than the average user on the social network. Still, fewer than eight per cent giving the thumbs-up isn’t exactly what Zuckerberg would have wanted, though he and the company went ahead with making the new profile format compulsory.

One of the main concern users are talking about on Facebook is how the new profile will make all your older post easier to view. However, if you spent enough time cleaning up your old posts – because you decides what shows up on you Timeline, or what you want to delete from your profile – there isn’t much to worry about.

What concerns me though is how Facebook is trying to make us share more on the site.

Do you worry about Facebook Timeline?