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Facebook Acquires Chai Labs While Google Goes For Like.com

August 16, 2010

Things are really heating up between Google and Facebook,  both showing interest in acquiring search-related businesses.

Facebook’s latest acquisition is Chai Labs, reportedly for around $10 million.

This Mountain View, California-based start-up was founded by former Google (GooG) adsense exec Gokul Rajaram.

On its website, Chai Labs says that the company is able to “bring a unique blend of skills and perspectives which help us reinvent the way content is created, stored, and delivered, to drive user and revenue growth for our customers.” The website also says that it specializes in “Structured Content Extraction” and “Semantic Search Platform.”

The ability to help publishers create, store and deliver content is something that makes sense for Facebook, given the powerful social networking site has been trying to work with media companies rather than compete with them.

According to VentureBeat, it isn’t exactly clear why Facebook is buying Chai Labs, but many people thinks it is more of a talent-acquisition than Chai Labs’ technology.

Meanwhile, Google is in the final stages of acquiring Like.com for $100 million, according to TechCrunch citing multiple sources about the information.

Like.com started as Riya, a tool for organizing photos, in April 2006. It re-launched as Like.com in November 2006 as the first visual search engine for products.

The co-founder and CTO, Burak Goturk, is a specialist in computer vision technology is said to have filed for two-dozen facial-recognition patents.

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Google Goes Shopping: Buys Jambool

August 10, 2010

Google goes shopping yet again while Facebook decided to stay home.

The face-off between Google and Facebook seems inevitable and can be expected very soon going by the urgency shown by both the giants.

With Orkut a passé, Google wave gone, and Google Buzz failing to make a ‘Pop,’ Google is going all out to launch it’s rumored  Social gaming network dubbed “Google Me” with such ingredients that it remains hot for a long, long time (or will it sizzle out again?)

Techcrunch reported that Google has acquired San Francisco-based start-up Jambool and its gaming product Social Gold.

Jambool’s Social Gold is an online virtual payment platform which can be incorporated in virtual worlds, social games and applications, MMOs, and other online games portal.

The deal amount is reportedly $70 – $75 million – $55 million for Jambool and another $15 – $20 million in an earnout.

This deal comes even before the news of Google’s acquisition of social app developer Slide for $280 million have died. Apart from that, if you remember, Google had also invested around $100 million to $200 million in Facebook leading game developer Zynga. There are also rumors in the air that the company is also under negotiations with other top social gaming companies like EA’s Playfish and Disney’s Playdom to establish games-friendly network.

With it’s hand on social gaming companies, social app developer and a virtual currency payment platform, does it mean “Google Me” is almost out?

While Google is busy shopping, as told earlier, Facebook has decided to stay at home for the next 60 days. During this period, the company’s office will remain open 24×7 to revamp some of it’s products.

We will see if working from the inside or outside is a better approach when the final show down happens…or will it happen?

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Facebook Turns Table On Google With New ‘Facebook Question’ Feature

July 29, 2010

Just yesterday, we  posted a new about Google’s plan of developing a new service to rival Facebook, but Facebook have completely turned the tables by rolling out a new beta application called Facebook Questions.

Facebook Questions lets its users pose questions to and share answers with millions of people around the world.

facebook question Facebook Turns Table On Google With New Facebook Question Feature

Although asking questions or advices is not a new thing on Facebook, this new feature will certainly push Facebook users to relay on Facebook Questions instead of going to Google or other search engines.

Remember when you posted, “Feeling bored..dunno wad to do” or “Just broke up with my GF/BF,” on you Facebook status and the overwhelming response or advice that you got??

Facebook Question is something similar, but on a larger scale. It will allow you to pose question to the entire community and the probability of getting a right solution is very high when a question is answered by the collective knowledge of more than 500 million users and beyond.

“Facebook Questions helps you tap into the collective knowledge of the more than 500 million people on Facebook,” Blake Ross, the company’s director of product, wrote in a blog post.

“For example, if you’re vacationing in Costa Rica and want to know the best places to surf, you can use Facebook Questions to get answers from nearby surfing enthusiasts,” adds Ross in his blog. “Because questions will also appear to your friends and their friends, you’ll receive answers that are more personalized to you.”

What’s more, users can also add tags to their questions like movies, photography, cycling etc..and the question will be show to people who have expressed interest in the particular topics resulting in more informative answers.

Though this new Facebook application is still in beta mode and only available to about one percent users, this new application will surely take away a significant amount search engine traffic which happens to be dominated by Facebook.

When this new application will be rolled out completely or how the final product will function is unknown, but one thing that bugs me at the moment is, how fast can i get the answer to my question with this new Facebook Q&A application?

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Google Beaten: Facebook Become The Most Popular Site In US

March 17, 2010

For the first time, Facebook overtook Google as the most visited website in the United States last week, according to the Web analytics firm Hitwise.

Heather Dougherty, Hitwise’s director of research, said that Facebook had ‘reached an important milestone” with the weekly figures.

According to the firm’s weekly figures on March 13, the two sites accounted for 14% of all US internet visits last week. Facebook’s home page recorded 7.07% of traffic and Google’s 7.03%.

Though the lead is slim, it is really an important milestone for Facebook who’s popularity has seen an enormous growth over past year – from just 2% visits a year ago to 7.07%.

The number of Facebook’s users have also increased dramatically from 200 Million last April to 400 Million in February.

One reason for the ever increasing popularity of Facebook can be attributed to Facebook’s games. Zynga’s FarmVille game alone boasts more than 83 Million monthly users.

Social networking sites have fallen in the past and Google had been leading since September 2007, when it overtook News Corp’s MySpace.com. However, the tremendous growth enjoyed by Facebook over the past year have led to an increase in popularity of social networking.

According to Nielsen Company research firm, internet users around the world spent more than five and half hours a month on social networking sites on an average. US leads country wise with an average of six and half hours on Facebook.

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Facebook, Google Slapped With Patent-Infringement Lawsuit

March 10, 2010

Search engine giant Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., the largest social-networking site in the world,  have been slapped with a lawsuit by Wireless Ink Corp.

According to a Bloomberg report, Wireless Ink Corp., which runs the Winksite service, has claimed that Facebook Mobile and Google Buzz are infringing a patent related to ways of offering content that is accessible by mobile devices.

The patent issued in October 2009 was apparently filed back in 2004. The firm says the defendants (Google Inc. and Facebook Inc.) must have been aware of the patent, “given the time and resources they have invested in their desktop and mobile web sites as well as their strategic importance.”

Respective spokesman for Google and Facebook said that their company is reviewing the complaint and didn’t offer any immediate comments.

Wireless Ink Corp., with more than 75,000 registered users, is looking for cash compensation and a ban on further use of its invention.

This isn’t the first time Facebook has faced patent-infringement claims over its service. A Boston company called Tele-publishing Inc. sued Facebook over a patent related to a method of providing a personal page last year. Facebook was also sued by Mekiki Co., owner of a Japanese social networking site, in 2009 over patents related to ways to identify “friends” through existing contacts.

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Facebook Tops World’s Most Innovative Companies 2010

February 22, 2010

Facebook tops the list of “World’s Most Innovative Companies 2010.”

Compiled annually by Fast Company, a US magazine which focuses on innovation, digital media and technology and list the 50 most innovative companies from around the world.

The top 10 out of the 50 are as follows:

1. Facebook
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. Google
5. Huawei
6. First Solar
7. PG&E
8. Novartis
9. Walmart
10. HP

Last year’s topper Team Obama, the e-campaigning team behind the successful presidential race, did not even feature in the entire list. Google went down two spot to no. 4, while Apple climbed up a place to feature third and Amazon climbed 7 places to finish second. Twitter also made its debut at no. 50 while Microsoft despite launching it’s latest operating system – Windows 7 – barely made it at no. 48.

Facebook was ranked at no. 15 last year.

“Now available in 70 languages and every country, the 400-million-user strong King of Social Media has managed a balance between insane growth and staying true to its core identity. Zuckerberg’s relentless embrace of his founding hacker philosophy encourages Facebook engineers to “break things in order to make them better” and allows them to change products and introduce new services as often as some users change profile pics,” writes Mark Borden.

Go here for a full list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies 2010.

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Facebook Passes Yahoo For The Second Spot

February 18, 2010

Google is the only website that stands in the way of Facebook in becoming the most popular site in the United States. Web analytics firm Compete reports that Facebook surpassed Yahoo to become the second most-visited website in the country.

AP unique visitors to facebook com yahoo com 300x220 Facebook Passes Yahoo For The Second Spot

In January, Facebook attracted nearly 134 million unique visitors in while Yahoo’s traffic declined to 132 million unique visitors. Google leads the pack with 147 million unique visitors.

Figures grabs the eyeballs, but for some time. On the attention front, Facebook is second to none. The site found that Facebook user spent 11.6% of all their internet time on Facebook as compared to 4.25% and 4.1% of their time on Yahoo and Google respectively.

Just a year back, Facebook had a little less than 70 million unique visitors. Facebook has enjoyed explosive growth over the last year with its user base touching 400 million mark world wide. Almost 50% of these users logs on to the site each day.

Questions like will Facebook be able to catch Google or how long will it take to go past Google remains to be seen. But, with the recent launch of Google Buzz, the number 1 spot might be a hard chase.

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Google Buzz: What’s The Real Deal

February 10, 2010

Words have been out before that Google’s product Gmail will get social networking features. Google has finally launched its new social product called Google Buzz.

Google Buzz 273x300 Google Buzz: Whats The Real Deal

Buzz, unveiled yesterday, will let Gmail users share status updates and links to media, like videos, news feeds and photos.

It is being compared heavily with Facebook’s FriendFeed service, which also allow posting, sharing and viewing photos, videos and commeting within the stream of updates.

Like Facebook, Google Buzz will also let users share either with the rest of the world or with selected group of people.

Mobile version application of Google Buzz allows people to see the public updates of other people in the same vicinity, which is particularly Twitter-like.

Many people are taking this launch as a move to rival Facebook and Twitter on the social-networking scene. However, Quentin Hardy writes at Forbes.com that Google’s plan for Buzz is “Not an “Us Too” social play –  it wants to manage knowledge.”

He suggests that though the features are very much like Facebook and Twitter at first look, Google has a very different core business from those other companies’ information organization, particularly on the web. By watching what people upload or who they follow, Google can offer a more personalized web search inside the Gmail application.

I wonder what Facebook users have to say on this issue. Some of the first time reactions, i believe, would be “Oh no, not another one!!”, “One networking site is enough for me!”, or “Buzz of Google Buzz.” It’s rather hard and too early too say how far this is going to affect Facebook. But, one thing for sure, if anyone is looking for me, you’ll find me on Facebook icon smile Google Buzz: Whats The Real Deal

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Gmail Seeks To Rival Facebook With New Features

February 9, 2010

Google Inc. is expected to introduce new features that will enable more social networking functionality this week,according to the Wall Street Journal.

The move “will allow Gmail users to view a stream of status update from individuals they choose to connect with.” like in Facebook and Twitter. The new feature will provide users with a real-time stream of status updates from their Gmail contacts.

Google is also expected to eventually include contents shared by Gmail users through sites such as YouTube  and Picasa, both owned by Google.

Google has been trying for long to make Gmail into more than an email service for years. Google’s move which comes after Facebook rolled out new layouts, and features including last week and not to mentioned, the rumor about it’s own email client.

How far this new move will take Google in the social-networking scene, but it’s is highly unlikely that Google will be able to rival Facebook who has now around 400 million users as compared to Gmail’s 176 million unique visitor in December (according to comScore Inc).

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Facebook And Google Launches Custom URL Shortner

December 16, 2009

Once upon a time, when one hear the word “URL shortner,” then TinyURL flashes through the mind. Since TinyURL was launched way back in 2002, many join this url-shortening game.

URL shorteners are tools that transform a long internet address in to a much shorter sting of random characters so that it is easier to read or share.

Earlier this year Bit.ly deposed TinyURL as the official link shortening service for Twitter, and announced a ‘pro’ version of its service on Monday.

Google and Facebook joined the url-shortening game by launching their own custom URL shorteners. Google’s announced it’s new URL shortener “goo.gl” in it blog late Monday. “This morning, we launched updated versions of the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner that offer a new URL shortening service from Google called the Google URL Shortener,” said Google in its blog. However, it is not yet available as a stand-alone service like TinyURL or Bit.ly.

Facebook’s “fb.me” is predominantly designed for use on mobile device, and it’s unclear whether it will be rolled out across the whole platform.

URL shorteners have grown in popularity over the last 18 months, with an increasing number of web users using services such as TinyURL and bit.ly to condesnse links so that they can be shared more easily on social networking sites such as Twitter, where there is a limit on the number of characters that can be contained within a single message.

There are two main problems with link shortening services. Firstly, since the actual destination URL is not displayed, it is easier for attackers to distribute spam and phishing attacks.  Secondly, since link shortening is frequently used with social networking services like Facebook and Twitter, there is an inherent trust that the link will be legitimate.

URL shortening is a useful and convenient service, so it is here to stay. Just don’t forget to use some common sense and be cautious enough to avoid being exploited by a shortened URL.

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