Facebook apart from what it is meant to be – a social networking place, can be used by people for and against crimes.

A college student used it against, and managed to thwart an armed robbery.

Nitesh Bhakta spotted masked burglars in his living room. He slipped into the attic when the gun-wielding burglars were tying up his grandmother and sister.

He grabbed his laptop as he slipped into the attic, and updated his status with an SOS message, “HELP, ROBBERS, NO PHONE”. He reportedly left his cell phone back in Athens, and was unable to call for help.

Most of his friends too his message as a joke, but his best friend John Salter didn’t, and immediately called the Bartow County Sheriff’s Department.

The miscreants took off when they heard the sirens. Police manage to nab one of them, and the remaining two wouldn’t be out for long, as they reportedly dropped their cell phones at the scene.

And that is how, with the right tools and some loyal friends, one can turn tables on misfortunes

Check out the video below:

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).