Facebook buys FriendFeed – is this the end of a good thing?
Bret Taylor of FriendFeed broke the news today that the social aggregator service has been purchased by none other than Facebook. In the short term, things will remain the same as they've always been. But Bret's post on the company blog suggests that plans are already afoot to integrate FriendFeed into the current black hole of social networking.
Facebook's changing their design again, and shamelessly cloning FriendFeed
Facebook is bringing out some major changes to their service in the next week. One of the most visible changes will be its new website design, despite only having the current one for about nine months. And with this new design, their ripping-off of lifestream aggregator FriendFeed seems to be complete.
Facebook could kill Twitter? Yeah, and I'm a flying pig
Nick O'Neill over at AllFacebook has an interesting idea — Facebook could trounce Twitter if they would only add the ability to fetch status updates from their API. Interesting idea… but so very, very wrong.
Screw the technology! Focus on what users understand.
2008 has been a fairly interesting year in the realm of single sign-on services. Every tech person's favourite method of signing into multiple sites with the same service, OpenID, has seen a lot of corporate adoption throughout the social internet. And not too long ago, Facebook unveiled its Facebook Connect service, letting you access a number of sites with your Facebook details.
If things continue the way they are, this time next year nobody will know what OpenID is (or was).
Boldly going where no social network has gone before
I broke my month-long boycott of Facebook today. Within 45 minutes, I scheduled my account for deletion. Good riddance, I say!
That crappy Facebook redesign is just killing... Apps, that is
Anthony Ha over at VentureBeat demonstrated the pain app developers on Facebook are facing thanks to the much maligned redesign.
Facebook shows how little they care about their users... Screw 'em, I'm gone
So, Facebook has finally shown how little they care about the needs and wants of their users, and completely switched to the new design today, no more workarounds. I’ve not gone and deleted my account, but I’m instead refusing to access Facebook at all for a month or so. After that time, if they’ve not accepted what is asked of them, I’ll obliterate my account.
Inches away from leaving Facebook forever
Yeah, I admit it. I use Facebook. But as they plan to switch over to their widely panned new design without option for anyone to keep the old, I’m just inches away from deleting my account and not using Facebook again. That design is broken, unhelpful, and confusing to a lot of people. It takes away most of the control I have over my profile, and what little it gives back is entirely ridiculous.
Why am I using Facebook?
Some time ago, I was more or less dragged onto the social networking website Facebook. And while I don't like the site (personally I think a system like FOAF? is better) I've actually found myself updating my profile there and actually thinking about finding everyone I know (or used to know) on the site. This all because a person I used to go to high school with had found my profile and confirmed that I was indeed myself.
Well, I'm on Facebook, and while I shall continue to limit my use of social networking sites, I might as well just bite the bullet with the ones I do have accounts on, at the least.
