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Livestream video directly on your Facebook wall
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Partnerships, Social Media, Video Services,
Livestream has had a presence on Facebook for a while now. It's been used to stream the Facebook announcements live on the social network, as well as provide other Livestream content that users could watch directly on Facebook. Now, the social site is introducing the Livestream app, which will allow any user of Facebook to stream video directly from Facebook, at a press of a button, onto their walls. This includes all the Livestream platform features such as making this a regular podcast, with archived videos, or even pay-per-view shows. If you already have a Livestream channel, you can embed it directly on your Facebook page. This will remove some of the steps where viewers would have to move from one site to the next, and show your content directly to your friends. While partners have had access to some of those services for a while now, it's the first time users can do it with a single click, at no cost. This is yet another move by Facebook to bring social components to every facet of the web.
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| Facebook
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Why your site needs Facebook and Twitter share buttons
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Features, Marketing, Social Media,
It doesn't matter if you run a Fortune 500 company, or if you just have a personal blog. It's also not about whether you like Facebook or Twitter, or if you're active on the social scene. The simple fact is that the world is moving to social, and in a big way. Facebook has over half a billion users, growing every day, with Twitter following behind. Where people used to look up things on Google or Yahoo!, now they look it up on social networks. Instead of getting stories and links from news sites, they get them on Twitter. Instead of writing an email to a friend asking how he's doing, they sit on their Facebook walls and see what they're up to.
Click to continue reading Why your site needs Facebook and Twitter share buttons
Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
Posted by Jazz English Categories: Internet, Software,
Yesterday, new browser RockMelt entered a limited Mac and Windows beta with hopes of capitalizing on your favorite social networks.
In the last few years, social network after social network has popped up and each has become more and more a part of daily Internet habits. According to RockMelt co-founder Tim Howes, that is why their goal is "reinventing the browser for how people use the Web today."
Click to continue reading Social Browser RockMelt now in beta
Facebook introduces single sign-on for mobile
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Business Tools, News, Social Media,
This morning Facebook announced improvements to their iPhone and Android apps, as well as changes to how they handle their sign-on platform. First, the new Groups and Places features are now fully integrated into both apps, which also brings up the Android app to be on par with the iPhone one. This will allow you to take part of all those groups while on the go. Their mobile apps hadn't been updated in a while, so it's good to see the company commit themselves to the mobile space. As a side note, they did comment that Facebook had no plan to make a phone of their own, preferring to instead bring their platform to the devices that people use.
The second part of the announcement dealt with single sign-on. Mark Zuckerberg described the troubles and frustrations that entering usernames and passwords could be on a phone, and their approach to solving it. They are now providing developers with a way to integrate a single button that will log users to their services. Now, to log into any mobile site or service that supports this feature, all you'll have to do is click on the button "sign in with Facebook". No more username or password to remember. They showed the Groupon and Zynga apps which will support this feature soon, with many more on board.
Jim Starlin: ‘Breed III Summer 2011
Posted by Tom Mason Categories: Editorials, Image Comics,
Since he’s posted it on Facebook, I’m guessing it’s not much of a secret anymore.
Jim Starlin is preparing 'Breed III, the third mini-series of his creator-owned property. The 7-issue series will debut in the summer of 2011 from Image Comics.
Jim will be writing, drawing and coloring the series. And, according to his Facebook post, “This mini will conclude the 'Breed storyline from the original 'Breed and 'Breed II series. The two previous 'Breed series will be collected, reprinted and on sale next summer also.”
I can’t wait.
‘Breed #1 was the lead-off book for the Bravura imprint for which I was the Line Editor. That was my official title, but I was more like consulting editor.
Starlin, Howard Chaykin, Walter Simonson, et al, don’t need story direction for their creator-owned projects; I was just there to check spelling and pagination and hang out with some of my favorite creators (until I was stolen away to work on something else).
Click to continue reading Jim Starlin: ‘Breed III Summer 2011
Facebook acquires Drop.io
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: Acquisitions, News, Social Media,
Late Friday afternoon, the Drop.io blog posted an announcement saying that they had sold most of their technologies and assets to Facebook. Included in the deal is the fact that the site's creator Sam Lessin will also move on to Facebook. This most likely means that Facebook is looking into easy file sharing for one of its future services. The site allowed users to create an account, and freely store data on the web where they could then share it with other users.
Of more interest to us, however, is the part where the actual Drop.io service will be shutting down on Dec 15, and all data deleted. This means everyone who used the site will need to download their data if they need it. This is a chilly reminder that any cloud-based service can shut down at any point, taking all your data with it. Just earlier this year Yahoo! shut down Geocities and they simply went ahead and deleted decades worth of user data.
As we rely more and more on web services, it's worth keeping in mind that no one cares about our files more than we do.
Read More | Drop.io blog
Barack Obama calls Facebook users to publicly commit to vote
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: News, Social Media,
President Barack Obama has had a Twitter account for a while now, which many think was influential in getting him elected. With the election season coming up once more, Obama sent a call yesterday morning inviting people to install a Facebook app on their profiles called "Commit to Vote Challenge". The app itself is also more than just an ad. In typical social fashion, it allows you to "compete with my friends to inspire the most commitments". This is perhaps the first time a head of state has recognized the popularity of the social networks to a point where they create actual apps, in order to push their messages and invite people to participate in the vote.
Regardless of political allegiance, this is an interesting step forward, with this kind of embrace of online social sites. This is only a first step, and I wouldn't be surprised if in the coming years, we could easily see iPhone apps, online forums, and so on.
Read More | Twitter
Facebook introduces Friendship Pages
Posted by Patrick Lambert Categories: News, Social Media,
Today Facebook introduced yet another new feature of the popular social networking site: Friendship Pages. The way they describe it, this feature allows two people who've shared a bunch of common Facebook interactions to have their own dedicated page. With this new feature, a couple, friends, or any two people can see on a single page all their common wall posts, pictures they're both tagged in, events they've both gone to, and so on. This adds a layer of personalisation to the site, and makes it easier to follow the happenings of the ones you want, through the sometimes overwhelming amount of 'stuff' that can plague your stream of posts.
Of course, being Facebook, this will also most likely bring out questions about privacy and security. It remains to be seen if Friendship Pages become popular, but we bet they'll at least bring more embarrassing moments to the masses, for those who enjoy that kind of stuff.
Read More | Facebook Blog
More than half of Facebook users log on to play games
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Social Media,
Wondering why your friends are taking forever to respond to your IMs or wall posts? Chances are they are probably too busy playing Facebook games.
According to a new statistic from AllFaceBook.com, a whopping 53% of Facebook users play games while on Facebook. That’s about 290 million people playing Farmville, Mob Wars, etc. 56 million of these people play FB games daily. To put this in perspective, that’s more people than the entire population of England. This means that you can talk openly about your FB games exploits and more than half the time will be able to spark up a convo based around social network gaming. Interest fact for the guys as well, as 69% of those FB gamers are women. We predict pick up lines to sway drastically into the “So, how many crops do you harvest, girl?” category.
Check out the stats after the jump.
Click to continue reading More than half of Facebook users log on to play games
Read More | All Facebook
Editorial: Facebook is not your dear diary
Posted by John Kilhefner Categories: Social Media,
Remember when the Internet was a place where you could come to put a mask on, and say whatever you wanted, however you wanted thanks to anonymity? Those were the golden days. Nowadays, however, with the advent of Facebook, more and more people are wearing their hearts on their digital sleeves. And the simple truth of the matter is some people look a hell of a lot better masked.
Click to continue reading Editorial: Facebook is not your dear diary
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