Displaying items by tag: Facebook

So the rumors about a “Facebook” phone have begun to pop up again. This time they are claiming that the arrival date of the social device will be sometime next year. These rumors are being fueled by other rumors (which is how you do it) and all seem to back up the possibility that Facebook might indeed be looking to try and enter the smart phone arena. How smart this decision is remains to be seem, but for now let’s just take a look at some of the supporting evidence.

Back when Facebook bought Instagram for a cool $1 billion it was widely thought that Facebook did this to be able to compete in the mobile market against companies like Google, Apple and a few others. In fact Facebook even made the comments that they were not good at mobile and needed to figure it out as it was a week spot. Now only a few weeks after the purchase Facebook has released their own camera app that can add similar filters to your pictures in the same way that Instagram could.

Wow, the rumors have started early; it seems that some people are trying to push the “Facebook is going to charge you” rumor again after the social networking company tried out a new “pay to promote” feature. This compiled with some recent purchases (and a change in the “data use” policy) has gotten the gears turning. The problem is that we highly doubt they will ever do that after considering there are much better ways to monetize their users.

Google has been competing with Facebook for a long time. This goes back to before the launch of their Google+ social networking service. We have honestly never bothered to see what the original reasons for the competition are since the two companies originally did not even operate in the same market space. Google is all about ads and Facebook is really all about gathering… Ah there it is. So now that we have hit the nail on the head so to speak let’s talk about this little rivalry along with some of the fun stuff that is rumored to be going on and that is really going on.

When the smart phone first hit the market it was designed with the business person in mind. It was something like a combination between a PDA and a Phone; in fact the first smartphone that I owned was a PDA complete with the PalmOS. It was a horrible brick of a phone and was quickly replaced with a HTC PPC 2600. Phone manufacturers quickly caught on to the fact that people other than business people wanted to do more with their phones. The idea of the connected phone was born and we started to see even the cheapest handsets with mobile web browsers games and message sharing.

The online privacy debate is heating up as we head into an election year in the US. So far we have watched as a handful of new legislation is talked about and data brokers, online services and others are asked for commentary on their practices. Of course, the real question is; will any of this matter or make it into law? As we have witnessed in the past, what congress asks for does not always happen and in fact many times it is dropped for unknown reasons.

Privacy is the big watch word these days. We are hearing more and more about how this app or that one gathers personal data or how Social media uses (or abuses) our personal information. We are even hearing the rumblings of congressional hearings on the subject with the US Congress demanding answers from a multitude of app providers on how they are addressing personal data privacy. It is a good thing that Congress is there to protect us… Oh wait, is this the same Congress that wants to enable internet monitoring and allow ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and corporations the power to collect and read all traffic that passes over their networks?

Facebook has not always been on the side of user privacy. In fact they have gotten into hot water about many of the features that they want to, and indeed have implemented. These are features like auto-tagging and facial recognition, the use of user pictures for their targeted ads. Storing user information after the user deletes it and even keeping deleted profiles after the user leaves Facebook. Now in what could be a PR move (and probably is) or could really be their concern over a new issue Facebook is telling users not to disclose their Facebook account passwords to employers, potential employers or during interviews.

Well we knew it was just a matter of time before this happened, but it looks like Facebook was intent on forcing the Timeline view on everyone. We opened up the DecryptedTech page this morning and were greeted with a new message telling us that Facebook was moving to a new page type on March 30th and that we could preview it now.

Yesterday there was a minor buzz around the internet claiming that Anonymous had gone after face book with a DOS (Denial of Service) attack. However, now that the morning has come Facebook is claiming that there was no attack. The two nagging items on this are a twitter post from the group AnonSec and an anomaly in the responsiveness of the Facebook API during the day (and overnight).