Netly News

Google Wants to Friend You

Thanks to a new Google project, soon any Website can be its own Facebook.

Upping the stakes in its ongoing battle with the popular social network, Google announced today that it was getting into the "social plumbing" business — giving every website a way to add a limitless number of applications and a means for those sites' users to communicate among themselves.

The initiative is called Friend Connect and it begins tonight when any site can apply to be in the Google pilot program (they call it a "preview release") here. Note: that site won't be live until Monday night. During the next few days, Google will choose one or two dozen sites to participate. Over the course of the next several months, the company will collect site, user and developer feedback on how the program is working. Then, if all goes well, in a few months Google will open up Friend Connect to any website or blog that wants to participate.

Here's how it'll work. (And forgive me for using my blog as an example; we need the traffic.)

(The rest of my time.com story is here.)

Microsoft buying Facebook? Not likely.

Two words: Marc Andreessen. I suspect he'd never join Facebook's board if he thought that selling out to Microsoft was an option. (I love taking  one rumor to debunk another.)

How Facebook Can Save Face

It looks inevitable that Facebook will move away from its proprietary platform to the open platform of OpenSocial. Indeed, sources tell me that representatives from Facebook and Google met for the first time late yesterday afternoon. And already, Facebook investor and board member Jim Breyer is indicating that the social network would be willing to join the Everybody-but-Facebook Alliance.

Meanwhile, a favorite parlor game yesterday afternoon among  pundits here in Techland was playing "What Should Facebook Do?"—though most of the people I spoke to were unwilling to go on the record. Virtually everyone's answers however, boiled down to three optionss:

1. Do nothing. Facebook has a surprising amount of power in this relationship. It has 50 million members and continues to grow. As long as that's the case, developers will continue to craft apps in FBML, its proprietary platform language.

2. Surrender, totally and at once. Converting Facebook's platform to open HTML isn't difficult from a programming standpoint or particularly time-consuming. Besides,  developers will love it. Many have privately griped that Facebook's platform is too gnarly and they look forward to simple HTML and Javascript. And no one I've spoken to can find any real problem with this shift from Facebook's perspective——indeed, the move should benefit Facebook since its members will be able to stay put, where FB can serve ads at them, while doing more outside the walls of FB.

3. Some combination of 1 & 2.

I had dinner last night with John Lilly, COO of the Mozilla Foundation. (Who better to talk about the virtues of openness?) Lilly, in fact, made me think that Option 3 was the smartest way to go. If he were running Facebook, he said, "I would not let Google take the 'open' mantle from the world."

Why I'm Rooting for the Kid

I’m rooting for the kid.

It’s not an easy decision—it never makes sense to be on the other side of Google (GOOG), and I am all for open standards. But on this one, I can’t help myself, I am rooting for the kid.

Imagine starting a business that, within 18 months, goes from nothing to 50 million members. You do everything right. You take a bit of seed capital and you make all the correct decisions, you play a scratch game, you innovate, you make a big bet, and bam! You create a product that’s so compelling, you make a market where none existed.

And now imagine that a far bigger company—no, the fifth biggest company in the U.S.!—comes along and simply copies your idea. It bigfoots you and says, you know that beautiful thing you figured out? Well we’re going to do it, too. And good luck competing with us because we’re going to take your great idea, and give it away for free to our market, which happens to be twice as large as yours before we even get started here.

In so doing, it (seemingly) neutralizes you, robs you of all the value you created.

How can you NOT root for the kid on this one?

A lot of this reminds me of the Browser Wars, when Microsoft took a similar tactic with Netscape. (“You know that cool browser you created? You know how your business model hinges on selling it to people? and want to sell? Well we’re copying it and giving it away for free.”) Of course, Microsoft also made the mistake of tying it to its operating system, which cost it billions. No one can scream “monopoly!” here.

So I’m rooting for the kid. I don’t care that, in this case, ironically, he has Microsoft (MSFT) in his corner. He is still the underdog.

I hope Dave Winer is right and that tech companies who promulgate standards to undermine other tech companies usually fail. I don’t believe him in this case. The “standard” that Google is foisting on its partners is open. It’s HTML and Javascript. Facebook has the proprietary code here.

But still I am rooting for the kid. He has momentum on his side—50 million people, and so far, Google’s ploy isn’t a good reason for any of them to leave. And that means the developers will stay. I am hoping that come next Tuesday, when he lets Madison Avenue see what Facebook can do with social ads, he’ll change the game yet again. God this is fun. That’s why I’m rooting for the kid.

Facebook for the Blackberry

Printed with permission of Keith Bilous

Finally! The best gadget I've purchased this year in my Blackberry 8830. I love it. SO much better than the Treo, that dumbest of smartphones, which I lugged around for the last three years.

At today's CTIA, Facebook unveiled Facebook Mobile—and a new download for the Blackberry which is supposed to make it easier to access the social network.

That's the good news. The bad news: Though I was able to download the application (point your BB browser here) and install it without problems, when I try to connect I get "There was an error contacting Facebook." Possibly too many people are attempting to login at once? Or what? Anyone else having trouble (or have you gotten in?)

Update: I'm still locked out, but some readers are getting in: See comments.

Update at 7:45 p.m. PST: Still no luck. Other readers complaining of problems.

Update at 8:45 p.m. PST: Looks like a ton of people are having trouble. See Facebook's Blackberry page here.

Final update: I got the RIM guys to debug the problem. Turns out that the people affected are corporate users whose IT departments limited browser access. Here's the fix.

Facebook's Move To Madison Avenue

Why bother to rob banks? Facebook is where the real money is—and the young social network has not yet begun to tap into it. But that will change within the next few months, says Mark Zuckerberg.

The lead-off batter at Day One of the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, Zuckerberg turned in his usual deadpan performance, and yet managed to divulge a lot in what little he said. The most interesting stuff had to do with where the young "it" company is headed in the near term. Moderator John Battelle asked Zuckerberg if he could let the audience know about any "places that Facebook might want to colonize"—an important question for developers who presumably steer clear of competing with its host.

More Google Brass Head for the Exits

Bigshots from around the world are converging on Google HQ tomorrow for Zeitgeist, the faithful’s annual mecca to the Googleplex. But at least one of Google’s top brass is heading for the exits: Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer described by Google (GOOG) watchers as one of “Larry and Sergey’s golden boys” has defected—to Facebook.

Reached in his Google office late yesterday, Ling confirmed the move, but declined further comment. His last day at Google is Friday.

A Ph.D in computer science educated at Stanford University, Ling was product-management director for Google where he oversaw all of the search goliath’s ecommerce efforts. Among other things, he created and ran its payment service, Google Checkout, as well as Google SMS, which delivers search services via text messages to cellphones. Ling will be heading the Facebook platform, the software architecture upon which the popular social network is built.

Ling follows ex-Googler Gideon Yu, who was the Chief Financial Officer of Google’s YouTube, to Facebook. Yu left for the CFO’s slot at the Palo Alto startup in August.

Google’s stock has surged to over $600 a share recently, which, ironically, is making it harder to keep top talent on board. Silicon Valley pundits believe that Facebook is headed for an IPO in the near future—a much faster path to riches for early stage employees.——Lindsay Blakey contributed to this post

Secrets of the Facebook Economy: Secret #1: How to make money by throwing crap at people.

Nevermind all the fanciful Facebook applications that developers are busily crafting. It's actually shockingly easy to get in on the Facebook goldrush, 400 attendees learned today at "Graphing Social Patterns," a two-day conference on the business and technology of Facebook applications.

Indeed, Seth Goldstein, president and founder of SocialMedia.com, appears to have found the killer app. Or maybe it's the killer crap. Goldstein's company created "Food Fight," one of the first apps to strike a chord among millions of Facebook users. The app allowed users to use virtual bucks to buy virtual food, which they could "throw" at friends. After the fad began to slow, Goldstein, asked one of his developers to create "a pile of poop," which he then threw at a VC pal.

Not surprisingly, it kept the Food Fight roaring. Until the virtual poop, most food items could be purchased for $1 (virtual). Facebook users earn money to buy virtual food by answering questions submitted by other users and market researchers; that in turn, creates real market research that can be sold for real money. Goldstein decided to charge $25 per pile for his newest creation. Demand was uncanny, he said in an interview.

Hundreds of thousands of users bought the item, answering reams of questions about their lives. "It was far and away our most popular item ever," he said.