The source of the feud: Facebook chose Microsoft as their ad partner and investor a year ago; Google had already put their money behind MySpace. But beyond that, Google was also quick to compete with Facebook platform by launching Open Social with most of Facebook’s competitors, cementing the ill-will.

Now Facebook may be shooting itself in the foot to spite its face (or however the saying goes) by ignoring the new Android platform. From what we hear, Facebook has dedicated exactly zero resources to creating a version of the service for Android, and has no plans to launch anything at all. That’s despite the fact that the company has robust iPhone and RIM applications (the iPhone app was developed internally by Joe Hewitt, the RIM app was built by RIM with Facebook’s help). Meanwhile, MySpace has already released an Android version of their service.

So why no Andoid app? The official reason is that Facebook is looking to others to develop these applications. Joe Hewitt pushed the iPhone app internally, a spokesperson says, and RIM built the app themselves (but Facebook lent engineers). Google or third parties are free to use the Facebook API to build apps using Facebook services, the spokesperson said.

But the off record discussions I’m having with others at Facebook tell a different story. One source derisively called Android “vaporware” (it looks pretty real to me). Another source at Facebook says “Android sucks, it doesn’t matter.”

Sounds like they’ve reached their decision.

Original URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/22/dont-hold-your-breathe-for-the-facebook-android-app/

Almost two million new users from around the world sign up for Facebook each week—and we couldn’t be happier. It’s tremendously rewarding to see so many people find what we work on useful and fun. As we continue to add new users and features, however, the load on our thousands of servers continues to increase at a pretty astounding rate. A few weeks ago we reached full capacity in our California datacenters. In the past we handled this problem by purchasing a few dozen servers, hooking them up, and getting on with our lives, but this time we didn’t have it so easy. We’d actually run out of space in our datacenters for new machines.

Fortunately we saw this problem coming a long time ago and started work on a new datacenter in Virginia. Now, we identify whether a user would be better off talking to the east coast datacenter or a west coast data center. For people in Europe and the eastern half of the US, it’s noticeably faster to talk to a server in Virginia than in California. For these users we direct them to Virginia whenever they’re browsing the site and not making any changes.

Whenever that person goes to change some data—uploading a photo album, or changing profile info for example—we send them off to California so that all our modifying operations happen in the same location. This decision was made to prevent two or more modifications from conflicting with each other and messing up our data. It might sound like we’re forcing our users to go to California a lot but only about 10% of our traffic causes a modifying operation. MySQL has a great replication feature that allows us to, in real time, stream all the modifications happening on a California MySQL server to another one in Virginia. Replication happens so fast, even across the country, that the Virginia servers are almost never more than one or two seconds behind the California servers.

Even though all of the modification happens in California and streams instantly to Virginia, we were faced with another problem. Although Facebook’s data is stored in MySQL database servers, we use a large number of memcached servers to store copies of the data. Memcached is much faster and able to keep up with requests quicker than the databases themselves can keep up. We had to figure out a way for memcached servers to replicate data concurrently with the MySQL databases. Because of various technical limitations of our architecture there was no easy way to do so.

Fortunately MySQL is open source software, meaning we can actually change the way it works by modifying the code. We did just that—embedding extra information in to the MySQL replication stream that allows us to properly update memcached in Virginia. This ensures that the cache and the database are always in sync. Over the last seven months a great team of Facebook employees has been building new software and setting up new servers like I described above. Over Thanksgiving we finally flipped the switch and since then almost 30% of our traffic has been served from Virginia.

The east coast datacenter is a great first step towards keeping Facebook fast and reliable as the site grows. Going forward we have lots of exciting plans to expand our infrastructure and improve performance so no user ever has to sit around waiting for a page to load.

Original URL: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=7899307130

Third parties can already integrate directly today via the Facebook API, Beacon and the Facebook Platform, but adoption from these companies, which are indirectly also competing with Facebook, has been slow. Now, users can add the content stream directly. Users simply tell Facebook what third party services they use the most, along with their credentials or public feed for the site. The content stream is then pulled into your Facebook News Feed.

What this means: in your friends news feed, you may start to see more content from Flickr, Twitter, Digg and other third party services. This competes directly with what a number of startups are doing – namely FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse and the more recently launched Iminta.

This is certainly an opening up of Facebook. And given that so many tens of millions of users spend so much time on the site already, it could remove the wind from the FriendFeed/Plaxo sails.

But don’t expect to see a RSS feed or widgets showing what you or your friends are up to any time soon. The data feeds that Facebook opened up last year do not extend to the News Feed. And from what we hear, Facebook hasn’t made a decision to open it up yet. Until they do, there is still plenty of breathing room for competitors.

Original URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/22/facebook-targets-feedfriend/

1. Acquisitions: The following startups and companies will be acquired (and two most possible buyers in that order):

• Twitter (Yahoo! [the Yang revival?], Microsoft [the Ballmer promise?])
• Digg (New York Times, Microsoft)
• Technorati (Google, Yahoo!)
• Techmeme (New York Times, Yahoo!)
• Pownce (Microsoft, Yahoo!)
• Tumblr (Yahoo!, Microsoft)

2. Facebook: Facebook won’t die. The new Facebook is Facebook. Instead, it will continue to grow and grow — internationally more so. How will they do that? Simple, like they’ve always been — introduce revolutionary new features, fail, fail, fail, jackpot, fail, fail, fail (note that I use the term “fail” very loosely — a more appropriate phrasing would be “wen’t nowhere” or even “didn’t make the NYT.”) Contrary to many of the skepticisms over Facebook’s revenue model, Facebook will find a revenue stream and thus a way to keep its $15b valuation. If 2007 was a sky-rocketing year for Facebook this year, 2008 will be a period of steady growth, where things get a little more settled and stable. Less valuation talk, more actual work done.

3. Google: The number and rate of new Google products introduced will decrease. Instead, what will increase is the quality and reach of them — Google Reader will very possibly be among the first RSS readers to make the mainstream, the Google Office suite products (i.e. their eventual “release” updates) will continue to offer unique and interesting functionality pushing some consumers to ditch the Microsoft, Google Video will branch out into a niche: video search and attempt to do it in an awesome way, and lastly, Google News will turn into an AJAX startpage-esque product (or opt for some of that functionality). Oh, and speaking of startpages, iGoogle will either hit the mainstream jackpot or die in the minds of its current users.

4. Yahoo!: 2008, in general, will be a huge test for Yahoo! and its revival. For years they’ve been thriving on the old mainstream model, and as the web’s current highest trafficked website, they’ll be needing a Plan B to keep it alive, or simply put, hit a few jackpots from their current 10 – 20 “lab tests.” I’m not sure what to think of Jerry Yang’s recent 60-day revival strategy period and it’s fairly difficult for anyone to predict what — if anything — came out of it, but surely, Yahoo! doesn’t seem like one that is going to go away anytime soon. They won’t grow as fast as they’ve been, and at worse mostly irrelevant to the Internet industry, but as a company I think they’ve got some big challenges ahead and the advantage of playing a contender where failure isn’t a possibility but success is the golden cookie. And one of the things that’s going to be trivial in their revival strategy, I think, is going to be acquisitions and lots of them. (read: point #1)

5. Microsoft: As if Steve Ballmer’s Web 2.0 keynote wasn’t enough to say it, 2008 will be a big year for Microsoft. Obviously, we’re looking at a lot of acquisitions, products, and murders (yes, I’m talking to you, the 5 or so Live products that no one uses.) In any case, I think 2008 will be the year we know Microsoft’s stance on the web. We’ve been trying to figure it out for years and it always seems like there’s something right around the corner that is going to make it for them (remember the new MSN Search, anyone?) In any case, Bill Gates’ exit — for the good or the bad — will mean that there is increased activity in Microsoft’s Web properties. And will we find out whether the Web Office is Microsoft Office? I don’t think so, I think we’ll be needing two or three more years for that, but this won’t be stopping them from trying.

6. Buzzwords: “AJAX” will die. “The Long Tail” will die. “Folksonomy” is dead. “Crowdsourcing” hasn’t really gone anywhere, and it may or may not. “Web 2.0? is at its peak, so I think next year is going to be when its use really reduces, and 2009 when it dies completely. RSS will be replaced by “feeds”, and the buttons with simply “Subscribe.” “New media” will survive for a couple more years. “Podcasts” will survive. “Social Network” will survive to refer to anything not Facebook, and “social graph,” until Facebook is alive, will be used to refer to Facebook. And lastly, “Web 3.0? is the most unoriginal and ambiguous word that ever exists, so it’s NOT going to be the successor of Web 2.0. At least, I hope so. Need I say more?

7. iPhone: If 2007 was a big year for the iPhone, I think 2008 will be when its survival is really tested. That 10 million mark Apple’s aiming for? They’re going to get it, and not only that, I think they’ll surpass it. And with more iPhone users comes increased activity on the mobile web, which, iPhone user or not, I think is good for everyone. Of course, with the web apps not really getting anywhere among users web developers have something to cringe about, but native apps coming February and more iPhones in circulation will in the long run will prove best for all developers — web or not. And what about iPhone 2.o, you’re wondering? I’m not one to predict specific features, but I think the web experience will continue to get better and better and I can imagine a day where I’d opt for the iPhone because it’s close to me than open my Macbook and wait for Firefox to boot (yes, I know the iPhone has a great web browser interface already, but I’m still really attached to the traditional Firefox on my traditional Macbook. Either I’ll change, or the iPhone will.)

8. OpenSocial: I know you’re only reading this paragraph to find out where I think it will flop or not, so I’ll cut to the chase. I think OpenSocial has a lot to offer, but I think Facebook apps — and their usage — is more powerful that all the others combined, and there lies the future of OpenSocial. I think it’s a good attempt — great attempt — by Google, and better than any social network they could’ve built (or have), but it won’t be enough to bring down Facebook or even hurt it in any way. If anything, OpenSocial is going to validate Facebook’s model of social apps and attract more developers into the landscape. However, this doesn’t mean developers are going to not adopt it. They are, and many existing Facebook app developers are too, but what won’t equate to the Facebook advantage is the number of users and the usage.

Original URL: http://www.rev2.org/2007/12/30/predictions-08/

The problem is, Facebook’s not for sale. And that’s got Google running scared. It’s an open secret in Silicon Valley that the company has been shopping around a nondisclosure agreement outlining its plan to create its own massive social network – and asking anyone with a pulse to sign it.

Google has to do something fast, because some of its best talent is starting to head for the exits. In July, Gideon Yu, finance chief at Google’s YouTube, left for Facebook. Now other Google guys, stuck in the Googleplex and smelling a Facebook IPO that could turn early employees into early retirees, are also jumping ship.

The latest defector: Benjamin Ling, the top engineer at Google Checkout, its online payment service. A Stanford comp-sci Ph.D., Ling will be overseeing Facebook’s entire software platform. Losing finance types is one thing. But smart engineers are the lifeblood of a great tech company, and Ling was worth a pint, insiders say.

Facebook’s threat to Google, of course, is bigger than a talent war. In fact, the stakes here are about as high as they get in the Internet business. Something is going on that we haven’t seen since Microsoft challenged Netscape and helped define the wide-open web.

Now the social networks are trying to do the opposite – to build what I call the Innernet. It’s the place you occupy with family and friends and where you exercise almost absolute control, showing the world only as much of your true self as you care to while protecting you and yours from the evil that lurks on the wider web, from spam artists to identity thieves. Whoever builds that walled garden stands to make the next great Internet fortune.

Facebook, until recently little more than a student hangout, is the odds-on favorite to win that race. In March founder Mark Zuckerberg opened the site to independent software developers, inviting them to write Facebook applications and reap a share of whatever revenue they generate.

Because creating Facebook applets was so easy, programmers could throw lots of stuff at the wall and quickly see what stuck. Take, for example, Super Wall, a little app that lets users add text, photos, video, or drawings to one another’s Facebook pages. It took a couple of developers part of a June weekend to write. Within three weeks, two million people were using it. Today, more than ten million do.

That’s a real economy (or could be, if someone figured out how to make money from it), and it explains why Facebook has suddenly pulled out of the slipstream of MySpace, growing from 20 million active users in April to more than 45 million today.

More cool apps mean more reasons for people to hang out there – and more reasons for developers to launch new apps. Worst of all for Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin: They can’t participate – for privacy reasons Google’s search engine is barred at Facebook’s door like an unwanted encyclopedia salesman.

How does Google plan to fight back? It’s gearing up to do for the web what Facebook did for its network, starting with its social networking site Orkut (which is big in Brazil) and extending it to Gmail, You Tube, iGoogle, and so on.

Imagine Google as the command center for your entire social life; you could chat and read your e-mail there, give your closest friends access to your calendar, and get minute-by-minute updates on their whereabouts. All the big social networks were invited to join the new coalition – even, presumably, Facebook. (No one from Facebook or Google would comment.)

Will it work? Google’s effort, I’m told, is being led by Joe Kraus, the founder of Excite. Though he is as Web 2.0 savvy as they come, I think Google’s plan may be too little too late. Everyone these days is opening up his network – even MySpace.

Besides, there’s no compelling reason for users to leave Facebook now. The developers will stay as long as they can reach a mass audience there. Google’s trying to fix something that isn’t broken – just as Microsoft has been doing for years with search and IBM tried to do with operating systems for PCs. Maybe Google should stick to organizing the world’s information, and let this little mouse roar.

Original URL: http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/15/technology/google_facebook.fortune/

The move could give maturing Microsoft more access to young users and let Facebook get closer to a major software maker at a time when its growth is increasingly tied to a proliferation of small applications from independent developers on its site.

Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal said the world’s largest software company sought to buy a stake of up to 5 percent in Facebook for $300 million to $500 million.

Facebook, led by its 23-year-old founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, may insist on a valuation as high as $15 billion and is considering raising up to $500 million in cash to expand its operations, according to the Journal.

Such a deal could help Microsoft better compete against Web search leader Google Inc for a growing base of online advertising and put one of the Internet’s hottest names in Microsoft’s camp.

Facebook, which already has an advertising deal with Microsoft, would benefit from closer ties with developers as it seeks to turn its site into a full-fledged Web platform where users can play games, interact and read news about each other, said Forrester analyst Charlene Li.

“If you are building a business around building a platform there is one company that has done it better than anybody else — and that is Microsoft,” she said. “People have been just assuming that Google would be the best partner and that is not necessarily the case.”

Google has also expressed an interest in investing in Facebook, the Journal report said.

“It would probably be pretty good for Microsoft since it has not had the best success in creating really hip, young-people-grabbing stuff on the Web,” said Kim Caughey, a senior analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group, which oversees more than $1 billion, including Microsoft shares, for clients.

Representatives for Microsoft and Facebook declined to comment.

Zuckerberg has repeatedly said his company wants to remain independent and is seen as preparing to float itself on the stock market eventually.

Facebook has grown to 39 million members, up nearly 63 percent from 24 million in late May, and is quickly gaining ground on larger rival MySpace, which was taken over by News Corp in 2005 for what is now seen as a bargain price of $580 million. MySpace has more than 200 million users.

Facebook’s explosion popularity has also drawn increased scrutiny, including a 50-state investigation into the company by attorneys general concerned about Web sexual predators.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said on Monday his office had subpoenaed Facebook and accused it of not keeping young users safe. Facebook said it was preparing a statement about the issue.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft already has an exclusive agreement until 2011 to broker display advertisements for Facebook. The Journal said Microsoft and Facebook are discussing expanding that agreement beyond the United States.

After relinquishing an early advantage in the lucrative paid search market to Google and Yahoo Inc, Microsoft is trying to catch up by clinching deals to broker display advertising to some of the leading names in “Web 2.0.”

Yahoo and Google are also maneuvering. Earlier this year, for instance, News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said he had discussed swapping MySpace for a 25 percent stake in Yahoo.

Web 2.0 is a catch-phrase for a new generation of Internet services that run on interactive software and typically rely on content generated by users to attract more visitors. Microsoft also has an agreement with popular news site Digg.com.

Microsoft shares rose 1.5 percent to $29.08 on Nasdaq.

Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070924/wr_nm/microsoft_facebook_dc

There are a number of clear ramifications here. The first is that the code can be used by outsiders to better understand how the Facebook application works, for the purposes of finding further security holes or bugs that could be exploited. Since Facebook is a closed source application, without access to the code security holes are usually found through a process of black-box testing, whereby an external party will probe the application in an attempt to work out how the application behaves and to try and find potential race conditions. In closed source applications it is common that developers rely on the closed nature of the application to obfuscate poor design elements and the structure of the application. An attacker getting access to the source code more often than not leads to further security holes being discovered. It is for these reasons that it is often claimed that open source software is more secure than closed source software, since there are many more eyes auditing the code and obfuscation can’t be used as a security measure.

The second implication with this leak is that the source code reveals a lot about the structure of the application, and the practices that Facebook developers follow. From just this single page of source code a lot can be said and extrapolated about the rest of the Facebook application and platform. For instance, the structure doesn’t follow any object oriented development practices, and it seems that the application is one large PHP file with a large number of custom functions living in the same namespace (they also seem to be using the Smarty templating engine).

This leak is not good news for Facebook, as it raises the question of how secure a Facebook users private data really is. If the main source code for a site can be leaked, then it can be said that almost anything is possible. Facebook has become such a success and has such a high profile that it has become a magnet for attacks against its systems. Most large scale applications suffer a breach at some point or another, since the odds are always stacked in favor of attackers, but companies can respond in a number of ways and the hope here is that Facebook will handle this situation gracefully. I don’t doubt that Facebook will pursuit this case with a lot of energy to both find the cause of why the code has leaked as well as to find who was responsible. They will also need to take some very quick short term measures to mitigate the risk to users since you can bet that right this minute there are hundreds of potential attackers pouring through the leaked code and probing their systems. At a quick glance, I know that I can see some obvious things in the code that both reveal certain hidden aspects of the platform and give a potential attacker a good head start.

Brandee Barker from Facebook left a comment on the TechCrunch post:

I wanted to clarify a few things in your story. Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.

Original URL: http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/08/11/facebook-source-code-leaked/

After seeing this message I refreshed the page and the site would not connect (page cannot be displayed). I wonder what they are doing…

Parakey was started by Firefox’s two founders, Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The site gives this description of the service: “Computers are frustrating. Creating documents, finding files, sharing information–why do everyday things still seem so tedious and counterintuitive? We hope that Parakey will make your life easier.”

According to Inside Facebook, “Parakey is intended to be a platform for tools that can manipulate just about anything on your hard drive: e-mail, photos, videos, recipes, calendars.”

What is Facebook planning on doing with a start-up that specializes in integrating online services with local machines? Facebook’s press release says the company will be working on the development of its Facebook Platform as well as its Web site.

I would have to say that Parakey will be bringing something fresh to Facebook Platform; otherwise, there would have been no need for this acquisition. Facebook’s developers could have continued to work on it. Tight integration with local content on your computer and offline access to some Facebook services seem likely here.

There are a few things that come to mind when I think about this. The obvious one is, of course, integration between Facebook Events and desktop calendar applications such as iCal and Outlook. A couple of the other things in the list of what Parakey can manipulate (photos and videos) match up with what Facebook is doing right now as well. Although these are good possibilities of what Facebook may do with this acquisition, it’s really anyone’s guess at this point, especially since nobody has yet really seen Parakey in action.

Details of the money exchanged in the acquisition have not yet surfaced. As more information about how Facebook will be using Parakey’s developers and technologies becomes apparent, I’ll do a follow-up on this. This news begs the question of what the odds are that Facebook is going down the road to an IPO.

Original URL: http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9747605-7.html

“How can NASA become hip?” NASA CoLab Project Manager Robert Schingler asked here Tuesday at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “For me, it’s allowing other individuals (and companies) to participate in the program.”

CoLab, NASA’s Collaborative Space Exploration Laboratory, hosted a one-day tech event called the Participatory Exploration Summit, which brought together representatives from across the space agency, as well as from Twitter, Creative Commons and game companies like Virtual Heroes and Virtue Arts.

CoLab’s sole purpose is to foster partnerships between the space program and tech entrepreneurs, and then develop novel applications and make use of NASA resources. To that end, it plans to open offices in San Francisco, and it’s already plotted virtual space in the virtual world Second Life.

But CoLab has a tough challenge in infusing the young, fast-paced culture of Internet technology into a government agency that’s largely slow, methodical and dominated by older scientists. Hobbled by spending cuts, NASA has increasingly turned to private industry to meet various goals for long-term space exploration, including returning to the moon in 10 years.

Now NASA is trying to reach out to the technology industry to help market itself to a generation of kids growing up online and who seem less inclined to study science or math.

According to open discussions Tuesday, NASA marketing efforts could come in the form of blogs, online videos and 3D games that simulate landing on the moon. When a NASA moderator asked the room whether people would like a stream of twitters from astronauts in space, a good portion of the small crowd raised its hand.

“We need more public support,” said Andrew Hoppin, NASA CoLab Communities manager. “As a technical-driven agency, NASA should be pushing the envelope. That’s the goal here today.”

Still, there are some minor signs that NASA is catching up with the times. Hoppin said the agency is building a social network for space alumni, for example, so that former astronauts like Buzz Aldrin can connect with peers online.

NASA scientists and employees are apparently already big fans of the social network Facebook, which is growing at a fast clip. There are more than 500 groups on Facebook that are associated with NASA, but not officially, Hoppin said. “It’s one of the most potent platforms for social networking,” he said.

The agency has also launched several blogs to communicate about internal projects both between groups and with the public. NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale started blogging this summer, for example. And although blogs have been popular for years, the fact that NASA officials are adopting the tools is a breakthrough for generating internal awareness for projects, Hoppin said.

Similarly, NASA’s CoLab is investigating an internal, collaborative use of Twitter to share more information among agency officials. It already uses a secure, internal instant-messaging system from Jabber, but the agency still largely relies on e-mail and the phone for communications, according to officials at the event.

Also, NASA plans to launch CosmosCode later this summer, said Jessy Cowan-Sharp, who’s in charge of the project. CosmosCode will be like a SourceForge for space software, she said, allowing third parties to contribute open-source code to NASA projects and share know-how with its scientists.

A big part of the agency’s sales pitch to third-party partners is access to enormous sets of data from various sources, including the Hubble Space Station and the James Webb Space Telescope, which resides a million miles from Earth. Google, for example, has teamed with NASA, which provides it data from Mars for the Google Earth mapping tool.

Game companies like Virtual Heroes and Virtue Arts have also used NASA data to create 3D simulations for space games. Virtue Arts has developed Lunar Exploration, a moon race game it plans to launch for the Xbox this winter.

And although NASA’s mission to travel back to the moon is 10 years out, it has grand ambitions for these types of partnerships: According to NASA’s pitch, “Imagine: As the first controlled lander to the moon in 40 years comes to rest on the lunar surface, millions of citizens participate in the descent through an interactive high-def video link. Millions more have already flown a simulated descent on the wildly popular lunar exploration game developed privately and distributed free on Nasa.gov.”

Mike Linksvayer, chief technology officer of the nonprofit Creative Commons, suggested that scientists and other planetary societies use its alternative license for copyrights to disseminate photos and other works so that more of the public has access to it. People can access NASA photos and videos that are posted to the Web because all government works are in the public domain.

“I encourage NASA to open up its data via APIs so that it can be used in mashups,” Linksvayer said.

That move could garner more interest by developers to produce games that would get kids interested in space exploration, officials said.

“We need developers to put some type of space element in all kinds of games, not shooter games,” said Beth Beck, NASA’s Outreach Program Manager Space Operations. “We have to get those kids who are young to really care about what we do, because we tend to make it boring.”

Original URL: http://news.com.com/2100-11397_3-6193493.html