facebook announcement

A few months ago, we started working with Skype to bring video calling to Facebook,” Facebook announced on its blog. “We built it right into chat, so all your conversations start from the same place. To call your friend, just click the video call button at the top of your chat window.”

Today Facebook will make an awesome announcement at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). It's rumored to be a more in depth partnership with Skype, which will integrate.

The tech world and beyond gathered yesterday for another big Facebook platform announcement.

Our social network members support us throughout the year," said CMA Chief Executive Officer STEVE MOORE. "They are loyal to the CMA brand and our events. So, it is terrific when we can share exciting news with them first."

The CMA AWARDS will air on WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9th at 8p (ET) on ABC-TV, live from the BRIDSTONE ARENA in NASHVILLE.

The group chat feature will let users chat with multiple friends at once by selecting "Add Friends to Chat." According to Facebook, 50 percent of users are using the Groups feature, for things like co-ordinating events. Users can add friends that are not online at the time, and those friends will receive a summary of the chat later on.

The announcement comes just as Google launched its own social network called Google+, which emphasized privacy and had features like group chat and video calling built in.

Zuckerberg said Facebook's video chat will work through a partnership with Skype.

Facebook doesn’t let more than two participate in video chats. Skype has group chats, but it costs users $9 per month. Facebook does warn users that some computers may have hardware or software compatibility issues with the service.

Tom Anderson’s last post on MySpace was on March 1.

On his Facebook page, which seems wrong, he said, “I started MySpace in 2003, it sold in 2005 to NewsCorp for $580 million, and I stayed there to run it until April 2009. Now a new owner bought MySpace from News Corp. I'm not a fan of the new MySpace, though the team's heart was in the right place. Maybe the new owner has good ideas.

Facebook users and Skype's 663 million registers users, of which 42.2 million are average daily "active" users (2009 was last active users stat I could find). Imagine being able to see your friend's presence info and then chat, voice, or even video call them over 3G data or a WiFi connection. But the implications go deeper. Since everyone seems to be on Facebook, you wouldn't even need PSTN numbers any more.

Facebook accidentally resets email notifications, fixes glitch

Image via Wikipedia

Facebook yesterday accidentally reset email notifications for some users. The social network lets users pick and choose what event on Facebook results in an email sent to their inbox (there are now 73 notification options to choose from). By default, most are turned on, and users often choose to turn some of them off. Unfortunately, the reset turned them all back on.

The glitch got a lot of attention and was posted on the Known Issues on Facebook webpage:

Email notifications: Some people are suddenly receiving email notifications for settings they had turned off, and the checkboxes are now checked. We are currently working on a solution to this problem.

The issue has since been fixed, according to Facebook. “Yesterday evening, we discovered a bug that caused a small number of people to start receiving notifications they had previously turned off,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement. “We have since resolved the issue and apologize for any inconvenience.”

Users  whose accounts got reset will likely encounter all 73 boxes checked and need to go through them to pare down the number of emails they’ll receive. However, some readers are complaining that as soon as they redo the email notifications, the site seems to ignore them or revert to sending all the messages that the user had just opted out of.

Facebook entrance to China

Image via Wikipedia

Entering China would give Facebook access to the world’s largest Internet market, with more than 457 million
Web users. People who want to get on the social network there now rely on private-network services to circumvent
firewalls that bar access to information the government deems inappropriate.

Facebook, with more than 500 million users, aims to expand in other parts of the world to add members and
advertisers. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg visited China in December and met with Internet
companies including Baidu Inc. and Sina Corp. He also met with Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile
Ltd., who said the pair discussed “the possibility of cooperation” in China.

“We are currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that
could benefit our users, developers and advertisers,” Palo Alto, California- based Facebook said in an
e-mailed statement.

owner of the world’s most popular social-networking service,Mark Zuckerberg, has held talks with potential partners
about how to gain a foothold in China, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The officials of Facebook said in February that it’s opening an office in Hong Kong. While the aim is to focus
on Taiwan

and Hong Kong, the location brings Facebook closer to advertisers in China, where Susquehanna International
Group LLP predicts the online advertising market will triple to almost $13 billion by 2014.