Tag Archives: facebook

Facebook Is The New AOL?

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Introduction:

Facebook has won the hearts of many over the years. This does not go without saying that Facebook has seen a fair share of positive as well as negative criticism on the trott. In the modern day, the ‘modern’ man would usually describe Facebook as an internet vicinity where everything and everyone you are interested in is readily available. This really takes us back in time (1990 to be exact) and reminds us of AOL. It is, therefore, no surprise that experts nowadays tend to compare Facebook with AOL a little too often (No wonder; both share quite a lot in common).

As it started to spread its wings and ascended even further towards supremacy, AOL saw success AND controversy. Facebook is no different in this regard. The only difference is, AOL now grimaces all that it had to lose. However, the million dollar question is: will Facebook overcome the odds and prevent history from repeating itself or will it share the same fate as AOL? Let us milk the moment (Let us not get too agricultural here) and ponder over what factors could cage Facebook in the same sort of trap as AOL.

1. Provision of Content and Pipes

Remember how AOL tried to be an all-rounder? Yes, it tried to be a little too many things at the same time and it cost them, dearly (Talk about multi-tasking being hazardous to health). Not only was it an ISP but it also tried its luck as a social network, a TV station AND a media empire! That pretty much explains why Time Warner did not prove to be a very successful bond and its existence came to an end in 2009, only nine years after their engagement.

Facebook has only focused and thus, excelled in pipes so far and let other firms deal with the content. Yes, Facebook is fine as long as it continues this way but in case otherwise, times of worry are about to commence for Facebook.

2. Charging for Everything

One major area where Facebook just can’t afford to be AOL is this. AOL was brilliant alright, but the bulk of AOL’s business relied upon charging users for every little service. This strategy used to worked fine and dandy for AOL, only until early 2000 though. This is when AOL ran into serious problems as people had now gained access to certain free services that AOL was charging a pretty penny for.

Yes, competition matters. AOL was too late in splitting its online services from the ISP and it really cost them, dearly. Speaking of Facebook, yes it has promised not to repeat any such errors. Of course, this comes at the cost of stalking people and their buying behaviours time and time again; however, if Facebook does make the mistake of doing what AOL did it is surely going to be a horrendous one.

3. Annoyances with Behavioural Targetting

Oh, this one can never go unnoticed, can it? Catching the attention of many, Behavioural Targetting has been a policy that Facebook had adopted ever since the very first day of launch. For those of you who really don’t know much about what the rant is about: This is a means of making use of the compiled information on a Facebook, or any other social media network, user’s browsing behaviour which may include pages liked and keywords searched.

Based on these results, the most pertinent advertisements are displayed on the page of the user so as to get maximum clicks and increase their profits, of course. Trouble is, Facebook plays a part in the (occasional?) privacy invasion and then tries to give others the impression that Facebook had no idea about what happened and how it happened. This can cost Facebook, big time.

4. Investment on the Wrong Firms

As aforementioned, AOL wanted to be everything, all at the same time. This also meant that it was heavily spending on its partner firms. It would have been an ok thing for AOL to do as long as it was spending in the right way. Nah, no sarcasm. AOL already found itself in hot waters following the purchase of Bebo, a renowned social network, in 2008 that cost them a mammoth total of 850 dollars and astonishingly, was sold out for merely 10 million dollars in 2010.

Facebook has played its cards, amazingly well in this regard. To date, Facebook has allowed only pure and polished talent to seep through the ranks and has successfully resisted the urge of buying enormous businesses that it has nearly nothing to reap from. By these standards, it is no surprise that Mark Zuckerberg  rightly points out, “we buy companies to get excellent people”.

5. The Internet Hub

There is no denying the fact that AOL used to be the main internet hub in its time of dominance- a service that was hard to resist. Since AOL was achieving burgeoning success and it just couldn’t register the word, ‘loss’ in its own little dictionary, AOL would especially provide incentives to its staff for deliberately  retaining even those customers who wanted to delete their accounts and had even sent cancellation requests. New Facebook changes, anyone?

Facebook hasn’t really shown similar signs so far; however, killing a Facebook account did become quite a bit of a pain in the backside at one point in time. The issue has been resolved, of course. In fact, I have personally witnessed the deletion of atleast a few dozen Facebook accounts (Sorry, Facebook but I couldn’t hold it back).

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Some Useful Facebook Apps

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With around 1800 apps on Facebook, it’s often difficult to select the best and the real (lots of duplicates) from this pool. Only for bookkeeping, there are almost 10apps with the same name and all of them try to reach over 46million users of Facebook claiming to be the best. After doing Best Facebook Games, we’re revisiting some more nice Facebook game play apps that we thought, might interest you. We encourage you to give us feedback and tell us about your favorite Facebook applications so that we could add them up in our posts too.

RockYou Games

Rock you

Flash Facebook game apps from RockYou are a sure shot for the flash game lovers. RockYou flash games integrate with Facebook like no other game.

Bookshelf

There are many Facebook game apps to rate and review your book collection. Bookshelf isn’t an actual game app as the name suggests. But for bibliophiles sorting out book and rating, reviewing them is the ‘actual’ game so we thought to add one for book-lovers too. You can browse collections of your friends and those in your network. Bookshelf supports collection of books, games, music and DVDs. It also gives you pretty accurate suggestions based on your Facebook profile before even adding anything.

Food Fight

Food Fight is surely one silly Facebook Game app, but has attracted millions of users already. It’s a pretty simple game, You earn money daily and buy food from that money. But wait! You don’t have to eat it, but will toss at your friends! Sounds fun? Join Food Fight and party with hitting food.

Facebook game appScrabulous

Ok logophiles, if you find laying out the board and setting up random letter tile distribution then Scrabulous is just for you. It’s not real time but actually real-time is not necessary as you Scrabble can be played one turn at a time.

Scrabulous appQuizzes

With Quizzes, create quizzes about yourself and get to know what your friends know about you: your nicknames, favorite pets, your high school crush name and much more. Enjoy making quizzes and try your friends’ ones.

BandTracker

This one is very useful Facebook play app to let yourself up to date with all your favorite bands. You can track down over 200,00 different bands that when they’re coming to play in your area and what will they play. With BandTracker Facebook app you can also search out for some new music as it lets you see who your friends are tracking.

 

BandTracker from Oodle

 

Do let us in the comments about the apps you think we have been missing in our Facebook App posts.

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Chrome Extensions to Enhance Your Google Plus Experience

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Introduction:

We are sure that you need no introduction to Google Plus; in fact, you are most probably loving it as much as anyone else on the face of this earth (If you’re thinking I’d be inviting you for the awesome conference call, think otherwise). There is no denying the fact that the Internet is a hub of innumerable distractions (no reference to any PG rated material here) so the use of an efficient web browser is key to maintain focus and save some valuable time in life. Although Firefox remains the preference of most, Google Chrome has certainly been amped up in regards to the many extensions it has put on offer that prove very handy in  improving browser productivity and help people organize their stream. Enough rambling for now, now let us present before you the best of Google Chrome Extensions for the all-lovable Google Plus that will definitely entice your user experience.

Google Chrome Extensions

1. Google+ Ultimate for Google Plus

Google+ Ultimate is a really useful extension for most. The usability and design of the application add to the functionality and thematic scheme of things. Yes, the extension contributes a great deal in customizing the look of Google Plus; in fact, that is the hallmark of this application in a nutshell. The first and foremost tweak made with the extension is the addition of a Brushed metallic look in the background, besides Grain and Solid Color. Perhaps, this sounds a no-use on paper; yet, it enhances the readability and contrast thereby proving to be a lot more compact that the other basic shades. The addition of fixed floating Google and Google+ navigation bar is also a handy one: it frees you of the duty to to scroll up and down to view the notifications and shares everytime. The size of media shares in the stream has also been decreased down to more ‘facebook-like’ embeds so as to free up a good amount of space.

Google+ Ultimate

2. Stream Filter BETA for Google Plus

This very extension for Google Plus will fulfil your need to avoid noise control on Google Plus. Yes, I shall be generous enough to explain noise control for you, only briefly though (Assuming here that the reader isn’t much of a noob). Well, with so many people swarming in on Google Plus and flooding your stream with all sorts of posts from all sorts of people. Now then, would you like to filter posts that do not suit your likes? Stream Filter does just that and allows you to control what you view in your stream. Keywords of choice can be conveniently included as well as excluded. In addition, the posts that are filtered can always be tracked following their disappearance.

Stream Filter

3. Stay Focusd

So, are you one of those many people who find it nearly impossible to cut down the time they spend on what are known as the time-wasting websites? Meaning thereby, less work and more time wastage (You bloody basket!). Now if you are of the view that you are too old to be scolded over issues like these, Stay Focusd provides an alternate solution to help your cause. Stay Focusd, as the name suggests, helps users a great deal in staying focussed on what’s more important ie. work and at the same time avoid being distracted. This, it does by allotting a fixed time for you to spend on those ‘time-wasting’ websites so that once you are over the time limit, it automatically blocks access to those websites for the remainder of the day. Sure, it works very well as long as you are fair and honest about it yourself, it’s only just computer technology afterall (Too bad it can’t BEAT you to it).

Stay Focusd

4. Minus One for Google Plus

We can’t term this as a Facebook rip-off simply because it is not even present on the Facebook social network; although, it would make for a great addition if it really did make an appearance. Anyway, Minus One comes across as a really simple; yet, a very interesting extension for Google Plus. In actuality, what this gives you is a Minus One button with which you have the freedom to ‘Minus One’ or, in other words, dislike people’s posts. Don’t like a comment and want the one posting to know its useless? Go tell him on his face; in fact, let the world know that with the Minus One. Only downside to the usabilty of the extension is that for all those who wish to view the ‘Minus Ones’ nee d to have Minus One installed to their systems as well. Nevertheless, a great extension to have.

Minus One

5. RSS Share for Google Plus and Google Reader

If you are regular about sharing posts on Google Plus, RSS Share is one peach of an extension for you to make use of. What it does really well is, it allows you a golden opportunity to stay up to date with ongoing events and web pages, plus share them all with a single click. The extension helps to read all your Google Reader materials. Plus, mark them as read or unread as you wish. In addition, Tree view of feeds adds to the neatness and tidiness of the layout. So then, use RSS Share for Google Plus and save the valuable moments in life (Excuse me for making that sound like a public service message).

RSS Share

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A quick review of Facebook’s New Features

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A quick run down of the new features of Facebook. If you’re a Facebook fanatic then you must’ve noticed these changed in a couple of weeks but if you’re a Google Plus fan like me, then you better checkout these new features.

 

POSTING

On top of your news feed there is the new publisher, a box where you post your status updates or share links. Some of the changes to this publisher box are:

1) Public – This was ‘Everyone’ before, now its called ‘Public’ (thanks to G+), it actually removes the confusion where everyone thought that ‘everyone’ means all of your friends, though what it really meant was, ‘Everyone including your non-friends’. Once you select a setting for a post, it will remember that and will use the same setting for the next coming updates as long as you don’t change it yourself. A good improvement regarding the security settings of Facebook.

Public and Friends Settings

2) Geotagging – does what it says, would tag your current place. If you want to add your current location either from your desktop computer or from your mobile device. It can be changed from post to post and you have the option of sharing either just a city/country or a complete address.

Geotagging in facebook

3) Tag friends – This is not a new feature but now it can be done more easily than before,  it worked like 4sqaure on mobile, you can tag your friends with check-in or by adding ‘@’ before their screen name. Now, you click on that little people icon with + on it (Google Plus has had its effects on Facebook) to tag friends. This will only tag people that you are friends with, unlike Google Plus where you can tag other people too. Keep in mind that tagging someone else will show your post on their wall too, for that check out our short tutorial ‘How To activate ‘Profile View’.

Tag your friends in posts

4)  Tag any Page – Whether you’ve ‘liked’ a page or not, you can tag it using the ‘@’ sign in your status update or any other content that you want to share. A drop down tag menu will appear as soon as you press @

5) Links – ‘How do I share a link?’. Answer to that question is that just copy/paste that link in the publisher box and it will show the preview below it. Once it has shown the preview, you can choose to remove the link from the text area and type/tag your message. This was actually a trick which worked in the previous layout with ‘Update Status’. Now it has become simpler, cleaner and more Google Plus-ish.

Preview Box and Page Tagging

6) Videos – There is no more a video button, just click the ‘Photos’ link, then ‘Add Photos’ and you’ll see an option to select the video file.

Add Photos to facebook

PHOTO VIEWER

8) The photo viewer is now white (and the “x” to close the light box has been moved farther out depending on the size of your screen!)

9) Last but not least, the ‘Privacy Settings’ has undergone biggest changes since the last update. You can view the new settings by going to the ‘Privacy Settings Page’.  We suggest you to go through the settings, especially the ‘How Tags Work’ one. Turn on the ‘Profile Preview’ and ‘Tag Review’ and Turn off the ‘Tag Suggestions’ and ‘Friends Can Check You Into Places’ for extra security.

How Tags Work in Facebook

 

Apart from that, you can now ‘Limit the Audience for Past Posts’, which will effectively change the settings for all the posts to ‘Friends’ from ‘Everyone’ status.

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Transfer All Your Photos From Facebook to Google+ Easily

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Another day, Another tweak, and Another Google+ tip for our dear readers. You know there are many users who kicked Facebook at-last and have started using Google+ on regular  basis. I believe it would take time for them to take their Google+ profile to the level where their Facebook profile stood. This specially includes all the photos they had on their Facebook, and it can be a tiring job uploading all those photos to your Google+ profile. But we have a simple tip for you here, which will help you carry out this tiring job in less than a minute.

Aman Kumar, an Indian Web Developer build a tweak under the name of ‘Move2Picasa‘ which is actually a Google Chrome extension. This extension lets you move your Facebook photos to Picasa, from where you can easily share them on Google+ with just a click whenever you want. You can download the Extension from HERE

move your photos

When you add the extension to your Google Chrome, you will see an icon on the right side of the address bar. Click that icon and login using your Facebook user information. After you log in, you will face your Facebook Albums and there you can select the photos and albums that you want to be transferred to Picasa. After you have selected your photos, click on Upload and all your photos will be transferred to Picasa from where you can easily display them on your Google+ profile.

move your photos

Install Move2Picasa

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Did you know You can Chat with Multiple Friends on Facebook?

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It was some days ago when Facebook announced the Video Calls on Facebook, which I didn’t like that much. But then I decided to give it a try and came across yet another new thing on Facebook which I had missed. While sneaking into the options while I was chatting with my friend, I saw an option to add friends to that chat. That means we can chat with more than one friend at a time. Before this, the multiple chat used to take place between group friends, which was known as ‘Group Chat’. But now you can yourself start a group chat by adding up some friends to a chat.

Here is a small how-to guide for how to chat with multiple friends on Facebook:

- When you sign in to Facebook, just start chatting with any of your friends, and above his/her chat window, you will see a wheel/gear type of icon. Click that icon and click ‘Add friends to Chat’

Facebook Multiple Chat

 

 

- After that start typing in the names of the friends you want to add to the group, and click ‘DONE’

Facebook Multiple Chat

- When you are done with adding them to the group, a new chat window will open up with all the friends you added now in this window together.

Facebook Multiple Chat

 

That’s it. Enjoy teasing them all at once now ;)

Some important facts about Facebook Multiple chat:

  • The new added friends to the chat won’t be able to see what you were talking about previously with your first friend.
  • If you want to leave the group chat, just click that wheel type icon, and then click ‘Leave Conversation’.
  • If you accidentally leave the conversation or you ever want to  join the group chat again, just jump over to your Facebook inbox, and in there you can find the group chat history from where you can start chatting again.
  • Its not compulsory that every one inside the group chat are friends of each other. You can be added to a group by a friend where all other members are not your friends at all, and you can chat with them easily.

So Facebook is trying really hard to cope up with the new competition since Google+ has been introduced. So what do you think these steps can help them save the day? Yes?  No?

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