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Google News Launches Facebook Application
NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."
Search and advertising ;)
My UID is prime... is yours?
Most people who use facebook are relatively intelligent. some people like to look at the news...
Facebook clientel definitely have a higher ~IQ than those of Bebo or myspace.
Talk is abandoned? News to many people I am sure that use it constantly.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
[rant]
As a new Facebook user, I'm surprised by the mess and disorganization that applications on Facebook cause. Reading other peoples' profiles is like participating in psychological experiments with lots of graphics and widgets competing for your attention. And don't get me started on regurgitated content such as "Only great minds can read this This is weird, but interesting!", vampire fights, yes or no apps, etc.
Here's hoping that Google application implementation won't suck.
[/rant]
"The death of X as we know it" isn't always a bad thing. Here's a few things that had that happen:
Entertainment
Construction
Travel
Communication
Mathemetics
Geography
All of these things are done -way- different than 100 years ago. Very few aspects of any of them could be considered worse off. Why is 'news' not the same? We used to be restricted to gossip, then the reach of the local printed paper, then the reach of the radio and television... Now the internet lets everyone communicate with everyone and self-style journalists (bloggers) can disseminate information with little or no cost to themselves. China has proven how hard it is to censor the internet and exactly how free information really is.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Talk is abandoned? News to many people I am sure that use it constantly.
Right, many people. Approximately 44 thousand. That's less than 1% of the market compared to ICQ/MSN/Yahoo/AIM.
There are over 14 million people that use Windows 98 constantly as of yet too, do you take this as a sign MS is very enthusiastic about their Win98 support?
Google Talk still has audio issue on certain machines (confirmed on two of my machines, where Skype worked great), and a bunch of other bugs, like "100% CPU stalling" bug during long conversations. Guess if Google cared, they'd smooth those up by now.
Look at what Google Talk users do:
Google Talk also has several "hacks" or things you can use to enhance your communicational experience. They include making your words italic and bold. Also, many users have found out a way to log in with multiple logins by changing the target of the shortcut.
Huh? Why should people hack Talk to emulate text formatting and multiple profiles.
Orkut is actually quite popular with people overseas taking the place of MySpace and Facebook. It's got a huge Brazillian and Indian userbase. In the US it's way behind it's competetors.
Google Talk's lack of updates makes me sad. It's my favourite messenger, but it seems like they don't care about it anymore. They've made a web-browser based version with soem new functions, but they never imported those to the actual Gtalk client.
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