Slashdot Mirror
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."
What of Google's isn't in beta?
Search and advertising ;)
My UID is prime... is yours?
Will this application be compatable with Orkut? Google's own social networking/Facebook site?
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.
As you add friends, you get to see your friend's lists of friends. It's all about the e-stalking.
Nope, it's just the MySpace give uses more chance to show off their IQ than Facebook. It's like what Jeff Foxworth says about people in the South, "They're as smart as everyone else, but they somehow cannot keep the dumbest ones off the television."
Boy, I am pissed. I have submitted Funwall as a Slashdot story FIVE times, and Vampires SIX times, and have been rejected every time. Who do you have to sleep with around here to get Facebook apps posted as stories??
Three Squirrels
Really, it's pretty difficult to explain anything in the world of self-involved, attention-whoring, navel-gazing, self-congratulatory social networks.
There's a very easy way to find out...
... following the path predicted by many, and nicely depicted in this short flash movie called "Epic 2015". We're indeed seeing the death of news as we know it. How does it feel to become a tiny part of the global consciousness?
it's in my head
[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]
Google seriously needs to get some SEO help...
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
At its core, Facebook is primarily a system for establishing relationships between accounts. You can sign up and set all sorts of properties on your profile - what school you went to, year you graduated, area you live, places you've worked etc. You can then search in those areas and find other people who match - old schoolmates, old colleagues, old neighbours, that sort of thing. Because it's gotten so big, it works fairly well - I signed up, and almost straight away found a bunch of old school mates I hadn't seen for years, and was able to catch up with.
It's sort of grown from there - now people can write "applications" that you can add to your profile page that can do all sorts of things, from playing games, to building a personality profile, match-making, whatever.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Back in 1995 AOL hit the net... it was an internally connected set of pages that covered everything you might want...with buddies, chat rooms, 'social networking', exclusive content (not public on the 'internet') and more.... I just don't see the difference between that experience and Facebook or MySpace or what have you. Their system is proprietary, your 'networks' only apply while on the site, logged in, consuming their advertising selection, logging your interests to their tracking systems and any content YOU create, actually belongs to them.
Tell me again why the public and the corporations didn't learn from the beast called AOL which has been dying a slow death for the last 10 years? Why aren't the press, the blogs and what have you calling them what they are... AOL 2.0 or Closed networks after AOL...
I don't get it. As far as I can tell it's just a big reservoir of virtual Kool Aid... it's not even real Kool Aid... just a big waste of time and energy that all goes to pay a few people mega salaries and a bunch of other people mediocre salaries. It also accomplishes nothing for the greater good, it's worse than a sitcom or American Idol.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
"but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.'"
Something needs to add value. The S/N ratio on Facebook is pretty horrible. At least none of my friends, or groups I've joined, etc. are doing anything beyond tinkering with it.
If they want to get serious about being a useful TOOL rather than TOY, I'd say the first step would be to give every Facebook user an e-mail address that can be used to communicate with the outside world (both ways). While I might not be interested in using this as yet another e-mail address, if it had forwarding capabilities I could direct such messages as "someone has thrown a food item at you" to the appropriate bin, while at the same time get actual content containing messages from friends who are insisting on using it as a replacement for e-mail. I could also respond to such messages using my e-mail method of choice.
*whoosh*
Of course, Chinese students who get party approval to post will be outed by Google to the Chinese People Security Bureau, and their parents will have to pay for a 9mm bullet.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
I grant you that there are possibly more university students on Facebook than MySpace -- is that truly a measure of intelligence?
Certainly for the creative arts Facebook is absolutely worthless. I'm a filmmaker. To network with other filmmakers artists and musicians I must have a MySpace account. I do also have a Facebook account that I never use -- but in the unlikely event that there would be people I would wish to network with on Facebook, I have no way of finding them due to the closed nature of Facebook. It's better coded and more secure, but more closed, and has (ironically, since I know News Corp owns MySpace) a more stagnant corporate feel to it.
I am aware that MySpace is coded by chimps, and there may have been a high percentage of low-brow teens on it at one time (I think they have mostly migrated to Bebo these days), however for the creative arts it is MySpace all the way.
And creative people ARE intelligent, probably much more so that than the average lawyer or accountant, who seem to populate Facebook in their droves. Look at the networking options on Facebook - there's dozens of management consulting firms on it. Those people may have degrees, but I would strongly question the true intelligence of anyone who wastes their lives as a Management Consultant.
In the UK now something like 40% of School leavers go on to University. But there's no way that the vast majority have the intelligence to be there, and I'm sure that even 10 years ago they'd ever get accepted into one.
There's a facebook app called fmail that let you access your gmail inside facebook - makes NO sense to me
... http://apps.facebook.com/mycliques
but its seems to have lots of users.
Can I toss in a plug for my facebook app
Automatically groups your friends.
Yes, their IQs are in the low 90s.
Facebook used to be interesting because it was semi-useful. Then suddenly the option to add applications appeared and now whenever I look at someone's profile, I get bombarded with all manner of stupid crap ("Adopt a pet!" "Pirates vs. Ninjas!" "Superpoke!"). Facebook profiles aren't quite the eyesore that their Myspace equivalents are (yet), but they've become so filled with stupid garbage that I don't want to look at them. So yeah, thanks Google for doing your part to help destroy what was once a fairly good website.
When Yahoo! released a wiki-like facebook app (mash.yahoo.com), it wasn't listed here as story. It launched with all kinds of rss feed modules that can be drag and dropped around the profile.
By the way, there are 28 yahoo rss applications on facebook, including news, weather, messenger plugin, and music player. I know I'll be crucified for saying it, but I think that slashdot staff are google whores.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
People like you are why I very loudly make known my opinion that the liberal and fine art disciplines form the world's largest conglomeration of BS.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
I use Gmail constantly - via POP. I never see the web page or the "text jabber client" whatever that is supposed to mean. It's kind of difficult to generalize, since what everyone does is assume that whatever the 20 people they know well do must be what everyone does, since by their own reference that IS "everyone".
In Brazil, Orkut IS social networking. In the Philippines, Friendster remains popular, If it works well enough, the choice of software largely devolves to whatever the group norm is for individuals. At my company, the 'standard' is Yahoo IM, but because I disliked a particular manager who used it as his substitute for interacting with employees, I popularized the use of Skype for IM in my group. This was two years ago, and the division remains to this day.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it