Tag: Facebook

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News

Facebook experiments with new a search feature for improved results

Facebook has started to test new versions of its Search that will take a deeper into content than just profiles. The experiment is being done with just a fraction of the people on Facebook, so it is likely that you will not see the new layouts for search results and its features this soon.

Potential features:

  • The new potential features of Facebook search should be able to find content from:
    • People
    • Organizations
    • Public figures of relevance as soon as they share it on Facebook
  • You will be able to search your
    • News Feed for the most recent status updates
    • Photos
    • Links
    • Videos
    • Notes being shared by friends
    • Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan
  • You will have complete control over the content you share from privacy settings.

In a blog post, Facebook engineer Kari Lee gives an example of what one might end up getting from a search on the news out of the Iranian election:

“By entering the term “Iran” in the “Search” field in the upper-right corner of any page on Facebook, I will see up-to-the-minute results from my friends and the Facebook Pages of which I’m a fan, not to mention people who have chosen to make their profile and content available to everyone. I’m able to discover what blogs and news sources my friends are following, what my friends are saying about President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, and how people in general are reacting to the election results.”

A more advanced search is for sure a welcome addition to Facebook. Even though Facebook goes slow on releasing this feature, I suppose people will be willing to wait to watch to see what might actually evolve out of the test.

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News

Facebook in Swahili language, targets 110 million speakers

Another language, Swahili, gets added to the popular social networking website Facebook. Swahili is the most widely spoken Bantu languages, the official language of Kenya and Tanzania and widely used in East and Central Africa.

Over past 5 years, Facebook has vastly spread in these African areas, where most Swahili-speakers live. With the launch of this new Swahili version by a group of Swahili scholars, Facebook will be targeting 110 million speakers of the language.

Next on the list is Facebook’s Hausa version in West Africa and Zulu for Southern Africa. Hausa belongs to the Chadic family of Afroasiatic languages. Facebook already exists in some 50 language versions.

Symon Wanda, one of the project’s initiators said that the launch of the Swahili version was to help safeguard the future of the language, giving people easy access to use the Swahili over English on Facebook. Apparently, over 60% of Facebook users in East Africa are already using the Swahili version.

(Source: Africa News)

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News

New Facebook Profile Links

It’s another major change in facebook since last month and this time they are going to change all the link of profiles on facebook. Unlike earlier, where the URL was just a random number assigned to the profile like

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1043785484

Now it will be like,

The reason of changing the profile ids with their username is to make it easier for people to find their friends on facebook. Also with new URLs people will be able to find their friends easily on search engines like Google or Yahoo.

The facebook users will be able to select their new usernames from 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13 which is 9:31 a.m in IST(Indian Standard Time),which is totally on the first come first serve basis.So just stick to facebook to get your desired username before anybody else takes it. 😉

Check the countdown at

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/username/

(Image credit: Facebook blog)

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Tips

Automatically Login to Facebook with your Gmail or Yahoo Account

Facebook has come up with a new technique where you can automatically login to it with the account you are currently using.

In the above snap shot, you can see the linking of Facebook with your various accounts.

Now, if you login to any of the services like Google, Yahoo, MySpace, your account in Facebook will automatically login to the currently working account. This means that next time there is NO NEED need to type your login ID  and password all over again!

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How to set up this privilege:

To set up this privilege between Facebook and Yahoo/Google Accounts, just

  • Go to Facebook -> Accounts Settings
  • Click on “Add a new linked account”.
  • This will login automatically to the current service you are using.

Facebook will let you link only one account at a time. For example, if you are sending an email via Gmail to anyone and using Yahoo answers, then it will ask you which account to link and thus, you can link to the respective account.

[Editor’s Note: This post is submitted by our guest blogger Prateek Dixit, the owner of thetechnoclub. This is Prateek’s first post on Devils Workshop.

If you, too would like to write for Devils Workshop, please check this. Details about our revenue sharing programs are here.]

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Reviews

Customize your Facebook profile with catchy designs and expressions

Here’s a fun, FREE and an easy way to customize your Facebook profile and add some personality to it! With FBexpressions, you could add eye-catching designs and expressions to your profile to express who you are, what you’re feeling and the things you like.

How to get started?

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  • All you have to do is browse through the various categories, such as:
    • Abstract
    • Animals
    • Beauty & fashion
    • Cars
    • Cartoons
    • Celebrities
    • Comic books
    • Dark & scary
    • Fantasy
    • Foods & drinks
    • Floral
    • Feelings
    • Hobbies
    • Movies
    • Music
    • Religion
    • Romance
    • Sports
    • Technology
    • Television …and many more!
  • Select the categories you find most appealing and “add” it to your profile, by clicking the ADD button.
  • Login to your Facebook account.
  • Install the application.
  • Expressions will appear on the left hand side of your profile.

In case you don’t find anything appealing to match your style, you could even design your very own expression.

For more information related to expressions, please click here.

To watch the applying expressions video, click here.

Link: fbexpressions

Categories
Analysis

Could Facebook really be a threat to Google Search?

Google, the king of the search jungle, is beginning to see social network sites such as Facebook as a competition to its search engine. For online advice, personal reviews, ratings, etc., social networking sites end up having an upper hand, whereas Google search in such matters is not considered to be as intimate or trustworthy. Information coming from friends and other acquaintances is trusted more, putting Google search information at a disadvantage.

Google Group Product Manager Ken Tokusei says:

“For decisions such as choosing a restaurant or a day care provider, social networking sites or known review sites have an advantage. We (Google) haven’t gotten to the point where results are seen as if they come from someone you know.”

Today, we all expect better-honed answers to our queries online.

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Google search is still facing competition from its rivals like Microsoft (with its new “top-secret” search technology yet to be launched – Kumo) and Yahoo search (which is tweaking its search results, cutting out links and emphasizing on images and videos).

Google currently devotes 70 % of its employees and resources to search. In order to remain the King of the jungle, Google will have to expand its tools and services to determine what kind of information a user is really looking for.

We would like to know what you think. Could social network sites be a threat to Google search?

Categories
Analysis

Thinking of a new Facebook status idea for yourself?

Your daily search for a new Facebook status idea ends here. If you are a die-hard fan of Facebook and like to keep your network involved by posting interesting status updates every day, this one is for you.

FaceBookStatusIdeas is an interesting blog that features cute, original, funny and themed Facebook status ideas.

Few interesting Facebook status ideas from the blog:

  • …knows where you’re hiding
  • …wants you to recycle your Facebook page
  • …is hiding behind YOUR wall
  • …is refreshing….the computer screen
  • It takes 10 people to change a lightbulb because 9 of us are on Facebook
  • …is still trying to balance your coffee cup on my head
  • A Facebook friend of yours is almost a Facebook friend of mine
  • …is comparing apples to green apples
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Though, the blog claims to provide some really cute, funny and original Facebook status ideas, I personally do not find them of real wit or humor. However, given that it is just a one month old blog, this appears to be a good attempt to begin with.

For the time being, I don’t see any harm in visiting the blog and finding a status message that you might like to use. Just be sure not to pick an idea which is commonly known already. It loses the charm.

Do tell us which one you liked the most from this blog.

Link: FacebookStatusIdeas

Categories
News

Facebook Access Blocked in Iran!

The government of Iran has banned access to Facebook in the run-up to the country’s June presidential polls! Guess what the reason behind this move could be… well, strangely enough, to stop supporters of reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi from using the site for his campaign!

Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister, is seen as one of the leading challengers to incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 12 June elections.

Mir Hossein Mousavi’s page on Facebook:

His page on Facebook has more than 5,000 supporters. It contains:

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  1. A biographical information on the candidate
  2. A statement on his proposed policies
  3. Photographs both of him and of his fans
  4. Comments posted by fans, as well as one by the candidate himself

All those visiting the site receive a message in Farsi saying “Access to this site is not possible.”

Facebook disappointed!

Facebook, that has some 175 million users worldwide, has expressed its disappointment over the ban. Facebook seems to be now in the league of YouTube, MySpace and Flickr in terms of becoming a staple in the list of banned sites.

It’s not surprising that Iran banned the social networking site. Apart from popular social networks, there are some blogging platforms and other domains for personal expression that have too been restricted in Iran. Sad, but true!

(Source: ynetnews)

Categories
Reviews

Bring your blog to Facebook with NetworkedBlogs

Did you always want to leverage Facebook platform to promote your own blog… But had no idea how to begin? Well, here is an easy way to so using the Network Blogs application.

NetworkedBlogs is a community of bloggers and blog lovers. It allows you to promote your blog on Facebook, at the same time to discover other new blogs.

Features

  • Works for both: Facebook profiles and Facebook pages
  • Supports importing your blog feed to your page
  • Supports visual blog roll to promote blogs you like
  • Provides an organized directory of blogs
  • Supports article ratings

How to setup?

Step 1:

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  • Create a personal page for your blog on Facebook
  • Customize the page the way you like it
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Step 2:

  • Add NetworkBlogs application to your page
  • It can be added as a separate tab that will then display snippets of your latest blog posts
  • You can allow the NetworkedBlogs application to update your page status every time a new post is published
  • Start sharing the page with your friends and invite them to become fans
  • Your friends will be able to rate your blog and leave comments

If you want to promote your blog even outside Facebook, then register your blog with NetworkedBlogs.com. It is an extension of the NetworkedBlogs Facebook application and makes their user-generated blog directory accessible outside Facebook which currently has around 120,000 listed blogs.

Link: Network Blogs

Categories
Tips

Are your deleted-photos from social networking sites really gone?

After having deleted some of your “embarrassing” photos from social networking sites, you’d probably be thinking – “Well, that was the end of it… it’s all gone and buried”.

Well… don’t be too sure…

Researchers at the Cambridge University say that user photographs can still be found on many social networking sites even after people have deleted them.

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Using the direct addresses to the deleted photographs, the team of researchers were able to detect almost seven such sites out of 16 most popular websites that still showed the deleted photos. The seven sites also include Facebook.

To this, Facebook said that the images are removed from its servers immediately, however, the URLs to photographs may continue to exist on the Content Delivery Network until they are overwritten.

How was the experiment conducted?

  • Photos were uploaded to different sites.
  • The photos were then deleted, however, the researches kept a note of direct URLs to the photos from the sites’ content delivery networks.
  • 30 days later, these links continued to work for seven of the sites even though a typical user might think the photos had been removed.

This just goes to show how lax some social networking sites can get about the users privacy.

So remember, before uploading a potentially “embarrassing” photograph on any of the social networking sites, be 100% sure that you wouldn’t want to remove it later. You don’t want to take any chances, especially now that you know you can never be too sure when it comes to your “privacy” on the internet!