It's been a fascinating year in the social networking space, as heavyweight champion Facebook fends off some solid blows from muscley contender Google Plus. However over the past week, it's been nearly all Facebook - with the release of the Subscriber button and vastly improved lists (akin to Google Plus "circles"). This week, or perhaps I should say round, is also shaping up to be a big one for Facebook. Its annual developer conference F8 is on this Thursday in San Francisco. According to uber-blogger Robert Scoble, "Facebook has one of its biggest releases ever coming this week." ReadWriteWeb will be at F8 to cover whatever big punches Facebook delivers.
Meanwhile the Google Plus team has been fairly quiet lately, other than the announcement of a (limited) API last week. Here are five things we wish Google Plus would do, both to improve its still nascent product and to make Facebook stagger a little against the ropes!
Two months later, Google has joined the international community in recognizing South Sudan's independence and adding it to Google Maps. After uprisings at the beginning of the year, South Sudan declared independence on July 9, 2011.
As we reported this summer, most of the major Web mapping services have lagged on this update. Google is the first to make the change.
Apple fans and the technology press have been wondering aloud for months about what new features will be included in the next iteration of the iPhone. As the iPhone 5's rumored October launch gets closer, that speculation grows more feverish, as details are leaked and rumors turn into facts.
We're reaching that point with the iPhone 5 (or is it iPhone 4s? Or both?), which is widely expected to launch within a matter of weeks. With a barrage of new rumors and purported leaks everyday, it's hard to know for sure what's true. A few things are practically guaranteed: the phone will be faster with upgraded tech specs. It will probably have a better camera than the iPhone 4. One thing that's always been unclear is whether the device will support NFC.
One of the most intriguing of this year's Web battles is between Facebook and Google Plus, as the two products vie for social networking supremacy. Yesterday we explored the ramifications of Facebook's new Subscribe button, which partly aims to match Google Plus on public sharing. Today we turn out attention to another new feature that Facebook launched this week: improved friend lists. It's a direct response to the "Circles" feature of Google Plus, which enables you to put your friends into lists. The new Facebook lists are definitely an improvement; and Facebook even gets one over Plus. Facebook has managed to automate some of the process of creating lists, whereas creating and populating Circles requires manual labor in Google Plus.
To make the most of Facebook's improved lists, we bring you this guide and analysis.
The future of mobile payments has the potential to invade your senses. MasterCard is showing off what could be the next wave of innovation in payments this afternoon at an event in New York City. Imagine being able to wave at your TV and order a pizza. Or get a coupon because your smartphone was listening to a commercial. These possibilities are not as far-fetched as you might think.
MasterCard Labs is working on proof-of-concept for these payment solutions and more. Not all of these futuristic designs will make it to market, but enough of them will that user behavior will be fundamentally changed within the next decade.
Improved mobile phone cameras and the ability to live stream anything from a phone has proved threatening to police who don't like to be filmed, but an app used by the University of Maryland police department could be the future of 9-1-1.
The University of Maryland police department is testing an app that will allow police to monitor live video of an emergency situation and will allow a mobile user to beam video to the police station in a time of need.
Mac users who thought Microsoft's acquisition of Skype would mean they'd be forgotten can relax. The service's Facebook integration, previously available only on Windows, is now available to Mac owners as well.
The beta version of Skype 5.4 for Mac, which was made available for download today, lets you connect your Facebook account and add everyone on your friends list to your contacts in Skype. From there, you can IM Facebook friends right from the "Contacts" page and, if your friends are using Facebook with Skype too, you can video chat with them.
When Netflix announced that they'd be changing their subscription rates in July, the company expected some existing customers to be uneasy about it. What they probably didn't expect was the widespread outrage expressed by customers, many of whom threatened to quit the service.
Now there's this: Thanks to a lag in subscriptions, Netflix has been forced to revise the number of subscribers it expects to see by the end of September, decreasing that number by 1 million. Previously, the company said it expected 25 million subscribers by month's end. That's a 4% drop in subscribers.
Goodreads, a social network that lets readers rate and review books, has launched a recommendation engine designed to help users choose what to read next.
The new feature comes six months after the startup acquired Discovereads, a book recommendation engine which is something CEO Otis Chandler cited as a sought-after feature among Goodreads users.
David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom, who made comments in the wake of last month's nation-wide riots about the possibility of blocking participants in civil unrest from using social media, has joined Google's new social network, Plus. Joining him this morning were +Ed Miliband and +Nick Clegg (as they are referred to on Google's site), leaders of the Labor and Liberal Democrat party.
Cameron's remarks about discussing the possibility of blocking social networks at times of unrest were widely criticized as either a balloon being floated for dictatorial contro, an appeasement of angry critics of social networks or simply heavy-handed. Others said it was simply a matter of putting a widely discussed idea on the table. When the city of San Francisco shut off cell phone service in its transit system in order to prevent organizers of a protest against police brutality from using their mobile devices to organize - that made the whole matter feel much more serious.
