Google Declares War On Facebook With Google Buzz

While it was expected that Google would use Gmail accounts as the center of users’ social graphs, the new Google Buzz makes it pretty obvious. Will Google eliminate Twitter or Facebook with this new service? Definitely not, however if you exchange emails with the majority of your contacts, Gmail could become a more efficient conversation aggregator. The one problem with Google Buzz will be the issue of combining email overload with social content overload.Google Buzz already integrates with Google Latitude to immediately integrate location aware features. Also included with Google Buzz is a mobile version which looks almost identical to Facebook’s existing mobile application. This makes it clear that Google’s new service is not an attack on Twitter but instead a powerful attack on Facebook.
Google Takes On Facebook
With email as your inbox (rather than Facebook’s existing messaging system and future mail product), Google already has one advantage over Facebook. Additionally, Google calendar serves as a tool for tracking all of your events, rather than having to integrate with Facebook’s existing events product. I have to admit that the new Buzz product is pretty enticing.
While I’m not leaving Facebook anytime soon, the fact that Gmail already has a large number of my contacts means that there is little barrier to getting started: I already have the majority of my contacts listed. While not all my contacts use Gmail, a large number of them are already using the service. Given that Google’s additional applications (Gmail, Calendar, etc) are already more powerful than Facebook’s, this is a shot across the bow of Facebook.
While I don’t see Facebook traffic declining anytime soon, Facebook will be forced to rapidly improve their product offering if they are going to compete with Google’s powerful new Buzz product. The fact that there’s also location aware features directly in Google Buzz means that Google just one-upped Facebook, who has yet to integrate location features

The Secret Reason You Won’t Be Able To Quit Farmville

It started out innocently enough. After a long day of classes, I thought that I deserved some downtime. And since my friends and family had been raving out this “Farmville” for weeks now, I thought I would join in and see what all the fuss was about. Little did I know that by clicking “Allow” on Farmville’s “Allow Access?” page, my life would take a sharp right turn into the depths of obsession.I quickly grew my six beginner plots and 300 coins into a bustling farm fully equipped with chicken coop, dairy farm, a grove of multi-colored trees and a wild variety of playful animals. I had to check on my farm at least twice a day, to make sure my crops didn’t wither. My wall filled up with notices of lost animals, golden eggs, and a rainbow of ribbons and level achievements. I was getting a handful of bonuses from my friends every day, but after a huge level gain and then plateau, that simply wasn’t enough.
I began frequenting the unofficial Farmville groups and pages, like “FARMVILLE “ADD & INVITE” ADD NEIGHBORS EVERY DAY !”, posting my plea for more neighbors. As the friend requests poured in, my mind worked to translate each new person into bonuses for my farm: that level 35 farmer would surely find golden eggs to share with me; the crop-loving farmer will have plenty of plots for me to fertilize for experience and coins; the daily farmer will send me lots of new animals and trees as gifts. Before I knew it, I had added over 100 complete strangers to Facebook.
These people were all on a friends list that limited their access to my information, so it really wasn’t a big deal. It’s all part of the game. You add people, get their bonuses, and share yours with them. I look back now, and realize I was in denial.
After a few days of glorious golden egg bounties and an inbox full of gifts, I realized that my Facebook Requests were in the triple digits, and 9 out of 10 were from this horde of Farmville “Friends”. Slightly panicked about the “Ignore” click-work ahead of me, I looked to my news feeds to find out what my real friends were up to instead. But here, too, was a spammy mess of cute little animals looking for a home, Rare Black Mystery Eggs, and fertilizer requests. Suddenly everywhere I looked on my Facebook page was a barrage of Farmville bonuses just waiting to be scooped up – and that’s when I realized I had a problem.
It took me a few days to come to terms with the fact that I had to quit… I had to quit cold turkey. I had to just cut my ties with Farmville completely, or else any real connections I had on Facebook would be lost. I would especially miss the little pink cottage area that I built, complete with pink cherry trees and purple plumb trees lining the brightly colored garden, and a front yard full of black, white, tabby, and grey cats. Maybe this was my dream country home, but I remembered that I had two real cats waiting for me to feed them downstairs, and clicked the “X” beside the application. It was all gone.
Over the next few days, I would slowly go through my friends list and delete anyone I had recently added during my Farmville obsession days. I cleared out my requests, and soon my Facebook was back to basics. No more Farmville. I now knew why it gained in popularity so quickly to become the top App on Facebook. I had been through the fire, and came out stronger on the other side.—Three days ago, I added Farmville to my account again. They started a Valentine’s Day event! You get cute little bears and cards from your friends, and if you collect enough, you can trade them in for limited edition gifts. I tell myself I just want to see these gifts and then I’ll get rid of it again. But the best way to get more Valentines is to add more Farmville friends…

Facebook Chat Now Available On 400 Million Desktops

Facebook Chat’s integration with AOL’s AIM was not a one off event, rather a part of something bigger. As of today, Facebook Chat is now available “everywhere” (including desktop apps). In order to accomplish that Facebook has implemented the Jabber XMPP protocol, which is an open messaging protocol that is supported by most instant messaging softwares, including iChat, Pidgin, Adium, Miranda – and yes Google Talk also supports the same Jabber XMPP protocol.
So all users need to do now is to integrate Facebook Chat with any of their preferred instant messaging desktop client, and start using Facebook Chat right from your desktop. Doing so is simple and painstakingly easy, all you need to do is to connect your Facebook account with the instant messaging client that you are using – and that’s it, you are good to go.
The one thing that needs to be mentioned here is that you wont be able to create separate Friend’s List from your desktop client. If you want to do so, you would have to go to Facebook.com. Although I would have love to have the ability to create separate lists right from the client, I would be happy with what I am getting at the moment.
Some additional features that would make me jump include the ability to change my status on Facebook right from my Desktop Client, upload photos from the desktop client to my profile, comment on the status messages of my friends from my client and other such niceties.
I don’t know if all these additional features could be supported by every desktop client out their in the wild, or if that’s possible with the XMPP protocol at all. But as far, as I am concerned – I just want a fully functional desktop client to help me keep up with my social life on Facebook.
Facebook has also built the support for Facebook Chat into Facebook Connect, so developers who want to build chat experiences into their blogs, websites etc could do so.
All in all this is one giant assault by Facebook to reach the desktop of millions of Facebook users.