News Microsoft may invest in Facebook

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2007/09/25/microsoft_may_invest_in_facebook/1

Facebook's value could grow to more than £5 billion if the rumours are true. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Microsoft is in talks to buy up to five percent of the popular social networking site.

 

Please don't screw up face-book Microsoft!

I love it!

 

i wish facebook would go away, all everyone seems to talk about, urg i hate this social networking!

 

quoted for truth

 

I don't give a damm about it, but I wish someone could explain (with a cattle-prod) to mainstream journalists that second life, facebook and the rest arn't really that important. I guess they could also tell them that there are other audio players that don't require a black polo-neck, but that might be a step too far.

 

relix's name is david? i didn't know that.

 

I love the way Microsoft has developed an open set of social-networking services, but Live Spaces just isn't up to Facebook. Hopefully this move will mean Facebook opens up to apps such as Live Writer and Live Photo Gallery to make it a lot easier to manage PC content and share it on Facebook.

<A88>

 

I've only recently joined Facebook as a couple of friends who've moved away use it and it seems to be a good way to share photos and keep in touch in general (besides E-mail and MSN).

 

Intel says second life is about as close to the future of the Internet as we're going to get today. Intel would like us to believe that virtual worlds are the way forwards.

 

If they get a controlling stale I bet £10 they will force a change to ASP.

Facebook is currently perfect on PHP

 

Not to be finicky, but should 'There has already been developers' be 'There already HAVE been developers"?

Ok so I lied, it was finicky, but meh.


Personally I like facebook, if only because there aren't any applications for it that are solely for the purpose of adding friends to your lists. (Thats how bad myspace is. There are actually applications developed for the sole purpose of whoring yourself onto everyones friend list.)

 

This was on BBC news 24. What is the appeal with facebook and myspace. I dont get it. Well if ms screw it up then it does not matter much

 

I hated Myspace with a vengeance and only over used social networking (my Live Space as it was tied in with Live Messenger) to share photos and note interesting things that had happened in my life (suffice to say it was barely used). However having joined Facebook for the sake of keeping in contact with all my old friends whilst I'm at uni, I'm actually quite impressed. It makes finding people with similar interests and whatnot very easy, and seems to have have much more purpose than Myspace.

In terms of Microsoft's push so far in the social networking arena, as I said before they seem to have got it tied up quite well. I can take photos on my WM6 phone and upload them directly to my Live Space with 2 clicks- likewise Photo Gallery now has an upload function and their other Windows Live sites such as Soapbox allow you to blog or add content to your space quite quickly. The issue with all of these services is that although they work seamlessly together, they also have to be used together. Youtube is far more popular than Soapbox and sites like Flickr are much more popular for photosharing (although there is a rumour that MS are considering adding Flickr support to the Photo Gallery). If you ask me, it would be ideal if they managed to get support for more popular apps whilst retaining services such as Live Spaces as a central hub for all content- thus meaning uploaded content would go to a user-selected service as well as simultaneously being added to the account's Live Space. Just my way of seeing things anyway...

<A88>

 

Thanks for the plug, Phil!

Personally, I feel Facebook has the worst developer support ever. Incomplete or just plain wrong documentation, undocumented but mentioned features that will or will not disappear, every now and then major changes to its architecture, which are announced only 10 days in advance, after which you are forced to comply to the changes or your application breaks. You don't have a way of knowing if the changes you made actually work, either. You just have to wait for the deadline and hope for the best. No announcement on new features, so you're forced to check the documentation page (which, up until recently, was a poorly maintained wiki frontpage (now it's just an averagely maintained wiki frontpage)) every day.

Stuff like that has made porting Seenly over to Facebook (and maintaining it) a friggin' nightmare.

What's worse, they actually have a clause in their ToS which states that if your application is popular they can clone it feature-for-feature without owing you anything. Yes, this is understandable in a way, but it probably scares some people off of doing great things with the "platform". Imagine spending a year perfecting your application, only to see Facebook clone it and integrate it far better than you could ever do (see windows and office).

 

Well they would, I'm sure, given they're making the hardware. But whilst I though Snowcrash was great reading, nothing I've heard about Second Life makes it look vaguely appealing, let alone essential for anything I can think of. Forums like this probably have more meaningfull social impact than all the SL fuss.

 

Sounds like Microsoft territory