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Facebook Killings in Colombia

27 Aug

The Atlantic - Megan McArdle

This is the most chilling story I've seen in a while:

Diego Ferney Jaramillo, 16, and Eibart Alejandro Ruiz Munoz, 17, were shot dead on Aug 15 while riding a motorcycle on the outskirts of the town of Puerto Asis.
Two days later, young people in the town received via Facebook a hitlist with 69 names on it, including those of the two killed. The teenagers on the list were advised to leave town or face death.
Norbey Alexander Vargas, 19, was shot dead three days after his name appeared on the list.
Police thought the first list was a macabre joke or a game between adolescents, officials said, but when the second list with 31 additional names appeared days later, parents began to panic and authorities launched an investigation.
Further threats have been issued, with a message on a leaflet left on cars in the Colombian town reading: "Please, as relatives, ask [the teenagers on the list] to leave town in less than three days, or we'll see ourselves forced to carry out more acts like that of 15 August".
It sounds like a description of a B-list summer horror flick, not a news article.
So far, there's no explanation, except that the area in question has a lot of drug war activity. That doesn't seem very helpful; drug lords are bad, but I find it hard to believe that they've developed hundred-person hitlists of local teenagers, or that they use Facebook to communicate their threats. A disgruntled bullied kid seems more likely, but really, the thing's so bizarre that it's hard to employ the word "likely" about any of it.

Facebook - Colombia - Puerto Asís - Police - Death

Read more over at www.theatlantic.com
SCVNGR Brings Location Game to Facebook Places

27 Aug

Mashable!
Taking an if-you-can-beat-them, join-them-and-beat-them attitude, SCVNGR is today unveiling its integration plans for Facebook Places and launching new features to take of advantage of both Facebook Places’s read and write APIs.
SCVNGR is just one of a handful of companies that has access to both APIs. The startup believes it is the first mobile game to integrate with Facebook Places.
SCVNGR’s mobile game layer for the real world possesses checkin functionality akin to Facebook checkins, but the integration is designed to magnify what SCVNGR does best — “the cool things you can do beyond the checkin,” says CEO and Founder Seth Priebatsch.
He’s not kidding. Instead of just posting checkins to Facebook Place Pages, SCVNGR users will notice that the activity they share with Facebook is kept in tact to maintain its original form on Facebook. Should a SCVNGR user perform a social checkin, that story is tied to a Facebook location, posted to the Place page and shared on the user’s wall. The same rules apply for captured photos, scanned QR codes and other completed app challenges.
The Facebook Places integration extends outside of Facebook and into the SCVNGR iPhone and Android apps as well. App users will now have access to the wealth of checkin activity happening on Facebook, further enriching its update stream. For a startup that’s just recently started to go after consumers, this could be just what the service needs to attract and keep new users.
At the end of the day, SCVNGR wants to share Facebook’s expansive playground. “Facebook Places is beneficial for anyone in the location space not specifically doing something around the checkin,” says Priebatsch.
In fact, Priebatsch believes that Facebook’s location direction cements the soundness of his own decision to go after building a game layer and not a checkin application. To that end he says, “Foursquare and Gowalla are in a less advantageous position. At [Facebook Places'] core, it’s competitive.”
Those are fighting words that the young CEO cannot yet back up with proof. The Google-backed startup says it’s sitting pretty and seeing “phenomenal” new user growth week over week, but no concrete numbers have been released.
More About: checkins, Facebook Places, facebook places api, scvngr
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Read more over at mashable.com
Facebook is trying to trademark 'Face'

27 Aug

CNNMoney.com

Facebook, which has gone after sites with the word "book" in their names, is also trying to trademark the word "face," according to court documents.

Read more over at money.cnn.com
Facebook movie promises to be a hit

27 Aug

ZDNet

Buzz about the David Fincher-directed film about the contested origins of Facebook has been growing now that its hyped premiere is less than a month away.

Read more over at updates.zdnet.com
Facebook Tries To Own "Face" And "Book"

27 Aug

WebProNews

As you may have read, Facebook is suing Teachbook for using the word "book" and being a competitor. To put it in Facebook's exact words, the company's Director of Policy Communications, Barry Schnitt, tells WebProNews:

"The problem is not merely that they use the word "book." You'll notice that we have no complaint against Kelly Blue Book or Yellowbook or others. However, there is already a well-known online service with 'book' in the brand name that helps people connect and share. Of course the Teachbook folks are free to create a similar service for teachers or whomever they like, and we wish them well in that endeavor. What they are not free to do is trade on our name, create confusion, or dilute our brand while doing so. Additionally, it's important to note that where there is confusion or brand dilution as there is with Teachbook and Facebook, we must enforce our rights to protect the integrity of our trademark.

Facebook is currently trying to register the word "Face" as a trademark, TechCrunch reports. Erick Schonfeld writes, "Facebook took over the trademark application for 'Face' from a company in the UK called CIS Internet Limited, which operated a site called Faceparty.com. Presumably, Facebook bought the application sometime around November, 2008, which is when its lawyer started dealing with the USPTO."

In an interesting twist, Aaron Greenspan, Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard classmate, who claimed to have had a hand in Facebook's creation, also has a mobile payments app called FaceCash under his Think Computer company. He is listed as a potential opposer to the "Face" mark, as Schonfeld points to.
Just as there are plenty of other items that use the word "book" there are plenty that use the word "face", notably, Apple's Facetime iPhone feature, which it has been heavily marketed since the release of the iPhone 4.

Facebook has made no indication that it intends to go after any service using "Face" in its name, just as the company told us it isn't going after every company using "book", but considering how closely Teachbook is related to Facebook, it's hard to say what Facebook would find too close for comfort.

Read more over at www.webpronews.com
'Anti-Facebook' eyes launch date

27 Aug

From BBC News

An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on the 15 September, the developers of the Diaspora project say.

Read more over at news.bbc.co.uk
Facebook Is Trying To Register The Word “Face” As A Trademark [Facebook]

27 Aug

Gizmodo

First Facebook didn't want anyone else to have the word "book" in the name of his or her online community and now it doesn't want anyone to have the word "face" either.More »

Read more over at uk.gizmodo.com
Facebook’s “Platmobile” Team Working On Eliminating Mobile Password Entry

27 Aug

TechCrunch

Earlier this evening, Facebook held an developer’s garage event at their headquarters — sort of like a State of the Union for third-party developers. Notably, they announced a new partnership with Y Combinator that has the goal of creating new startups with deep integrations with Facebook’s newest tools. But there was also a Q&A session with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, CTO Bret Taylor, and Y Combinator’s Paul Graham that was pretty interesting.
One question asked if Facebook was working on their instant personalization technology for mobile devices. Taylor fielded the question noting that mobile brought about some interesting technology problems in this regard. Most notably, he said the issue is with password entry on mobile devices. According to Taylor, that’s something they have an entire team focused on right now.
Taylor noted that this team is called the “Platmobile” team (as in: platform + mobile, and said like ‘Batmobile’). This brought some laughs from the audience, but while the name may be somewhat of a joke, their goal is very serious.
Taylor noted that many people have three-letter passwords that they use for mobile services to keep things fast and simple. But obviously that’s not ideal from a security perspective. He noted that many of the developers in the room likely had long passwords that included weird characters for this very reason. But Taylor said that this “10 minute process” was a “really negative part of the user experience.“
“The Platmobile team is focused on improving that experience. I don’t know the exact timeline on that, but it’s something we’re really focused on because the user experience on the phone right now is sub-par,” Taylor said.
Zuckerberg chimed in to say that the mobile experience is obviously different, so instant personalization would be different too. Perhaps you’d have a group of apps that you set different privileges for (such as password memorization) with such a feature, he noted. “The general trend though is that all of this stuff is going towards less friction to get to social interaction,” Zuckerberg concluded.
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Read more over at www.techcrunch.com
Facebook to Mentor Y Combinator Startups

27 Aug

GigaOM

Though every street corner in San Francisco seems to house a startup incubator these days (and promising folks are coming out of the woodwork to start new ones), Y Combinator is at the top of the heap. Tonight, Silicon Valley prince Facebook bestowed its endorsement on YC, announcing a relationship with the Mountain View, Calif.-based program to mentor its startups.
At an event in Palo Alto, Facebook said it would offer startups “product, technical and design resources” and “priority access to our technologies and programs such as Facebook Credits, Instant Personalization and upcoming beta features.” With Facebook’s support, Y Combinator will specifically be looking for relevant social startups for its winter 2011 class.
It won’t be hard for entrepreneurs to read between the lines here. Facebook is an increasingly active acquirer of small startups. In a blog post, Carl Sjogreen (a product manager on Facebook Platform after his company Nextstop was acquired) noted Facebook recently bought the YC company Divvyshot, and complimented social integrations at YC alums Scribd and Justin.tv. (On the flip side, both Facebook and Y Combinator have fielded criticism for their encouragement of companies that tackle relatively small problems and sell out for amounts that don’t reward investors.)
Sjogreen wrote,
In the near future, we think it will be hard to imagine a web experience that is not personalized. Startups that can build in these interactions from the beginning — not simply add them to existing products — will be the examples of transformative social experiences others will follow.
Y Combinator also has a relationship with Twitter and a close relationship with Sequoia Capital.
Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my bio.

Read more over at gigaom.com
Facebook lax on child porn

26 Aug

AustralianIT.com.au

THE Australian Federal Police has accused Facebook of failing to reveal the activities of an international child pornography syndicate on its site.

Read more over at www.australianit.news.com.au