Microsoft tried to buy Facebook

David Kirkpatrick already claimed that Microsoft wanted to buy Facebook in his book "The Facebook Effect".

According to Fritz Lanman who is Senior director of corporate strategy for Microsoft, Microsoft tried to buy Facebook at an earlier stage of the company. He revealed this at a talk of the Web Connference LeWeb in Paris on 8th of December 2010. / via @leweb and @techcrunch

Steve Ballmer @stevebmicrosoft offered Mark Zuckerberg 15 Billion $ for Facebook which Mark Zuckerberg did not agree to. When Steve Ballmer knew that he couldn´t buy Facebook, because Mark Zuckerberg was not willing to sell it, Microsoft bought 1,6% of facebooks shares for 240 Million $ in October 2007. Just shortly before that Steve Ballmer stated, that Facebook ist totally overrated with a Market Valuation of 15 Billion Dollars and then 40 Million Users.

Obviously its not since now there are more than 500 Million Users and market Valuation is a lot higher (according to Fritz Laman it could top the Value of Microsoft one Day)

Unfortunately there is no LeWeb Video yet..

Influence the Look of your Friends profiles

I just Read an Article, that explains how you can influence the Look of your friends profiles on Facebook. It only Works with the New "Version" of profiles.

Read more

Mark Zuckerberg on 60 Minutes

Part 1



Part 2

German "Verbraucherschutz" against Facebook

According to the leading german techsite Heise the german Consumer Organization ("Verbraucherschutz") wants to sue Facebook.

The friendfinder Feature that Facebook offers is obviously used to send invites to your contacts without permission of the recipients. This permission is necessary (so called double-optin) to legally send commercial Email to persons who haven't had any contact with you before.

If you want to read the (german) article click here

FAZ Artikel mit Fehler

Bei der FAZ ist unter http://www.faz.net/-01keey ein interessanter Artikel über Facebook zu lesen, der nach meiner Meinung aber leider im letzten Absatz einen Fehler enthält.
Dort heißt es: "Aber daran, dass schon heute mehr Menschen über Facebook kommunizieren als mit Emails, ändert das nichts."

ECC (link) zitiert eine Studie der Radicati Group, die besagt, dass es 1,4 Milliarden aktive E-Mail Accounts und ca. 1 Milliarde E-Mail Nutzer gibt. Facebook hat derzeit geschätzte 500 Millionen User.

Unified Messaging....

... is what you called it in the ´90s I think. Unified Messaging was the dream in modern Office Communication all your Emails, Faxes, Phone Calls end up in the same Inbox.

The Idea of Facebooks new/remodeled Messaging Service is pretty much the same, but you can read more about it on Facebooks blog about it right here

Headlines of the last few weeks about Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg is now richer than Steve Jobs. 
For full story by BUSINESS INSIDER click here


Interview With Mark Zuckerberg On the Facebook Phone. 
For Article by @techcrunch click here

Mark Zuckerberg appears in Simpsons
Unfortunately the Videos linked in the Article by @mashable can only be seen in the United States (like a lot of HULU-Videos) click here

According to german Tech-News Site Heise (@heiseonline) Facebook reveals the Contacts of Facebook-Users even if the contacts do not use Facebook. The Article by Heise also links to another Article by Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. [both articles in german] click here

Zuckerberg: Facebook Isn’t Making Real Profits, And That’s OK
BUSINESS INSIDER click here

Facebook Surpasses Google In “Time Spent” On Site Domestically

Full Article by allfacebook.com click here

8 Outrageous Facts That Put Facebook’s Valuation In Perspective [Infographic]

Infographic by allfacebook.com here

Ping!

This Blog has been very  slow.

I think now is a good time to get it moving again. There has been News by Apple on September 1^st, 2010, that there will be a Social Aspect built into the latest Version of iTunes (10.0) which you can find here .

The Service can be activated in your ITunes as you can see in the picture of my own (german) iTunes-Version. 

The Service could in my opinion very well be the deathblow to lastfm.com . 

Apple has already turned the Music Industry upside down. The best step to continue that is to take it more social.

I still wonder why the Music Industry did not innovate as much as they could have instead of paying Lawyers. When Napster started in 1999 big Media Companies should have built a peer-to-peer network themselves and put a “buy” button right next to each song and Video. This way they would have had their own iTunes (iTunes probably wouldn´t have been the success that it is now). But that´s a whole different storie…

The reason why I´m even posting about iTunes is that up to this point it will not work with facebook. Ping probably couldn´t be more social than it would be by working with facebok. But with Ping you simply can not find your facebook friends right now. See the related article in the New York Times 

According to germam TechNews-Site heise.de both companies are working to resolve the issue. See the German Article here 

Flickr, Yahoo + Facebook

As I tweeted before: You can hook up your Flickr and Yahoo Account to Facebook.

@flickr wrote about it here

Facebook and iPhone-App

With facebooks iPhone-App it´s possible to sync your facebook contacts with your iPhone Adressbook. Synching means that facebook copies data in both directions.
If you have contacts that are not on facebook but in your iPhone Adressbook they will be sucked up into facebooks database after synching.

There are two german articles on this by winload and Spiegel (@spiegelonline)

Spiegel here and winload here

Mashable (@mashable) also wrote about it here

Facebook and Gaming

According to german Techsite heise.de (@heiseonline)more than half of the 25 biggest Games on facebook have lost substantial numbers of users. Farmville is still number one with 70 Million Users but has lost 12 Million Users since April. The Statistics mentioned bei heise.de are found on insidesocialgames.com

[edit]Maybe the announcement of Farmville for iPhone/iPad in Steve Jobs Keynote will change those numbers dramatically[/edit]

Privacy Privacy Privacy...

..a Statement by Mark Zuckerberg at "D8 All Things Digital" (Wall Street Journals Tech Conference)