ITGumbo: spicing IT up

Facebook, the web’s second most popular social networking site today announced that it is enabling non-Facebook registered members to search for their friends’ profiles in the Facebook network. Subsequently in the coming weeks, Facebook would also allow search engine to crawl member profile pages, enabling other people to search for Facebook profiles through search engine portals.

Internet security firm SurfControl reports that based on its recent study, the use of Facebook by Australian employees during office hours could contribute to a significant loses for the company.

The study based its calculations from the estimated 230,000 Australian employees who are already registered users of Facebook and who are enjoying the social networking site’s many features to connect and communicate with their friends online. These employees are constantly accessing Facebook, viewing their profiles, uploading photos and videos and searching for long lost friends and relatives. These they even while in the confine of their respective offices during their official working hours.

The web’s second best social networking site next to mySpace is finally graduating from being a college social networking site to a bigger, better and more matured web service. Via a much celebrated press conference, Facebook’s 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg is unveiling Facebook’s direction and what it aims to become.

It’s all over the web. Every news agency has covered the event. Almost all well known blogs have dedicated a post, some even several posts for Facebook’s transition into a more matured service. Here’s what other bloggers have to say about this big news about Facebook:

Well, at least for the UK web population, a recent survey by NetRatings reveal that 18% of the active online British people are young female with ages ranging from 18 to 34. Although, the survey shows that generally, the online presence of male and female Brits are almost the same, with 50.5 men and 49.5 women.

In a move to protect children and minors from preying online criminals while hanging out in the virtual meeting place, mySpace, a group of US Attorney Generals is demanding the NewsCorp owned social networking site to provide a list of registered offenders in the site.

In a USA Today News report, Atty General for North Carolina Roy Cooper said:

“These social networking sites are a treasure trove for these sexual predators, Sexual predators can groom dozens of children at once in order to find the one to lure for their sexual interests."

Despite mySpace’s effort in protecting children and members with innocent mind from online sexual predators, particularly when it hired private group Sentinel Tech Holdings to check on verified sexual predators who registered in mySpace, still, the Atty Generals deemed it not enough to stop these kind of crime from happening in mySpace.

In another bid to entice members to come back more often and to stay longer on their site, Facebook is launching a free classifieds service. Competing with other classifieds sites on the web, Facebook’s classified listing simply called Marketplace will let members to create classified listings to be categorized into four namely, housing, jobs, for sale and others for those classified ads that won’t fit into the three categories.

Facebook Founder and Owner, Mark Zuckerberg said in a New York Times Article:

“We don’t try to lock people up or take more of their time, but we try to provide them with easier ways to do the things they want to do on the Internet,”

And with Facebook’s Marketplace, Zuckerberg is giving its user useful avenues to access whenever they login to their Facebook account.

One good thing about Facebook’s Marketplace is that users have the option to choose who can view their ads. They can either be viewed only by friends of the users or to selected networks.

Facebook currently boost of around 22 million active users. Although not integrated yet with the current release of Marketplace, Facebook is also planning to implement advertising campaigns on the Marketplace. And with such number of active users, paid advertisement could earn Facebook some if not a lot of revenues.

Looks like the Japanese have beaten the Chinese in launching their own localized version of top social networking site, MySpace. While MySpace China is currently on test mode, News Corp’s social networking site has announced the launch of MySpace Japan.

The Associated Free Press Reports via Yahoo Tech News that:

“Nearly 1,300 users have already uploaded personal videos onto the Japanese website, with thousands viewing short films that range from one titled "the screams of the sausage" to homemade music videos.”

Is MySpace really buying Photobucket? A lot of media speculation has arisen the past several days. Reuters reports today that a preliminary deal worth $250 million has been reached by the two companies. New York Times says that the deal was not over yet. Negotiations are still ongoing between the two companies.

Not even MySpace very own news portal carries any official announcement from the company of whether the deal is done or not. So, what is the real deal? Is Myspace really acquiring one of the web’s most established online photo storage facilities which have been widely used by My Space’s very own members in their respective places on MySpaces.

Top social network site MySpace launches a test version of MySpace China, with the hope of penetrating the Chinese web market. With the world’s second largest internet population, MySpace China’s entry into the Chinese internet market would certainly boost Newscorp’s MySpace’s overall popularity, user based and of course profit. In a Yahoo Tech News report via Associated Press, Luo Chuan, leader of the said joint venture said:

"Based on the MySpace global brand and technology platform, we will develop products and features that are tailored to today's Chinese citizens,"

MySpace is set to launch its own news aggregation service which is expected to rival other established news aggregator services such as Google, Slashdot, Digg, Yahoo among other well known news aggregator sites. With MySpace News, Newscorp's social networking site hopes to keep its more than 100 million unique visitors stay on the site longer by giving them added stuff to work on.