Facebook Consolidates Its Virtual Currency with Facebook Credits

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One of the many announcements at Facebook's f8 conference today included an expansion of the Facebook Credits program, the social network's official virtual currency. Expansion of the Credits program could have a huge impact on how and how much revenue Facebook applications will generate.

Already in beta testing with over 100 applications, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Credits would soon role out to the whole network. Credits allows users to purchase virtual currency through Facebook that can be used to purchase virtual goods across multiple applications.

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Credits are meant to simplify online transactions by allowing users to use just one source of currency, rather than having to enter separate bank or credit card information for every purchase. According to Deb Liu, product marketing manager for Credits, users can currently purchase credits for use in Facebook applications with credit cards, special offers, mobile phones and Paypal, and Facebook plans to add "100 or 200" local payment options worldwide.

Liu also introduced the App2user Credits program, promotions that will allow users to earn Facebook credit without paying with their credit cards. The App2user program is designed to enable merchants ways to convert reward points into Facebook Credits. Facebook may seed new and inactive users with credits in order to incentivize their use, and they hope that this will "grease the system," introducing more users with more Credits into the system.

While some developers have grumbled at the 30% cut that Facebook takes from Credits, they soon may have little choice. However, the move to a single virtual currency for the entire Facebook network will mean more revenue overall as users find transactions easier to make.

When Facebook released their revenue figures in February, the Credits program accounted less than 2% of revenue - only $10 million out of $700 million. The consolidation of virtual transactions on Facebook into one currency means that these figures are likely to change substantially. Liu said today that there were around 800 million unique social gaming experiences on Facebook each month. Clearly there is potential for phenomenal growth in virtual currency - for developers and for Facebook - lies with users who are willing to pay for virtual goods to help them in their social gaming.

But according to Zuckerberg, Facebook is not doing this to generate revenue, but "for the developers."

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Facebook Announces Plan To Infiltrate The Entire Web

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mark zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg just wrapped his keynote to kick off Facebook's F8 developer conference.

In a nutshell: Facebook wants to be ubiquitous across the web. Not just at Facebook.com.

Here are the bullets:

  • The plan is to make Facebook Connect, which is already being used by 100 million people, bigger. This is the system where you can log in to other sites (such as this one) using your Facebook credentials.
  • Facebook will add "Like" buttons to sites across the web. If you like content, you can just hit "like." It will be noted by Facebook. If more of your friends click "like," it can be added to your stream on Facebook. This may then send traffic back to the originating site, which gives publishers an incentive to put more Facebook buttons on their pages. Zuckerberg expects 1 billion "likes" for Facebook in the first 24 hours.
  • Facebook showed someone using CNN and seeing what his friends were just reading on the site via a widget. The "like" button and other features are making the Web more social.
  • The biggest applause was when Zuck said they were killing the policy that made third-parties delete all info after 24 hours. This gives sites to access to more data for longer. But there could easily be privacy concerns about this.
  • Facebook is also introducing a social toolbar for sites to add at the bottom of their page. With that you can share plenty of things on Facebook more easily. You will also be logged into Facebook and be able to chat with people.
  • In addition to all this, Facebook and Microsoft are collaborating to kill Google Docs. (And to give Microsoft's online version of Office a chance.) Docs.com is Microsoft's online version of Office. It will be tightly integrated with Facebook. If you want to share a doc, you can send it to a Facebook inbox. (More data here.)
  • And finally, Facebook has 400 million users sharing 25 billion things a month.

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Docs.com: Facebook and Microsoft Go After Google Docs

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docs_logo_apr10.jpgDuring today's F8 keynote, Mark Zuckerberg announced a number of new products and features for Facebook, including a new collaboration with Microsoft. With Docs.com, Microsoft's FUSE labs just launched an online document editor and viewer that connects directly to Facebook and uses all of the new social features for third-party sites that Facebook announced today. Docs, for example, allows users to share documents with their Facebook friends, edit them collaboratively and discover documents that their friends have uploaded to their profiles.

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Creating Documents in the Cloud and Sharing them With Your Facebook Friends

With Docs, you can create new documents right in the web application or upload them from your desktop. Docs gives you the option to share documents privately or you can allow a select group of your Facebook friends to edit the document with you. A button next to every document allows you to add additional editors at any point. In our tests, the editor wasn't working properly yet (though the document viewer works just fine). We will take a closer look at Docs editing features once it is fully up and running.

msft_docs_example.jpg

friends_on_docs.jpgIn addition to being able to create and view documents, Docs.com's Facebook integration will also allow your friends to discover these documents (if you choose to share them). You can also add a new tab to your profile page that shows all the documents you have shared with your friends. This also means that you can use Facebook to discuss these documents in public, just like you would discuss any other status update on the site.

Attacking Google

There can be little doubt that this is a direct attack against Google Docs. Even though Google Docs only offers relatively basic editing features, the service's collaboration tools allow it to stand out from Microsoft's products. Until now, collaborating on Microsoft Office documents was always a rather difficult task for Office users and generally involved using third-party software.

It remains to be seen how many people in an office environment will really want to connect their documents to Facebook. For students and other Facebook users who aren't using this tool in a corporate environment and just want to share documents with each other, however, this looks like a great solution.

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Google Tries To Kill Yelp, Offers More Tools For Local Businesses (GOOG)

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google places

Google couldn't buy Yelp. So it's going to kill it by making its local business pages amazing. 

The company announced more tools today for local businesses to have a stronger presence on Google and Google Maps.

Google is changing the name of its "Local business center" to the less wordy, but equally uninspired, "Google Places." (Sounds familiar, no?)

In a blog post, John Hanke, VP Google Maps, says "One out of five searches on Google are related to location." He says he wants businesses getting found easily on Google.

Google's objective here is to pick up more ad revenue from all these businesses by giving them a place to send people who click on Google search ads.

Here's the new features it's adding:

  • Service area: If travel to serve customers, you can now list the areas you cover.
  • New advertising feature called "Tags." It costs $25 a month for a business to tag themselves. They get little yellow stickies that highlight their business on Google Maps with tags. 
  • Free photos of your business. Google will travel to your business, take nice interior photos and upload them to your page.
  • Customized QR codes. These aren't really popular here yet, but Google is trying to change that. QR codes are those things that look like TV static, but are barcodes. If you take a picture of a business's QR code with certain smartphones, you get a ton of information on the business. Google suggests putting the QR code on flyers and business cards for users.
  • More favorite places. Google is mailing out a fresh batch of Favortie Places decals, which you may have seen in the windows of certain businesses. Similar to Yelp stickers, or even City Guide stickers if you've seen those.

See Also: How Google Is Going To Put The Squeeze On Salesforce.com

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Facebook Shutters Facebook Lite

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Facebook just announced via its Facebook profile that the ultra-lightweight version of its website, Facebook Lite, is no more.

The site, which many (including us) called yet another Twitter imitation, had only been live since last September but now redirects to the main Facebook homepage.

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Facebook's status update announcing the closure read as follows:

Thanks to everyone who tried out Facebook Lite. We're no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site. If you used Lite, you'll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site.

The pared-down version of the social network was meant to serve dial-up users and those in third-world countries with slower connections. Facebook did announce another stripped down version of itself called Facebook Zero last February at the Mobile World Congress, but going to this site from a browser simply gets the message "Sorry, your carrier does not support zero.facebook.com."

We've asked Facebook if any other alternative will be available for slow-connection and dial-up users, but did not receive a response by press time.

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Facebook's Community Pages Unleashed Upon World

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facebook_logo_feb09.pngToday on the Facebook blog, Alex Li announced that Facebook would institute a number of new, or newish, features that will multiply the connectivity of the community. These features are Community Pages and Connected Profiles.

"Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it." Unlike a Facebook page devoted to, or run by, a company, a Community Page might be devoted to an area or an activity that cannot be legitimately claimed by a limited group such as a corporation.

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These pages are not community-created, not off the block anyway. Users can make their own. But Facebook has created Heaven only knows how many Pages out of raw Wikipedia copy. Will Facebook users interested in Sichuan cooking or the subtle charms of Orlando, Florida, race forward to create independent copy and make the placeholders into something more than linkbait?

Zombies.jpgLi-i-i-nks! Li-i-i-nks!

The Connected Profiles certainly add to this proliferation of linking.

Fields in your profile, like city, education and employer, as well as your interests, will now be automatically linked to their respective pages.

"Instead of just boring text," said Li, "these connections are actually Pages, so your profile will become immediately more connected to the places, things and experiences that matter to you."

Additionally, each time you login, Facebook will have a suggestion box filled to bursting with links for you.

Frankly, the proliferation of links that result from these features makes it sound like nothing so much as a content farm like Answers.com or Demand Media.

If you're publicity shy, you may need to avoid these Community Pages altogether.

"Keep in mind that Facebook Pages you connect to are public. You can control which friends are able to see connections listed on your profile, but you may still show up on Pages you're connected to."

The solution? Never connect to any page that indicates an interest you don't want the world to know about. If you find yourself connected already, disconnect as quickly as you can. Given the automatism of the profile links, it looks like you will be publicly linked and will have to de-link from each page you don't want, regardless of how clear you've been about your privacy.

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Apple iBooks Defeat the Amazon Kindle in Reader Poll

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It’s been another exciting match here in our long-running Faceoff Series, where two competing services, apps, or devices are pitted against each other for a fight to the finish. In this edition, we pitted relative newcomer Apple iBooks up against its most significant rival, the Amazon Kindle, to see who would win over the hearts and minds of Mashable readers.

The results are now in, and it looks like Amazon might have something to worry about down in Cupertino. Apple iBooks bested the Amazon Kindle with 48% of the vote to the Kindle’s 36%. Still a close race overall, Apple’s victory is nevertheless even more impressive considering the relative recentness of its entry into the digital books arena.

Interestingly, the “Neither: I prefer my books in analog format, thanks” option in the poll received a respectable 11% of the total vote, showing that a good chunk of digital natives still prefer it old skool style when it comes to books.

Were you surprised by the results from this week’s faceoff? Let us know in the comments! You can also check out the roster of past winners at the end of this post.


Who would win in a fight: Amazon Kindle or Apple iBooks?survey software


Faceoff Series: Overall Results


Week 1:
- Mozilla Firefox vs. Google Chrome
- WINNER: Firefox, 4600 votes (Chrome: 3310 votes, Tie: 911 votes)

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop: 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Week 8:
- Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs
- WINNER: Microsoft Office, 1365 votes (Google Docs: 994 votes, Tie: 315 votes)

Week 9:
- Apple iPhone vs. Google Android
- WINNER: Google Android, 3323 votes (Apple iPhone: 1494 votes, Tie: 228 votes)

Week 10:
- AT&T vs. Verizon
- WINNER: Verizon, 1161 votes (AT&T: 538 votes, Tie: 118 votes)

Week 11:
- Google vs. Bing
- WINNER: Google, 2180 votes (Bing: 519 votes, Tie: 97 votes)

Week 12:
- iPod Touch/iPhone vs. Nintendo DS vs. Sony PSP
- WINNER: iPod Touch/iPhone, 704 votes (Sony PSP: 639 votes, Nintendo DS: 482 votes, Tie: 108 votes)

Week 13:
- Digg vs. Reddit vs. StumbleUpon
- WINNER: Digg, 14,762 votes (Reddit: 11,466 votes, StumbleUpon: 2507 votes, Tie: 1032 votes)

Week 14:
- Old versus new Twitter retweets
- WINNER: Old style retweets, 1625 votes (New style retweets: 699 votes, Tie: 227 votes)

Week 15:
- Gmail vs. Outlook
- WINNER: Gmail, 3684 votes (Outlook: 980 votes, Tie: 590 votes)

Week 16:
- Boxee vs. Hulu
- WINNER: Hulu, 626 votes (Boxee: 591 votes, Tie: 106 votes)

Week 17:
- Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS
- WINNER: Nexus One, 6743 votes (iPhone 3GS: 2818 votes, Tie: 592 votes)

Week 18:
- Foursquare vs. Yelp vs. Gowalla
- WINNER: Foursquare, 1182 votes, (Yelp: 661 votes, Gowalla: 509 votes, Tie: 143 votes)

Week 19:
- AIM vs. GTalk vs. FbChat
- WINNER: GTalk, 2189 votes, (AIM: 1257 votes, FbChat: 511 votes, Tie: 203 votes)

Week 20:
- Music Ownership vs. Music Subscription
- WINNER: Ownership, 533 votes (Subscription: 299 votes, Tie: 237)

Week 21:
- Match.com vs. PlentyofFish
- WINNER: Plenty of Fish, 430 votes (Match.com: 334 votes, Tie: 187 votes)

Week 21:
- Google Buzz vs. Facebook Vs. Twitter
- WINNER: Facebook, 3353 votes (Twitter: 1828 votes, Google Buzz: 1298 votes, Tie: 651 votes)

Week 22:
- HTML5 vs. Adobe Flash
- WINNER: HTML5, 3892 votes (Adobe Flash: 1779 votes, Tie: 660 votes)

Week 23:
- Project Natal vs. PlayStation Move
- WINNER: Project Natal, 1268 votes (PlayStation Move: 668 votes, None: I don’t like motion controllers: 170 votes, None: I prefer the Wii: 150 votes)

Week 24:
- Chatroulette vs. Hot or Not
- WINNER: Chatroulette, 742 votes (Hot or Not: 281 votes, Tie: 99 votes)

Week 25:
- iPad vs. Netbooks
- WINNER: iPad, 3098 votes (Netbook: 1969 votes, Tie: 605 votes)

Week 26:
- Amazon Kindle vs. Apple iBooks
- WINNER: Apple iBooks, 1227 votes (Amazon Kindle: 928 votes, Tie: 118 votes, Neither: 276 votes)



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Reviews: Bing, Boxee, Chrome, Digg, Facebook, Firefox, Foursquare, Gmail, Google, Google Docs, Gowalla, Gtalk, Hulu, Pandora, Posterous, Seesmic Desktop, StumbleUpon, Tumblr, TweetDeck, Twitter, TypePad, Windows, WordPress, Yelp, aim

Tags: amazon, apple, books, digital books, ebooks, ereaders, ipad, Kindle, polls, trending, web faceoff

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