Transcript

Tuesday June 3, 2008

To Counter Google, Thank Developers, Facebook Opens Its Code

Facebook has announced it will open parts of its development platform, plus implementations of its most popular methods and tags in an effort to give back to the developer community with more tools and information on how Facebook platform actually works. The announcement comes in lieu of the one year anniversary of the Facebook platform launch, although its rumored to be instead a direct attack on Google-led competitor OpenSocial, which is an initiative to establish a standard set of common APIs that will let developers create social-networking applications that can run with minor modifications in multiple sites. Among OpenSocial's supporters are Yahoo, AOL and MySpace. In March, Yahoo, Google and MySpace formed a nonprofit foundation to promote the OpenSocial platform as a neutral, community-governed specification.

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=117
http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/02/to-counter-google-facebook-sets-code-free/index.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/02/Facebook-open-sources-parts-of-its-app-development-platform_1.html
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/06/02/facebook-open-sources-the-platform/
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/02/facebook-turns-platfrom-open-source-via-fbopen/
http://www.webmasterworld.com/social_media/3665281.htm

Music Groups Call for Boycott of Search Engine Baidu Over Music Piracy

Following a string of lawsuits filed against China’s leading search engine Baidu.com, Chinese and International record companies are pushing for an advertiser boycott over complaints of music piracy. The group of companies and associations include record companies Universal Music Group, EMI Group, Sony BMG Entertainment and others. Baidu opposes the accusations, claiming it pays great attention to protecting intellectual property rights and follows Chinese law. It has also said it is testing advertisement-supported music downloads with companies including EMI Group.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121248137549340971.html

U.S. Internet Report Predicts Future Of Google, Amazon, IAC & eBay

If Stanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay is correct in his stance, detailed in a 310-page report titled: “U.S. Internet: The End Of The Beginning,” Google and Amazon.com will remain stable in the race of the leading Web companies, despite economic downturn, while he believes Yahoo will be sold to Microsoft, and IAC InterActive will be split in five separate companies as planned. eBay, he adds will become a merger target.

http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN0232735820080603

[edited by: Vanessa_Zamora at 9:51 pm (utc) on June 3, 2008]