Apr 30 2009

Microsoft goes social

The software giant thinks it can make money in social networking the old-fashioned way – charging subscription fees. By Jessi Hempel, writer NEW YORK (Fortune) — Facebook might have a larger audience than the population of Brazil (200 million users vs …

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Apr 30 2009

Web Analytics Databases Get Even Larger

CurtMonash writes “Web analytics databases are getting even larger. eBay now has a 6 1/2 petabyte warehouse running on Greenplum — user data — to go with its more established 2 1/2 petabyte Teradata system. Between the two databases, the metrics are enormous — 17 trillion rows, 150 billion new rows per day, millions of queries per day, and so on. Meanwhile, Facebook has 2/12 petabytes managed by Hadoop, not running on a conventional DBMS at all, Yahoo has over a petabyte (on a homegrown system), and Fox/MySpace has two different multi-hundred terabyte systems (Greenplum and Aster Data nCluster). eBay and Fox are the two Greenplum customers I wrote in about last August, when they both seemed to be headed to the petabyte range in a hurry. These are basically all web log/clickstream databases, except that network event data is even more voluminous than the pure clickstream stuff.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 29 2009

Facebook Has Twitter Envy – But Why?

It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.

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Apr 28 2009

Crowd-Source Translation Software For Free Content?

yahyamf writes “I have a lot of free educational content in the form of audio lectures and text, which I’d like to translate into as many languages as possible. I would also want to transcribe the audio and create audiobooks from the text. There are already several volunteers willing to contribute, but I need some web based software to manage all the work. Facebook is already doing something like this, but it is only for their content. I’ve also looked at Damned Lies, which is part of the Gnome project, but it doesn’t seem to handle audio. Are there any other open source translation projects out there that I can customize and build upon?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Apr 28 2009

Facebook seeks to export its network across the Web

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook regularly attracts more than 200 million people to its website, but the company is now looking for ways to permeate the lives of its users without the need to check-in to the Facebook site. The Palo Alto,…

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Apr 27 2009

Facebook To Let Others Play In Its Stream

Seeing the explosion in growth of Twitter right now, it’s pretty clear that the hot trend on the web is to have a service which acts as a central hub for information, and allows third-party sites and services to built on top of it. Tomorrow, it looks like Facebook may be knocking down its dam to let its streams of data flow more freely.

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Apr 27 2009

Facebook Drops Other Shoe Tomorrow?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting Facebook will open up most if not all of their user-contributed data to developers at a developer event tomorrow.Could this take us one step closer to the ultimate live stream of real-time events?

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Apr 25 2009

Seven Curious Things Online This Week

Torture, sex, killer robots, cheap hacked iPhones and Julia Allison (did we mention torture?). This week was a good one in the Web world. You can now find photos of your friends more easily on Facebook, or find yourself on Facebook endorsing a “friend” you never meant…

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Apr 25 2009

Charities see potential, risk with social networks

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. – Meredith Bowen was getting tired of requests from Facebook friends to exchange make-believe pansies, daffodils and tiny cartoon characters for her “(Lil) Green Patch,” a virtual garden that sprouted on her social-networking page about a year ago.

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Apr 24 2009

Former Facebook Executive To Be Named CEO of MySpace

Former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta will be named CEO of MySpace, as early as tomorrow, said sources close to the situation.

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