Author: Rahsheen on Black Web 2.0

At Facebook’s event today in Palo Alto, we got two major announcements to the Facebook platform. The one that most are excited about is the ability to download your Facebook data. The second is a redesign of the Groups feature, which I think is powerful enough to attract some users back to Facebook.

Download Your Information

A major point that always comes up in discussions about Facebook and its privacy practices is that you can’t get your data out of it. Even given this obstacle, many users did “delete” their accounts. For those few that succeeded past the “deactivated” phase, they might be kicking themselves now.

Facebook Product Manager David Recordon explains that you can access the “Download Your Information” feature from your account settings, hit the download button and Facebook will allow you to download everything off your profile, including all of your messages, wall posts and all of your photos, into a zip file.

Not only is this an awesome feature for users, but it opens up the possibility for other services to easily import Facebook data. As a whole, this make Facebook a little more open and makes your personal online profile a little more portable.

Facebook Groups

While it’s simple to share stuff on Facebook with your friends or with the world, it’s much more difficult to single out a specific group. As Zuckerberg points out, lists can be tedious and hard to manage (FB list help). Algorithms also don’t always get things quite right. The solution comes in looking at how you interact with others.

We approached this problem as primarily a social one. Rather than asking all of you to classify how you know all of your friends, or programming machines to guess which sets of people are likely cohorts, we’re offering something that’s as simple as inviting your best friends over for dinner. And we think it will change the way you use Facebook and the web.

At first glance, you’ll notice that you still have to manually add people to a group once you’ve created it. What isn’t immediately clear is that your friends can ask to be invited to your group. For instance, if I create a group for Black Web 2.0 readers, I just have to make the group Open and people can invite themselves to join and participate.

From this space, you can quickly post photos, make plans and keep up with ongoing conversations. You can also group chat with members who are online right now. You can even use each group as an email list to quickly share things when you’re not on Facebook. The net effect is your whole experience is organized around spaces of the people you care most about.

This is a good example of how a simple reorganization of features can dramatically change user experience. I suspect that the new groups feature will completely change the way many of us use Facebook. One feature that will become immediately obvious is group chat.

As I watched the live Facebook event, I noticed a chat popup in Facebook from the Flickchart group. Seconds later, I saw a lot of activity coming from the FriendFeed chat group. I rarely use groups, so it’s a welcome change to see live interaction going on around them.

Facebook groups are Closed by default, which means other users can see the members, but can’t see what’s being posted. You can also make a group Secret, which hides everything about it.

via Facebook Blog, TechCrunch

According to Ben Metcalfe, the Libyan government is cracking down on their .ly domain space. On September 23rd, NIC.ly (the domain registry and controlling body for the Libyan domain space .ly) deleted the ‘vb.ly’ domain with no notice or warning. This domain was co-owned by Ben and his partner @violetblue. You’ve probably seen the .ly domain used most prominently by Bit.ly, but it’s also used by a plethora of other services like Hootsuite (ht.ly and ow.ly) and Ad.ly.

What is more disturbing about the domain being shut down is the reason why. After escalating the situation, we eventually find that the domain was shut down for content violations. This is usually something reserved for hosting companies to enforce and it looks like Libya might be overstepping their bounds a bit.

The domain was seized by the Libyan domain registry for reasons which seemed to be kept obscure until we escalated the issue. We eventually discovered that the domain has been seized because the content of our website, in their opinion, fell outside of Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law.

What is most disturbing about this is that vb.ly was a URL shortener. This means that it never actually hosted any content on its own. This is the case for most URL shorteners. Even those which put the content in a frame don’t actually host the content themselves, so there seems to be some confusion here. As Ben points out, it doesn’t seem that the his domain being deleted was covered in the official NIC.ly regulations, even though this is the document he was referred to.

Other important points to note if you were thinking of starting a startup using a .ly domain:

• The Libyan Islamic/Sharia Law is being used to consider the validity of domains, but this is open to interpretation and makes it unclear to figure out what’s allowed and what’s not.
• Because the content is basically being censored, this “makes .ly domains untenable to be used for user-generated content or url shorteners.”
• NIC.ly have suddenly decided that <4 letter .ly domains should only be available to local Libyans.

This may turn out to be an isolated incident, but it’s not very likely. All signs seem to point to the fact that Libya failed to capitalize on the popularity of their 2-letter TLD and is now trying to recover the domains and possibly some revenue.

more at Techyum

While the Droid Pro has been blogged about before, it looks like the rumors were all wrong. It was originally thought to be a world edition of the Droid 2, which simply means it would support cell networks around the world.Not a very exciting prospect for a new mobile phone, but Verizon has somehow been able to keep the real Droid Pro specs under wraps until now. The Droid Pro is much more than anyone expected, providing a “new, powerful, stronger and faster solution designed to meet both business and personal needs.”

The first Android™-based smartphone optimized for business use, DROID PRO is also a global-ready Android smartphone from Verizon Wireless, allowing customers to enjoy wireless voice service in more than 220 countries and data coverage in more than 200 countries.

To put it bluntly, the Droid Pro looks and feels like a Blackberry, except that it’s running Android 2.2. It’s a candybar phone with a QWERTY keyboard and is geared towards business professionals. Built-in security features like VPN and remote wipe as well as pre-loaded Quickoffice Mobile Suite only enforce the business side of things.

“The DROID PRO is an advanced business-ready solution that provides users with the full smartphone experience, redefined by delivering the power of a DROID,” said Sanjay Jha, chief executive officer of Motorola Mobility. “The DROID PRO consolidates users’ work and personal needs. This is just another reason the DROID PRO is setting a new standard for enterprise, allowing users to enjoy all the benefits of a smartphone with full push delivery of corporate e-mail and corporate level security.”

Key features and specifications:

• Support for both Exchange e-mail and Gmail™ for business
• Corporate directory look-up, unified calendar for Enterprise and sync with Google Calendar™
• PC-like browsing with Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1 on a full, multi-touch, 3.1-inch brilliant display built on Android 2.2
• View, edit and share documents, including Microsoft Excel® spreadsheets, PowerPoint® presentations and Word® documents
• Built-in security features, including AuthenTec IPSec multi-headed VPN integration, remote wipe of device and SD card, and complex password support. Device and SD card encryption will be available in early 2011
• 3G Mobile HotSpot capabilities – Allows customers to connect up to five other Wi-Fi®-enabled devices and laptops
• Live widgets that stream e-mail messages to the home screen; customers can filter the widgets to separate work and home e-mail
• 5-megapixel camera with auto focus and dual LED flash as well as DVD-quality video
• 3G diversity antennae provides customers with enhanced data speeds and range
• Wi-Fi®-enabled DNLA® connectivity
• Android Market™ – Provides customers with access to more than 80,000 applications
• My Verizon and Backup Assistant(SM) support – Allows customers to manage their wireless accounts or their contacts from their phones

The Droid Pro will be coming to a Verizon Wireless Communications Retail Store near you as well as Verizon’s website (verizonwireless.com) in the coming weeks. Pricing will be announced shortly before the phone is actually available. It was speculated initially that Verizon might offer some type of upgrade path for Droid 2 early adopters, but the Droid Pro seems to be a different beast entirely.

via Verizon Wireless, Engadget, Mobile Crunch

Google has just made Google Goggles available to iPhone users. To refresh your memory, Goggles allows you to do a visual search. Normally, when you want to know more about something, you go to a search engine and type in a query. You tell the search engine what you want with your words. But what happens when you don’t know what something is or can’t describe it in words? What if you want information an object or location that you don’t know much about? That’s where Google Goggles comes in.

Using your mobile phone’s camera, it’s easy to find out more about the world around you. You search for things by pointing your camera at them. This feature has been available as an app for Android devices since December, and will now become a feature of the Google mobile app for iPhone, which already lets you speak your queries and find relevant search results based on your location.

Using Goggles is simple:

• Point your camera at whatever you would like to identify
• Click the camera button in the Google Mobile App
• Goggles will highlight the items it recognizes in the image
• Click each item to get more information

Visual search is for from an exact science and Google is quick to remind us when it won’t work. For instance, no matter how much of a social media guru you are or how many top spots you have in Google, Goggles probably won’t recognize you.

Computer vision is a hard problem and Google Goggles is still a Labs product. It works well for things such as landmarks, logos and the covers of books, DVDs and games. However, it doesn’t yet work for some things you might want to try like animals, plants or food.

Starting today, the free Google Goggles app will appear in the Apple App Store (just search for “Google Mobile App”) and will gradually begin to show up in all App stores around the world. Goggles requires a camera with auto-focus, so it is only available for the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 running iOS 4 and up. The feature is only available for English-speaking users.

Have you ever used Google Goggles? Will you be using it now? Tell us about it.

via Google Mobile Blog

At long last, Skype is available for Android. Skype Mobile was initially introduced on the Verizon network and has remained exclusive to Verizon for some time. Now, you can download the free app from the Android market to make Skype-to-Skype calls for free and send/receive free Instant Messages. IM’s work on a one-to-one basis or with a group.

There are some serious caveats with this application, though. It takes a page from FaceTime’s book, only allowing calls over Wi-Fi for users in the United States. If you live in China or Japan, don’t bother looking for the app in the Marketplace because it’s not available.

While the app is available for a wide range of Android phones, it has only been tested on HTC and Motorola phones running Android 2.1 or higher. They note that it may work on other devices, but may have limited functionality and compatibility. You can download the app for yourself at skype.com/m to try it out.

If you are outside of the US, you can use Skype via a mobile data connection, but operator charges may apply. Skype recommends an unlimited data plan. If you are abroad, it’s still recommended that you make calls via Wi-Fi “for best value.”

This comes just after Skype announced a new CEO, Cisco SVP Tony Bates. Skype is on track to pass 1-billion next year and, in August, filed to go public. Fring has also recently made moves on the Android platform which seem to be aimed directly at Skype:

• $.01 cent/minute calls
• To/From any carrier
• No connection fees
• No VAT/taxes
• Any data connection (WiFi, 3G, 4G)

While Skype seems to be the standard for VOiP calling on the desktop, I’m not so sure they have secured their place in the mobile market. Their dealings with Verizon have restricted their growth in the US and the current app still has some major limitations. With Skype heading towards an IPO, it will be interesting to see if Fring is able to steal some of their thunder.

via TechCrunch, The Big Blog, The Next Web

In a rather shocking announcement, Twitter CEO Evan Williams has asked COO Dick Costolo to step in as the new CEO of Twitter. While we’ve seen restructuring going on at major companies like HP and Yahoo, this seems a bit more benign and mostly a strategic move on @ev’s part.

As Twitter’s growth has exploded, Evan has been the front man. He has been at the helm as we’ve watched Twitter go from 1.25 million tweets/day to 90 million. Before that, it grew from a cryptic service no one understood, into a communications platform that most major brands use as a matter of course. Through all this, Ev admits that it hasn’t been easy:

The challenges of growing an organization so quickly are numerous. Growing big is not success, in itself. Success to us means meeting our potential as a profitable company that can retain its culture and user focus while having a positive impact on the world.

Twitter’s management team has grown along with the service. Dick Costolo has been Evan’s sidekick, a “critical leader in devising and executing our revenue efforts, while simultaneously and effectively making the trains run on time in the office.” It looks like Ev has decided that he would serve Twitter better by stepping down as CEO:

This led to a realization as we launched the new Twitter. I am most satisfied while pushing product direction. Building things is my passion, and I’ve never been more excited or optimistic about what we have to build.

Dick Costolo has a track record as a three-time successful CEO. He was co-founder and former CEO of Feedburner, which was later acquired by Google. It looks like Evan would rather work to keep up the vision of Twitter rather than deal with the business side of running the show. As of today, Ev will be “completely focused on product strategy” and says he is excited about where their “amazing team” will take Twitter next.

via Mashable, Twitter Blog

Microsoft and, more specifically, CEO Steve Ballmer are having a seriously tough time succeeding in the mobile market. First, we witnessed the launch and later failure of the Microsoft Kin after only a couple of months. Then, in a regulatory filing last week, we find out that Steve Ballmer got docked on his bonus. Mostly likely, this was because of the Kin. Now, Ballmer sounds confident that Microsoft will be able to turn things around with the launch of Windows Phone 7.

On Oct. 11, Microsoft and its partners plan to announce the initial wave of handsets that will use Windows Phone 7, a thoroughly overhauled version of the company’s cellphone operating system. Mr. Ballmer believes the software will compete more effectively against Apple Inc.&apos;s iPhone and Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

According to the event description, there will be “an exclusive showing of T-Mobile powered Windows Phone 7 devices” from 3pm to 4:30pm at the Microsoft Office in NY on October 11th. Will this be enough to make up for Microsoft’s past mistakes? Apple’s iPhone is going strong and Android has skyrocketed out of nowhere. If Microsoft is able to make headway on either front, in will be amazing.

Of course, those old Redmond boys have some tricks up their sleeves. Android has gained popularity in large part because of its open and free nature. According to Ballmer, the hidden fees come by way of patents: “Android has a patent fee. It’s not like Android’s free. You do have to license patents. HTC’s signed a license with us and you’re going to see license fees clearly for Android as well as for Windows.”

While MS is already making money from Android via HTC, they are seeking a similar arrangement with Motorola. Just a few days ago, they made Motorola an offer they couldn’t refuse. Well, they can’t refuse to battle it out in court, anyway. Microsoft claims “infringement of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smartphones.” They site things like “synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.”

Pretty ridiculous claims and, if Microsoft gets away with this, it could be serious trouble in the mobile market. It’s interesting to note that Microsoft struck a deal with HTC after suing them, while no such deal seems to be in the works for Motorola. This could be because HTC is helping with the Windows Phone 7 launch while Motorola is all-in on Android.

And, speaking of Android, Microsoft is indirectly going at Google by attacking its hardware partners. Ballmer sincerely believes that Microsoft can make a comeback in the ever-changing smart phone market. As he said to WSJ, “We know it’s possible, we’ll see what happens.”

via WSJ, TechCrunch, Engadget

WTF Link

Apparently, even though we all know we should absolutely not click things we aren’t sure about, a large number of folks who know better got got by Twitter’s latest exploit. If you saw a tweet that said “WTF” followed by a link and you actually clicked it, your account would tweet “I Like Anal Sex With Goats.” It would also trigger a second tweet with the malicious link included so that your followers could join in the fun. The bug was limited to Twitter.com and they quickly blocked the link and fixed it. via The Next Web

TwtRoulette Isn’t What You Think

We all know about ChatRoulette, the service which lets you video chat with random people. While TwtRoulette has a similar name, the concept is pretty different. It lets you peak into the life of another Twitter user, viewing their timeline as they see it. As the site says, It’s a great opportunity for extended information discovery and consumption. TwtRoulette also includes a “random” function, which explains the “roulette” part. It was developed by the 15yr old who created iTunes Instant, Stephen Ou. via TechCrunch

Goo.gl Finally Gets a Website

Google’s own URL shortener has been out for a while now, but is just now getting a website where you can use it directly. You can now login to your Google account and see a history of links you’ve shortened along with basic analytics. For those wondering why in the world we need yet another URL shortener, Google offers a few reasons:

Stability: We’ve had near 100% uptime since our initial launch, and we’ve worked behind the scenes to make goo.gl even stabler and more robust.

Security: We’ve added automatic spam detection based on the same type of filtering technology we use in Gmail.

Speed: We’ve more than doubled our speed in just over nine months.

One important point that they barely touch on is that “it will keep working.” One major argument against URL shorteners in general is that they create an ecosystem of links that could go dead if the service provider goes away. Since Google is well on their way to world domination, it’s doubtful they will ever disappear.

An awesome hidden feature of Goo.gl is that you can create a QR code by adding “.qr” to the end of any shortened link. For example, This link http://goo.gl/Jga4 points to this post. Changing it to http://goo.gl/Jga4.qr gives the image to the right. Scanning that image with your mobile will automatically load this post in your mobile browser. via TechCrunch, Google Social Web Blog

Apple Stealing Ad Revenue from Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!

Apple’s recent entry into the mobile advertising arena with iAds has given them 21 percent of the ad market as well as put a spotlight on mobile advertising. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! have seen losses since last year. Even though it looks like Apple is in the lead, the mobile ad market is changing extremely fast with independents quickly gaining on the big names. It will be interesting to see what moves these companies make in 2011. via Bloomberg Business Week

Gmail Makes Threading Optional

One feature that differentiates Gmail from other mail interfaces is threaded conversations. They make it easy to follow conversation threads and make your email interface less cluttered. For some reason, many users find this confusing and would rather see their emails in a basic chronological list. Gmail has finally given users the option to disable threading. The primary benefit for this feature is in transitioning enterprise customers using legacy (meaning old) email solutions to Gmail. Just because you’re used to something, doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do things. I tend to agree with Matt Cutts, who said turning threading off is like banging your head against the wall. via Google Enterprise Blog

Facebook is finally making updates to Photos that will make the service much more useful and a lot less tedious. The three primary areas of improvement: high-resolution images, a better viewer, and a better uploader.

I’m excited to announce three big improvements to Photos: high-resolution images so you can store bigger pictures, a better viewer for browsing photos, and an simpler uploader when you have lots of images. The team has been working hard to get these done, and we’ll make these available to everyone over the next month.

Higher Resolution

Facebook is increasing the size of uploaded photos from 720 pixels to 2048 pixels on the largest edge. This is an 8x increase overall. Back in the day, not many people had digital cameras and most mobile cameras were garbage. Now, you have cell phones taking photos at 8M (3264×2448 pixels). Posting these to Facebook used to kill the quality, but now you won’t take such a serious hit.

A Better Viewer

Browsing photos on Facebook is a pain. Clicking a photo anywhere on the site takes you to a completely different page, losing your place in the feed. Many users have previously resorted to opening multiple tabs so they could keep their place, but this is a less than ideal solution. Now, when you click photos, they pop up in a light box on top of the page you’re on. They’ve also rewritten all the code for the viewer from scratch, so paging through photos will be faster.

Better Uploads and Tagging

The Facebook uploader has been updated to use the latest Flash technology. This makes it more stable, reliable, and easier to use. It’s also a lot easier to tag photos. At a recent event, a friend took over 120 photos with their phone and uploaded and tagged them all on Facebook. I can’t imagine how much time that took. Now, it’s easier to tag multiple photos or photos of the same person using face recognition technology.

It looks like Facebook is making a serious play for your online photos. Given the volume of photos that they deal with on a daily basis, it’s no surprise. They even seem to throw a jab and competitors in this space, saying “and unlike on many other online services, you don’t need any kind of premium or paid account.”

Should Flickr and others be watching their backs?

via Facebook (8) | More Beautiful Photos, Inside Facebook

Using a specialized software program called TaintDroid, researchers from Duke University, Penn State University, and Intel Labs have discovered some popular Android apps sharing private user data. TainDroid uses “dynamic taint analysis to detect and report when applications are sending potentially sensitive information to remote servers.”

Researchers chose 30 popular free Android applications at random and used TaintDroid to test them. Half of these applications sent private data information to advertising servers. This included users’ GPS location and phone numbers. Some applications were sharing GPS location as much as every 30 seconds when they weren’t even displaying any ads.

Android has measures in place for users to protect themselves. Before you can install an application, you are able to see exactly what features of your phone that app will have access to. If you don’t feel that the permissions make sense, you can always change your mind and not click Install. The problem is that many users don’t pay attention to any of these permissions, blindly trusting the developer in exchange for using the app. This is pretty much the same behavior we see with warning dialogs on computers.

The real issue is that, even if the user painstakingly screens all the permissions of every app they install, they can never tell when an app will use those permissions. For example, you would definitely want the Foursquare app to have access to your GPS coordinates, but you would expect it to only share your location when you were checking in or looking for nearby places. You wouldn’t expect it to send your location and phone number to a remote ad server when you weren’t even using the app.

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any legal recourse for these applications. They have notified the user what they would access ahead of time. A partial solution would be for every application to have a clear privacy policy available before installation so that you would already know what they might do with your information beforehand, but most users still wouldn’t read them.

TaintDroid is only possible because Android is open source. Now that the issue has been pointed out, there are measures that can be taken to fixing it. What I wonder is how this is handled with Apple, a completely closed system. While they have a strict approval process, I doubt they screen each app to detect privacy breaches. According to one commenter on Ars Technica:

• Apple applications don’t notify you which services an app will have access to.
• Apps that track other apps are not allowed in the App Store.

This means that, even if iOS apps are leaking private data, users would never know about it. Not only that, but it seems there is no way for them to ever know about it.

via Ars Technica

According to Neowin, Microsoft will release the final version of Windows Live Essentials today. This comes about a month after an update to the beta on August 17th. Windows Live Essentials includes applications like Windows Live Movie Maker, Mail, Messenger, Writer, Sync, and Family Safety.

This final release offers deeper integration with Windows 7 using “jumplists” and all applications have the new ribbon UI. Windows Live Sync allows you to keep files synchronized across the web and multiple PCs. Windows Live Photo Gallery has received a few updates, including photo fusing and improved facial recognition.

Just yesterday, Microsoft and Automattic announced that WordPress.com would be taking over for Windows Live Spaces for blogging with Windows Live Essentials. It was reported that Live Spaces boasted 30 million active users and those users would be transitioned over to WordPress.com, who currently has about 14 million blogs. This would be huge for WordPress.com as they would triple their users.

However, According to internal documents acquired by betanews, it seems that 30 million number is incorrect. Many within Microsoft were concerned about moving so many blogs from a Microsoft platform to the competing Linux platform. In an effort to downplay the implications and avoid a decrease in morale with in the company, a senior Microsoft manager: “The net is: 300k sites are expected to migrate of the 30M ‘blogs’ — most are dead. WordPress is adding somewhere in the order of zero servers to handle this capacity. This was a ‘who has the best online service for blogging for our customers’ and had nothing to do with technology.”

Reaching out to both Automattic and Microsoft, Betanews learned that 50,000 users had already migrated to WordPress.com in the first 48 hours. On Microsoft’s end, they admitted that the 30 million number “includes both authors and their visitors.” The number of actual active authors is 7 million, which shaves 23 million off of their original figure.

While it’s normal for companies to overstate their numbers, this seems to be a pretty huge discrepancy and it’s doubtful that WordPress.com was aware of the “error.” In any case, WordPress.com should still see a significant bump in active users. Look for the new Windows Live Essentials around 1PM EST.

During the final day of TechCrunch Disrupt, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner announced the limited release of a new product called Signal. It’s a beta product that helps you find information and news “most relevant to you as a professional.”

Here are the primary features of Signal in the limited beta:

1. Filters – Sharpen your feed of random updates and links into something you can use to help your business. The information is there and LinkedIn now offers eight dynamic filters to help you find it.
2. Search – Find information on keywords, topics or people across your stream. Because of LinkedIn’s nature, you can quickly find relevant info about specific people and brands.
3. Real-time – You can see an auto-updating stream of the rich content posted by LinkedIn users. You don’t have to refresh the page, but you do have to click (I don’t consider that real-time, but I digress).
4. Trending Links – LinkedIn Signal mines all shared links on status updates so that you can see which are most popular in relation to your searches. Think Tweetmeme for LinkedIn updates.
5. Who’s Shared This? – In addition to seeing what links are popular, you can see who shared those links to make them popular. You can even refine this list by industry, company and region. “Imagine if you wrote a blog post on your company’s blog or were quoted in a news article, you can now see who’s shared that article and made it popular.”

Once you’ve drilled down to the specific data you’re looking for, you can save it as a real-time stream. For instance, you could use this to keep track of what your colleagues are doing or what’s going on at some company you’re interested in. Evelyn Rusli of TechCrunch outlines another interesting scenario:

Beyond a curiosity, I could see this becoming an interesting tool for researchers and professionals, especially journalists like myself. For example, if the CEO of a multi-billion dollar technology company was abruptly ousted by his board (not thinking of anyone in particular here), within seconds, I could find out what that company’s employees were saying about the CEO and what links they were pointing to.

This is an interesting move by LinkedIn in its quest to become more relevant. For most of us, it’s just a Rolodex. There isn’t much real interaction going on their and most users don’t even bother visiting the site. This also highlights how powerful it is for a service to gather information on its users. LinkedIn Signal draws most of its power from the information fed to it by about 70 million users during the past seven years.

LinkedIn Signal is available in a limited beta. They will be rolling it out to some users, but you can ask for an invite here. Are you looking for the signal in your LinkedIn noise?

via LinkedIn

According to AllThingsD, Facebook and Skype will soon announce a partnership that will closely integrate the two services. This will be a two-way deal which includes SMS, voice chat, and Facebook Connect. Skype would use Facebook Connect for deep integration into Facebook contacts, while Facebook would offer SMS, voice, and video chat via the Skype service.

This is a natural move for both parties and could also be a big win for users. According to sources close to the situation, Facebook’s goal is to bring together communications and community. Rather than build from the ground up, it makes sense for Facebook to look for strong partners in the communications area. This seems to be a running trend in the tech community with Microsoft partnering up with WordPress and Windows Live Spaces, AOL acquiring TechCrunch, and Google getting it in wherever they possibly can.

Facebook gains a powerful and proven communications system to connect its users and make the service “stickier.” Skype possibly becomes the primary mode of communication for over 500 million existing Facebook users. Another benefit comes in stretching across the world. Skype is very popular outside of the US while Facebook is more popular within US borders. By putting their heads together, Skype and Facebook can also bring their users together and increase their global influence.

These updates should come in the 5.0 release of Skype, which is now in beta. It is unknown whether this tight integration will trickle down to the mobile applications and, even if it does, Android users may still be left in the cold by Skype’s dealings with Verizon. Skype has also partnered up with other companies as it prepares itself for a public offering.

On a related note, you can still get the Vonage Facebook app, which lets you make VoIP calls to your Facebook contacts around the world for free. It seems to offer the same type of deep integration we might see from a Skype+Facebook deal, but definitely works on iPhone and Android. It doesn’t seem that Vonage has any actual partnership with Facebook, though.

via AllThingsD

Instead of reinventing the wheel, Microsoft has decided to go with WordPress.com for Windows Live Spaces customers. This means that current Live users will be able to migrate their blogs to WordPress.com and new users will get a WordPress blog. When checking out the competition, Microsoft decided that WordPress has “a host of impressive capabilities – from a scalable platform and leading spam protection, to great personalization and customization.”

The goal is to give Windows Live Spaces users the best blogging experience possible and finding a successful company to partner with instead of starting from scratch was the best option. It seems that the two companies are working hard to make sure the transition is a smooth one for current Live Spaces bloggers. They kept three key points in mind:

• Giving existing Windows Live Spaces customers an easy upgrade of their blogging experience to WordPress.com
• Letting anyone connect their WordPress.com blog to Messenger so their Messenger friends are updated when they publish a new post on WordPress.com
• Allowing Windows Live customers to easily create new blogs on WordPress.com

The 30 million people who have awaited the launch of the new blogging features on Windows Live Spaces should breathe easy. Migrating has been broken down to a few easy steps. Your content, comments , and links will all be moved over and preserved. All links will be properly redirected so that your visitors don’t get lost and you don’t lose your Google juice.

If you don’t want to move to WordPress.com for one reason or another, you can opt to download all your content, migrate later, or just delete your Space. Given these options, I’d recommend downloading your content and completing the migration process as soon as possible.

As part of making the migration as simple as possible, WordPress has created a detailed How-To which walks you through the process. In their welcome post to Windows Live Spaces bloggers, they’ve covered some basic WordPress resources for users new to the platform.

Definitely a big move by Microsoft, but it’s not as surprising these days to see them partnering with other successful companies. This is especially true in the social space. It also seems that this move is no surprised to many Windows Live Spaces users.

Are you one of the 30 million who used Live Spaces? Will you be upgrading to WordPress?