Facebook URL Shortener Makes Appearance

From WebPro News

Long URLs cut into character limits, are difficult to remember, and simply look awkward.  Quite a little industry has sprung up in response.  Only it looks like a major player is now entering the game, as a URL shortener created by Facebook has been sighted.

Ryan Spoon first wrote about links built around the characters "FB.me" this weekend.  Since, then, more and more examples have been found, and although Facebook has yet to announce anything official, there's no reason to believe that FB.me won't go live for everyone at some point.

This could spell doom for entities like Bit.ly, Is.gd, and Ow.ly.  FB.me works as a standard shortener, but with the backing of Facebook, it's likely to prove more reliable, and will also have a marketing/name recognition head start.

Then it's got one extra trick: as Saad Kamal noted, "[I]f your Profile URL is say - http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks, now you can even write it as http://fb.me/starbucks and it will still go to the exact same page."

Of course, Facebook isn't guaranteed victory in the URL shortener field.  Aside from the existing competition, it's possible that Google (or Goo.gl, if you like) will act as a rival.

Facebook Tests "Many" New Design Changes

From WebPro News

Reports and screenshots have surfaced indicating possible further design changes to the Facebook home page. These changes would include an altered header with drop-down menus for things like chat, messages, and notifications (Via SAI). 

There would also be greater emphasis placed on the search box. It would be moved further to the left, and more into the center of the page. Such emphasis on search would make sense, as Facebook has greater real-time search functionality these days than what it once had (particularly since its acquisition of FriendFeed).

Screenshot from French publication PCInpact.com (they have several more).

Let's not get too carried away though. These changes are only tests at this point, and may or may not ever see the light of day for Facebook users at the mainstream level. 

A Facebook spokesperson tells WebProNews, "We are continually experimenting with new designs on the site that are meant to simplify and improve the user experience. These are just a couple of the many changes we're testing."

Whenever Facebook makes design changes, there is usually some amount of backlash from users. That doesn't stop them from continuing to make tweaks, however. In the end, users are likely to get used to or accept the changes either way. I don't think the world is ready to abandon Facebook for the next big thing just yet. 

Yahoo Releases Top Searches Of 2009

From WebPro News

Yahoo has released its top 10 overall searches for 2009, based on billions of queries over the past year.

Michael Jackson garnered the most searches of 2009, after his death in June of a drug overdose. Jackson bumped Britney Spears from the top position where she had dominated for the past four years.  Spears still made it into the top 10 landing in the fifth spot on the year.

"We saw consumers escape to the Web hoping to pursue news and their guilty pleasures: vampires, political implosions, how to moonwalk - you name it, people went online to find it," said Vera Chan, a Yahoo! Search trend analyst. 

"And with economic uncertainty looming, people looked for ways to find stability by searching the Web for new jobs, unemployment benefits, and ways to save through old-fashioned coupon hunting."

Here are the Top 10 Overall Searches for 2009 according to Yahoo:

1.    Michael Jackson 
2.    Twilight 
3.    WWE 
4.    Megan Fox 
5.    Britney Spears 
6.    Naruto 
7.    American Idol 
8.    Kim Kardashian 
9.    NASCAR 
10.  Runescape

For comparison you can checkout Bing's most popular trending topics of 2009 here.

New Film Website Offers 12,000 Clips From Major Studios

From WebPro News

Clip sharing site Movieclips.com has launched in beta with a catalogue of more than 12,000 two-minute streaming clips.

Movieclips has struck licensing deals with six major Hollywood studios including 20th Century Fox, MGM, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. The clips are available for free on an ad-supported network that links to third-party sites where users can rent or purchase full length films.

Movieclips features a video player that can be embedded in social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and shared on blogs, Twitter and other personal websites.

Users can search the site based on dialogue, mood or actor as well as browse by subject such as best kiss, tearjerkers, birthdays, holidays, awkward moments, scariest bad guy and best fight scenes.

"Our goal was to build a place where we could easily find, watch, and share all the best movie scenes," said Co-Founder and CEO Zach James.

"Our content partners are incredible. They made it possible for us to build the greatest collection of licensed movie clips online today. It's pretty cool to be able to send a clip from Sixteen Candles to my sister on her birthday or a Wayne's World 'Party on!' clip to my friends on a Friday night."

YouTube Gets Faster With "Feather" Beta

from WebPro News

YouTube's supposed to be fun and easy to use; people want to visit the site and, in short order, view all sorts of interesting clips.  Making things load more quickly is a solid goal, then, and Google's pursuing it with the launch of a new project called "Feather."

The official explanation states, "The 'Feather' project is intended to serve YouTube video watch pages with the lowest latency possible.  It achieves this by severely limiting the features available to the viewer and making use of advanced web techniques for reducing the total amount of bytes downloaded by the browser."

By Alex Chitu's count, Feather's quite effective, too, taking that total from the neighborhood of 400 KB (391 KB, to be exact) to 52 KB.  And it'll probably be a rare person who can't live without search suggestions, the option to make a comment, and the couple of other things it cuts.

Perhaps the one issue would-be users should watch out for is the fact that Feather doesn't yet work for all videos.

Otherwise, this development counts as a very nice step forward in Google's march to make the Web faster.