Facebook Gets Into Customized Data Centers

From WebPro News

It's always a big deal when a company like Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft begins to build another data center; the move proves that they've got a fair amount of cash on hand and are growing at an impressive rate.  More significant, though, may be the idea of a company first getting into the DIY data center business, and Facebook appears to have reached that juncture.

Rich Miller reported yesterday, "Facebook has decided to begin building its own data centers, and may announce its first facility as soon as tomorrow.  The fast-growing social network has previously leased server space from wholesale data center providers, but has grown to the point where the economics favor a shift to a custom-built infrastructure."

The facility Facebook's rumored to be behind is under right now construction and will cover 117,245 square feet in Prineville, Oregon.  Unless some seriously innovative construction techniques and types of hardware are employed, it's sure to cost more than $100 million, and data centers often carry price tags along the lines of $500 million.

Then, when the construction's done, Miller writes that it will take about 35 people to staff the data center.

So Facebook does indeed seem to be making a major move.  We'll try to relay more details as they become available.

Happy New Year 2010 !!!

Wish you all people, a happy and a prosperous new year!!! May all your dreams come true...

What's Happened in Social Media Over the Year

From WebPro News

The Year in Social Media: 2009 

As we did last year, we have gone back through our archives and picked out some of the most noteworthy social media items we have covered since 2009 began. Now that 2009 is almost over, it was worth going back and seeing what all has happened. 

January 

In January, Twitter announced that it hired Kevin Thau as Director of Mobile Business Development, and that he would be working on a variety of different fronts as Twitter's "first official business development guru." LinkedIn introduced a new Polls feature, and launched a bookmarklet for IE. MySpace Music made dealswith Nettwerk Music Group, INgrooves, IRIS Distribution, and RoyaltyShare to bolster its catalog by hundreds of thousands of songs. YouTube expanded its e-commerce platform and started letting people delete their own comments. Digglaunched the "People who Dugg this also Dugg" feature. 

February 

In February, LinkedIn launched a set of HR Tools and launched a German version. MySpace launched a mobile redesign, and Digg updated its algorithm. Facebook introduced polling ads, changed its terms of service, made some design changesto profile pages for businesses, opened its corporate blog to comments, introduced the comments box widget, and launched the "like" button. Google introduced the Social Bar and launched Friend Connect integration with Blogger. 

March 

In March, Twitter brought its search box to most people's Twitter home page, andchanged the "replies" tab to the "@username" tab. Twitter also adjusted the title tags for member pages. Where they used to go "Twitter / username" they would now go "User's Real Name (username) on Twitter". Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanisoffered to buy a spot on Twitter's Suggested Users list. 

Facebook launched a redesign, started including updates from Pages in the news feed, changed pages to operate like profiles, and changed the status box to the publisher box. They launched the ability to let users chat within apps, added ad spots to Pages, relaunched Facebook Marketplace to be powered by online classified service Oodle, launched Facebook Connect for the iPhone and iPod Touch, launched some new ad targeting options, and enabled Page owners to let people sign up to become fans via text message. 

Google began implementing Portable Contacts, launched the Friend Connect API,blended user-generated content into search results on Google Maps, madeGoogle Reader more socialwith commenting, allowed forricher Gmail messages, andstarted its own Twitter accounts. 

YouTube changed the name of some video sections, LinkedIn did some redesigning of its own and enhanced Direct Ads, and MySpace was stamped on a credit card. 

April 

Google launched an event gadget for Google Friend Connect, the Digg-like "What's Popular" gadget, and the "Get Answers" gadget for Friend Connect. Google also gave profiles vanity URLS and started putting profiles into search results. 

Facebook made it easier to organize friends, opened its stream up to third-party developers, added electronic signatures for public pages, worked with the blind on accessibility, began making app recommendations, and readied its next steps in governance. 

Twitter started integrating search into its interface more, and CNN showed that you can buy/sell a Twitter account. Scientists created a brain-Twitter interface. 

StumbleUpon broke away from eBay and enhanced its "web stumbling." Digg launched the controversial DiggBar. Reddit launched a video site, AOL launched SocialThing, and Yahoo shifted its focus to social altogether. YouTube launched the beta version of YouTube RealTime. MySpace got some new management. 

Read the full Article >>>

Merry Christmas!!!

I'm not a Christian, but i think that i don't have any problem with greeting you for the Christmas.
Merry X'mas to all the people in the world!!!
And also the next year will be a great year for all of you...

Google Now Has Its Own URL Shortener

From WebPro News

Google made a couple of announcements today that actually combined for perhaps a more interesting announcement than either of them as stand-alone news items.

First, Google has added a new share button to the Google Toolbar, which allows users to share any site on the web via their social network of choice. Second, Google announced that with Feedburner, you can now set your feeds up to post to Twitter. 

The thing that these two announcements have in common is that they both utilize a new URL shortener from Google. They tried to slip that in their quietly a couple of times, but then went ahead and made an announcement about the service itself. 

The shortening service is located at goo.gl, but it is not available for broad consumer use at this point. Google is just using it itself to compliment the aforementioned services. In other words, you can't just go to goo.gl and shorten a URL yourself. However, Google says that in time, it may offer such an option.

"We think people who use the Google Toolbar and FeedBurner will benefit from a shortener that is easily accessible — making it faster and easier to share, post and email links," Google says. They also say the core goals of the Google URL Shortener are:

- Stability – ensuring that the service has very good uptime
- Security – protecting users from malware and phishing pages
- Speed – fast resolution of short URLs

Google's standard privacy policy applies to goo.gl. The company says that it may choose to publicly display aggregate and non-personally identifiable statistics about particular shortened links, such as the number of end use clicks. 

On a related note, Facebook also now has its own URL shortener.