Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be asking you to submit your ideas on one of several different social networks in order for the whole world to advance in the world of tiny computing. It’s one big brainstorming session for the WIMM One Android-based platform device, and you’re invited. For this first week’s session, we simply ask that you do the following:

1. “like” us on Facebook: /SlashGear
2. Leave a comment in this thread with your idea for a Micro App the WIMM would work great with in the future.
3. We’ll pick a set of our favorites and select a random winner every 24 hours starting on the 14th of February!

It’s just that simple! You may only submit ONCE, and only ONE idea of yours will be considered for the random pull if it’s good enough to get into the hat in the first place!

Development tools (SDK) are available to registered WIMM developers. Sign up here.

Get out your thinking caps and get to it!

Here’s the full rules as well, if you’re wondering about all the legalities of the situation:

Giveaway begins February 14, 12:01AM PST, and ends February 24, 12:01AM PST barring any complications finding winners. A winner will be announced every 24 hours here in the main news feed and at our official Facebook page.

WINNERS will be given the opportunity to submit a review of their WIMM One unit and have it posted on the front page of SlashGear or AndroidCommunity.com! *Reviews may be edited or modified before publication and are considered works for hire under the 1976 Copyright Act. Submissions will be ineligible for payment or remuneration.

Competition is open to residents of the US over the age of 18. One entry per giveaway per person. Family members of Google and SlashGear/Android Community are not permitted to enter. Competition entries are only accepted via the specified SlashGear Facebook page; entries left in the comments section of this or any other post will not be recognized.

The winners will be contacted by a SlashGear or Android Community staff member upon being selected and will be expected to respond to that staff member; they will be expected to respond within 24 hours else their prize may be forfeit and another winner selected. Editors decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Winner agrees that their name and details of their entry may be used for promotional purposes by, but not limited to, WIMM, SlashGear, and Android Community.

Prize consists of 10 WIMM One developer units to be given out over the 10 days between February 14th and February 24th. One prize per winner. There is no cash alternative or any other alternative for prize winners unless this prize should become unavailable, in which case SlashGear and WIMM reserve the right to substitute another prize of equal or greater value.

Giveaway provided by SlashGear/Android Community. Prizes provided by WIMM. Any questions regarding this giveaway should be directed to Giveaway@SlashGear.com

Angry Birds has certainly become a phenomenon, and the game has been available on the desktop and just about every mobile device out there for a while. However, this marks the first time it has landed on a social network, and the Facebook version has some special features. The special features are power ups that can be used to help defeat difficult levels, in other words, you can cheat if you’re willing to pay.

There are four different power ups that can be accessed using a lightning bolt on the top of the Angry Birds screen. These power ups will cost real money to use, granted it’s very cheap. The power ups cost you one dollar for 20 uses. The Facebook version of the game runs on Flash Player 11 supporting 3-D graphics for enhanced lighting, smoke, and explosions.

[via CNET]

You’ll see quite a rabble of people jumping for joy when Vic Gundotra makes simple note of the Full Screen option this week, with Gerwin Sturm getting credit as an avid coder and contributor to the Google+ project from the odd angles. It’s the community that surrounds a platform that makes it strong, of course, and though Skype does have one massive following and brand recognition to spare, there’s something to be said about Google’s simple integration and quickness with the updates to their systems. If you’re signed up for any one of Google’s different services, it’s just one more click to get into any of the rest of them – and thus the web does close in.

When I’ve got to teach a new employee or a colleague about something that requires me to show them on-screen what I’m doing, I use Google+. When I want to chat face-to-face with my wife across the country or the world, I use Google+. It’s becoming natural to me and the people I associate with very quickly, and with value added options such as the ability to collectively watch a YouTube video from the chat, Hangouts wont be cutting back any time soon.

Then there’s integration with smartphones – already live now. Plug your smartphone in to your HDTV with its HDMI or MHL port and you’ve got a camera and a giant screen to do large-scale video conferencing on the fly. The ability for Google to grow here is immense, and with video quality and the popularity of the program jumping each time someone like Barack Obama jumps on to have a chat, Google is in a great place with Hangouts.

And everyone knows that Facebook needs more hype, right? For a company that’s already worth billions, it’s hard to imagine any move on their part creating more hype than their mere existence already does – but here it is. Facebook’s mobile ads will likely take the form of an in-feed set of images and text. That means below the gallery of your friends’ cats and above your own status update of “I just ate a scone.” Analyst Zeus Kerravala of ZK Research noted the following on the situation:

“The valuation at IPO is based on basic company fundamentals and hype. Hype can bring in investors that might not typically participate in an IPO, and another revenue stream adds to Facebook’s long-term potential.” Karravala

Of course ZK wasn’t quite so kind when mentioning the potential for the advertisements themselves, noting how users across the Facebook spectrum would likely revolt at any sign of another change to their beloved user interface. Yet Facebook continues to change and Facebook continues to grow. We’ll find out how well this all worked out when May rolls around – will you buy in?

[via ComputerWorld]

What you’ve got here instead of a link in StumbleUpon that, like most other sites, leads out out to the 3rd party site as it should, is a inward link. This link shows you a window of the content you’re supposed to be seeing without actually bringing you to the link. To actually get to the link, you’d have to cut and paste the end of the StumbleUpon URL like a chump and make it so yourself. Back when Digg implemented a similar system with the DiggBar, then-CEO Kevin Rose backtracked to the point of saying that “[It's] bad for the Internet.”

God knows he’d say the same thing about this if he were in a position to make a comment. We’re seeing massive revolt on this change by StumbleUpon in social networks as well as in mails to our tip line, so I personally would like to suggest this to StumbleUpon: cut it out. At least make it an opt-in option, or the sites whose SEO and hit readers you’re destroying with this measure as well as your users who for so long have remained loyal to you will jump out and you’ll fail. Mark my words.

The pilots are for “mobile and cross-platform rich-media ads” and, although details are in short supply, appear to be far more complex than mere banners and links. Razorfish mobile ad chief Paul Gelb likened the functionality Facebook is working on to rich media alternatives including combinations of interactivity and animation, streaming video and location-based features, in addition to tap-to-call and tap-to-coupon.

Whether Facebook’s platform will support all of those is unknown, though the social network already has a rich LBS provision including Check-Ins and support for local deals. That could open the door to mobile coupons where businesses compete to offer deals based on user interests, served up through the handset.

Although Facebook saw around 425m active users through its mobile interface in December 2011, the site does not “generate any meaningful revenue from users accessing Facebook through our mobile products” according to the IPO. There’s also talk of premium accounts in the pipeline as another way for Facebook to boost its profits.

Update: Razorfish’s Paul Gelb now says he was misquoted, and that the company “is NOT working with Facebook on any mobile media ad buying. Rather, in the interview I was referring to rich media featured stories, not paid ads.”

A Facebook spokesperson told us that “We want to clarify that we are not working with any agency to create paid ads on our mobile platform.”

[via mocoNews]

It’s that tight grip on the social network’s future that has some experts concerned. “The public has no say in the control of the board, which in my view is terribly harmful to any notion of accountability” University of Delaware corporate-governance professor Charles Elson told Bloomberg, suggesting that the decision will be ”very troubling to investors, and it’s a bad bet for them.”

The way the IPO has been organized, other stockholders will be able to own more of Facebook in financial terms, but still be subject to the whims of Zuckerberg in voting terms. The founder will also be able to designate his successor, assuming he is still in control of Facebook at the time of his death, and avoids the requirement of forming a compensation committee and a board of predominantly independent directors as it classed a “controlled company.”

However, being under the thumb of the young billionaire may not be as bad as Elson makes out. Studies into firms where the founder is CEO and dominates the direction the company takes indicates they may in fact perform better than average, according to data dug up by the CSMonitor. “Founder-CEO firms invest more in R&D, have higher capital expenditures, and make more focused mergers and acquisitions” Rüdiger Fahlenbrach, of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and the Swiss Finance Institute, found in a study back in 2007.

Any lingering concerns could well be to do with Facebook’s perhaps unique position at the moment, poised between traditional social network and all-encompassing platform. The site has taken several steps to broaden its footprint in recent months, including the Open Graph apps and signs that Facebook might make a greater play toward its ever-increasing mobile userbase.

In a Premium service, Fadaghi notes that he expects Facebook to offer up services that lesser companies simply cannot. That said, he also expects that Facebook won’t be going Premium anytime soon, just so long as the competition remains in-tact. He also mentions Google+ as a good source for keeping the competition strong enough that no one social network dominates the entire landscape. He spoke thusly:

“In the app space you will see a lot more in-app advertising, purchases and subscriptions. That whole ecosystem will keep growing. It already represents a significant portion of Facebook revenue, so that side of the business can definitely grow a lot more. The challenge is companies such Google+ will provide similar services, but are likely not to charge because they are less powerful in the social networking space. As long as there is competition, social networking sites will remain free to consumers.” – Fadaghi

Facebook is also setting itself up to get much better support in their mobile applications. The group will soon move a bit past the individual users and focus on businesses in not only the desktop-based browser-based site, but the mobile applications made officially by Facebook as well. Advertising will also be on the rise with more content driven or invasive methods for getting into your brain.

There may be more marketing or advertising related products or services that we see develop and come out as investors and shareholders look to make more money from the site. Traditionally social networking websites have had a lot of advertising imagery but haven’t been able to get the same high rates as the premium content sites, such as news. So those metrics will come under scrutiny.” – Fadaghi

It will be interesting to see the ever so gradual slide from one iteration of the most major social networking sites in the world to other versions of themselves. The advertising world is certainly sliding in on us all, and though a pay-per-use model isn’t near reality now for Facebook, you never know about the future.

[via News.AU.COM]

Facebook has plenty of mobile users – in fact in December 2011 over half of active members accessed the site via a mobile device – but it has very little control over that experience. So far, the social network hasn’t even monetized them: mobile visitors don’t see adverts, and in fact Facebook has cautioned potential investors that, if the current situation continues, it could actually see a reduction in revenue despite rising membership. However, it’s being subject to the whims of Apple and Google that really cause sleepless nights.

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS,” Facebook wrote in its IPO filing. “Any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices.”

The answer, of course, is to build a platform of Facebook’s own: the until-now mythical Facebook Phone. Back in mid-2011, when HP was still floundering with webOS and receiving plenty of uninvited suggestions as to what it should do with the mobile platform, several people painted Facebook as a potential suitor. Then, the idea was that Facebook should buy webOS wholesale from HP, with the computer company likely to cut a good deal if it could get the platform off its hands.

Now, though, there’s no need for Facebook to open its wallet – at least not initially. HP is giving webOS away, having released it under an open-source license. It also addresses an early criticism of the first bout of Facebook-buying-webOS speculation: that it would leave the social network responsible for not only maintaining its own mobile software and services, but a variety of apps out of its usual beat. Browser, email client, calendar app: they’d all have to be dealt with.

Under HP’s open-source plans, though, it will take responsibility for keeping webOS up to date. In fact, the company has said we can expect a significant release every month for the next six or seven, and there’ll be further attention beyond that too. Facebook already has arguably the best dedicated mobile app for its site on the TouchPad, too, a useful shortcut when its app strategy has, until now, been lackluster.

There’d be room in such a scheme for HP to profit, too. Back when the company announced it would be open-sourcing webOS, it also said it would wait to see what third-party adoption was like before deciding whether or not to build a new generation of devices on the platform. At the time, that seemed unlikely, with all the most obvious names each tied up in their own existing mobile strategy: HTC and Samsung had plenty on their hands with Android and Windows Phone, Apple has iOS, Nokia had thrown in with Microsoft, and LG was pushing away trying to reclaim market-share with what it already had.

If a significant name like Facebook jumped onboard, though, that could prove a major draw to webOS. Something certainly sufficient to get HP thinking about whether its own phones and/or tablets might make sense. webOS struggled for the large part because there was no single reason why it was better than Android or iOS: no one point of appeal that HP could build a promotional campaign around. Facebook’s 800m users would certainly be an instant audience.

It’ll take more than just open-source to get a webOS Facebook phone off the ground. After all, Android is free to use, and the social network is still believed to have struggled with that. The core problem at the time, it’s suggested, was money: Facebook management had simply underestimated quite how much building a device from scratch costs.

Those naive failures pushed the company into the arms of HTC and others, resulting in devices like the Salsa and ChaCha; phones bearing the Facebook brand but with software entirely the handiwork of HTC itself and caution from Mark Zuckerberg that, rather than being the true “Facebook Phones”, they were examples of how the social site could be integrated into mobile.

The opportunity to show the definitive example of that is finally coming together, though. Facebook will soon have the cash to invest significantly into a mobile strategy of its own, along with access to an OS that’s been significantly under-developed but still has the backing of a major player in the computing space. Think of it as the social network’s “Nexus” moment only, unlike Google, the focus isn’t on the core software but the overall user experience. Your social life, the new Open Graph apps, Facebook’s existing strengths in games, all colliding.

Facebook knows a huge part of its future will be taking social mobile. Soon enough, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. will have the cash to show its 800m+ users exactly how it believes Facebook on the move should look.

Currently, Facebook points out, there are no mobile adverts in play, despite the huge potential audience for advertising. It’s an issue the company suggests might in fact negatively impact Facebook’s bottom line: even if mobile users grow, they’re not contributing to Facebook’s purse.

“Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices … We currently do not show ads or directly generate any meaningful revenue from users accessing Facebook through our mobile products, but we believe that we may have potential future monetization opportunities such as the inclusion of sponsored stories in users’ mobile News Feeds” Facebook IPO

That’s the most obvious cloud on the horizon; the other, the IPO documentation suggests, is a lack of control over the most popular mobile platforms in play today. Facebook runs the risk of being marginalized should Apple or Google decide to prioritize other services, including their own in iOS and Android. It’s something Facebook has already seen, in fact; Apple opted for Twitter for its in-depth social integration in iOS 5.0, while Google has been pushing its own Google+ network heavily in recent months.

“We are dependent on the interoperability of Facebook with popular mobile operating systems that we do not control, such as Android and iOS, and any changes in such systems that degrade our products’ functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products could adversely affect Facebook usage on mobile devices”

The obvious path, then, is a smartphone of Facebook’s own. HTC and others have already experimented with baked-in Facebook integration, though the handsets themselves have failed to set the market alight. However, the social network is believed to have long harbored ambitions for an in-house Facebook phone, built on a modified Android base, with the first-gen project even hoping to design its own hardware.

The sheer costs involved supposedly scuppered those plans, and Facebook apparently turned to HTC once more with the promise of an HTML5 based OS the site would build on top of hardware from the smartphone manufacturer. However, with the promise of a huge IPO payout on the horizon, Facebook could well decide to head back into the labs and renew its efforts on an official Facebook handset.

[via The Guardian]

Yesterday, several new brand pages rolled out on twitter, including pages for NBC news, Volkswagen, the Huffington Post, and several others. A twitter spokesperson told Gigaom the rollout of enhanced brand pages would continue with more advertising partners and other companies and individuals getting their own enhance pages in the coming weeks and months.

These enhanced brand pages are a good move for twitter because it wants to attract more advertising dollars. Major brands that spend on advertising want to control as much as they can about the campaigns and the way the ads are viewed. I would bet most brands would have their own branded page before long. What do you think of enhanced brand pages, do they make it easier for you follow your favorite brands and companies?

[via Gigaom]

As the screengrab below – the same photo, but shared on Google+ instead – illustrates, it’s tricky to tell the difference at first glance.

Of course, you could well argue that there are limited ways in which you can set out images and comments, and this is definitely an improvement over the existing Facebook layout. There’s less scrolling involved to see comments and tags, for instance. It also allows Facebook to slot in adverts above the fold.

It’s not the first time Google+ features have been seen “educating” Facebook. Back in September, Facebook rolled out Smart Lists, a system of grouping contacts that users quickly compared to Google+ circles.

While the new photo system seems an improvement, other recent changes by Facebook have been less popular. User research suggested the Timeline layout, which Facebook has now made mandatory, was proving more of a turn-off than appealing to social networkers, while the Open Graphs apps were similarly divisive.

[via TNW]

Revenue for the company is basically divided into two categories, the first being “Advertising” and the second being “Payments and other fees.” Advertising accounted for 85% of revenue in 2011, versus 95% in 2010 and 98% in 2009. The Payments and other fees revenue comes from payment processing fees related to the sales of virtual goods through game apps, a majority of which are through those made by Zynga.

Zynga has developed a variety of popular games for Facebook, including Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Words with Friends. The company also purchases ads from Facebook and its games generate a significant number of page views that add to Facebook’s advertising revenue. Hence, Zynga’s importance to the social network is highlighted in the paperwork.

“If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected,” said Facebook in its filing.

As it was signed on February 1st, 2012, “We consent to the reference to our firm under the caption “Experts” and the use of our report dated February 1, 2012, in the Registration Statement (Form S-1) and related Prospectus of Facebook, Inc. for the registration of shares of its common stock.” In a chat which shows the total assets that Facebook has since 2007, you’ll see that investing in Facebook is no joke. Taking the total assets of the company racks you up the most impressive numbers: 448 million USD growing to over 6 billion in just 4 years. Facebook’s current free cash flow sat at 55 million USD in 2007 also, with that number up to 470 million USD in 2011.

Another interesting point is the current set of stockholders, this including Mark Zuckerberg as the one with the very obvious top amount of stocks and voting power before the public offering, James W Breyer sitting at number 2 with about 2/5 the amount of stocks and power. You can see the entire filing at the SEC here with special attention payed to the absolutely massive amount of information required to make such a move as this.

That’s where Zuckerberg’s offbeat attitude to Facebook’s users is tipped to come in. Analysts suspect the unconventional CEO will make some provision for Facebook’s 800m members – without whom, of course, he’d not have a business – to get in on the action, the Washington Post reports.

Exactly what that might look like is unclear, though according to one IPO expert it could be the introduction of a new type of floatation. “I’ve been hoping that Facebook would use this opportunity to try a new method to bring in retail investors” Ann Sherman, associate professor and IPO expert at DePaul University suggests, “a public offer where shares are set aside for only individual investors.”

Meanwhile, what Facebook – already sitting on a considerably bank balance, even without floating stock – might do with as much as $100bn is unclear. Speculation ranges from the obvious, like enhancing existing Open Graph App partnerships, through possible, such as pushing out an official Facebook phone, to terminally tenuous, as with rumors the social site has ambitions to buy T-Mobile USA. We won’t know for a while yet; even if the IPO is announced today, stock is unlikely to go on sale until the middle of the year.

If Facebook raises the $10 billion, that would value the social network somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion according to the Wall Street Journal sources. The sources also claim that the social network has chosen Morgan Stanley as lead on the IPO. However, the Goldman Sachs Group will also play a part according to people familiar with the matter. Facebook could possibly file the IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission as early as next Wednesday.

However, the sources also claim that Facebook is considering filing the documents the following week. If Facebook raises the $10 billion with its IPO, that would make it the fourth largest IPO ever for US companies and would make it the largest Internet-based IPO ever, putting it ahead of Google’s $1.9 billion IPO in 2004. Every time I hear talk of Facebook making an IPO, I wonder why with the boat loads of money Facebook is sitting on.

Apparently, Zuckerberg is under external pressure to make an IPO. It was determined in 2010 that by the end of 2011 Facebook would have 500 shareholders, which would trigger regulatory requirements to publicly file financial details. Zuckerberg decided if Facebook was going to have to file financial details anyway, the IPO might as well be made claim people familiar with the situation.

[via WSJ]

If you do no like the Timeline feature on Facebook, you can snap out the bits and pieces you do not like by heading to your security features or by deleting everything you’re ashamed of in your past piece-by-piece. What you can’t do is get rid of Timeline entirely. If you see an offer on Facebook (or outside of Facebook, for that matter) to get rid of Timeline in one way or another, you’re being scammed. Please do not fall for these fool’s errands by entering your email, downloading software, hitting the Like to activate, and a whole lot more.

For those of you wishing to report sites and Facebook entities that attempt to scam you with such offers, either report them straight from their page in the upper right-hand corner under the gear icon or head here: Facebook Security Page. Facebook does have one whole heck of a lot of security in place, but cannot realistically police the entirety of its own realm. If you can help cut down on scamming across the board, you benefit everyone.

“There’s been no change in our stance or attitude or policy with respect to content on Twitter” Costolo said. However, he also insisted that Twitter’s hand had been forced by legal requirements, with the tacit suggestion that the short-messaging network shouldn’t be the target of complaints but rather policy makers in governments instead. “It is simply not the case you can operate in these countries and choose which of the laws we want [to adhere to]” he pointed out.

Instead, rather than a black or white situation where Twitter is either allowed to operate in a country or not, Costolo hopes the flexibility of masking certain messages will mean only a small percentage will lose access. “When we receive [a takedown notice],” he explained, “we want to leave the content up for as many people as possible while adhering to the local law.”

Nonetheless, despite the tweaks, Costolo holds little hope for Twitter launching in China, where the social network’s involvement in numerous protests has left it a source of grave concern for the censorship-prone government there. “I don’t think the current environment in China is one in which we could operate” he said.

I don’t listen to music via Facebook or share links, but I do have a couple of friends who listen to a lot of tunes, and at times most of the news feed page is links to what they are listening to, which is rather irritating. The topic of “frictionless sharing” came up at the Midem conference and VP of Partnerships for Facebook, Dan Rose, took the opportunity to talk about frictionless sharing a bit. Facebook calls “frictionless sharing” the ability of apps to share things without you having to control what is. The goal is for Facebook to show only the right people, the right stories, at the right time.

I would hope that means trying to make things like all of these music links only show if they’re appropriate for you. I would assume that means since I don’t listen to music on Facebook, “frictionless sharing” should presumably make the system understand that I’m not in the music and stop showing me all these links. So far, that has not happened. I think if Facebook tweaked the system to eliminate that sort of sharing of material that friends may not want, it would limit the effectiveness of the sharing partnerships for Facebook. With that in mind I don’t particularly see Facebook working hard to stop sharing from friends of things we aren’t interested in, Games are a prime example . I’ve never once played a game on Facebook, yet I still get loads of game requests. I don’t see frictionless sharing changing things much for me.

[via Thenextweb]

Facebook says the new Timeline Movie Maker creates a movie highlighting special moments from your Timeline and the app is built in cooperation with Facebook and Definition 6. This is clearly designed to lure people to use the new Timeline, even though Timeline is going to be mandatory soon and users won’t have a choice. The app appears to be easy-to-use, you give it permission to access your basic information from your profile and the movie it constructs lasts a minute.

You don’t have to do anything, and apparently you don’t pick the photos the app does it for you. The app checks your content, identifies the most engaging and relevant life moments, then builds a chronological story for your movie, and renders it up in a few minutes. You get to pick background music from five tracks, and then the movie is posted to your site and can be shared with friends. Does the Timeline Movie Maker make you feel better about being forced to use Timeline, or is this just something else that you don’t care about?

[via ZDNet]

This Google+ hangout is slated for 5:30PM EST and the questions, again, are said to have been picked based solely on their popularity on Google through their pre-set ratings system. There will be a set of five pre-selected American hangout partners joining in on the conversation at some point during or after the questions to add questions of their own as well. This event had previously been slated for 9PM EST but has been moved back to the much more reasonable 5:30PM for all you pre-supper lovers of conversation with the leader of the Western world.

This isn’t the first time Obama will call upon the “Fireside Chat” vibe initiated first by Franklin D Roosevelt, and it won’t be the last. You’ll see an amplified amount of social interactions between the President and the internet now that we’re inching closer and closer to the 2012 elections in which Obama will, indeed, be up for re-election. Now we’ve got to see if that Newt Gingrich lunar base has any salt – that might be a zinger on the other side!

Tune into the +The White House Google+ page at 5:30PM EST to see the whole event go down!

[via Vic Gundotra]

Rovio is dropping little hints that the game on Facebook will not be exactly like the game on mobile phones that we all know and love. So far we only have little hints about the differences will be to go on. You can check out the YouTube video below and see the trailer for the video game to get an idea what will be like. Courtney Rovio CEO Mikael Hed the new game will have a different feel and will be more collaborative than the mobile version.

The game also focuses more on the pigs, but how Rovio will pull that off remains to be seen. Rovio isn’t dropping hints on what the collaborative features will be, but it would be pretty easy to assume the new feature will be some sort of method for collaborative play by inviting your Facebook friends. You can find Angry Birds on just about every mobile device out there, but this will be the first time it’s on a social network. With Rovio claiming the game focus more on the pigs it would be really awesome if you could invite a friend who could somehow play as the pigs against you.

[via Mashable]

Sophos surveyed around 4,110 Facebook users, and discovered less than 8-percent actually like the new Timeline layout. Just over 8-percent said they thought they would get used to it, while a third said “I don’t know why I’m still on Facebook.”

In SlashGear’s own survey, just 3-percent of over 5,800 respondents said they were keen to take advantage of the new Timeline Apps. 5-percent said they intended to “try a couple of Facebook apps” but over a fifth of respondents said they were yet to be convinced.

Neither poll is scientific in its methodology, though both suggest that Facebook Timeline and the Open Graph Apps – which allow users to pull in more personal data culled from third-party services, such as when they eat at restaurants, travel or exercise – are still viewed with suspicion. Facebook made the new Timeline profile layout mandatory and will be forcing users to upgrade over the next few weeks, though early-adopters of the beta have been using it since mid-December and soon discovered that there was no way of turning it off.

Facebook maintains that Timeline shares no more information than the previous profile system, and that the Apps are accessible on a voluntary basis.

The new initiative is called the Experiment Fund, and it will award amounts of $250,000 to $500,000 to as many as six start-ups in the brainy Massachusetts area that houses Hardvard and MIT, among many others. While anyone is eligible it was Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences dean Cherry Murray who co-founded the project.

New Enterprise Associates’s Patrick Chung, a venture capitalist, was quoted as saying, “There has been an envy of the left coast. Now, these talented engineers don’t have to leave when they reach the boundaries of the university where the ideas are formed … They can walk right out of class and into a place that can make those start-ups real.” Then again, if you watched The Social Network, you know there’s a lot of reasons to go to Silicon Valley aside from the fact that you might get a bit of funding. Nevertheless, it’s always nice to see initiatives that promote enterprising start-ups.

[via All Things D]

Citing a source familiar with the situation, the WSJ reveals that Facebook could file the documents with the SEC as early as next Wednesday. However, the source also noted the possibility that the company would file a few weeks later, although previous rumors suggested a filing sometime in May.

Facebook could raise as much as $10 billion, which would put it in fourth place among US companies, behind Visa, General Motors and AT&T. It’s $100 billion valuation is worth nearly the same as McDonalds and almost half of Google. The social network currently boasts 800 million users with 500 million actively logging in everyday.

[via WSJ]

Twitter argued that the selective-censoring system was a better option than the company’s existing approach, where locations that do not allow free-speech were simply blocked from seeing all of a users’ tweets. However, privacy and free-speech advocates were quick to criticize the social network, claiming the decision would prevent future uses of Twitter as seen during the “Arab Spring” of 2011, when the site became a hub for communication when state-run methods were locked down.

The simplicity of this workaround – forcing Twitter to assume you are in a different location to where your IP address resolves to – is likely to prompt questions as to whether the social network left such an obvious loophole open on purpose. If not, it’s possible that faking your location could be subsequently made more difficult.

Twitter is working with Chilling Effects to publicly flag up incidents where messages have been blocked, though the company says it is yet to actually implement the new system.

If you fear that the information you share with the public on a daily basis will be read by the FBI and you’ll get targeted for it, you’re in for a sour surprise: they’ve been reading your posts since the internet was invented. What this tool will be for them is a way to be a bit more omnipotent about it all, it being a “secure, light weight web application portal, using mash-up technology” whatever that means, that “must have the ability to rapidly assemble critical open source information and intelligence that will allow SIOC to quickly vet, identify, and geo-locate breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats.” I’m not so sure their “cached and real-time proprietary data” request is all that realistic, but the rest seems like a task that could be attainable by a team of you industrious developers and engineers out there.

One of the main objectives of this future setup the FBI is requesting someone make is:

Provide a user defined operations pictures[sp] (ODOP) that are flexible to support a myriad of functional FBI missions. Examples include but are not limited to: Reconnaissance & Surveillance, NSSE Planning, NSSE Operations, SIOC Operations, Counter Intelligence, Terrorism, Cybercrime, etc.

The reason this comes to our attention is, of course, the specific listing of a set of websites that should, first and foremost, be able to be Searched:

Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Another interesting layer lies in the “Map” category for requirements:

Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps. The FBI will provide the layers to the selected vendor who must in tern incorporate the layer(s) on the respective geospatial map.

Finally there’s a category for requirements that’s called “Twitter and other Social Networking Monitoring:

Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and other “publicly available” social networking sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

Got your interest piqued? You’ll want to head to the Social Media Application listing “Packages Section” to find the PDF that contains the full listing. For the original listing (on the 19th of January, 2012,) head to the job post and go wild!

[via New Scientist]

It’s Bradley Horowitz, VP of Product for Google+ who updates us all today on how Google+ is now officially open to much younger citizens of earth (13+ in most cases) and what some new safety features are for them as they enter into this strange new world. It all begins with Circles, of course, the gatherings of acquaintances each of us has on Google+ and the tool with which we are able to limit who we share with.

Sharing content with “public” will now have a warning label which shows how “when you share publicly, people you haven’t added to your circles will be able to view your post and may be able to comment.” Next in regards to notifications, anyone inside circles are the only ones who can say hello (by default) and blocking anyone is “just a click or two away.” In Hangouts there’s a new feature for teens exclusively wherein each time a stranger outside a teen’s circles joins a hangout, the teen is temporarily removed with a chance to rejoin.

There’s now also a whole Google+ Safety Center where parents (or teens) can read up on how these changes will affect them, accessible at google.com/+/safety/. And, as Horowitz says, “we do have at least one thing in common with our newest users: we’re both busy growing up.” That’s so cute!

[via Google+]

The news will come as a disappointment to those who have resisted Timeline since Facebook offered it as an optional upgrade last year. Announced at f8 2011, the system has been criticized for making a significantly larger amount of personal information publicly accessible than before.

Unfortunately, Facebook made clear that Timeline would be a mandatory upgrade for all users, despite calls for it to be made optional instead. With Open Graph, Facebook now integrates more closely with third-party services, such as flagging up your recent travel, food or entertainment exploits to your friends.

Twitter has acquired web security firm Dasient, a real-time link checking system that scans URLs for malware and other online threats, in a move that will likely make clicking a link on the terse social network safer in future. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dasient’s technology scans both web addresses and sites for potentially harmful content, as well as operating a service that keeps web-based advertising malware-free.

The acquisition is not Twitter’s only security-related buy in recent months. Back in November 2011, the short messaging service bought Whisper Systems, an Android security and encryption app specialist. No indication of exactly what Whisper’s tech – which includes modifying the core Android kernel to lock down user date – will be used for at Twitter has been given.

Use-cases for Dasient are far easier to envisage, however. Twitter continues to struggle with malware links shared by fake accounts, masked by the general use of URL shorteners to get longer web addresses to fit into the 140-character messages. “Dasient will be able to apply its technology and team to the world’s largest real-time information network” the security firm says.

Dasient was founded in 2008, by a team including ex-Google staff and security researchers from well-known firms like McAfee.

Currently, Don’t Be Evil is a bookmarklet that works on a per-visit basis to Google. Users click the bookmarklet and, rather than being shown Google’s specially crafted results, see a purer set of results that have not been refined according to the search company’s own social promotion.

That promotion has already got Google into hot water with regulators, with the FTC looking closely at “Search plus Your World” to see if it pushes the company into antitrust territory. Nonetheless, Google is ramping up its Google+ promotion; last week it announced it had passed 90,000,000 users of the social network, and that number is set to increase with more pressure to use Google+ put on new Gmail sign-ups.

The Don’t Be Evil add-on – its name a reference to Google’s unofficial motto – works in Chrome, Firefox and Safari and has been released under an open-source license. Already there’s a Chrome extension using the tech, with more likely in the pipeline.

Google’s VP of Product Bradley Horowitz made the announcement today, revealing that the number of users that take issue with the naming policy has been small, only about 0.1% submit name appeals. Of those appeals, 60% simply want to add nicknames, 20% are inadvertently trying to set up a Profile instead of Google+ Pages for their business, and the remaining 20% actually want to use a pseudonym or some other unconventional name.

Hence, starting this week, Google+ will begin rolling out support for alternate names, such as nicknames, maiden names, and names in non-Romanized languages. To add an alternate name, you go to your Google+ profile, click on Edit Profile, and then select your name to click on “More options.”

However, if it is more than a nickname, such as with pseudonyms like “Madonna,” you will have to prove that it is your established identity. Proof may include references to the pseudonym in print media, scanned official documentation such as a driver’s license, or online proof such as with a meaningful following under the pseudonym on another social network.

UPDATE: This attack has been denied in kind by sources we’ve trusted in the past to provide Anonymous-run operations.

What this attack will do is to make their DDoS more widespread than its ever been before, inviting anyone who has a computer to join in on the project with but a few clicks. A DDoS attack is what’s also known as a Distributed Denial of Service, this being the same method used last week to take down the Department of Justice, the MPAA, the RIAA, and Universal Pictures. Anonymous has a large collective of users working all around the world to push the buttons of websites so rapidly and so many times that the pages cannot stay active, thusly their “denial of service” has been attained.

With this attack will come no destruction of Facebook’s stored information, nor will Facebook users have to fear that their information will be shared in any way. Instead they’ve only to fear that they wont be able to see their status updates for a few hours (more than likely, tops), as the Anonymous collective has some fun at their expense. There’s a message held inside the bottom of the video you’re seeing above if you head to YouTube to see it, and I’m not going to reproduce it all here because it’s mostly gibberish, but know this: the files they’re sharing are not something we recommend you download, and we do no support the willful hacking of webpages or DDoS attacks on them at all either.

That said, Anonymous have created a situation here where their name, nameless, has been used to strike fear into quite a few hearts of those that would otherwise dominate the internet world and seek to control it entirely. Have a peek at a short list of Anonymous stories we’ve got below and learn about them, and decide for yourself if the video above comes from them or is, again, another sham aimed at the big kahuna: Facebook.

The White House only joined Google+ on January 20, last Friday, but has already accrued around 17,000 +1′s at time of writing. It has also gathered a fair number of comments, both positive and negative, and we can see Obama’s online interview being a hotly-discussed event.

That the administration has decided to use Google+ is quite the coup for Google, which is still facing questions around antitrust behavior after integrating results from the social network into general search. Google+ broke the 90m user mark last week, a figure which is likely to increase rapidly since the search giant is now pushing sign-ups for all new users.

If you’re keen to ask a question, you’ll need to have it submitted by the end of the day on Saturday, January 28 – that’s this coming Saturday – and hope that it gets sufficient votes to filter up to Obama’s attention. Some of those picked to have their questions answered will also be invited to join the president in the Google+ hangout.

Now when you sign up for a new Google Account, you are asked to fill out more information than before. Instead of being able to use any email address, you will have to create a Gmail address and you’ll be asked to provide your birth date, gender, country, and optional mobile phone number. This information is then used to create your Google Profile, which automatically enrolls you in Google+.

For those who do want to sign up for all the services, the new registration process makes it more convenient to get everything setup altogether. However, it also seems to be a good way for Google to pad its Google+ user numbers, which was recently reported as having surpassed 90 million users.

[via PCMag]

Facebook was believed to have 800m active users back in September 2011, and has been aggressively promoting site changes since then in an attempt to increase popularity and engagement. Earlier this week, Facebook launched Timeline Apps, part of its Open Graph promotion to increase the amount of personal data shared on each users’ wall.

Still, Google’s achievement is a credible one, given it came significantly later to the social market than rivals. The search giant has boasted that it added at least one new feature to Google+ each day since July 2011, most recently the ability to initiate YouTube video recording directly from the service itself.

“Four months ago, when we opened to the public, we were not sure what kind of reception we would receive. Your feedback has helped us build this service, and we can’t thank you enough for your enthusiastic support” Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice President of Social at Google, said today, unsurprisingly taking to Google+ to celebrate the milestone. Gundotra also quoted anthropologist Margaret Mead, likening her famous quote “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” to the early-adopters of the social network.

Twitter is always looking for ways to streamline their already seemingly simple system – it’s just a bunch of text, right? No way, says Twitter, it’s much more complicated than that, and the amount of data they must filter already with all of this “just text” comes down to one thing: they need more hands to help. What Summify is set to do is not only help them on the back end, but bring forth a possible front-end interface change to Twitter down the line as well. Imagine a much simpler way to have all of your social media filtered through Twitter instead of having yet another system to work with?

Twitter’s user base is still expanding, believe it or not, and they’ll continue to scoop up companies like Summify to make the move into the future. While Google+ and Facebook have algorithms galore to work with relevant content filtered in to users based on their interests, with new features as such being launched constantly, it’s high time Twitter stepped their game up once more to stay fresh. Are you still using Twitter?

Summify, for those of you unfamiliar, is known for its two founders, Mircea Paşoi and Cristian Strat, two former interns of Microsoft and Google, having come from Romania to set their headquarters in Vancouver, now moving on to Twitter to stay! Their message from their official blog post outlines their changes to the platform in the coming weeks as thus:

What happens to Summify?

We will be disabling new account registrations immediately and we will also be removing some features. We will keep the email summaries for a few more weeks, but at some point we will shut down the current Summify product. In the meantime, if you’re a user of Summify you’ll still receive your summaries, just like before.

What features are you removing?
Starting today, the following changes will take effect:
We’re removing the ability to make your summaries public (i.e. all summaries will be private)
We’re removing profile pages and influence pages
We’re removing the auto-publish feature
We’re disabling user registration from the website, iPhone and Hootsuite apps

Why are you removing these features?
We are offering a more streamlined service as we transition our efforts to working at Twitter.

Will you still be in Vancouver?
We will be moving down to San Francisco and will work out of the Twitter office.

What will you be doing at Twitter?
We are joining Twitter’s Growth team and will continue to explore ways to help people connect and engage with relevant, timely news.

[via target="_Blank">Wired]

Recording video is, as you may have guessed, very similar to YourTube in that you get the same interface, more or less, you working with whatever webcam you’ve got connected to your computer at the time of tapping. Sharing then has the video embedded into your share box where you can add or subtract people at will. The video then appears in a box not unlike what you’d see for a YouTube video, minus the extra embedding options and link out to a separate YouTube page.

This is an interesting approach from the folks at Google, and it wouldn’t be surprising if in the near future all of these videos were cross-posted to YouTube in one way or another. Of course the privacy issue would still be there, but heck, they already look the same, right? Will you be using Google+ now instead of YouTube?

[via Shana Gitnick]

“Soon, there will be apps for all types of interests, as more apps will launch over time” director of platform products Carl Sjogreen says of the launch. ”Whether you love snowboarding, gardening, hiking, or knitting, or something else, there will be an app for you.”

Timeline Apps obviously requires a Facebook user have the Timeline profile, which is believed to be rolling out as a mandatory upgrade from later this week. Meanwhile there’s information for developers on how to integrate their services with Open Graph and Timeline Apps here.

Full details on Facebook Open Graph and Timeline Apps here.

Full list of new Timeline Apps:

TRAVEL
* Gogobot
* Airbnb
* TripAdvisor​
* Wipolo
* Where I’ve Been

FOOD
* Foodspotting
* Cookpad
* Snooth (wine)
* Urbanspoon
* Yummly
* ​Foodily

SHOPPING / FASHION
* Pose
* Pinterest
* Polyvore
* Oodle
* Fab.com
* eBay
* Giftrocket
* Payvment
* Livingsocial

FITNESS
* MapMyRun
* Runkeeper

ENTERTAINMENT
* Rotten Tomatoes
* Dailymotion (French video site)
* Cinemur (French video site)
* Metacafe (videos)
* Ford (game)
* Wooga (Bubble Island, Diamond Dash)
* OMGPOP (Draw My Thing)
* Zynga (Words with Friends, Castleville

GIVING
* Causes
* Fundrazr
* Artez.com

MORE
* BranchOut (job search)
* Monster (job search)
* Color (photo and video sharing)
* Courserank (education)
* Grockit (education)
* Foursquare (location)
* Goodreads (books)
* Kobo (books)
* StubHub (ticketing)
* Ticketmaster (ticketing)
* Ticketfly (ticketing)
* ScoreBig (ticketing)
* Appsfire (app discovery)
* Artfinder (art)
* Autotrader (cars)

His note itself has over 75 thousand likes on it, having gotten these in right around 10 minutes, the support from his followers (and the rest of the internet) quite clear at this point. Zuckerberg notes that Facebook is wholly against both SOPA and PIPA and he also links to Facebook’s position page making their views, again, very clear.

You can check out our view on SOPA and PIPA in the post we laid out this morning, and find out all you need to know about the bills in our timeline below. These bills are dangerous and WILL have adverse affects on the way you are able to access information if they’re allowed to pass. Don’t let it happen!