Richard Davies wrote: The UK has a good crop of technology pioneers in cloud computing - for example ElasticHosts, FlexiScale, Flexiant, OnApp - and also some strong government initiatives such as G-Cloud.
We will have to see whether this kind of technical leadership converts into swift mass-market adoption or not.
Launched in February 2004, Facebook is now worth $15BN - judging from the fact that Microsoft has reportedly just bought itself a modest 1.6% chunk of the company for a staggering $240M. Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard Class of 2006, will not be short of change any time soon: as of October 2007, the website had 42 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year.
According to today's New York Times, "Microsoft will sell the banner ads appearing on Facebook outside of the United States, splitting the revenue with it."
"Making this investment and expanding this partnership will position Microsoft and Facebook to better take advantage of advertising opportunities around the world, and is a great win not only for our two companies, but also our collective users and advertisers," said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft in a statement.
"We have partnered well over the past year and look forward to doing some exciting things together in the future. The opportunity to further collaborate as advertising partners is a big reason we have decided to take an equity stake, and is a strong statement of our confidence in the long-term economics of this partnership," Johnson added.
Zuckerberg's 20% stake in the company would now be worth $3BN and, despite the fact that MySpace has 110 million users, Facebook continues to be the poster child of the social networking movement. Almost 60 percent of Facebook's users are outside the U.S and currently an average of 200,000 new users register each day.
Last month the Wall Street Journal speculated that Microsoft's investment would be in return for a 5% stake, so the 1.6% figure suggests that Facebook perhaps drove a harder bargain than Redmond was expecting.
Google has yet to comment officially.
AJAX plays its role at Facebook. Javeline for example released in July an AJAX application for Facebook using AJAX framework Javeline PlatForm and their Offline AJAX solution Javeline DeskRun. The Facebook application is called BeepMe and can be installed from http://beepme.javeline.com.
Whenever a friend is added, according to the team at Javeline, a mail is received or any of several other events a popup is displayed in the right bottom corner of the screen. The Facebook skin developed for this and upcoming applications will apparently be included in the next release of Javeline PlatForm.
About Web 2.0 News Desk The Web 2.0 Journal News Desk keeps you up to speed with all that's happening in the world of the read/write Web and all its mushrooming new facets - from tagging, wikis, mash-ups, and image-sharing to "Advertising 2.0," podcasting, and The Writeable Web.
In some circles, not having a Facebook page is a bigger faux pas than offering TMI about last night's hookup.
#1
0xdeadbeef commented on 25 Oct 2007
Anyone remember Friendster? Yeah, it collapsed under the weight of its users, but long before that it stopped being interesting. Orkut had the hardware and was easier to use and its discussion group features brought something new to the table, but it never went anywhere, either.
It took "gen Y", with it's comfort with the Internet coupled with a lack of sophistication regarding it, to turn Facebook and MySpace into something enduring and popular. But they're still going to get bored with it. These things are toys, and they always will be until they can become as simple and ubiquitous as email or text messaging.
At least LinkedIn, with its focus on career networking, is actually useful for grown-ups. That *might* have a future, if they can get past the creepy spammer vibe to the whole thing.
0xdeadbeef wrote: Anyone remember Friendster? Yeah, it collapsed under the weight of its users, but long before that it stopped being interesting. Orkut had the hardware and was easier to use and its discussion group features brought something new to the table, but it never went anywhere, either.
It took "gen Y", with it's comfort with the Internet coupled with a lack of sophistication regarding it, to turn Facebook and MySpace into something enduring and popular. But they're still going to get bored with it. These things are toys, and they always will be until they can become as simple and ubiquitous as email or text messaging.
At least LinkedIn, with its focus on career networking, is actually useful for grown-ups. That *might* have a future, if they can get past the creepy spammer vibe to the whole thing.
Rackspace Hosting, the service leader in cloud computing, on Thursday announced its acquisition of SharePoint911, an industry leader in SharePoint consulting, training, and "JumpStart" services within SharePoint. The unification of both companies provides capabilities to deliver ...
Skill at computing comes naturally to those who are adept at abstraction. The best developers can instantly change focus—one moment they are orchestrating high level connections between abstract entities; the next they are sweating through the side effects of each …
Apache Deltacloud, the Red Hat-contributed ReSTful API that abstracts differences between clouds so services on any cloud can be managed – provided of course there’s a driver – has graduated from the Apache Foundation’s incubator and is now a full-fledged Top-Level Project (TLP)....
Swisscom, the Swiss telecom, is going into the cloud business.
Its subsidiary Swisscom IT Services AG has signed up with Red Hat as a Certified Cloud Provider and launched a public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud targeting enterprise-class customers primarily in ...
CONGRATULATIONS to National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) CIO Jill T. Singer for being selected as one of the 10 winners of the first annual CloudNOW awards presented in Santa Clara, California earlier this week...
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Launched in February 2004, Facebook is now worth $15BN - judging from the fact that Microsoft has reportedly just bought itself a modest 1.6% chunk of the company for a staggering $240M. Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard Class of 2006, will not be short of change any time soon: as of October 2007, the website had 42 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year.
Rackspace Hosting, the service leader in cloud computing, on Thursday announced its acquisition of SharePoint911, an industry leader in SharePoint consulting, training, and "JumpStart" services within SharePoint. The unification of both companies provides capabilities to deliver ...
Skill at computing comes naturally to those who are adept at abstraction. The best developers can instantly change focus—one moment they are orchestrating high level connections between abstract entities; the next they are sweating through the side effects of each … 
Apache Deltacloud, the Red Hat-contributed ReSTful API that abstracts differences between clouds so services on any cloud can be managed – provided of course there’s a driver – has graduated from the Apache Foundation’s incubator and is now a full-fledged Top-Level Project (TLP)....
Swisscom, the Swiss telecom, is going into the cloud business.
Its subsidiary Swisscom IT Services AG has signed up with Red Hat as a Certified Cloud Provider and launched a public cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud targeting enterprise-class customers primarily in ...
CONGRATULATIONS to National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) CIO 
