It appears that Facebook might have pushed itself a bit too much to help people in Iran as it released the Persian version of the social network. It appears that the present move has violated its own terms of use. The clause states that one cannot use Facebook if one is located in a country under embargo from the U.S or are in the list of U.S Treasury Department’s of Specially Designated Nationals. Although users in numerous countries that are under embargo can still access the network from those countries. I am not sure what action will be taken in this regard, but there is a very low probability that any action will taken against this and that Facebook will have to make a few changes to its terms of use as it continues its expansion across the globe.
Archive for June, 2009
Google made some improvements to its search last month which included the wonder wheel. Today YouTube also got its own Wonder Wheel that adds a visual navigation to search. Simply type in your query and you can select the Wonder Wheel on the right side just beneath the advanced options. This follows the countless improvements that YouTube has made recently.
23andMe, the genetics testing startup that was founded by Sergey Brin‘s wife, Anne Wojcicki has scored another round of funding. The current round came from Google, bringing in $2.6 Million from the estimated $24.26 million it expects to raise in Series B. It has continued to grab funds beginning with a $9 million Series A round. The company helps consumers find information about their ancestry and predicting what diseases they might develop by analyzing their DNA.
While EA waved goodbye to one of its execs it welcomed John Schappert as its new COO. Schappert previously held the position of VP at Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business. This would boost EA as Schappert has vast experience with both the online and console divisions on the gaming industry. He would be taking position of the departing John Pleasants.
News aggregation site, Newser has raised a healthy $2.5 million in a round of funding. The company was founded by Patrick Spain and Michael Wolff and the current funding came from several individual investors who have invested in previous startups by Spain. With over 2 million visitors a month, the news aggregator site still has quite a long way to go before it actually stands in competition to the giants like Google and Yahoo news in business.
Playdom, the social gaming startup has got a big boost as it hired EA’s COO John Pleasants as its CEO. He would replace Playdom’s current CEO, Dan Yue who is also the startups co-founder and will switch his position as its chief product officer. The social gaming has made a big jump in the recent past and the company itself has divided its team into two that will individually develop games for different genres which include, RPGs and the usual titles.
We had earlier reported about Facebook testing out a better search on the social network. Today it’s been trying to make improvements to the inbox, which to be honest appears to pretty poor and needs a facelift, badly. The redesign would place filter options at the top of the inbox, making it easier to organize and identify unread messages and report unwanted or scam messages. You can even perform keyword searches or find mails from a particular friend by simply typing in the contact’s name in the search box on the top left. There are quite a lot of other features too, which include managing subscriptions, viewing updates from the Facebook pages you are connected to, etc. The whole interface appears much pleasant to say the least.
LoveLogger is a new blogging platform and s definitely not another lovers point on the web. The platform is based on a unique idea of letting users can form pair and take advantage of its platform to create a blog and share interests. The pair could be your lover, friend, either of your parents, child, etc, in short if you are to create a blog you must have a partner to do so. I sort of like the idea as it lets you talk about and share what happens the two of you. Interesting but there has to be a very high level of understanding between the two (and of course time) before the two can effectively manage such a venture.
