racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Social networking website Facebook revealed Facebook for Feature Phones, a new mobile application that is specifically intended for lower-end cell phones.

It can be noted that features phones take the majority of mobile users. Because of this, the largest social networking site partnered with Snaptu to launch an app for feature phones tagged as Facebook for Feature Phones.

Even if the mobile app for Facebook is the most downloaded free application for smartphones such as the iPhone, the users it targets merely represent a small fraction of the overall mobile users in the world.

Facebook for Feature Phones will be available for download on thousands of devices from the leading manufacturers of the world including Nokia, LG, and Sony Ericsson among others.

There are also plans of making this new app available in many countries without the need for data fees.

[via The Atlantic]

The plans to allow apps on accessing the home address and mobile phone number of users has been put on “temporary hold” by Facebook, the social network revealed on its developer blog.

Last Friday, Facebook had announced that it will let apps to request for those personal contact information of users.

However, the plans have been frozen as of the moment because of “some useful feedback” with regards to how the users will be aware of the way contact information can be accessed.

Changes are expected to keep things smooth in terms of the granting of access to user’s contact information.

There is still no exact date as to when Facebook will implement its new privacy feature.

[via BBC]

The social networking site Myspace will fire 500 workers in a surprising restructuring. This is in line with the significantly big declines in the number of users and amount of advertising.

Meanwhile, Yahoo is said to be interested in purchasing Myspace from News Corp for 25% swap of stock. The giant media company seems to have long-term plans for the once-popular social networking site. News Corp is reported to be open to this.

News Corp, who was once proud to tell that they were not just looking up “friends” when they were still on top three years ago as opposed to Facebook which was not yet that big a name.

About 47% of the workforce at the Beverly Hills company will be affected by the repercussion to the striking decline in monthly visitors and advertising revenue.

[via ZD Net]

Despite the search engine hits and all the buzz about it, Facebook has not launched its own application for iPad that can let users browse the website conveniently right on their tablet. It can be noted that the iPad device is launched merely nine months ago.

Enterprising developers took advantage of the lack of urgency on the part of Facebook and the towering demand from people. If you are looking for an iPad app for Facebook, then Friendly for Facebook is just the thing for you.

Made by a third party, Friendly for Facebook just became one of the most successful applications in the App Store of iTunes.

Friendly for Facebook promises a beautiful Facebook experience that is specifically designed for anyone’s iPad. Navigating through Facebook photos can be done through swiping the screen. Upload and download of photo, and even chat, are fully functional.

The paid version can be purchased at 99 cents. A free version has recently been released but it comes with ads.

Friendly for Facebook is not in any way affiliated with Facebook. Neither is it sponsored or endorsed by the social networking site.

[via Tech Whack]

Facebook is now the world’s third largest website in terms of traffic according to internet marketing research company comScore.

Based on the November 2010 results of comScore, Facebook got an estimated number of unique visitors amounting to 648 million users from all over the world. Facebook overtook the place of Yahoo! with 630 million unique visitors.

Still at the number one spot is Google at 970 million unique visitors, followed by Microsoft at 869 million. However, the digits for Google and Microsoft are to be attributed to its respective websites. Google has YouTube, Blogger and Orkut, while Microsoft owns MSN, Windows Live, and Bing.

What if websites start buying other websites again? Let us just see how far Facebook will still reach.

[via Tech Crunch]