Some dead interesting stuff popped up when I logged in this morning – all worth giving a read:
Facebook buys FriendFeed
Lots of people seem to be quite upset about this one. Friendfeed is still a pretty niche service, even by the standards of the social web, so this isn’t that seismic a change. The interesting thing about FriendFeed is that it was founded and developed by a really skilled team of ex-Googlers and it is probably those guys’ brains that Facebook are after.
Google makes new search engine available
Google have responded to the threat of a revitalised Microsoft web search (in the form of the ludicrously named Bing) by starting to re-engineer their core search product. You can test it out on the sandbox site – I found it noticeably quicker and the results are different.
IE team ‘defends’ IE6
There have been a whole bunch of memes on the web around the fact that Internet Explorer 6 sucks and that people should replace it. This was reflected in the UKGovWeb scene with Tom Watson’s parliamentary questions asking when government departments would be upgrading from this ancient bit of tech.
Microsoft’s IE team have responded to this chatter on their blog, not necessarily defending IE6 as a product (they would prefer people to upgrade, too) but explaining the reasons why big organisations – and indeed individuals – might be happy sticking with what they know.
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Do you think that the loss of Friendfeed’s Facebook-independence has implications for the ability of Facebook to shut down activist news distribution? If users are blocked from Facebook, will they get blocked from Friendfeed too?
Was Friendfeed any more open and social than Facebook’s walled garden? I’ve been musing on Open Social Networks a bit at http://www.news.software.coop/facebook-disrupts-activism/740/ and a few other places.