Facebook schedules f8 conference for Sept. 22

Facebook has scheduled its f8 conference for Sept. 22 in San Francisco. The all-day event is where the company’s engineers and product teams will highlight “new tools along with best practices for developers and partners building the next generation of social practices.”

That likely means Facebook will have some kind of meaty announcement by that time. We don’t know what it is, but it could include numerous items such as Project Spartan, Facebook’s latest push into mobile social networks. Facebook said on its developer blog that there will be “some exciting product announcements that enable a new class of social apps.”

The conference is late this year, but it is likely tied to the company’s schedule for big upgrades. Facebook last held its f8 conference on April 21, 2010. At that event, it introduced a number of new features, and chief executive?Mark Zuckerberg delivered a keynote speech in which he introduced the Like button and talked about Facebook Credits.

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Tags: f8

Companies: Facebook

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Miramax launches app to watch movies on Facebook

Film studio Miramax on Monday launched a new Facebook application that lets you rent acclaimed movies like Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting and No Country for Old Men.

With 20 titles to rent, the Miramax eXperience app is one of the largest movie streaming apps yet to hit the massively popular social site. It joins other studios like Warner Bros., Paramount and Universal that also allow users to rent and watch movies via Facebook.

Miramax CEO Mike Lang said he sees the Facebook app as just the beginning of a wide-ranging content strategy where users will be able to watch movies on any web platform.

“No question there will be more content and more markets,” Lang said in a blog post. “Our plan is to use this as an enabling platform, including eventually as a digital locker cloud service.”

Users can watch movies on Facebook from the PC, iPad, or Google TV browser. Rentals through the application cost 30 Facebook credits, or $3. Facebook gets to keep one third of the purchase, so Miramax banks $2 for every rental. That amount is higher than what a streaming rental earns through a service like Netflix or Hulu, which usually gives pennies for each stream.

Aside from short movie clips, the app will also soon include a game called Casting Call where you can can cast your Facebook friends as characters from Miramax films.

What do you think of Facebook movie rentals? Do you think many users will use it?

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Tags: Facebook apps, movies, online video, streaming movies, streaming video

Companies: Facebook, Hulu, Miramax, Netflix, Paramount, Warner Bros.

People: Mike Lang

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Foursquare wins major victory with death of Facebook Places

While Facebook was rolling out some changes to its privacy policies today, the company also quietly announced it was killing off the Foursquare-like Places function inside of its mobile app.

The Facebook Places feature was unveiled a year ago and let users “check-in” to various locations. Many saw this as a serious threat to other social location services like Foursquare and Gowalla because Facebook has an incredible number of users. But by October you could already see that the feature wasn’t catching on, with only 6% of Facebook users trying the service.

As an alternative to the Places feature, Facebook will optionally add a location to status updates or pictures. But adding a location to a status is clearly not the same as checking in and getting the benefits of knowing where your friends are. So really, Facebook has folded the check-in the game in favor of a broad location idea that many users will likely not try. (Just as they didn’t try Places.)

Foursquare has to be happy about this, though the company declined to say anything about the death of Places. It did you the opportunity to toot its own horn.

“Far from concentrating on what others are doing, we’re 100 percent focused on continuing to build an amazing product that changes the way people experience the world around them,” a Foursquare spokesperson told VentureBeat.

The New York-based Foursquare has been on a bit of a roll with a slew of announcements the past few months. A week ago, the startup added the ability to check into events with friends, and in mid-July it partnered with several daily deals sites to offer better deals to customers who checked-ins.

As of July, Foursquare has more than 10 million users and has had more than half a million businesses sign up to offer specials. The company recently raised a $50 million funding round with a valuation of $600 million.

Personally, I never used Places because I already had Foursquare for check-ins. Another reason I wasn’t attracted to Places was because there are many people on Facebook I don’t know well enough to share my location with. My Foursquare friends, however, are people I’m comfortable with knowing my whereabouts.

What do you think of the death of Facebook Places?

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Tags: check-ins, Facebook Places, location, location based apps, location based services, social networking, Social networks

Companies: Facebook, Foursqaure, Gowalla

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Facebook makes a run at YouTube video dominance

What do you do when you’re already the number one website for sharing photos? Go after videos. In a report released today by online measurement firm comScore, Facebook ranked as the third largest website for viewing videos online in the month of July, with Google Sites and Vevo ranking as the first and second largest.

With more than 51 million unique video views in July, Facebook beat out popular video sites like Microsoft, Viacom, Yahoo and even Hulu, the online video streaming site that has had supposed interest from Google. Google Sites, which includes the Google-owned YouTube, ranked as the top video viewing site with close to 160 million views. Just ahead of Facebook was Vevo, a site for watching music videos that secured more than 62 million unique views.

Interestingly, while Facebook ranked third on this chart, it still has a lot of catching up to do in terms of the amount of time each viewer spends on the site watching videos. The company averaged 17.9 minutes per viewer, while Vevo almost tripled that with 66 minutes and Google Sites had a whopping 353.7 minutes. The difference makes sense because YouTube and Vevo revolve around video as their main content, while Facebook features multiple types of media, including photos.

Another report by comScore shows Facebook growing in unique website visits for July with more than 162 million — that’s an increase of almost 2 million from June and another 3 million from May. However, the very sites Facebook beat out in video are still at the top of the charts for website traffic, including Yahoo and Microsoft.

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Tags: unique views, video, video players

Companies: Facebook, Google, VEVO, Youtube

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Wirklich? Germany declares Facebook ‘Like’ button illegal

The German government on Friday declared the Facebook “Like” button, which appears on countless websites accessible all over the world, in violation of the country’s strict privacy rights — and thus illegal.

An official from the German state of Schleswig-Holstein’s data protection center, Thilo Weichert, said the privacy violation stems from the Like button’s ability to track a person’s movement across the web, according to a report by The Local.

In addition to violating German laws, Weichert claims the Facebook Like button also breaks European Union data protection laws. However, Facebook has rejected those claims and said any data that’s stored (like web activity from a unique IP address) is deleted after the industry standard 90-days, according to the report. VentureBeat has contacted the company for further comment.

Websites in Schleswig-Holstein must remove Facebook Like buttons by September 30. Failure to do so will result in a fine of up to €50,000 (or about $72,000).

What’s unclear at this time is whether the fine will apply only to websites published within the particular German state or to all websites accessible within the country. It’s ridiculous to think how the government would go about issuing the fines and policing websites that refuse to remove the Facebook Like button.

This situation is reminiscent to the recent Tennessee legislation that makes it illegal to post offensive images online — both are examples of local governments acting beyond their limited authority.

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Tags: illegal, like button, privacy

Companies: Facebook

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Wirklich? Germany declares Facebook ‘Like’ button illegal

The German government on Friday declared the Facebook “Like” button, which appears on countless websites accessible all over the world, in violation of the country’s strict privacy rights — and thus illegal.

An official from the German state of Schleswig-Holstein’s data protection center, Thilo Weichert, said the privacy violation stems from the Like button’s ability to track a person’s movement across the web, according to a report by The Local.

In addition to violating German laws, Weichert claims the Facebook Like button also breaks European Union data protection laws. However, Facebook has rejected those claims and said any data that’s stored (like web activity from a unique IP address) is deleted after the industry standard 90-days, according to the report. VentureBeat has contacted the company for further comment.

Websites in Schleswig-Holstein must remove Facebook Like buttons by September 30. Failure to do so will result in a fine of up to €50,000 (or about $72,000).

What’s unclear at this time is whether the fine will apply only to websites published within the particular German state or to all websites accessible within the country. It’s ridiculous to think how the government would go about issuing the fines and policing websites that refuse to remove the Facebook Like button.

This situation is reminiscent to the recent Tennessee legislation that makes it illegal to post offensive images online — both are examples of local governments acting beyond their limited authority.

Next Story: WordPress runs 15 percent of the web’s highest trafficked?sites
Previous Story: Guess which cities produce the most Android?apps

Tags: illegal, like button, privacy

Companies: Facebook

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