Google and Facebook in talks to buy Twitter

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If the report in todays The World Street Journal is to be believed Google and Facebook might soon bid to buy Twitter. Twitter has now over 200 million users, generating 65 million tweets every day. During the recent Super Bowl there were 4063 tweets per second breaking the previous record of 3283 tweets per second set during Japans 3-1 victory over Denmark during the last world cup. The record is of more then 6939 tweets per second set in Japan after midnight on  New Year's Eve.

But what is so special about Twitter a micro blogging sites ? Twitter has gained a lot of popularity over the past few years and is ranked at third place among the most popular Social Networking sites and among the top 10 most viewed sites worldwide. Facebook and Google have been in talks to buy Twitter for sum of $10 billion dollar much higher then the companies recent evaluation which was $3.7 billion dollars.

Both Google and Facebook have discussed buying Twitter in the past and have kept their lines of communication open.Twitter's revenues and valuation have risen even as the company continues on ways to translate its more than 200 million registered users into profitable business.

People familiar with the situation said that the company belive that it can grow into a $100 billion company.

To read the original article click here.

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Google and Twitter launch service enabling Egyptians to tweet by phone

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Google Inc launched a special service to allow people in Egypt to send Twitter messages by dialing a phone number and leaving a voicemail, as Internet access remains cut off in the country amid anti-government protests.

"Like many people we've been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground," read a post on Google's official corporate blog on Monday.

The service, which Google said was developed with engineers from Twitter, allows people to dial a telephone number and leave a voicemail. The voicemail is automatically translated into an audio file message that is sent on Twitter using the identifying tag #egypt, Google said.

Google said in the blog post, titled "Some weekend work that will (hopefully) enable more Egyptians to be heard," that no Internet connection is needed to use the service.

It listed three phone numbers for people to call to use the service.

Internet social networking services like Twitter and Facebook have been important tools of communications for protesters in Egypt who have taken to the streets since last week to demonstrate against the 30-year rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

Internet service has been suspended around the country and phone text messaging has been disabled.

A source familiar with the matter said Google, whose corporate motto is "Don't Be Evil," was not taking sides in the crisis in Egypt, but was simply supporting access to information as it has done with other services such as video website YouTube.

YouTube has been streaming live coverage of Al Jazeera's broadcasts of the events in Egypt.

Dozens of the so-called speak-to-tweet messages were featured on Twitter on Monday. The messages ranged from a few seconds to several minutes and featured people identifying themselves as Egyptians and describing the situations in various parts of the country.

"The government is spreading rumors of fear and of burglary and of violence," said one of the messages from an English speaker. "The only incidence of theft and burglary are done by the police themselves."

Google listed the following numbers for people to use the service: +16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855.

Source: www.reuters.com

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Zynga Lost $11.9 million in fraud

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A 29-year-old British man faces a certain jail term after admitting he stole 400 billion gaming chips worth an estimated £7.5 million ($11.9 million) from FarmVille maker, Zynga.

Ashley Mitchell, who runs the Facebook application Gambino Poker, had illegally accessed Zynga's servers in 2009 before draining the chips and then selling them to fund gambling debts, a British court heard this week.  

Mitchell sold the stolen chips at a discounted price, netting him just over £50,000 between June and September, 2009.

Had police not intervened, he would have netted about £184,000 at the rate he was selling.

Zynga alerted police after staff discovered many chips were disappearing. Mitchell had accessed Zynga's computers between June and August, 2009.

Justice Phillip Wassall denied Mitchell bail on the belief that he would do it again. 

'It is inevitable you are going to prison. The question is how long for," said Phillips.

Mitchell's lawyer said the defendant's "six-figure income" was enough to pay back the money over two years.

Mitchell admitted to a charge of unauthorised access to data with the intent to commit a crime and faces four more counts under the proceeds of crime act. 

Zynga's most famous game

source: www.securecomputing.net.au

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Explaining Facebook's Spam Prevention Systems

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• 
  

  • As a global service connecting 400 million people, Facebook has helped build and extend communities around the world. As with any community, the benefits of bringing people together are occasionally accompanied by inappropriate or unacceptable conduct by a small number of people. This behavior ranges from thoughtless to criminal and can degrade the experience for others or undermine the community itself. 

On Facebook, the most common unacceptable behavior involves some abuse of the communication tools. This can be as innocent as annoying others with too many messages or friend requests or as serious as deliberately trying to spam others for commercial gain.


Facebook has taken these deliberate spam attacks seriously and devote a tremendous amount of their engineering time and talent to build systems that detect suspicious activity and automatically warn people about inappropriate behavior or links. Because of the efforts, only a very small percentage of people who use Facebook has ever experienced spam or a security issue.


Every once in a while, though, people misunderstand one of these systems. They incorrectly believe that Facebook is restricting them by blocking them from posting a specific link or from sending a message to someone who is not a friend. Over the years, these misunderstandings have caused Facebook to be wrongly accused of issues ranging from stifling criticism of director Roman Polanski over his sexual abuse charges to curbing support for ending U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba to blocking opponents of same-sex marriage. 


To try to be more transparent, they have been working to improve  warnings and make them more clear. 

• • • • • • • • • • 
                    

                    • 

                                    New warning explaining why content has been blocked.
                    
                    
                    With billions of pieces of content being shared on Facebook every month and bad actors constantly targeting the people who use Facebook, preventing spam isn't easy. Just as a community relies on its citizens to report crime,Facebook rely on you to let us know when you encounter spam, which can be anything from a friend request sent by someone you don't know to a message that includes a link to a malicious website.
                    

                    • • • • 
                            
                            Using information from your reports and what they know about how the average person uses Facebook, they have identified certain common patterns of unacceptable behavior. For example, they have learned that if someone sends the same message to 50 people not on his or her friend list in the span of an hour, it's usually spam. Similarly, if 75 percent of the friend requests a person sends are ignored, it's very likely that that person is annoying others he or she doesn't actually know. 

                        • • • 
                              
                              In extreme cases where the behavior continues despite the warnings, they may disable the person's account. When this happens, it usually isn't a person's account at all but a fake account or a real account that's been compromised. The compromised accounts are put into a process to give control back to the rightful owner. 

                        • • • • • 
                                  
                                  These automated systems don't just prevent spam and other annoyances. They also protect 

                        against dangerous websites that damage your computer or try to steal your information. When we're notified about one of these sites, we immediately add it to a block list and prevent Wall posts or messages that link to it. We also provide the person who's attempting to share the link with an explanation of why it's blocked and a way to correct us if we're wrong. 

                • • • • • • • 
                              

                • • • • • • • Sometimes, spammers try to hide their malicious links behind URL shorteners like Tiny URL or bit.ly, and in rare cases, we may temporarily block all use of a specific shortener. If you hit a block while using a URL shortener, try a different one or just use the original URL for whatever you're trying to share.
                              
                              These systems are so effective at working in the background that most people who use Facebook will never encounter one. They're not perfect, though, and Facebook always is working to improve them. 

                        
                        

                        
                        

                        If you do encounter one of our spam prevention systems, remember that its sole intent is to protect you and maintain Facebook's trusted environment.
                        

                        
                        

                        Source: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=403200567130

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