The Social

Considering all the horror stories we hear about photos hosted on Facebook and people, you know, losing their jobs over them, maybe this isn't such a bad thing: The social network acknowledged in a blog post on Sunday evening that 10 percent to 15 percent of the billions of photos it hosts were affected by a storage problem, replaced by a question mark.

But they aren't permanently gone, the post by engineer Evan Priestley insisted. "We've already repaired about one-third of affected photos and expect to complete repairs on another third tonight," he explained. "We still have all your photos because we store them in a way that maintains multiple copies of the data in case of hardware failures like this."

The company still isn't quite sure how the outage happened.

"During an otherwise routine software upgrade on Friday night, we ran into some problems with our photo storage and a few of the hard drives where we store photos apparently failed all at once," Priestley wrote. "We're trying to fully understand what happened, since simultaneous hardware failures like this are rare."

Facebook is no stranger to uptime issues, with minor but noticeable outages hitting the social network as recently as two months ago. This one, however, is different in that it specifically affected the photos hosted on the site, leading some members to grow concerned about mass deletions.

If your photos disappeared over the weekend, they are probably back already. But just to be safe--you really should keep a backup on your hard drive. Really.

Multiply, a social network that has done a fine job of flying under the radar since its 2005 launch, has announced a new paid-account program that focuses on media storage. Called a "digital scrapbook," this premium feature will cost $19.95 annually.

Members who opt in to the "digital scrapbook" program will be able to store high-resolution photos, as well as videos up to 20 minutes long. They will also be able to surf the site without ads.

Multiply has also launched a tool that automatically uploads photos and videos to a private "locker," from users can choose content to share with friends. All Multiply profiles are friends-only, as the site promotes an aim of friends-and-family communication and media sharing.

The site also has a more "adult" focus than many social networks; the average age of active users ranges from the upper 20s to mid-30s. "We've never tried to be the hip, cool nightclub," Vice President Michael Gersh said to CNET News.com.

Multiply hit the 9 million member mark recently and will likely hit 10 million in July, still paltry compared to the likes of Facebook and MySpace. But executives say touting huge growth numbers would be contrary to the site's aim of connections between family and close friends, not random strangers or even acquaintances. Its members, according to Multiply numbers, post 2 million photos, 19,000 videos, and 55,000 blog entries every day.

"It's much more organized and meaningful than some explosive megasite," Gersh said. "People are sticking around."

Nokia acquired media-sharing start-up Twango last year, and now it's finally doing something with it.

Twango has been folded into Ovi, a new brand for Nokia's mobile Web services such as gaming, social networking, and mapping.

"The Twango brand will be a fond memory," a blog post from Twango director of service development Jim Laurel reads. "We are now Share on Ovi."

Nokia made the announcement Monday, though Laurel's blog post is dated last Monday, February 4. Go figure.

Twango originally pitched itself as a more functional alternative to photo-sharing sites like Flickr; people can also share video and audio, organize it into "channels," and selectively share it with other individuals. Back in 2006, we billed it as a "great sharing site that no one uses."

Twango users without Nokia devices will still be able to use Ovi for media-sharing, but they will apparently be missing out on some perks. Laurel's blog post goes on to say that the former Twango team has developed downloadable software so that Nokia handsets (N95, N82, and N73) can automatically upload media to the service.

Also part of Ovi is Nokia's new navigation service, which was announced Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The main Ovi.com home page gives a few teasers as to impending services from Nokia, and encourages visitors to "come back soon and see what's new."

Twango's home page.

(Credit: Twango)

Media-sharing site Twango updated its Web site on Monday to announce that it's been chomped up by cell phone manufacturer Nokia. With its cool new toy, Nokia hopes to make it easier for handset owners to share multimedia content among desktop, Web, and mobile platforms.

"The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our consumer Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks--at any time, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive vice president and general manager of multimedia at Nokia, in a joint statement We have the most complete suite of connected multimedia experiences including music, navigation, games, and--with the Twango acquisition--photos, videos, and a variety of document types."

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

A sexy Nokia N95

(Credit: Nokia)

I played around with a Twango account for a bit after testing it out when the Redmond, Wash.-based start-up (yes, it was founded by Microsoft alums) came to the DigitalLife trade show in New York last October. It's sort of like a mix between Flickr and multimedia "channel" creator Kyte.tv, facilitating the storage and sharing of a variety of media types and allowing them to be organized into "channels." To be honest, the structure of the site confused me somewhat (are "channels" like Flickr "albums" but with audio and video too?) Then again, I also can't seem to wrap my head around all those fancy Nokia N-series handsets that you can play with at the company's nightclub-like flagship store in midtown Manhattan.

But the match makes sense: it's clear that both companies pursue a strategy that focuses on the ultra-functional, the feature-heavy, and the if-it-counts-as-media-we'll-help-you-share-it mentality. It's unlikely that this acquisition will affect a whole lot of people who aren't Nokia customers (and it's not yet very clear as to how Twango itself will change) but it'll be interesting to see how this affects mobile media-sharing.