Webware

A look at Google's Android mobile operating system.

(Credit: Google)

Last we heard, we'd be seeing phones powered by Google's Android open-source software in the second half of 2008. A report Monday from The Wall Street Journal has narrowed that down somewhat: Those handsets will start appearing in the fourth quarter of this year, a later time frame than expected.

And according to the Journal, some handset manufacturers are "struggling" to get Android on track even for a fourth-quarter launch. Sprint Nextel and China Mobile, the world's largest cell carrier, reportedly won't be able to put out Android-powered phones until next year. Other carriers, like T-Mobile, claim their Android phones are still on track.

Some developers of mobile applications, on the other hand, have been sidetracked by the announcement of the iPhone 3G, the second-generation version of Apple's ubiquitous handsets. With a lower price point, a developer kit already released, and a concrete launch date of July 11, not to mention faster Web access and a built-in GPS chip, the appeal of the new iPhone may have pushed Android to the back burner for some companies.

This post was updated at 12:30 p.m. PDT with more detailed information and quotes.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook plans to unveil a redesign of profile pages in coming weeks to help members cut down on the clutter, executives said here at a press event Wednesday.

Executives also said they'll introduce a beta version this week that will allow developers to test the new pages before it rolls them out to members in June.

The redesign, a preview of which was released Tuesday night, slots member information under five new tabs: personal news feeds; profile information; photos; applications; and a customizable page.

As part of the redesign, Facebook is dramatically playing up the role of its News Feed, which will be the anchor, or first tab, of the new member home page. This shift is meant to make it easier for people to see dynamically changing information from friends and applications first, according to Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook's vice president of product marketing.

"We see this big trend," Palihapitiya said. "People are publishing feeds all the time, and the point is, people are increasingly telling a narrative, and we want to make that easier for our users to do. And we want people to consume that narrative more easily."

The company will unveil design changes at the risk of angering application developers that rely on Facebook for distribution and member usage. Designers of less popular widgets, for example, could feel somewhat marginalized by Facebook's placement of external applications on a dedicated profile tab.

Company executives, however, said the design overhaul will ultimately give developers more reason to engage with members. "We think there's more opportunity for distribution, but (also) for more meaningful application," Facebook product manager Mark Slee said.

Palihapitiya added that some developers could suffer in the more dynamic environment of News Feeds on member home pages. "Applications that are much more static in nature will not be as successful as they used to be."

Here is an overview of the changes:

The news feed will take the role of the member home page, with one stream of information that people can reformat into three different sizes. From the main page, people can also update information on new Facebook applications, post a wall message, or upload photos from one point next to the news feed.

The reason for that change, Palihapitiya said, is the company's desire to make the home page cleaner and simpler, and allow people to see dynamically changing information first.

Developers can also get front-page play through the news feeds. "Developers can integrate into the feed through the publisher box, so I could draw some graffiti or send a SuperPoke," said Facebook product manager Ruchi Sanghvi.

Facebook moves the static information on members to its second tab, or the information tab. That page will contain detailed data about the person's address, personal history, and preferences. Executives said developers can get creative with new applications that help members tell a story about who they are.

Next is a tab for photos, which are commanding a lot of attention from Facebook users, according to Palihapitiya. So far, he said, members have uploaded 6 billion photos to the site, or 14 million on a cumulative daily basis. "Photos are just one example of an application that could blow up for us," Palihapitiya said.

The profile box tab, or where applications will reside, lets people see a record of the widget they downloaded.

The last tab gives people a choice to customize a page, much like a new feature on the iPhone. People can add a new tab to highlight an application like Scrabulous that they play often. Executives said this is "a huge new opportunity for developers" that could increase advertising revenue.

That said, developers will need to try it out of themselves.

"We are going to give developers a beta period in which they will be able to step into the sandbox and tweak their application," product manager Slee said, "so that they're ready for when this thing gets rolled out in coming weeks."

All gold rushes must come to an end, and according to one new report, Facebook's developer platform is no exception.

Facebook developer Jesse Farmer, creator of developer analytics service Adonomics, did an extensive amount of number-crunching after coming to an odd observation earlier this year: "Something is wrong in the Facebook developer community," Farmer wrote in a blog post Tuesday. "Starting in March I began noticing that the level of activity in the Facebook developers forum was dropping sharply."

Farmer's research confirmed his speculation: activity in the Facebook developer forum, from posts per day to highly active users, had fallen notably from January to April. In other words, that likely means there's less activity on the part of independent developers hoping to tap into Facebook's massive audience.

One possible reason, Farmer wrote, is the fact that Facebook isn't the only hub for social-network application developers anymore. Google kickstarted the OpenSocial standard last year, and Bebo, newly acquired by AOL, is currently the only social network that supports both Facebook and OpenSocial applications.

It could also mean, as Farmer pointed out, less chatter taking place in an open forum as application creators grow more concerned about the effect of competition in the packed developer space.

Or perhaps, he suggests, small-time developers might be disillusioned. Facebook, in an effort to curb spam, has instituted new regulations that some developers find controversial. Then there's the presence of big application companies like Slide and RockYou, which dominate the rankings of the most popular Facebook applications and have valuations in the hundreds of millions. Not only do they dwarf smaller developers, but they also snap up programmer talent that might otherwise be independent.

"Networks like Zynga and Social Gaming Network have cropped up in the last few months and have made it their business to consolidate the game space on Facebook, probably the only real vertical that has found success on the platform," Farmer wrote. "Bigger companies like Slide and RockYou have been actively recruiting from the Facebook developer pool all along, too."

Is the Facebook platform doomed? Hardly. But if Farmer's research is accurate, it's a sign that the initial frenzy is finally quieting--it's been a year, after all.

(Credit: FlowingData)

The world of social networking may never be the same.

A new study from number-crunching firm Flowing Data did some eye-opening work recently, dividing 23,160 Facebook applications into 22 categories. A whopping 9,601 of them fall into Facebook's "just for fun" category, followed by "gaming" and "sports" with over 2,000 each. In other words, the majority of Facebook applications are goofy time-wasters.

This is an unsettling piece of news that I don't think any of us saw coming.

It's true, though. Since the debut of Facebook's developer platform, there has been an onslaught of annoy-your-friends applications like Slide's SuperPoke and popular gaming apps like Scrabulous. But really "useful" applications have yet to make the same kind of splash, despite a few promising debuts like Six Apart's Blog It and quasi-promising ones like the "social college application" widget.

Ever come across one of those Facebook Platform applications that required you to spam a dozen of your friends with invites before you could access the results of your "Vampire Jedi Zombie Personality Quiz"?

They're annoying. And now Facebook has done something about it. Developer applications must "offer some navigation option to leave the friend invite process," according to a change in the social-networking site's platform policy. If an application's friend-invite page doesn't contain one of Facebook's in-house "Skip This Step," "Cancel," or "Skip" buttons, it has to contain an alternative way to navigate away from the friend invite process.

Developers whose applications ignore the new regulations reportedly receive warning letters that threaten shutdown if they fail to comply.

This is a big step toward cleaning up the cluttered Facebook app directory. Ideally, it will cut down on some of the "app invite overkill" that's led many Facebook users to groan every time they're invited to the corny application du jour. And it'll likely mean that Facebook members will probably only be passing on invites to applications they actually like, rather than spamming their friends just so they can learn what character from Hannah Montana they most resemble.

It will also mean your friends won't have to know that you even installed such an abhorrent application.

Update at 12:10 p.m. PST: Comment from Zango has been added.

Good riddance: Facebook has banned the "Secret Crush" application due to reports of its affiliation with a notorious spyware manufacturer.

The social-networking site confirmed the breakup on Monday: "Facebook is committed to user safety and security and, to that end, its Terms of Service for developers explicitly state that applications should not use adware and spyware," a statement from the company read. "We have contacted the developers and have disabled the Secret Crush application for violating Facebook Platform Terms of Service."

Lonely Facebook users eager to find which of their friends had the hots for them were served up with the nasty news last week. According to a report from security firm Fortinet, invitations luring members with the message "One of your friends might have a crush on you!" contained a link to software from Zango, a company whose name has become almost synonymous with adware. Upon installing the application, users were informed that they needed to "invite" at least five more friends to Secret Crush before going on, and then were invited to download a "Crush Calculator" application that contained Zango software.

Tragically, duped Facebook members never did get to learn which people on their friends list had crushes on them.

Zango has publicly denied involvement with Secret Crush, publishing a blog post dismissing Fortinet's claims and saying that Secret Crush hadn't disappeared--it had just changed its name to "My Admirer."

"In the case of the Zango ad seen by Fortinet, if clicked it would have taken a consumer to Zango's standard plain-language notice and consent page where consumers could choose to install Zango software and access (without subscription) a Zango Astrology application--or choose not to install the software," the Zango blog post read. "Although we did not purchase this ad directly, it was placed by one of our advertising partners within the Facebook system, which appears to be a completely legitimate practice."

Spyware and adware claims are nothing new in the social-networking world; Facebook's chief rival, the News Corp.-owned MySpace.com, has had issues with adware masked as YouTube videos, for example. The recent news nevertheless raises the question of how quickly Facebook, or any other site that accepts third-party developer content, should be expected to take action in this kind of situation. AllFacebook reported that 1.5 million users had installed Secret Crush before it was taken down; this kind of situation will certainly add to the debate over how attentive a company built on user- and developer-generated content needs to be.

In its statement concerning the Secret Crush takedown, Facebook responded pre-emptively to potential criticism by stressing that members should be aware that they are dealing with third-party content on the Facebook Platform. "Users should employ the same precautions while downloading software from Facebook applications that they use when downloading software on their desktop," the company warned.