Webware

So how do you say "fail whale" en español? Twitter has launched a Spanish translation, according to a blog post Tuesday (in Spanish) by co-founder Biz Stone.

It's the first of multiple volunteer-assisted translations for the microblogging site, the post explained. A look at Twitter's public timeline will show that it's used in many languages across the world, but until this point, the Twitter.com site has been English only. Now, users can go into their settings to translate it into Spanish.

This could be key as Twitter attempts to grow bigger overseas amid allegations that its traffic has plateaued. Facebook, for example, saw significant growth overseas when it started launching user-translated versions of its site.

To better inform the Twittering masses, we have gone to the trouble of plugging the term "fail whale" into Google Translate to see how you say it in Spanish. That didn't go too well with the algorithm, so we tried "whale of failure" and came out with "la ballena de fracaso." Unfortunately, that just doesn't have the same ring.

But this is not actually the first time that Twitter has toyed with launching a non-English edition. Last year, Twitter board member Joi Ito hyped up the launch of a standalone Twitter Japan site, powered by an investment from Ito's Digital Garage, that was notable because it was ad-supported (Twitter still hasn't rolled out ads or even said that it will for sure).

Biz Stone filled in CNET News on the status of Twitter Japan via e-mail on Tuesday night: "(It's) doing very well. A few of us were there a few weeks ago to launch a brand new mobile service. We had a really fun tweetup in Tokyo."

Twitter hasn't said what the next translations of its site will be, though presumably they'd pick a language that's already spoken by many users or one spoken in a region where it hopes to make big inroads. Or they could just be cutesy and launch in Klingon or Pirate.

This post was updated at 10:40 p.m. with comment from Biz Stone.

It's complicated.

So just how do you say "poke" in Latin? It's "puncti," according to Facebook's newest language translation. The supposedly "dead" language--O.K., so the Others on "Lost" speak it sometimes--debuted as an official translation on the social network on Friday.

"Latin has joined the more than 70 languages we've made available on the site in the past two years, including some which have launched just today--Azeri, Faroese, Georgian and Nepali," a post on the company blog by Facebook's Elizabeth Linder read. "Some of these are languages that millions of people speak across the globe. Others are dialects that specific communities use in select geographic areas. Still others are just for fun: 'Pirate' may not appeal to everyone, but for those nostalgic for the days of Blackbeard and Captain Hook, it's there for you."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg notably studied both ancient Greek and Latin in high school; interviews have said that when he enrolled at Harvard, which he ended up dropping out of to run Facebook full-time, he considered studying classics rather than computer science.

Most of Facebook's translations have been "crowdsourced" by users. Latin was a volunteer effort, too, according to the blog post, which must have been quite the operation considering the likes of Cicero and Ovid probably didn't use the term "news feed" colloquially.

"To students of Latin, the availability of the language on Facebook may be just what's needed to narrow the distance between themselves and the venerable language," Linder's post wrote. "While students of 'living languages' practice on subtitled films and in conversation groups, on vacations and with exchange students, Latin scholars soak in rare living breaths of their studied language, satisfying themselves with the occasional legal phrase, nursery plant, benediction or school motto."

Conveniently, that ubiquitous Facebook term "status" is the same in English and in Latin.

Google is offering Web publishers a free tool for providing translation services on their pages.

Lots of big companies based outside the U.S. offer English-language versions of their Web site with a click of a button, but Google's new service actually detects the home language of a visitor to your site and offers them a translated version of the page based on their browser settings. Fifty-one languages will be supported by the service, which Webmasters can offer by pasting a bit of code into their pages.

Such a service is only as useful as its accuracy, however. Google admitted the service is really designed to offer a "quick gist" of a page's content and hailed the work of professional translators on what is apparently International Translation Day. (Unbelievably, Hallmark does not appear to make a card commemorating this day.)

Interested publishers can test out the code here.

Facebook made a dual set of announcements this week pertaining to Facebook Connect, the universal-log-in product that it offers to third-party developers and Web sites. Both are aimed at making Connect more ubiquitous: first, a tool called "Translations for Facebook Connect" that simplifies the process of translating the product into international languages, and second, the "Facebook Connect Wizard" for incorporating the product into a site with little developer expertise required.

Facebook first announced that Connect would be available in a multilingual format this summer. Now, the tool can be used to translate any site into the language of a given user who's logged in with Connect.

Last we heard, about 15,000 sites had implemented Facebook Connect, a product that statistics firm Hitwise says gave the social network enough momentum to propel it past once-bigger rival MySpace in terms of U.S. traffic. Launching international translations of the main Facebook site--which the company ended up "crowdsourcing" to users starting early last year--is largely credited with kickstarting the social network's growth overseas.

Facebook now has over 300 million active users around the world, a sizable majority of which are outside the U.S.

Plugging in Facebook Connect information with the three-step 'wizard.'

(Credit: Facebook)

"Establishing a presence on the social Web requires fundamental building blocks," a post by Facebook employee Alex Himel explained as it announced the Facebook Connect Wizard. "Facebook provides these essential tools, including identity for a great registration system, and immediate access to 300 million active global users. Facebook Connect gives entrepreneurs of all sizes--and with varying developer resources--the ability to build traffic efficiently through reaching a relevant audience, while offering an engaging user experience."

The new Connect Wizard takes only three steps, Himel's post said.

The problem has been resolved. See details below.

An international-shipping option appeared to be unavailable for Amazon Marketplace sellers on Thursday. According to an e-mail sent to CNET News on Thursday, "Marketplace sellers who ship internationally, for the past 24 hours, have lost international shipping."

The international-shipping option has indeed been unavailable since Wednesday, an Amazon.com call center representative confirmed. The option should be back up for most Marketplace sellers now, however, he said, adding that Amazon is looking into the outage's cause.

That said, Amazon wrote a forum post to sellers in its Amazon Seller Community message board Thursday morning saying it's still experiencing issues.

"We are currently experiencing a technical issue that prevents the 'Will Ship Internationally' text from appearing on the offer listing page," Amazon wrote on the board. "This is a text display issue only; buyers can place international orders normally. We are working to correct the issue and will provide an update, once the issue has been resolved."

Amazon has yet to reply to that thread, saying the issue has been resolved. In the past, when it experienced similar problems, the online retailer responded to its first post when the issue was fixed.

So there are mixed reports about whether the international-shipment option is readily available to consumers from Amazon Marketplace sellers.

Updated at 11:01 a.m. PDT to add option outage information.

Update at 1:37 a.m. PDT: Amazon has posted an update on its message board confirming that the glitch has been addressed.

"This issue has now been resolved," the company wrote in the post. "'International shipping available' is now correctly appearing on the offer listing page."

A listing page confirms Amazon's claim. All is well in the Marketplace.

Facebook announced Tuesday in a post on its developer blog that Facebook Connect--its universal-login product used by more than 15,000 third-party sites--is now available in an array of international languages.

"Developers who've implemented Facebook Connect, including those who have installed social widgets like the Fan Box, now have the ability to decide in which language they want their Facebook Connect features rendered," the post by Facebook's James Lezsczenski read. "When a user first connects to your site, or publishes something back to Facebook, the Facebook Connect content will appear in the language you specify. User-generated content continues to appear in the language in which it was written."

Facebook, which now has more than 250 million members around the world, began launching international translations of its site early last year, encouraging users to help translate the social-networking service into their native languages. This is when Facebook's growth around the world really started to speed up.

An investigation by Canada's Privacy Commissioner is concerned that Facebook is only paying lip service to members' privacy, and has called on it to do more.

"It's clear that privacy issues are top of mind for Facebook, and yet we found serious privacy gaps in the way the site operates," commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said in a release Thursday, which explained that the investigation was spurred by a complaint from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).

About 12 million of Facebook's 250 million active users are Canadian.

More specifically, Stoddart expressed concern that while it's easy for members to deactivate their accounts, it's less clear on how to actually delete them. Facebook therefore can retain member data from deactivated accounts for an indefinite period of time, which is in violation of a Canadian privacy law; Stoddart's office's investigation recommended that Facebook designate a time period after which that data is permanently deleted.

The report also suggests that Facebook tighten privacy regulations on its developer platform to ensure that third-party developers can't access too much personal information from the users who have installed their applications.

Here's something interesting from the release: "As a result of the investigation, Facebook has announced a new privacy tool for its site, which is aimed at giving users more control over who gets to see each item on their Facebook page."

Facebook launched those new tools in a conference call with reporters early this month. But the social network did not say at the time that there had been any impetus from lawmakers behind it.

"Facebook is pleased that the Canadian Federal Privacy Commissioner has dismissed most of the inaccurate claims brought by CIPPIC, and that we were able to collaboratively resolve other issues raised in the complaint," a statement from Facebook read. "The Commissioner also recognized, as we do, that privacy and user control on the social web is a new area, which requires websites, users and data protection authorities to work together. Without question, Facebook and the Canadian Privacy Commissioner's Office share the common goal of making the Internet more privacy friendly for Canadians and users across the world."

"As part of our continued leadership in developing privacy tools that advance user control over their information, Facebook will soon be introducing a number of new additional privacy features to its service that we believe will keep the site at the forefront of user privacy and address any remaining concerns the Commission may have," the statement continued. "In the meantime, we will also continue our efforts to work with the Canadian Federal Privacy Commissioner to address the outstanding areas highlighted in the report and will continue our efforts to raise awareness of the privacy controls on Facebook."

This post was updated at 11:04 a.m. PDT with comment from Facebook.

Least surprising news of the day: Facebook has officially grown to 250 million active users across the world, according to a post on the company blog by CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"For us, growing to 250 million users isn't just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world," Zuckerberg wrote. (The post is accompanied by an animation of how Facebook's growth spread around the world, which is pretty cool.)

Facebook announced that it had reached 200 million members barely over three months ago. Then, Facebook commemorated the occasion with the launch of a new nonprofit-focused initiative, Facebook for Good. This time, they're not launching anything fancy, just assuring members that they're continuing to develop and innovate.

"Today as we celebrate our 250 millionth user, we are also continuing to develop Facebook to serve as many people in the world in the most effective way possible," Zuckerberg wrote. "This means reaching out to everyone across the world and making products that serve all of you, wherever you are--whether through Facebook Connect, new mobile products and the other things that we are building."

Interesting that he specifically mentioned mobile development. Facebook's growth explosion as of late has been largely overseas, and some would argue that the next frontier for the massive social network would be to make better inroads into countries where people are more likely to be accessing the Web on a mobile device than on a computer.

Facebook Connect, which lets external sites use Facebook login credentials and some profile data, has been one of the company's most high-profile projects since debuting about a year ago. It's also been a big success, with some reports that the company may build a powerful advertising network around it.

And "other things" likely entail the social network's virtual currency system, a potentially lucrative product that was finally announced after much speculation but has yet to make any kind of formal debut or rollout.

It took about four months for Facebook to go from 150 million to 200 million members, and slightly longer than that for it to grow from 100 million to 150 million.

Also making Facebook-related milestones this week: "The Accidental Billionaires," the factually questionable account of the social network's early days at Harvard, debuted in bookstores on Tuesday and had cracked Amazon's top-100 ranking by the end of the day.

When Twitter rescheduled some planned downtime in order to stay accessible for Iranian users in the midst of political upheaval, it was at the request of the U.S. State Department, according to CNN.

This should not be taken to mean that the U.S. is attempting to get involved at this point, CNN added. The State Department is working with multiple social-networking and communication services to ensure that conversation and information channels stay active.

"By necessity, the U.S. is staying hands-off of the election drama playing out in Iran, and officials say they are not providing messages to Iranians or 'quarterbacking' the disputed election process," the article by CNN's Elise Labott read.

Because the U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Iran, information gathered on the Web is crucial to its understanding of the post-election unrest that has led to mass protests and fatal clashes with police. Twitter, where users have been filtering relevant information with the hashtag #iranelection, has been a crucial hotspot for raw news.

Twitter's planned maintenance, according to a post on the company's official blog, was selected by its hosting partner, NTT America. The update is "a critical network upgrade [that] must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter," however, so it will instead take place this afternoon when it's well after midnight in Iran.

Meanwhile, in a sort of digital twist on that famous scene in The Thomas Crowne Affair, a new viral campaign is going around Twitter: Users from around the world are resetting the location data in their profiles to Tehran, the capital of Iran, in order to confuse Iranian authorities who may be attempting to use the microblogging tool to track down opposition activity.