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Facebook's $1B revenues: Now keep it up

Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That's an increase from the same publication's estimate of $700 million last year.

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.

(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn't disclose its financials.)

What can Facebook credit this big jump in … Read more

MP3 Insider 183: Facebook fake out (podcast)

This week, Microsoft finally launches the long-awaited Facebook app for the Zune HD, but it's wrought with bugs and naturally, the MP3 Insiders have a few things to say about that. Also, Donald mulls over the depressing fact that people are downloading less music from both P2P and legitimate music stores, while Jasmine attempts to offer solace in the form of speculation that music has always been around and will continue to be. Finally, we take a look at a disappointing new Archos product and a cool new remote accessory for the iPod and iPhone, and compare both to the excellence that is Sonos.

Subscribe in iTunes audio | Subscribe in iTunes video | Subscribe in RSS audio | Subscribe in RSS video… Read more

Hi5 to support Facebook games

Hi5, a social network that changed its focus to gaming relatively recently, announced Tuesday that it's built some code so that Facebook application developers can transport their creations to Hi5's platform with minimal effort. It's specifically targeting game developers, so that some of the smash-hit games built on Facebook can now wind up on Hi5.

This may sound familiar: Bebo, the social network eventually acquired by AOL, announced a similar plan to accept Facebook apps late in 2007, but it's unclear as to the extent it was actually executed.

"As a leading game distribution platform, … Read more

Zune HD gets Facebook app, finally

In what can only be described as the most anticlimactic app release known to mankind, the Facebook app for Zune HD is now available. Originally promised to arrive by the end of 2009, the fabled Zune HD Facebook app has maintained a Yeti-like elusiveness.

Was it worth the wait? Not hardly. An app would need to lay laser-shooting golden eggs to be worth six months of prolonged anticipation. Fortunately, just like Microsoft's Twitter app (which actually arrived in December), the Facebook app is free to download and contains no advertising.

Like any Facebook app worth its salt, the new … Read more

Heartless Web scam leaves brides at the altar

I have to fly to the hallowed depths of Texas in a couple of days in order to be at the marriage of the noted musician and Web designing guru Parker Todd Brooks to someone far smarter.

So I have immediate knowledge of how seriously people still take these wedding things. These are the occasions where hope triumphs over experience, if only for a day.

My neural ecosystem is, therefore, filled with a searing anguish on hearing about the Boston 411 Bridal & Home Show 2010. It's not that brides will be forced to mud-wrestle each other for a … Read more

Buzz Out Loud Podcast 1174: Pregnant robot drones

In and amongst our fights over Facebook patents, TV spectrum and the reasons for the decline of music, we find time to agree on one thing. Robot drones are cool. Robot drobnes that carry little baby drones with them are even cooler.

Subscribe with iTunes (audio) Subscribe with iTunes (video) Subscribe with RSS (audio) Subscribe with RSS (video) EPISODE 1174

Where virtual worlds once ruled, FarmVille dominates

Almost every week for the last few years, it seems, I've gotten a press release or a pitch touting some company's great new Facebook games network or kids' virtual world.

And why not? Companies like Zynga and Playfish are making money hand over fist with their collections of massively popular social games, and 2D Flash games aimed at children like Club Penguin, Webkinz, Habbo Hotel, and others have garnered vast amounts of virtual world investment dollars in recent years.

But to someone who cut his virtual world teeth on more immersive, 3D environments like There and Second Life, these never-ending announcements of new companies trying to jump on the social gaming bandwagon have left me with one nagging question: Where is the innovation?

To find the answer, one has only to do what investigative journalists were always trained to do: follow the money. But while Facebook games like FarmVille and Who Has the Biggest Brain, and social worlds for kids or teens like Gaia Online make financial sense, they aren't all that satisfying intellectually.

After all, while Second Life had no end of technical problems and was about as inviting to mainstream audiences as obscure European philosophy, it had a complex economy, a deep social structure, sophisticated politics and always seemed, to me, at least, as the jumping off point for truly groundbreaking technology.… Read more

Obscenity-laden e-mail leads to Facebook boycott

Some e-mails are not suitable for opening in the workplace, and then there are e-mails not suitable for sending from the workplace.

This must be the difficult lesson for Steven Payne, a vice president (at last word) of Evergreen Entertainment. Payne's company operates a chain of movie theaters, including the St. Croix Falls Cinema 8, in St. Croix Falls, Wis. Recently, a patron of the movie theater wrote a letter to the company complaining about the experience she and her husband and another couple had during a showing of "Shutter Island."

Sarah Kohl-Leaf of Taylors Falls, Minn., … Read more

Facebook to developers: Get ready for Credits

Facebook's virtual currency, "Facebook Credits," is getting very close to its full launch: a post on the Facebook developer blog explains some of the full terms of the system and what developers can expect as the currency continues to roll out slowly.

"Today more than 500,000 applications exist on Facebook, and the virtual goods within those applications (particularly games) have become an increasingly valuable part of the user experience," the post explained. "By providing a single, cross-application currency, our goal is to [make] transactions simpler for users, leading to a higher conversion rate … Read more

Bug causes Facebook messages to misfire

An unknown number of Facebook users had their messages sent to the wrong people for a while on Wednesday after a computer problem, the social-networking company said Thursday.

"During our regular code push yesterday evening, a bug caused some misrouting to a small number of users for a short period of time," a Facebook spokesperson said in an e-mail statement. "Our engineers diagnosed the problem moments after it began and worked diligently to get everything back in its rightful place. While they fixed the issue, affected users were not be able to access the site."

The … Read more