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Facebook announces new Groups, data portability, application control

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Oct 7, 2010 a 12:12 am

During a press event today, Facebook announced new Groups, which aim to simplify and make social interaction more communal, data portability which sounds like it takes a little of the wall off Facebook's garden, and application control, which should let you better decide who gets your data.

Mashable's got the goods on all of it:

Apple and Facebook continue to pong over Ping

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Oct 1, 2010 a 9:02 am

Facebook CTO Bret Taylor is "very confident" Facebook and Apple will be able to come to terms on integrating Apple's social music network with Facebook's social people network.

Ping launched with Facebook Connect so you could more easily find your friends, but the service was blocked by Facebook and then pulled by Apple, with rumors following the two had been going back and forth over a deal for up to 18 months and Steve Jobs complaining Facebook wanted "onerous" terms.

While Apple improved Ping with iTunes 10.0.1's inclusion of a sidebar and the ability to Ping music you already owned from within iTunes, the service is still off to a rocky start. It remains inaccessible from a web browser when you're away from your desktop iTunes and don't have an iPhone with you (blasphemy, but it could happen), and otherwise still feels like a work in progress.

So here's the question: would heavy Facebook integration make you want to use Ping more?

iPhone live 118: Got voice?

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Sep 23, 2010 a 6:05 pm

Google Voice returns to the App Store and brings some Basic and some Ringtones along for the ride. We're talking Facebook phones, Verizon rumors, Apple buying Faces and Guides, and more. Get social folks, it's iPhone live.

Facebook down

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Sep 23, 2010 a 4:33 pm

Facebook is down. Now don't panic, the world isn't ending, no one forgot to pay the interwebs bill, and no, it didn't catch a bug from the Facebook for iPhone app -- it's just down.

These things happen. Luckily our iPhones can still call people for really real.

Hold to hope, it should be back soon. Let us know when you can access it again in the comments.

Facebook 3.2.3 for iPhone - yet more bug fixes!

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Sep 21, 2010 a 8:24 pm

Facebook 3.2.3 for iPhone and iPod touch has just hit the iTunes App Store and once again, it's all about the bug fixes:

Improved, more streamlined login experience for developers using the Facebook SDK
Fixed a crash when receiving push notifications
Fixed a crash when navigating in Messages
Fixed inconsistent notification counts in notification bar and application badge
Fixed a problem where people would appear twice in Here Now on a Place view
Fixed a problem that could cause the toolbar to not be shown on a Place view

Note: Facebook Places is only available in a limited number of countries. We're working on making this available in other countries soon.

After 18 months of courtship, did Facebook leave Ping at the altar?

By Rene Ritchie, Tuesday, Sep 21, 2010 a 4:21 pm

Apple and Facebook were in discussions for 18 months before ultimately failing to come to terms on integrating the world's most popular social network with Apple's upstart Ping music service.

While we don't know the details of their discussions, it makes sense that Apple may have wanted to build Ping as a music-tracking and sales service on top of Facebook's social graph. This could have allowed Apple to get what it wanted out of the relationship -- more iTunes and iPod sales -- without having to build a social network from scratch.

Facebook is absolutely working on a phone (or they're nuts)

By Rene Ritchie, Monday, Sep 20, 2010 a 10:18 am

Facebook phone was the big internet flurry of the weekend -- are they making one, are they not making one, what does a Facebook phone even mean?

Techcrunch, who claim the Nexus One vindicated their longstanding assertions of a Google phone, now say Facebook is also working a branded device.

Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware.

Facebook Places now in UK. Are you still using it?

By Rene Ritchie, Friday, Sep 17, 2010 a 7:42 am

Facebook Places has gone live in the UK. It lit up in Japan a few days ago as well. No love for Canada or many other countries yet. Still, even in locations where Facebook places has launched, it doesn't seem to have slowed down FourSquare or Gowalla at all.

Is Facebook Places available where you are? Are you using it? If so, let us know how it's been working for you, if not, tell us what's kept you away.

[Thanks English Mike!]

iTunes Ping- Where is the Facebook Integration?

By Chad Garrett, Saturday, Sep 4, 2010 a 8:12 pm

Facebook connect for Ping made a very brief appearance during Steve Jobs' iTunes 10 demo and some early users were able to catch (and use) it to find friends on Apple's new social music network. However, a short time later the Facebook integration was missing. What happened?

As it turns out, Apple was indeed having talks with Facebook to integrate the services on an unspecified level. We have to assume the ability to search and find friends as an absolute minimum requirement for the paring of the two companies (though wouldn't it be great if Apple created its own client that integrated with Facebook and iTunes? Hey, one can dream).

iPhone live podcast 114: What's that guitar mean anyway?

By Rene Ritchie, Thursday, Aug 26, 2010 a 11:10 pm

Apple announces annual special music event for Sept. 1, Jobs says iOS 4 on iPhone 3G is getting fixed, More on LiquidMetal, and Facebook releases 3 updates in a week. And what does that guitar mean anyway? This is iPhone live!