Facebook Announces Its Own App Store
In a move that should surprise no one but make many developers happy, Facebook today announced a marketplace for finding apps called the App Center. "The App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga," writes Facebook engineer Aaron Brady on the company's Developer Blog. The Center will also include a mobile version, which Brady says is designed to increase the number of mobile apps that use the social network.
The new hub, which will open in the next few weeks, will organize apps by user ratings, an important change from the current "like" system which can favor apps with huge marketing budgets. App makers will also get a dashboard for tracking how people are rating their apps.
Paid apps are also on the way. Until now, Facebook apps have been free, and developers who wanted to make money did so through in-app purchases. The new App Center will feature all apps that meet its guidelines, and developers can sign up for the beta test program from the announcement page.
Google+ Releases Mobile App
In a move that should surprise no one but make many developers happy, Facebook today announced a marketplace for finding apps called the App Center. "The App Center will become the new, central place to find great apps like Draw Something, Pinterest, Spotify, Battle Pirates, Viddy, and Bubble Witch Saga," writes Facebook engineer Aaron Brady on the company's Developer Blog. The Center will also include a mobile version, which Brady says is designed to increase the number of mobile apps that use the social network.
The new hub, which will open in the next few weeks, will organize apps by user ratings, an important change from the current "like" system which can favor apps with huge marketing budgets. App makers will also get a dashboard for tracking how people are rating their apps.
Paid apps are also on the way. Until now, Facebook apps have been free, and developers who wanted to make money did so through in-app purchases. The new App Center will feature all apps that meet its guidelines, and developers can sign up for the beta test program from the announcement page.
Google+ Releases Mobile App
Google is announcing today that it is releasing a mobile app for Google +. The iPhone version is available today, and the Android version will be available "in a few weeks." Writing on the Google blog, Google+ lead Vic Gundotra says the new app doesn't just provide a smaller version of the desktop service. Instead, they're trying to create an app "with sense and soul." The app, he says, includes crisper fonts, larger profile pics, and a friendlier home screen. "We're embracing the sensor-rich smartphone (with its touchable screen and high-density display), and transforming Google+ into something more intimate, and more expressive," Gundotra writes. The app arrives less than a year (11 months) after Google+ first launched.
Etsy Closes $40 Million Funding Round, Plans International Offices
Via the New York Times: Building on sites in French and German, Etsy is pushing forward with its expantion into international territory, with their eye on Canada and Australia among others. The site closed a Series F funding round at $40 million, following the $51 million it collected already. Etsy currently has 15 million members users, and hopes to use offices on the ground to boost its presence in countries where it wants to grow.
PayPal And SoftBank Announce Digital Payments Joint Venture In Japan
Via The Verge, Wall Street Journal: eBay's e-payments arm PayPal is teaming up with Japanese telecom company SoftBank for a new mobile payments venture. Each corporation will invest 1 billion Yen ($12.45 million)in the 50-50 venture called Japan JV. As a side project, SoftBank is planning to hoist cellular base stations on balloons. That'll keep their customers connected even if towers are knocked over during natural disasters.
FBI: Hotel Internet Connections Unsafe
The government agency known as the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) just went public with the news that the FBI is investigating multiple cases of malware installed via hotel internet connections.
According to the IC3, travelers' laptops have been infected with malware after using hotel internet connections--guests logging in to hotel networks were given prompts to update "a widely-used software product." The IC3 did not specify at what hotels or in what countries the attacks took place, but warned that government, private industry, and academic personnel traveling abroad pay special attention to any anomalies on their hotel internet connection.
Anonymous Hits U.K. ISP For Pirate Bay Censorship
Anonymous has hit one of the main U.K. ISPs, Virgin Media, after it became the first ISP in the country to react to a court-ordered censorship of The Pirate Bay, singled out by the legal system for a role in pirating copyright-protected content. The denial-of-service attack successfully took down the company's website for about an hour and Anonymous claimed responsibility in a tweet that ended with the hashtag "OpTPB," a clear indication it was intended as retaliation for Virgin's censorship. But The Pirate Bay itself has reacted angrily to the DDoS attack, noting that this itself amounts to censoring the internet and instead urged supporters to "join or start a pirate party, teach your friends the art of BitTorrent, set up a proxy, write [to] your political representatives, develop a new p2p protocol" or other acts to promote its version of a free Net.
Foursquare CEO and cofounder Dennis Crowley has revealed that his company has serious monetization plans that center on personalized local offers--a transformation for the company from its usual "check-in" game model. Merchants will be able to buy promotions the give users access to coupons--which they can only redeem if they actually check into the location. The service will be able from July, and is an additional attempt to monetize the social sharing actions of its twenty million users. It means Foursquare is competing more directly with Groupon and Yelp, but with a business model that is different from either service, and perhaps better orientated to offering local offers at point of sale when the mobile payment revolution kicks in.
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