Google News Launches Facebook Application

NewsCloud writes "Eight days after Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Zeitgeist conference attendees that social networks account for an 'enormous proportion [of Internet usage]...it's a very real phenomenon,' Google News has launched its own Facebook application. Says Google News: 'This experimental application enables users to create custom sections or select from a set of pre-defined topics, then browse and share stories with their friends on Facebook. We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.' Check out Google News on Facebook (requires registration) — or view screenshots."

Still in beta

[r_jensen11]

We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but...

What of Google's isn't in beta?

Re:Depends

[Deltaspectre]

Search and advertising ;)

Google Being Evil

[WED Fan]

Of course, Chinese students who get party approval to post will be outed by Google to the Chinese People Security Bureau, and their parents will have to pay for a 9mm bullet.

Re:Still in beta

[chinkuone]

Would you rather have Excel 2007 ?

Re:Still in beta

[suv4x4]

> We are trying a couple things differently with this application, and it is still in beta, but...

What of Google's isn't in beta?

They lack direction. Their direction used to be better search, now it's just "more ad clicks in more places". The rest of their portfolio appears truly random to me, which it may very well be, as it consists mostly of "20% off time" projects left in the labs, or as early beta, or late beta.

Looks like the 20% time has side effects. Microsoft has been bashed here regularly for its strategy of entering in all markets it possibly can and observing "what sticks", but now Google is in the same situation, even more so.

Some random Google projects, which were abandoned while stuck in perpetual beta status:

Google Gears (the page say "early beta")
Google Video (looks like they recycled some of the tech in YouTube and left the rest stagnate)
Google Talk (what happened to this thing? They virtually abandoned it, and there are some known issues still not fixed in it)
Google Pack (they did an update some time ago, that rips off the look of Vista gadgets, and seems it staled)
Google Accelerator (the ill-received internet accelerator that will cache your password protected pages and share them out).
Google Product Search (former Froogle, now seems quite downplayed, and no development is happening in it. Of course, it's "beta")
Orkut, Picassa, Blogger, SketchUp: what's going on with those, they just bought them /except Orkut/ and sit on them, no development or updates.

Also I always wondered why they work on various improvements in the Labs, like Google Suggest, only to then never push them on the main site (oddly enough the Google search field in Firefox uses Google Suggest).

Re:Still in beta

[hpavc]

Talk is abandoned? News to many people I am sure that use it constantly.

Re:Still in beta

[suv4x4]

Talk is abandoned? News to many people I am sure that use it constantly.

Right, many people. Approximately 44 thousand. That's less than 1% of the market compared to ICQ/MSN/Yahoo/AIM.
There are over 14 million people that use Windows 98 constantly as of yet too, do you take this as a sign MS is very enthusiastic about their Win98 support?

Google Talk still has audio issue on certain machines (confirmed on two of my machines, where Skype worked great), and a bunch of other bugs, like "100% CPU stalling" bug during long conversations. Guess if Google cared, they'd smooth those up by now.

Look at what Google Talk users do:

Google Talk also has several "hacks" or things you can use to enhance your communicational experience. They include making your words italic and bold. Also, many users have found out a way to log in with multiple logins by changing the target of the shortcut.

Huh? Why should people hack Talk to emulate text formatting and multiple profiles.

Re:Still in beta

[smookumy]

Google Talk isn't ready yet. And it won't be ready until it has a list of useless tabs on the side of the contact list, print ads at the bottom of the contact list and chats, and the ability to both violently shake the chat window and fill the chat with just the most obnoxious emoticons.

Re:Still in beta

[colourmyeyes]

I am in grad school, and at least at my school, gtalk is the chat client; it's what AIM was in undergrad a few years ago. Everyone uses it because everyone has a gmail account - if you can check your email somewhere, you can send someone an instant message - no additional browser windows, no proxy issues.

Just my experience, but it has almost entirely replaced AIM for me. Google was smart to build chat into gmail.

Re:

[bigmac13]

Same for me and all the people I used to chat with in college. It used to be all AIM, and now everybody uses GTalk. That 44,000 estimate seems awfully low.

Re:

[ShannaraFan]

I used the Google Talk exclusively. Most of my friends have moved over from the other protocols. For those who haven't, I have my own Jabber server running at home, with the MSN and AIM gateways running. Using XMPP, I can communicate with those stragglers using Google Talk, through my Jabber server. All of my IM conversations take place in the same client (and can even happen within a browser), and all of them are logged in one convenient place.

Re:

[Tim C]

Pretty-much everyone I know uses some sort of IM client or other. I am only aware of one of them who uses Talk.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Talk
Its use is high where people are not stuck with MSN (which means most of the developing countries, except South America where every one uses MSN). As more people start using Google Mail, Google Talk will become more usable.
Google Pack
Why they created this is beyond my understanding.
Orkut
Welcome to Brazil, India, Pakistan... everyone is on Orkut-ing. Orkut is still being developed (and gathers a lot of down-times with a very stupid temporary page which has no information about how long it will tak

Re:

[mgblst]

Yes, but will you concede that there is more than that one person, or who would they talk to.

Googletalk is great, because all you need is a browser. If you have google mail, and most people I know do (but then again, I work in a very smart field of IT), then you already have the only IM client that you will need.

Re:

[SuperQ]

Just about every gmail user is a talk user.. text jabber client, in the browser.

Eh?

[slyborg]

I use Gmail constantly - via POP. I never see the web page or the "text jabber client" whatever that is supposed to mean. It's kind of difficult to generalize, since what everyone does is assume that whatever the 20 people they know well do must be what everyone does, since by their own reference that IS "everyone".

In Brazil, Orkut IS social networking. In the Philippines, Friendster remains popular, If it works well enough, the choice of software largely devolves to whatever the group norm is for individua

Re:Still in beta

[jmauro]

Orkut is actually quite popular with people overseas taking the place of MySpace and Facebook. It's got a huge Brazillian and Indian userbase. In the US it's way behind it's competetors.

Re:Still in beta

[mrdaveb]

Yeah, Orkut is now a big success. There are about a Brazilian people using it

Re:

[The One and Only]

I was using Orkut before I was using Facebook or MySpace. Orkut was great for awhile, but when the Brazilians took over everything was in Portuguese and I just got sick of it.

Re:

[Donniedarkness]

Google Talk's lack of updates makes me sad. It's my favourite messenger, but it seems like they don't care about it anymore. They've made a web-browser based version with soem new functions, but they never imported those to the actual Gtalk client.

Re:

[rm999]

They may lack direction, but that does not matter one bit to them. Nor their shareholders. Nor their users. Remember, they just announced a 1 billion dollar profit for the last quarter. They are still growing...

Their search/advertising is like Microsoft's OS and Office - it is guaranteed to make them *a lot* of money for the foreseeable future - enough to dwarf the cost of these side projects. To the shareholder, the side projects make sense because 1% of them turn into a gmail. To the typical user, these b

Re:

[kisielk]

Google Gears is being added to a number of their applications. It's already in their online newsreader, and rumor has it that it's coming to GMail soon. Google Talk is mine and many people's most used messenger service, and the new flash client released a couple of months back lets you use it in places where you wouldn't be able to use it otherwise. The official client is fairly good apart from some memory leaks, and I can't really think of many other things I'd like to see added to it.

I haven't used most o

Re:

[MrNonchalant]

Google Gears - Relatively recent release, definitely key to bridging online/offline divide.
Google Video - Probably gets killed off or refocused at some point, YouTube is their main entry in that space now.
Google Talk - Big shift away from the downloadable client toward web-based versions, which seem to attract more market share.
Google Pack - Don't really need to do anything with this, except new versions of apps when they update.
Google Accelerator - This I'm pretty sure they've orphaned, for the reasons you

Re:

[rumith]

They lack direction.

Or at least their direction isn't obvious to outsiders like you and me. Google has always been known for keeping their projects secret.

Looks like the 20% time has side effects. Microsoft has been bashed here regularly for its strategy of entering in all markets it possibly can and observing "what sticks", but now Google is in the same situation, even more so.

Agreed on this one. The good thing about Google is its interoperability. Let's just hope it won't be inversely proportional to Google's market share.

Some random Google projects, which were abandoned while stuck in perpetual beta status:
.......

Are you trolling or what?

Google Gears is a pretty recent project, and it's being actively developed. Check out their blog; there's a submission every ten days or so, nevermind the real code that gets written.

Google Talk -

Re:

[Donniedarkness]

Regarding Google Talk--"regularly adding features to both"? You realize that the Gtalk client hasn't been updated since January, right? They've added features to the flash version, though, that aren't in the client. I'm pretty sure they're abandoning it :(

Re:

[rumith]

And ICQ hasn't been updated, AFAIK, since April, while ICQ 5 was released back in 2005 [nearly two years between releases]. Is AOL abandoning ICQ?

Re:

[Donniedarkness]

Well, seeing as how they're focusing on the flash app, and adding new features to it that they haven't announced for the client, things don't look too great for the client.

Re:

[swordgeek]

Their business plan.

Re:

[Donny Smith]

Screw them and their betas.

Someone comes up with something cool, Google copies the idea (Skype, PayPal, Facebook...) and several crappy releases ("betas") later they get it half-right and kill the other guy.

At least MS has ecosystem & partners, these guys are like the aliens from the movie Independence Day. Screw Goo.

Re:Can someone explain

[Anonymous Coward]

As you add friends, you get to see your friend's lists of friends. It's all about the e-stalking.

Re:

[uglyduckling]

There's a very easy way to find out...

Re:

[LordLucless]

At its core, Facebook is primarily a system for establishing relationships between accounts. You can sign up and set all sorts of properties on your profile - what school you went to, year you graduated, area you live, places you've worked etc. You can then search in those areas and find other people who match - old schoolmates, old colleagues, old neighbours, that sort of thing. Because it's gotten so big, it works fairly well - I signed up, and almost straight away found a bunch of old school mates I hadn

Re:

[tehcyder]

You can then search in those areas and find other people who match - old schoolmates, old colleagues, old neighbours, that sort of thing.

Yes, I've lost count of the number of times I've thought to myself "if only I could trace that particularly unpleasant boss I used to have and burn his house down now that a sufficient number of years have passed to make me an unlikely suspect."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people who use facebook are relatively intelligent. some people like to look at the news...
Facebook clientel definitely have a higher ~IQ than those of Bebo or myspace.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, it's just the MySpace give uses more chance to show off their IQ than Facebook. It's like what Jeff Foxworth says about people in the South, "They're as smart as everyone else, but they somehow cannot keep the dumbest ones off the television."

Re:

[owlnation]

Most people who use facebook are relatively intelligent. some people like to look at the news... Facebook clientel definitely have a higher ~IQ than those of Bebo or myspace.

Hmmm... that depends entirely on how you look at intelligence...

I grant you that there are possibly more university students on Facebook than MySpace -- is that truly a measure of intelligence?

Certainly for the creative arts Facebook is absolutely worthless. I'm a filmmaker. To network with other filmmakers artists and musicians

Re:

[linuxrocks123]

People like you are why I very loudly make known my opinion that the liberal and fine art disciplines form the world's largest conglomeration of BS.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook clientel definitely have a higher ~IQ than those of Bebo or myspace.

Yes, their IQs are in the low 90s.

Re:

[Seumas]

Really, it's pretty difficult to explain anything in the world of self-involved, attention-whoring, navel-gazing, self-congratulatory social networks.

Orkut?

[jmauro]

Will this application be compatable with Orkut [orkut.com]? Google's own social networking/Facebook site?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, is it written in Brazilian Portuguese?

Again FUNWALL! Vampires!`

[rueger]

Boy, I am pissed. I have submitted Funwall [facebook.com] as a Slashdot story FIVE times, and Vampires [facebook.com] SIX times, and have been rejected every time. Who do you have to sleep with around here to get Facebook apps posted as stories??

Re:

[Xgamer4]

Google.

Re:

[BagOBones]

Vampires is barely notable in any aspect and fun wall... well it is just the wall with more crap on it.

Google (giant popular company) integrating its services with Facebook IS news.

Oblig.

[fmarkham]

*whoosh*

Re:

[rueger]

Oh yeah!.....

Re:Again FUNWALL! Vampires! (need options)

[commodoresloat]

Who do you have to sleep with around here to get Facebook apps posted as stories??

If you're going to post a poll, you need to include the options:

• Larry Page
• Steve Wozniak
• Larry Ellison
• Steve Ballmer
• CowboyNeal

Epic 2015

[Troed]

... following the path predicted by many, and nicely depicted in this short flash movie called "Epic 2015" [albinoblacksheep.com]. We're indeed seeing the death of news as we know it. How does it feel to become a tiny part of the global consciousness?

Re:Epic 2015

[Aladrin]

"The death of X as we know it" isn't always a bad thing. Here's a few things that had that happen:

Entertainment
Construction
Travel
Communication
Mathemetics
Geography

All of these things are done -way- different than 100 years ago. Very few aspects of any of them could be considered worse off. Why is 'news' not the same? We used to be restricted to gossip, then the reach of the local printed paper, then the reach of the radio and television... Now the internet lets everyone communicate with everyone and self-style journalists (bloggers) can disseminate information with little or no cost to themselves. China has proven how hard it is to censor the internet and exactly how free information really is.

Re:

[Joe Tie.]

That video could have saved a lot of time by just having a frame or two saying "Hey, remember how Hiro made money in Snowcrash? I wonder if that might happen."

Re:

[NoPantsJim]

The death of news as we know it? Does that mean no more corporate controlled media that is now run as a for profit business rather than a loss-leader based on quality reporting? No more ridiculously biased reporters/stations or totally fucked up talking heads like O'reilly? No more news outlets taking 3+ years to grow a pair and stand up to the Bush administration?

Boy that sure will suck, I can see why you're worried.

Re:

[Troed]

If I came off as worried that was most definitely not my intention ;)

Re:

[NoPantsJim]

Roger that. It's just that whenever I see that Google 2015 flash video I just imagine conspiracy theorists yelling out "Oh no!!! we must stop teh Google!!!"

Makes my eyes hurt

[Aminion]

[rant]

As a new Facebook user, I'm surprised by the mess and disorganization that applications on Facebook cause. Reading other peoples' profiles is like participating in psychological experiments with lots of graphics and widgets competing for your attention. And don't get me started on regurgitated content such as "Only great minds can read this This is weird, but interesting!", vampire fights, yes or no apps, etc.

Here's hoping that Google application implementation won't suck.

[/rant]

Re:

[moosesocks]

Facebook used to be great -- a prime example of exactly how you want to build a website. They knew their purpose, and the satisfied that purpose well. Their forays into other areas that were relevant also proved to be a considerable success, photo sharing being the most obvious example. Events were also revamped to the degree where they were actually useful (and of course, they're quite relevant to Facbook's original goals)

As time went on, they grew too greedy. Their "blogging" and "bookmark sharing" co

Re:

[Troed]

anyone wanting either feature was already on digg, del.icio.us, livejounal, etc...

vs

The App platform in one fell swoop eliminated every single competitive advantage Facebook once had, and completely erased its identity

When people ask me why I like Facebook my answer is just BECAUSE it's such a great "Web 2.0" aggregator. My Facebook profile lists my Wordpress blog, my del.icio.us bookmarks, my Last.fm music, my latest Jaiku and my Flickr pictures.

That is, exactly the opposite to your objection above, and it

Zeitgiest

[sh3l1]

Google seriously needs to get some SEO help... [google.com]

What about this isn't like AOL?

[foniksonik]

Back in 1995 AOL hit the net... it was an internally connected set of pages that covered everything you might want...with buddies, chat rooms, 'social networking', exclusive content (not public on the 'internet') and more.... I just don't see the difference between that experience and Facebook or MySpace or what have you. Their system is proprietary, your 'networks' only apply while on the site, logged in, consuming their advertising selection, logging your interests to their tracking systems and any conten

Re:

[swordgeek]

What you say may be true, but...

Oh, wait--there's no "but." You're right. One could argue that the lack of closed protocols is the key difference, but fundamentally I have to ask, "so what?"

"just a big waste of time and energy that all goes to pay a few people mega salaries and a bunch of other people mediocre salaries."

Yep. Exactly.

"It also accomplishes nothing for the greater good, it's worse than a sitcom or American Idol."

Well now, it provides as much entertainment as those 'fine' venues for humiliation

Well hopefully

[cmacb]

"but we think that it adds value to the Facebook experience and to users' overall news experience.'"

Something needs to add value. The S/N ratio on Facebook is pretty horrible. At least none of my friends, or groups I've joined, etc. are doing anything beyond tinkering with it.

If they want to get serious about being a useful TOOL rather than TOY, I'd say the first step would be to give every Facebook user an e-mail address that can be used to communicate with the outside world (both ways). While I might n

Re:

[fmarkham]

What many people misunderstand is that the S/N ratio on Facebook is the value add. The ability to consume your friends "news" of totally useless crap like Vampires, semi-useless crap like status updates and marginally useful crap like events and photos is the value of Facebook. Its a way of being connected to your social group without leaving your chair, because, in meatspace, most social interaction is also "useless crap". The ability to provide a centralised and reasonably private way of sharing this s

fmail

[hey]

There's a facebook app called fmail that let you access your gmail inside facebook - makes NO sense to me
but its seems to have lots of users.

Can I toss in a plug for my facebook app ... http://apps.facebook.com/mycliques [facebook.com]
Automatically groups your friends.

Applications ruined Facebook

[Naelok]

Facebook used to be interesting because it was semi-useful. Then suddenly the option to add applications appeared and now whenever I look at someone's profile, I get bombarded with all manner of stupid crap ("Adopt a pet!" "Pirates vs. Ninjas!" "Superpoke!"). Facebook profiles aren't quite the eyesore that their Myspace equivalents are (yet), but they've become so filled with stupid garbage that I don't want to look at them. So yeah, thanks Google for doing your part to help destroy what was once a fairly

News??

[uigrad_2000]

How is this listed as news?

When Yahoo! released a wiki-like facebook app (mash.yahoo.com), it wasn't listed here as story. It launched with all kinds of rss feed modules that can be drag and dropped around the profile.

By the way, there are 28 yahoo rss applications [facebook.com] on facebook, including news, weather, messenger plugin, and music player. I know I'll be crucified for saying it, but I think that slashdot staff are google whores.