For anyone inside the generation for which AOL was synonymous with the internet, and AIM was prerequisite to any social life at all, some pretty sad news: AOL just sacked its IM team. The old king of chat is paraplegic.

The NYT’s Nick Bilton reports the mass canning:

The AOL Instant Messenger group took the deepest cut so far. A former AOL employee said the group was “eviscerated and now only consists of support staff.” This person, who asked not to be named because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the company, added that “nearly all of the West Coast tech team has been killed.”

Support staff only means no more developers. No more developers means no more new software. No more new software means AIM stops growing and changing forever, frozen on the decline—we’ll never know if the new client could have been great. AOL still somehow hopes to milk “$25 million a year” from tranquilized AIM, but put their business fantasies aside: the staff execution only makes formal what was happening anyway.

AIM was long ago defeated by a pincer attack from Gchat and Facebook—the former is the IM staple for the employed, the latter the golden protocol for students, tweens, and below. Oh, and Twitter happened. AIM was beaten at its own game, overwhelmed by popular new things and too many years of bloated software. There’s nothing particularly surprising here—just sad for those of us who spent so much time with a program. For software that was near mandatory for keeping up with your friends, AIM was kind of a friend itself.

We’re waiting to hear back from AOL for an official statement on AIM’s future, if there is one.

Yahoo has seen some fairly big shakeups within the company recently, and it looks like it’s now also trying another change in tactics. As AllThingsD reports, Yahoo has today filed what’s being described as a “massive” patent infringement lawsuit against none other than Facebook. That suit concerns ten patents in all, which cover everything from advertising and privacy measures to messaging and social networking itself.

As detailed in the complaint (viewable at the source link below), Yahoo alleges that Facebook is infringing on those patents left and right, including in such core features as the News Feed, user profiles, and its advertising methods. Yahoo went on to say in a statement that it has licensed its patents to others but that the “matter with Facebook remains unresolved” and that it’s therefore “compelled to seek redress in federal court,” further noting that it’s “confident” it will prevail.

For its part, Facebook says that it’s “disappointed that Yahoo’s effort to engage with us was limited to a few short phone calls and that we continue to learn of new developments about a long-time partner through the press,” adding that “we will defend ourselves vigorously against these puzzling actions.”

SOURCE via All Things D

Before you’ve even sipped your morning brew, a regional German court has delivered yet another stern judgement affecting a multinational organization. This time it’s Facebook back in the dock over the Friend Finder feature, which uploads a user’s contact list to Zuckerberg’s bunker without proper warning. Another offense involves the ownership of data — any original photo or music track uploaded to Facebook supposedly belongs to the company and can be used however it likes, which has now been deemed to breach data protection laws. Someone ought to add this to the Harvard Student Handbook.

SOURCE via Mac World

FarmVille and CityVille junkies rejoice, as you’ll have an even bigger virtual landscape to grow crops on thanks to the Zynga Platform, or what the company calls “a playground for social games.” As part of the initial roll out, Zynga will debut the beta release of the new platform on Zynga.com. It will serve up not only several popular Zynga titles, but social games created by third party developers like Mob Science, Row Sham Bow and Sava Transmedia.

“We built Zynga.com to give our players more ways to connect with each other and play great social games whether built by Zynga or other talented developers,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO, Zynga. “Together with our platform partners, we look forward to bringing more play to the world on our platform.”

The first set of Zynga titles to be offered on the new platform include CastleVille, Words With Friends, CityVille, Hidden Chronicles and Zynga Poker. The platform itself will consist of social features like zFriends which allows gamers to play with more people outside the Facebook social bubble. There’s also Social Stream for posting requests in real-time, and Live Chat for real-time chattery without having to leave the game “board.”

“Zynga.com was created based on listening to players and understanding what they want and need to make their play time more fun and meaningful,” said Manuel Bronstein, general manager of Zynga.com. “We are excited to give players a way to connect with other people who love to play the same games in a destination that is all and only about games. We will continue to listen to player feedback and provide even better ways for them to connect and play together.”

Not to worry: Zynga isn’t abandoning long-time comrade Facebook. Instead, the new platform sounds more like a Facebook recruiting tool, connecting social gamers to the website who otherwise may have shied away. As Zynga states, the platform is one of the first sites to be “totally integrated with Facebook” as an extension of the companies’ “strong and collaborative” partnership. Players will be able to log in with their Facebook ID and easily play games with their existing Facebook friends, as well as other people who love to play the same games.

When launched later this month, the full-blown Zynga Platform will be available in 16 languages, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Indonesian, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Thai. Then later this year Zynga plans to open the platform up to more third party game developers (other than the current limited few) by releasing an API.

Foursquare’s been quite the active startup lately, adding NFC support for Android 4.0 and releasing its app for the PlayStation Vita. The company isn’t quite done being the mayor of Busyville, though, announcing a switch from Google Maps API to OpenStreetMap data-based MapBox Streets for Foursquare.com. Foursquare cited greater flexibility and support for other startups as reasons for the switch, although it also admits that Google’s decision to start charging for its Maps API spurred the search for an alternative. Meanwhile, a quick check of the Foursquare app still yielded Google Maps results, so it appears the change is limited to the web site for now. Also, no word on whether Foursquare’s awarding MapBox Streets a BFF badge.

SOURCE via Foursquare

Need another watering can to irrigate those crops on your highly-profitable Facebook farm? Soon you may be able to boot that expense directly to your monthly mobile tab, just as you do with other necessities, like ringtones and emoticons. The social networking site is working with carriers to streamline billing, eventually enabling Facebook users to pay their app dues along with their monthly phone bill. Naturally, this is a win for developers, since eliminating the need to pre-purchase Credits or enter card information will result in an increased number of impulse purchases — and let’s face it, there’s no line item for FarmVille in the monthly budget. Quite a few carriers appear to be on board — AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon in the U.S.; Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and Vodafone in Europe; and KDDI and Softbank in Japan — so it looks like devs should have plenty of reasons to celebrate. The service will be automatically activated once providers support it, enabling easier purchases for “hundreds of millions of people worldwide.” Streamlined carrier billing is but one recent development, so hit up the source link for the full rundown.

SOURCE via facebook

HTML5 is supposed to set the web free. Free to deliver and shape online media in any web browser. However, several of the standard’s greatest champions want to be able to restrict the use of audio and video tags through encrypted media extensions. A draft proposal has been submitted by Google, Microsoft, and Netflix to the W3C — the curators of HTML5 — to add encrypted media extensions to the web standard’s spec. The proposed system works using a key-based content decryption system controlled by applications, thusly providing the copy protection that so many content owners desire. Naturally, the proposal specifically states that “no DRM is added to the HTML5 specification” if it’s adopted, but letting apps lock up audio and video content sure sounds like digital rights management to us. However, there’s already some discord amongst the W3C’s members as to whether the proposal will work as promised, so its addition to HTML5 is far from assured. You can read the full proposal at the source below.

SOURCE via W3C

A recent article is heating up the privacy issue with apps again, this time focusing on text message reading via Facebook’s app. A report from the London Sunday Times (paywall) claims that the Facebook mobile app for Android and iOS is accessing personal text messages residing on smartphones. The social website reportedly isn’t denying its actions, saying that the data collection is part of a trial to launch its own messaging service. Even more, when the service actually goes live, users will be prompted to give permission.

“The permission is clearly disclosed on the app page in the Android marketplace and is in anticipation of new features that enable users to integrate Facebook features with their texts,” a spokesman for Facebook said in a statement. “However, other than some very limited testing, we haven’t launched anything yet so we’re not using the permission.”

The overall theme of the article reveals that companies like Facebook and Yahoo are accessing personal information — including text messages and contact lists — and intercepting phone calls without the user’s knowledge. YouTube can reportedly remotely access and operate the users’ smartphone camera to take pictures or videos at any given time. Even more, merely downloading basic apps can leave consumers vulnerable to a plethora of spam and invasive advertising. Read more…

A 55-gallon tub of lube is funny. That’s just science. But when you post to Facebook about it being a funny thing that exists in the world, there’s a chance that your post might get turned into an ad for that specific lifetime supply of hand love enabler, visible to everyone you know.

That’s what happened when Nick Bergus posted about the notorious 55-gallon pleasure tub a while back. He saw it, fired off a joke, and more or less forgot about it. Then this happened:

A week later, a friend posts a screen capture and tells me that my post has been showing up next to his news feed as a sponsored story, meaning Amazon is paying Facebook to highlight my link to a giant tub of personal lubricant.
Other people start reporting that they’re seeing it, too. A fellow roller derby referee. A former employee of a magazine I still write for. My co-worker’s wife. They’re not seeing just once, but regularly. Said one friend: “It has shown up as one on mine every single time I log in.”

That’s equal parts disquieting and hilarious, of course. Actually, no. It’s far more funny than it is alarming to the ‘victim’. And the good thing is, no personal information was disclosed or traded, no one was egregiously harmed, and honestly, the story of how that one time you became the face of the 55-gallon lubricant merchants of the world is worth having to explain a very funny situation to a few confused acquaintances. Just maybe be a little careful about posting about that hilariously shaped dildo you just saw last night, eh?

Facebook wasn’t kidding when it said it wanted to build better backends for the digital world — after sharing the plans for its customized data center, it’s looking to do the same with storage hardware. “We’re taking the same approach we took with servers,” Frank Frankovsky, Facebook’s director of Hardware Design, told Wired. “Eliminate anything that’s not directly adding value.” Frankovsky says they are working on a completely tool-less design, eliminating the need for mounting screws and plastic handles on hot-plug driver carriers. The goal is to get the outfit’s new storage digs to run as efficiently as its previous efforts, streamlining hardware to be more serviceable, cost less and use less energy. The new storage designs are set to debut at the Open Compute Summit in early May, and hopes that sharing the designs will help redefine how storage hardware is made. Check out the source link below for Wired’s in-depth look at the project.

SOURCE via Wired