Facebook to annouce “awesome” new feature at press event this week
Facebook To Announce “Awesome” New Feature At Press Event Next Week
TechCrunch is reporting this event will announce browser-based video chat on Facebook using Skype. If true, and depending on what shows up, it may steal some of Google+’s thunder around the social platform’s excellent Hangout video chat feature.
Facebook will launch a new video chat product, powered by Skype, that works in browser. Suddenly those chat icons in the invitation have a lot more meaning.
The product has been built on Skype and will include a desktop component. It’s not clear to me whether that means it will just work if a user has Skype already installed on the computer, or if additional software will need to be downloaded even if the user already uses Skype. But it’s clear that there’s very deep integration between the products, and from the user’s perspective, the product will be an in browser experience.
Facebook and Skype have already been working together, including integration of various Facebook features into the Skype service.
But this is something else entirely. The partnership could substantially increase Skype usage. Facebook has more than 750 million active users. Currently Skype has just 170 million. And it will certainly help Facebook become even stickier for users as they start to have voice and video chat as an option to communicate.
Google+ “Pages” Coming For Businesses
Where are the Google+ company “Pages” for brands, something similar to Facebook’s “Fan Pages?” They’re coming apparently.
Right now it’s pretty tough to make Google+ work for companies. Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land had some choice words for Google about the challenges of setting up company pages currently. The prompted this response from one of the chief architects of Google+, Bradley Horowitz:
Let me be clear – and I’m sorry if this wasn’t obvious – we are not currently supporting brands, organizations, and non-human entities in the Google+ field trial. While we should have been clearer about this, there are some fields in the registration form (asking for a first name, a last name, an age and a gender) that indicate that.
Supporting these non-human entities is an obviously great feature – we have no allergy to it at all! It’s just not part of the system we are currently testing.
The field trial has limitations that I know are frustrating – ranging from lack of “obvious” features to inability to invite the people you most want to share with… We weren’t kidding when we said this was early and a test… and if the product leads to more frustration than you can bear, then that’s understandable and I promise that you will see fast and meaningful progress… and you can jump back in when we meet your bar for minimum viable functionality.
Official: The Google Wonder Wheel Is Gone
A Google spokesperson has informed Search Engine Land that the Google Wonder Wheel feature has been taken offline.
The spokesperson said that the search tool was removed due to the “initial stage” of the Google site redesign announced earlier this week.
The Google Wonder Wheel along with a number of other search refinements were formally introduced at the 2009 Searchology event but actually became available as part of a test a couple of months earlier.
Wonder Wheel was used by SEOs, SEMs, and advertisers as a way to visually identify relationships between a search term(s) and related searches using the Google database. As you moved from one set of terms to another results would change.
It could help this user group discover related keywords and ideas to explore for possible purchase as AdWords or for further exploration.
