Web Searches May Be Predicting the Future

Move over Mystic Meg and Derren Brown, the internet is the next big psychic. more ›››

Facebook To Mimic Twitter? “Subscribe To Your Friend(s)”

We all love the news feed and updates from our friends, specially the close ones (maybe some more than close ones!). But, most absolutely hate updates from the many applications that run on Facebook. Like the ones that say there’s a new black sheep in your friend’s farm!

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SCVNGR to teach Foursquare & Facebook Places a lesson in going back to school?

In mid-September Foursquare announced the rollout its Foursquare for Universities program which: ‘helps students, alumni, and staff connect with each other, find new and interesting things to do, and earn rewards for exploring their campus and nearby areas.’ Foursquare has partnered with 20 universities for the launch with the likes of US universities Harvard, Stanford, Texas and Syracuse already having signed up. Facebook Places also recently launched its own university package, entitled “Universities on Facebook“, which is a ‘return to start’ of sorts for the social network that began as a student only intranet when it was launched in February 2004. Not to miss out on the party other geo-social apps Whrrl and Gowalla have come up with similar schemes. more ›››

Rich Snippets For Google Places

Google yesterday announced incorporation of Rich Snippets for Google Places. In continued efforts by the search giant to gather the world’s information and present the best and most relevant information to its users, rich snippets would soon in the near future become a must as part of an SEO strategy. more ›››

Games on Facebook About to Become Better for Users

Much like Twitter or Marmite, social gaming is not for everyone and those who dislike them can get quite annoyed if any one of the three is forced on them. Likewise, those who enjoy them may be displeased if they are deprived of them for too long. Whichever camp you belong to, games on Facebook are about to undergo an overhaul that should make life much easier.

Up until now, the situation has been weighted heavily towards those who enjoy playing games on Facebook, as the blog post on the subject stated:

“People who use Facebook either tend to tell us that they love playing games or hate them, and we haven’t had the right tools to enable developers to grow their games while at the same time providing a great user experience for non-gamers. We’re building more sophisticated tools that will allow us all to be more successful against those goals.”

According to the blog post, changes to Facebook games include the following:

“Targeting stories based on usage”, meaning that only those already engaged with an application will see stories for it.

And also less annoying for non-users.

“Displaying full game stories”, meaning that Facebook games stories will not be collapsed or aggregated in the News Feed.

“Deploying smarter bookmarks”, meaning that the applications used most will be automatically bookmarked and will reorder themselves based on how often you use each application.

“Displaying more prominent counts”, meaning that outstanding tasks or invitations within a game will be highlighted in a count next to the bookmark.

Not being much of a fan of games on Facebook, the thing that I personally am happiest about is the fact that I will no longer have to endure being peppered with requests to help get the harvest in. And there will no longer be any need for the millions of other people like me to howl in agony and begin deleting any and all Facebook connections that have ever clogged up their feeds with FarmVille….