Would you pay for an Ad-Free Premium Facebook Service?

Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone started using Facebook as he mentions on a Medium post, and after having used Facebook for a while he had a thought…

“They could offer Facebook Premium. For $10 a month, people who really love Facebook (and can afford it), could see no ads. Maybe some other special features too. If 10% percent of Facebook signed up, that’s $1B a month in revenue. Not too shabby”

Facebook recorded $7.87bn in revenue for 2013 (not a bad money maker), however this would be a far cry from the possible $12 billion they could make a year due to Stone’s subscriptions plan, which is similar to that of Spotify and Pandora who remove ads as a premium service. This would then be on top of what they would make from the ads running as per normal.

What is also interesting to note, does Stone think Twitter should have a premium ad free system to remove the promoted trends and tweets?

Should users have to pay for an ad free social media experience? After all Facebook is the one who filled our screen with the ads in the first place.

So the question is would you ever pay to have an ad free Facebook experience?

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China's Alibaba Complains of Blackmail by Media Organisation

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which is preparing for its US initial public offering (IPO), on Friday claimed it was being blackmailed by a media organisation which runs a business magazine.

The company said it has approached police after the media outlet, which remains unnamed, asked the e-commerce giant to pay $300,000 for a research report against it to be dropped.

The research is allegedly based on negative reports from a domestic weekly and comments by individuals online, Alibaba said in a statement.

Police in Hangzhou city, where the company is based, registered a case on Monday, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

The company is currently in the quiet period before its much-anticipated IPO and go public on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO has been postponed until September, according to the latest reports.

Alibaba welcomes supervision from the mass media, but it will not tolerate acts that go beyond the legal boundaries, said Jack Ma, founder and chairman of the company.

The statement did not disclose the media institution's name, but insiders speculated it referred to a Huangzhou-based business magazine.

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Facebook to challenge Amazon soon?

Houston: After making billions connect socially on its network, Facebook is testing a new feature designed to let users buy products directly from ads and posts on its news feed.

"With this feature, people on desktop or mobile can click the 'Buy' call-to-action button on ads and Page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving Facebook," the post reads.

In an image of what this feature looks like, a 'Buy' button sits in the bottom right corner of the ads that users normally see as they scroll through their Facebook news feeds.

This feature is currently in its test phase, so it is being used only for a few small and mid-size businesses in the US.

The "Buy" option will be available for specific products on Facebook's site and mobile app starting Thursday.

The announcement came Thursday on the company's 'Facebook for Business' blog, a resource for businesses that use Facebook to market their products.

Facebook has previously tried to enable purchasing on its site, but with little success, reports say.
'Facebook Credits', for example, was a virtual currency that allowed users to make purchases within games, one US dollar was equal to 10 Facebook Credits.

While this feature was disbanded in 2012, it has since been replaced by Facebook Game Cards that let users "buy items" in their "favorite games and apps."

Facebook had said earlier this year that it would avoid a direct purchasing feature on its news feed.
But Facebook is now feeling the pressure to compete with sites like Twitter, which recently released a 'buy now' button that lets users buy items directly from paid-for tweets and the online mega-giant Amazon, which packs its devices with features that take the users directly into the Amazon Store, compelling them to make purchases in the moment.

However, the nature of purchasing something with a simple tap on a screen, has recently come under scrutiny.

A federal lawsuit filed against Amazon last week alleges that the online retailer took in millions of dollars through in-app payments by unsuspecting children.

In the case, the Federal Trade Commission is contending that parents were unknowingly billed for charges made by their children while playing games that required actual currency which appeared to be part of the game and seemed no different than the games' play currency.

To assuage the concerns of privacy by its more than 1.2 billion users, Facebook says no credit or debit card information users share will be given to advertisers.

"We have built this feature with privacy in mind, and have taken steps to help make the payment experience safe and secure," the post reads.

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'Game of War' Mobile Game Maker Looking at $3 Billion Valuation

Machine Zone Inc, the developer of popular mobile game "Game of War: Fire Age," is in talks with JPMorgan Chase & Co to raise funding that could value the company at more than $3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The expected valuation would make the Palo Alto, California-based company one of the biggest startups in the world in terms of market cap, the report said.

Machine Zone is expected to raise about $250 million in a private placement, Bloomberg News reported, citing a person with knowledge of the company.

The company, launched in 2008 as a dating app developer, renamed itself as Machine Zone in 2012 and shifted its strategy to focus on mobile games, according to the Journal.

"Game of War" is known for its built-in translator that helps multiple players across the world interact online without language barriers.

Machine Zone is trying to raise private funding months after a weak market debut by mobile game developer King Digital Entertainment Plc, dashing hopes that its coming-out party could revive investor interest in the mobile gaming industry.

King's IPO price of $22.50 valued the company at about $6 billion.

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Chrome 36 Released for Desktop and Android, Brings Minor Changes

Google on Wednesday announced the stable build of Chrome 36 for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems, as well as for Android.
Chrome 36 (version 36.0.1985.125) for desktop can be updated from the browser or can be manually downloaded from its website. For Chrome 36 (version 36.0.1985.122) on Android, Google said that users will to wait as the update will be available in Google Play over the next few days, though it is now listed on Google Play India.

The Chrome update for desktop contains a number of fixes and stability improvements. The changelog details that the design of Incognito/Guest NTP has been updated, but no further details have been provided. It appears as if only the new incognito tab design has been changed, giving the same warnings in a new cleaner white-background layout. Chrome 36 also adds a 'browser crash recovery bubble', brings improvements to Rich Notifications, and also introduces the Chrome App Launcher for Linux.

Google says it has also fixed around 26 security issues with Chrome 36 update that were particularly known or were either contributed by external researchers. Users can also contribute by fling a bug on Chromium page.

Additionally from a Google+ post, the company has also informed that it has brought developer features from Chrome 36 beta to its stable Chrome 36 update, such as "HTML Imports, Object.observe() and more".

For Chrome 36 for Android, the changes are quite minimal. Along with the bug fixing and performance improvements, the Chrome 36 browser for Android has brought improved text rendering for non-mobile optimised sites. Google also says that now doodles have been brought back to the new tab page. The bug fixing update also includes fixes to address issues from OpenSSL 1.0.1h, an Undo tab close option, full-screen video playback with subtitles and HTML5 controls, and support for multi-window and Chromecast.

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Social Technology – The Connected Workspace

Social technology is dominating the world, everybody knows what Facebook and Twitter are, and most people have an account there. Now-a-days even most businesses have some sort of social technology involved in their business. Research from McKinsey Global Institute from late 2012 put the figure at 72% – 72% of business report using social technology within their business, that’s a huge percentage of companies. But, McKinsey also found out how much potential we have failed to unlock with social technologies, and the numbers are very surprising.

With so much potential still to unlock, the great success and results that businesses are already seeing from social technologies are just the start, and there is a lot more we could do to utilize these new technologies to their full potential.

Current State of Social Tech in the Workplace:

 72% of businesses report using social technology within their company

But, only 3% of those 72% are seeing substantial benefits from their efforts

Productivity could be improved by up to 25% in some workers through the use of social technology

Collaboration is improved by up to 66% in businesses who have implemented social technology

Using social technologies to replace conventional methods of business could save thousands of dollars and hours of time, for example by using free phone conferencing services instead of conventional meetings, or messaging services for marketing instead of manual one-by-one marketing which is very time-consuming

The Connected Workspace Infographic:

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How U.S. College Students Use their Technology [Infographic]

Sometimes it helps to see the numbers behinds the trends to confirm popular assumptions. In this case, Onlinecolleges.net assembled an infographic to help digest technology usage— all from student perspectives.

Most of the numbers are obvious— 87 percent say their laptop is the most important piece of tech and 78 percent say wi-fi is crucial to academic success.

But wait, it gets more interesting in items five [Most important sites] and six [Social Networking in Academic success]. Google beats Wikipedia, and Facebook beats academic-focused social networks. The crucial question is, “Why?” Could it be that Facebook was already built for college students by college students? If you have thoughts, drop us a comment or email. But for now, on to the pretty picture:

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Google | Orkut departure adds another project to Google’s kitty of exits

Orkut departure adds another project to Google’s kitty of exits

Within a month of people bidding goodbye to the iconic Ambassador car, the time has come for good old Orkut to depart forever. The original social networking site that once had a huge collection of scraps and photographs is being phased out by Google due to lack of takers.

Orkut was launched early in 2004, the same year that Facebook, now the world’s No 1 social network with 1.28 billion users, was founded.

Google has announced that it will shut down Orkut, which is widely used in Brazil and India but hasn’t caughton more broadly across the rest of the world, on September 30 to focus on its other social networking initiatives.

Orkut may have lost its popularity battle against Facebook, but Google’s original social network was bigger than Facebook in emerging markets such as Brazil and India just a couple of years ago. According to comSCORE, until December 2011 Orkut was the most popular social network in Brazil.

Less than two years later, Facebook’s lead was so far ahead that it had a 74% market share compared with Orkut’s 0.97%, states a report by eMarketer.

Orkut’s growth and popularity did not last long, as Facebook emerged as a powerful social networking tool for millions. Facebook was created by a college student — the famous Mark Zuckerberg — for other college students, which emerged as a site that not only connects teenagers to friends, but other students, their families and even their favorite TV shows, movies, and stores.

Facebook also launched separate profile pages for businesses, allowing them to create events and fan pages for their current and potential consumers. Facebook transformed as a platform where programmers can create applications and games on it, that allow users to spend most of their time in the same platform without shifting to other websites.

While some may mourn over Orkut’s silent departure, Google dropping its services is not a huge surprise. Over the years the search giant has axed many of its services to create room for expanding newer projects.

In 2013-2014, Google discontinued Google Schemer (2011-2014), Google Reader (2004-2013), IGoogle (2005-2013) and Google Postini Services (2007-2013).

Last year, on July 1, many users were left unhappy and clueless when Google deactivated its Reader services. Google Reader was an RSS/Atom feed aggregator operated by Google. It was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell and launched on October 7, 2005, through Google Labs. Google Reader grew in popularity to support a number of apps which used it as a platform for serving news and information to people.

Prior to this Google has also dropped Google Health (2008-2012), Google News Badges (2011-2012), Google Buzz (2010-2011) etc.

Thanks.

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Freedom Wars: New Details on Play Station(PS) Vita’s Upcoming Action RPG

Freedom Wars: New Details on PS Vita’s Upcoming Action RPG

It’s my distinct honor to bring you more information regarding one of the biggest PS Vita titles you’ll see this year – Freedom Wars! The futuristic action game launched last week in Japan, so we wanted to bring a few more details to our North American “Prisoners.”

Those who were able to visit the PlayStation booth at E3 might have had a chance to play our multiplayer co-operative demo – thanks to all who stopped by! I saw a lot of expert thorn-wielders soaring across the skies of the Panopticon, sawing Abductors apart and saving civilians to decrease their 1 million year sentence of penal servitude, and I must say, I was very impressed. However, the one recurring question I continue to hear from the community is – “How’s the story?” Well, let’s take a peek:

Freedom Wars promises intense co-op action with a captivating storyline. I’d like to leave you today with a message from our Japan Studio Producer, Junichi Yoshizawa. Yoshizawa-san has been tirelessly promoting Freedom Wars throughout Japan across the past few months, so I asked him to share a few words with the community:

Last week, we were finally able to release Freedom Wars in Japan. To celebrate the successful launch, I wanted to take a moment to write a message to our eager fans in North America.
Freedom Wars is a title I created to realize a dream of mine. My vision was to develop a PS Vita game that took advantage of the handheld system’s unique features, enabling gamers to come together via ad-hoc and Wi-Fi to overcome terrifying enemies. PlayStation has a storied legacy of creating innovative experiences and our collective goal was to create a Vita game that brought gamers together in a socially connected, location-based, co-op experience.

In order to do that, I gathered a number of well-known developers with an impressive pedigree for creating some of Japan’s most beloved titles – developers Shift and Dimps. These two developers both produce high-quality, interesting titles, but in this case I wanted to utilize both of their strengths, so I asked Shift to be in charge of game design, character design and story, while Dimps handled programming, graphics and direction.

Click here to see the full gallery

The collaboration between these two developers has been wonderful and the “Freedom Wars” that they have helped create has three distinct strengths:

The first is the outrageous world and story, where prisoners are bound by 1 million years of penal servitude for the sin of “living” and need to fight for their freedom.

The second is a new game where the goal isn’t to just defeat your enemy, but to save people from your defeated enemies and create a multiplayer experience where you can clearly divide up responsibilities among your teammates.
The third is a ranked competition where players can contribute to the areas they actually live in and battle on behalf of their own “city state.”

With the coordination of each of these pillars, we created Freedom Wars – a testament to our collective vision of delivering a frenetic, co-op action game that we believe will please the Western community when it launches later this year.

Take care!

Abhishek Singh

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