Facebook's Gmail Killer : Project Titan

       Facebook has reportedly sent out invitations for a special invite-only event to be held on November 15 at St. Regis Yerba Buena Terrace in San Franscisco, US. Michael Arrington, founder and co-editor of TechCrunch is betting that Facebook will unveil a new web-based email client codenamed Project Titan at this event. Internally, Project Titan is referred as "Gmail Killer" and is said to bring email address backed by @facebook.com domain name. Do you think Facebook can take over something as big as Gmail? Well, probably not but read on.

      Earlier this month, Google had updated its API Terms of Service that allowed easy export as well as import of Contacts to a service or application only if the same is reciprocated. In a way, Google shut down Facebook's access to pull contacts from Gmail to protect the user data. To battle that, Facebook came up with a work around to download Gmail contacts as CSV files and then upload it to Facebook. Google wasn't happy with Facebook's move and criticized Facebook for not letting users get their Friend Lists and email addresses out of Facebook.
 
      This is not the first time both companies stood against each other for Friends/Contacts exchange matters. Back in 2008, Facebook suspended Google Friend Connect as the latter started re-distributing user information from Facebook to other third party developers without any user knowledge. Looks like that wound didn't heal even after more than two years have passed. But in a way, Google is correct for not letting a service simply take away Gmail contacts and not offering something in return to Google. All Google is asking Facebook to do is to let users pull out Contacts and Friends from Facebook to Gmail. Practice what you preach.

 

       Now, to respond back to Google and kill the whole data protection issue, Facebook is rumored to launch its own email service with @facebook.com domain. It's pretty unlikely to kill Gmail but if Facebook launches its own email service, it would be interesting to see how other popular web-mail service providers react.

      Facebook chat integration in several mobile apps has certainly made many Facebook users happy. But when Facebook Chat is used in the web interface, it's not that comfortable to use. Though the invitation obviously points that a new email/messaging service is on the anvil, I think Facebook might give a facelift to its Chat service. A much deserved facelift for users who have thousands of known and unknown friends. If Facebook chat is revamped with the ability to share photos, links and files, it will actually lead to loads of users remaining logged into Facebook for longer hours.

      However, as of now, we have no confirmation on Facebook's deal. We've got to wait till November 15 for Facebook's official announcement.

Mark Zuckerberg : Youngest Billionaire In The World

 Mark Zuckerberg

 

   Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) is an American entrepreneur and software developer best known for creating the social networking site Facebook, of which he is CEO and president. It was co-founded as a private company in 2004 by Zuckerberg and classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes while they were students at Harvard University. In 2010, Zuckerberg was named Time magazine's Person of the Year.

Harvard years

By the time he began classes at Harvard, he had already achieved a "reputation as a programming prodigy," notes Vargas. He studied psychology and computer science and belonged to Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity. In his sophomore year, he wrote a program he called CourseMatch, which allowed users to make class selection decisions based on the choices of other students and also to help them form study groups. A short time later, he created a different program he initially called Facemash that let students select the best looking person from a choice of photos. According to Zuckerberg's roommate at the time, Arie Hasit, "he built the site for fun." Hasit explains:

We had books called Face Books, which included the names and pictures of everyone who lived in the student dorms. At first, he built a site and placed two pictures, or pictures of two males and two females. Visitors to the site had to choose who was "hotter" and according to the votes there would be a ranking.

The site went up over the weekend, but by Monday morning the college shut it down because its popularity had overwhelmed Harvard's server and prevented students from accessing the web. In addition, many students complained that their photos were being used without permission. Zuckerberg apologized publicly, and the student paper ran articles stating that his site was "completely improper."

At the time of Zuckerberg's "fun" site, however, students had already been requesting that the university develop a web site that would include similar photos and contact details to be part of the college's computer network. According to Hasit, "Mark heard these pleas and decided that if the university won't do something about it, he will, and he would build a site that would be even better than what the university had planned."