A funny thing happened on the way to my home page…. They changed it!  Well, kind of-sort of.  When I open up MSN.com on my development PC, this is what I see. It’s much brighter than its predecessor and easier to navigate. In addition, it has added some cool social media integration into the lower right hand corner.

Not only will it show my Windows Live, Facebook, and Twitter feeds, but it will also let me post from here as well.  I know this is not terribly new, but I did not expect it from MSN.com. It was a welcome surprise. 

Here is the funny part, not every user gets to see the new site. As a matter of fact, I get the old MSN page on every other computer in my house. In addition, when I do a Bing Search , I cant find anyone talking about it’s “New Design”. 

Finally, after searching every place I could think of, I found this one reference to it on its Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/msn.com , at the bottom of the page is this one line :

“On November 5 2009, Microsoft released a preview of their homepage and new logo. It’s expected to be widely available to over 100 million U.S. customers early next 2010.^[21][22]”

So, if unlike me, you don’t get the preview and want to see what it looks like, head over to http://www.msn.com/preview.aspx

Let me know what you think.

Daniel

In a surprise announcement today, Facebook acquires FriendFeed; the social network aggregator. 

The official press release goes something like this.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — August 10, 2009 — Facebook today announced that it has agreed to acquire FriendFeed, the innovative service for sharing online. As part of the agreement, all FriendFeed employees will join Facebook and FriendFeed’s four founders will hold senior roles on Facebook’s engineering and product teams.

“Facebook and FriendFeed share a common vision of giving people tools to share and connect with their friends,” said Bret Taylor, a FriendFeed co-founder and, previously, the group product manager who launched Google Maps. “We can’t wait to join the team and bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world.”

To me, this is a very strange acquisition. I understand the value of both Facebook and FriendFeed separately but together they make a very unusual match. How does FaceBook plan to use this service?  Does it want to integrate other social media outlets into facebook so that people never leave their pages?  If so, could they not have just built this themselves? It can’t be for the userbase, I assume a large percentage of users of friendfeed already use facebook.  I will have to keep an eye on this to see where it is going.

I also understand the points Robert Scoble makes in his post about the merger (http://scobleizer.com/2009/08/10/facebook-friendfeed/) but I still think it was a much better deal for FriendFeed (Couldn’t Facebook figure out RealTime Search?).

Let me know what you think. Why did FaceBook make this purchase?

You can hear a little more about the acquisition from the Robert Scoble interview of Paul Buchheit, founder of FriendFeed. http://btre.blogtalkradio.com/74_299692.mp3

Image by Lucas Janin via Flickr

Every week I will be listing the Social Networking events happening in the coming week.  This is a list of the latest happenings in the Social Media/Social Networking/Start-up Space.  If you are having or know of an event that I am not aware of, feel free to let me know and I will add them to the list. (This week is a quick list. I am creating a module that makes this easier for future posts.)

See you Socially -  Daniel

Socal Social Events for the Week of 8/10/2009

8/11/2009

• ExecTec – A meetup where executives in technology and entertainment share ideas. http://www.exectec.us/
• OCDotNet – Orange County .Net User Group http://www.ocdotnet.org  **** Attending

8/12/2009

• DealMaker LA – Return of the Angles – how angel investing is changing, and what it means for entrepreneurs – http://dealmakermedia.com/la.html  **** Attending
• Digital LA – Digital Disneyland Panel + G-Force Movie and Mixer  http://www.digitalla.net/

8/13/2009

• ThursdayLunch – Santa Monica Promenade – Informal lunch for startups and the like – http://ThursdayLunch.com/
• DigitalLA – Entertainment News Goes Social Panel -  http://www.digitalla.net/  ****Attending

8/15/2009

• The Black Card Circle Foundation Black Tie Charity – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=75410629680
• LAMPsig Los Angeles Web Development User Group – Testing security with Nessus http://lampsig.org/new/

Are you going to DigitalLA this Friday? I will be there. If you have not attended one of these events then you are missing out. It is a great networking event for those in the Social Networking Social Media Field. They usually run twice a month and go back and forth between a Panel/Mixer and Mixer Only format.  This one will be at Boulevard3 in LA and should be a great event. Make sure you pre-register for the evnet($10) , it usually sells out.  Information is below.

Title: Digital LA – Digital Drinks @ Boulevard 3
Location: Boulevard 3
Link out: Click here
Description: We are an informal networking organization of professionals and friends in
online entertainment, marketing, advertising, and tech in Los Angeles.

Attendees work at WB, Sony, FOX, Paramount, MySpace, Google,
Yahoo!, Disney, Paramount, CAA, WMA, ABC, NBC, Activision, EA,
and other entertainment, studios, agencies, and tech companies.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2009-07-10
End Time: 22:00