Just what the world needed: another addiction. But not all addictions are bad for you. With a rising number of users accessing social networking sites from mobile phones, it’s rumored that Facebook (News - Alert) could “redefine” communications by issuing its own smartphone.
Facebook is clearly leading the pack in the mobile Internet race. In December, in Britain alone, it racked up 5 million mobile users, against 4.5 million for all of Google’s (News - Alert) sites combined, Business Week reported on Monday.
And now with Google offering its own phone, platform and app store, it would only be logical that another online giant – ever-expanding Facebook – would follow suit with its own mobile device.
As TMCnet's David Sims reported last week, the first salvo has been fired in the brewing war between Google and Facebook for social media dominance: The Associated Press (News - Alert) is reporting that Google opened a new social hub in its e-mail service, called Google Buzz.
Google Buzz will let Gmail users post updates about what they are doing or thinking and share those with the rest of the world or with only a select group of people, the AP says: “Gmail users also will be able to track other people’s updates and instantly comment on them for everyone else in the social circle to see.” You can also post video, photos and Web links.
Business Insider branded it “late, boring and lame: 400 million people are already happily using Facebook, and tens of millions (or hundreds of thousands) are using the other services. Why would they switch to this Google service when there are no compelling reasons to do so? And if Google isn’t going to actually kill Facebook with this thing, what’s the point?”
Erin Harrison is a senior editor with TMCnet, primarily covering telecom expense management, politics and technology and Web 2.0. She serves as senior editor for TMC's print publications, including "Internet Telephony", "Customer Interaction Solutions", "Unified Communications (News - Alert)" and "NGN" magazines. Erin also oversees production of TMCnet's weekly iPhone e-Newsletter. To read more of Erin's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Erin Harrison