Facebook Blogged

With the Facebook for BlackBerry Smart phones application, Facebook users can wirelessly send and view messages, photos, pokes and Wall posts. Facebook is now accessible via the BlackBerry browser, but this is so much more than that. Facebook for BlackBerry pushes received notes-notifications to user’s BlackBerrys. Users can also take photos, upload it to Facebook with captions and tags invite friends, manage events and photo albums as well. Facebook users will be able to download the application at www.facebook.com from their PC or BlackBerry smartphone.{New software application runs natively on BlackBerry smartphones and provides an unparalleled mobile experience to users of the popular Facebook social utility}.Today launched Facebook® for BlackBerry® Smartphones, an exciting new BlackBerry software application that enables fast, streamlined and optimized mobile access to the popular Facebook social utility using a BlackBerry smartphone. The application leverages the push-based BlackBerry system architecture and Facebook Platform to create an unparalleled mobile experience for Facebook users. With the Facebook for BlackBerry Smartphones application, Facebook users can wirelessly send and view messages, photos, pokes and Wall posts. The rich, native application goes beyond browser-based access, automatically pushing notifications to the user’s BlackBerry smartphone as friends and colleagues send notes, Wall posts or pokes. The application allows users to take a photo, upload it to the site with captions and tags; quickly and easily invite friends; manage events; manage photo albums; and manage their status while on the go.

The application allows users to:

• Receive notifications and messages automatically – notifications and messages are automatically sent to the user; the user can also set a unique alert (vibration and/or ringtone) for Facebook related content
• Quickly access essential features – Convenient onscreen icons let users quickly change their Status, upload a photo, add a friend, poke someone, write on a Wall, or send a message. Users can also quickly scroll through messages and notifications as they do with email messages
• Invite friends to join Facebook and accept new friend requests
• Quickly snap and post pictures along with a caption and tags – The photo upload feature is also integrated with the BlackBerry smartphone camera and photo management applications on the smartphone
• View the Status of friends
• Read, compose and reply to messages even while offline – If the user is out of wireless coverage, messages are queued until the user returns to an area of coverage

Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton writes "Last month Facebook had to submit to some ritualistic lashing when New York Attorney General Cuomo accused them of misrepresenting the site’s safety features and exposing minors to sexual predators — thus making it official that "Facebook is the new MySpace". Facebook did agree to make some concessions, mainly responding faster to abuse reports. But would this make any difference, when anyone who loses their account can sign up for a new one instantly?

What kind of contact do they think the social networking sites should prohibit between adults and minors? .i feel the sites should block adults and minors from messaging each other unethically at all?

Second, if the site does try to monitor for inappropriate contact between adults and minors, is there any practical way to stop someone from falsely signing up as a minor? Third, if someone’s account is cancelled for inappropriate behavior, what good does that do when they can just create another one?

What if Facebook blocked adults from contacting minors at all? Before, I would have assumed that Facebook would respond to this suggestion by saying that it was too draconian, that nobody had ever seriously tried to outlaw all contact between minors and adults on the Internet, etc. But Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer appeared at one point to endorse this policy as reasonable, by saying that, well; they did block adults from messaging minors on the site, even though they didn’t.

Facebook’s current screening system is that anyone who registers as a high school student has to be confirmed by an existing student at that school, by sending them a friend request and having them confirm that you are friends. This is another recent change that Facebook made that was not listed in their settlement agreement — previously, the Attorney General had documented that anybody under 18 could sign up and join a high school network, but now, you can’t do this without getting another student to confirm you.

Facebook could conceivably require real-world verification for anyone who signed up as a minor — confirmation from their school, for example. But this would be competitive suicide for any site whose main draw is that everybody wants to go there because everybody else is already there, so they need signups to be as easy as possible.

Finally, if Facebook does cancel your account, you can always sign up for a new one instantly with a new e-mail address. Losing your Facebook account might be a harsh punishment for someone who had built up an extensive network of contacts around their profile. But I’ll bet that any adult with a network of friends on Facebook, built around a profile that gives their real name and employer, is probably using a secondary profile with a lot less information on it.

So there’s really nothing that Facebook or any other social-networking site could do to prevent adults from signing up as minors, to prevent adults and minors from messaging each other, or to keep abusers from creating new accounts.

A group called, “30 Reasons Girls Should Call It A Night” having over 150,000 members in it is creating sensation all over the world. Yep it is ! The group has photographs of hot babes who have uploaded about  4800 photos in funny places while being drunk. Some of them in closets, some of them upside down and some of them without clothes.

To add on the misery, The Daily Mail has run an article about the group. The beauty of the article is that there are very few words in  the article and there’re more pictures. Semi-nude kids in the group. What is Zuckerberg doing?

According to FacebookTalk.com there’s a new portal dedicated to the group. Full points for guessing the name right. It is a website devoted specifically to the group.

Great news for movie buffs ! Fans who love to talk about movie, discuss em” share their thoughts with others can now do so with ease with the launch of a new Facebook Application called Movie Clique. Apparently, the company behind this application is BLOCKBUSTER(R),

Movie Clique enables Facebook users to search thousands of movie titles and create lists of movies they want to see, movies they’ve already seen and all-time favorites — along with ratings and reviews — to share with their friends. Infact users can also rent movies directly from Blockbuster if they’re members of the subscription service. without leaving the Facebook website.

Keith Morrow, the CIO of Blockbuster said, "Facebook users love movies, and they love to compare notes and share suggestions with their peers"."We wanted to take that exchange and interaction to a whole new level with Movie Clique by offering content and rental opportunities as only Blockbuster can — all without leaving the Facebook website that these users already enjoy. It’s just one more way we’re working to give consumers convenient access to media entertainment, whenever and wherever they want it."

Do check out Blockbuster’s website right now.