Yahoo Mail Makes Friends with Facebook

Yahoo revealed a new strategy: lots and lots of Facebook. Today the company announced that it’s gradually rolling out the first feature to come from the partnership — Facebook Connect integration with Yahoo Mail.

The new feature means that Yahoo Mail users can now connect their Facebook accounts and integrate their Facebook () friends’ e-mail addresses into their Yahoo Contacts list. Users can visit the Import Contacts page to be guided through he Facebook friend import process.

Of course, this is just the beginning of the full Facebook Connect feature bonanza on Yahoo. You can expect functionality to be integrated into News (), Sports, Finance and even Flickr () in the months ahead.

Given that Facebook is now 400 million members strong, we have to believe that there’s a significant shared user base between Facebook and Yahoo. In a perfect world, Yahoo will see those users stay on Yahoo properties and use the Facebook contact and sharing functionality to push Yahoo content out to the world’s largest social network and generate more traffic in return.

Facebook Threatens to Sue Daily Mail Over Sex Predator Claims

According to the Guardian and Global Dashboard, Facebook has threatened to sue Daily Mail over an article that wrongfully claimed Facebook makes it easy for older sex predators to approach and seduce minors.

Daily Mail’s article, which can (in edited form) be found here, was written by a former police detective Mark Williams-Thomas, and had originally been titled “I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you.” It contained the account of the author posing as a minor on Facebook, which, according to him, attracted sexual predators right away.

The problem? He wasn’t really using Facebook to conduct the experiment, he used a “different social networking site,” as explained in today’s update to the article, added at the bottom by Daily Mail staff. The full text of the update is as follows:

“In an earlier version of this article, we wrongly stated that the criminologist had conducted an experiment into social networking sites by posing as a 14-year-old girl on Facebook with the result that he quickly attracted sexually motivated messages. In fact he had used a different social networking site for this exercise. We are happy to set the record straight.”

Needless to say, this caused a strong response from Facebook, which is still referenced throughout the article. According to the Guardian, a UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was considering legal action due to the “brand damage that has been done.” “If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us,” she said.

Facebook has a point here; besides the obvious erroneous reporting, the article details how someone posing as a 14-year-old girl would get messages from older men (more accurately, users whose Facebook profile indicates they’re over 18 years old), which cannot be done on Facebook. Therefore, Facebook can argue it has measures in place to prevent exactly the kind of behavior the article describes, unlike the unnamed social network the experiment was conducted on.

We’ve contacted Facebook’s UK PR representative on this matter but have yet to hear back.

Apple App Store Has Twice as Many Apps as Facebook

Information within Flurry’s report inaccurately stated that Apple’s app store has more than twice the number of applications as the Facebook platform. The Flurry report meant to say that Apple had more than twice the number of apps as Facebook at its 18 month mark than Facebook did during its 18 month mark (November 2008)

Based on the updated report, we have struck out incorrect sections of this article. We apologize for the error.

—

A study by mobile application analytics company Flurry reveals that Apple’s App Store now has more than twice the number of applications as the Facebook Platform, despite Facebook’s much larger market of users.

Flurry estimates that as of its eighteenth month this January, the App Store for iPhone, iPod touch and (shortly) iPad devices has 140,000 applications, while the Facebook Platform only reached 60,000 apps in its first 18 months. The discrepancy might exist because the App Store provides a clearer path to revenue and return on investment than Facebook’s until-recently ad-supported application platform.

Regardless, the difference is surprising because Facebook has 400 million users, while the iPhone OS used by App Store applications has significantly fewer.

---

iPad Spurs Increased Developer Activity

---

The report revealed that developer activity for App Store software has increased 185% since Apple announced its iPad device. In general, Flurry’s report voices tremendous expectations for the iPad; we’ll see if consumers buy the device in large enough numbers to justify the development surge.

---

Where Did iPhone Developers Come From?

---

Flurry also did some research to find out where iPhone developers got started. Did they start with iPhone apps, or did they serve up something else beforehand, and if so, what what was it?

It turns out that the iPhone is still a viable place for startups with no established brands or customers — for now. This might change as companies with the resources to market their apps continue to enter the market. Upstarts probably won’t have the resources to compete for attention.

The majority of iPhone app developers come from other backgrounds; the graphs below show which ones. But around one fifth of developers are native to the iPhone OS and the Apple App Store.

Social Faceoff: Google vs. Facebook vs. Twitter Buzz

Gmail users: We hope to add the discussion about Buzz Google Account

Four months ago we asked in our web FaceOff series for the desired social network between the two current giants: vote Twitter versus Facebook. The results were pretty close, although Facebook Twitter squeezed in a 48% to 40% victory. Now there's a whole new game in town.

Google Buzz (Buzz Google) is the new slim, and on Google (Google) great pressure on social networking site conforms to the mobile social services. We know that even days before the start of the buzz, but it is a good time to explore the opinion of Mashable (Mashable) readers still seem to.

You have the opportunity to spend some time with buzz? Do you like the service? Are there parts that you do not it from? If your character from other social networks or complement? Give us your vote for the best social services in the poll below, and you tell us why your favorite selected winners.

Facebook is the Web's Ultimate Time Sink [Stats]

The average American Internet user spends more time together on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon. Think about that for a moment.

New figures from Nielsen released today confirms what we've known for a while: Facebook (Facebook) is the number of times a Web sink. It is interesting how much time we spend on the largest social network in the world today than it was six months ago.

Already in June 2009, Nielsen estimated that the average American users spent four hours and 39 minutes on Facebook per Mo. The approximately 9.3 minutes per day in a 30-day month. In August this figure had increased to five hours and 46 minutes and 11.5 minutes per day.

In January 2010, but increased the time that the average person spent on Facebook, more than seven hours. Every American Facebook users spent an average of 421 minutes per month on Facebook, more than 14 minutes per day. Even if you shave a comb the time on Google (Google) (1:23), Yahoo (2:09), YouTube (YouTube) (1:02), Microsoft / Bing (Bing) (1:35) Wikipedia (Wikipedia moved) (0:15) and the Amazon (0:22), the reports still Facebook.


As you can see from the above tables, there are a few other interesting statistics (the average number of people visiting Web sites rose from 8.4% during the time the men were dropped on the PC by 8.2%), But history still seems clear Facebook rapid increase.

How much longer can we sink into Facebook? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Facebook launches new privacy settings for Facebook Apps

Facebook has a new privacy options for users with more control over their Facebook applications and websites with Facebook Connect. The changes follow new privacy controversial revision of December.

In a message on the Facebook blog, the world's largest social network have shown that it added: "granular" control of content shared by applications. The changes are designed to allow users to change your friends' updates for some applications, but also for third-party applications and Web sites Facebook Connect.

Seesmic (Seesmic), for example, will soon be more privacy features, in particular so that the users for status updates only for the buddy lists you specify.

From Facebook (Facebook) blog:

"There are privacy options so grainy, the audience for any content that you shares through personalization applications. Just select the category of persons from the drop-down menu near the lock icon shares Publisher on your homepage or a profile, or the evidence when application sharing or Facebook Connect sites will appear.

For example, you might not want all your friends to the humorous greeting card you have written only one application. Now you can perform these functions are only visible from a few friends. "

View a result of the changes, further evidence of applications ask you to change your privacy. Overall, this update may appear legitimate and less controversial than in December, pushing for more public profile. We wait for the new settings to play a final decision, though.

Facebook Analyzes How Relationship Status Impacts Happiness [STATS]

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and it apparently had the data team at Facebook thinking: Does being in a relationship (as defined by Facebook relationship status) really make individuals more happy? The results, which are detailed on Facebook’s blog aren’t quite as black and white as you might expect.

---

Methodology

---

Facebook () already has a methodology for measuring the overall “happiness” of its users. It basically looks at how many positive words people use in their status updates (for English speaking users). This results in the USA Gross National Happiness Index.

For this particular study, Facebook looked at the use of positive and negative words in status messages over the course of one week in January. The data team was then able to filter the results based on sex and relationship status (as defined by Facebook).

---

The Results

---

The results aren’t entirely unsurprising: People who are in relationships do seem happier than those who are not in relationships. However, there are some important areas of distinction. For instance, the people that seem the most unhappy are those that either don’t disclose their relationship status or those that are in an open relationship.

An open relationship dwarfs widowers and “it’s complicated” by a pretty significant margin for both men and women. However, those that don’t disclose their relationship at all are about 50% more negative than everyone else.

In the end, while this data is certainly interesting, it’s only scientific insofar as it is a reflection of what people choose to share in their status updates. Obviously, that’s not going to be a strong — or even defining — indicator of how people really feel, regardless of relationship status.

What do you think of this data? Do you find yourself more or less happy when in a relationship as opposed to being single? Let us know!