Recently, our Techgiraffe team was in Vietnam on a geek meet when we felt the urge to “Socially Network” with our friends and family back home. To our surprise, Facebook is blocked in Vietnam. We immediately got on line with Facebook spokesperson – Meredith Chin to confirm if Facebook blocked Vietnamese IP’s or if it was the other way around.

Internet Services providers blamed this issue on a Technical Glitch which couldn’t be explained to us. A representative from Viettel, a DSL and cell phone service provider, told me “there might be something wrong with Facebook.” None seemed to know what was happening however, during a media briefing on December 3, Nguyen Phuong Nga, a representative of Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry, affirmed that agencies have been evaluating the contents of certain social Web sites because “many people in Vietnam have been upset that a number of social Web sites have been misused,” basically posting information of an undisclosed nature that is deemed inappropriate.

I’m unaware of any misuse, but the upset seems much louder from the other side. With more than a million users and counting, the limited access to Facebook has created a lot of anguish. Lan Nguyen, a 23-year-old English student in Hanoi said, “I use Facebook daily. Now, it feels like something just got stolen from me.” She uses FPT Telecom, one of the biggest DSL providers in Vietnam.

Ha Do of Ho Chi Minh city, another mid-20s, self-proclaimed Facebook addict who has some 1,800 friends, put it simply: “This sucks big time!” She revealed, however, that she still could access the site from some cafes, though definitely not from home. Upset and disappointment are common feelings among those I talked to about the matter. This also affects a lot of small businesses in Vietnam, especially bars, restaurants, and tourism agencies that use Facebook to promote themselves to the outside world.

Since we were unable to hear a convincing reply from either Facebook or Local ISP providers, our eyes are gonna be fixed on Vietnam and Facebook for coming days.

Seriously !! How did they do it ? They have an internet audience of more than 300 million active users, out of which atleast 50% of  users log on any given day.

The world over, people spend more than 8 billion minutes  each day with more than 45 million updates each day.More than 2 billion photos and 14 million videos are  uploaded each month.

It has more than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries engaged in it. There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing it through their mobile devices.

You probably came to read this post through them. What am i talking about ? A website what’s changed societies, economies, strategies and perceptions of people all around the world. Just 5 years old,  founded by Mark Zuckerberg (25 years) with his college roommates and fellow computer science students. The name ?

Facebook.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 might have been designed by a capable team of Infinity Ward developers, but the company had some help: Twitter followers. Infinity Ward Community Manager Robert Bowling told Develop Online in a recent interview that during the development of the highly-anticipated release, the developer called on Twitter users for help.

“During development, if we are sitting in a design meeting and we are arguing about something, no matter what it is, I can just turn to what is now 60,000 people and post the same question,” Bowling told game developer news site Develop Online. “‘Do we think players will like this?’ well why don’t we ask 60,000 of them and get a good representation of what we think they may like?” But it was the next statement that might cause gamers participating in social networking to rejoice. Bowling told site that Twitter was “fantastic throughout development” and he “would recommend many, many more people adapted that into their design schedule.” Bowling also said that Infinity Ward didn’t ignore any responses to its design questions. He said that developers “listened to all” of the suggestions, but filtered out those that didn’t match the company’s “design philosophy.” Suggestions that asked for more gore, for example, ran against the company’s design philosophy, Bowling said.

Regardless of whether or not Infinity Ward incorporated every idea into Modern Warfare 2, Bowling told the publication that now more than ever, gamers are getting closer to the development process. “The average gamer is so much closer to the people who make the games than they ever were before,” he told the publication. “And as a result of that they are so much more developer-aware. No longer is it an Activision game, but an Infinity Ward game, or a Treyarch game or a Bungie game. And gamers know where to go to offer their feedback.” Oh, how things have changed. When I was younger, I sent several snail-mail letters to developers asking for design tweaks in some of my favorite franchises. I never heard back. And it seemed that my plea had fallen on deaf ears.

Today, things are different. The developers of one of the most highly anticipated games to be released in 2009 were listening to gamer suggestions on a social network? Amazing. Let’s hope for more of it.

Microsoft is offering a sneak peak at a redesigned version of its MSN.com home page that features a cleaner design, a more prominent Bing search box, and direct links to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The company plans to formally launch the redesign early next year.

More Microsoft / Windows Insights
Whitepapers

* Smart Work for a Smarter Planet: Empower people and embrace change
* Simplifying Windows Server® 2008 Deployment

Webcasts

* Asia-Pacific Managed Network Services
* Navigating Business in Stormy Conditions with Event Processing

Reports

* Hybrid Clouds
* E-Health: One Step Closer To All Those Stimulus Bucks

Videos

Path Intelligence installs sensors in high traffic areas. Those sensors detect cell phones and can use that data to examine traffic patterns and behavior, which can be viewed & analyzed in real time. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts provides his view on the net neutrality debate, saying that he welcomes the dialog. MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta talks about the future of MySpace, it’s current partnerships, and the company’s ability to monetize its business.
Path Intelligence installs sensors in high traffic areas. Those sensors detect cell phones and can use that data to examine traffic patterns and behavior, which can be viewed & analyzed in real time.
Microsoft said MSN’s new look was inspired by customer research that showed Web users want a simplified portal experience.

“Now is the time to clean up the mess on the Web—people need less clutter and less hassle to find what matters most to them,” said Microsoft corporate VP Erik Jorgensen, in a statement. “Microsoft is uniquely invested in search, media experiences and technical innovation. Combining these assets to deliver our new MSN home page is a tremendous win for customers and advertisers,” said Jorgensen. The new portal includes 50% fewer links than the existing MSN home page and simplified navigation tools.

Windows Live, Facebook and Twitter users can establish direct links to their social networking accounts that allow content sharing and feed aggregation between MSN and those sites. It also pulls content from several Microsoft partners, including Fox Sports, Hulu, and Hearst. “Customers told us they want the latest information from their favorite sources, their friends and the breadth of the Web—and the new MSN home page delivers via a fresh new look and features,” said Jorgensen.

Microsoft is also hoping the new look will draw more users to its Bing search engine. Despite the new features, and a partnership with Yahoo that will see Microsoft add Bing to Yahoo’s Web pages, Microsoft isn’t having much luck catching Google in the search market. The most recent numbers from market watcher comScore show Google with 64.6% of the sector, with Microsoft holding 9.4%. Microsoft shares were up .87%, to $27.77, in early trading Wednesday.

Are you a hardcore photographer. Well, I bet you have already heard of Flickr then. Flickr offers you an option to upload all your pictures and let the world see it and enjoy your talent. Well, I bet this is not where you wanted to stop. If it was me, This is definitely not where I want to stop. Like The Joker from Dark Knight said: “If you are good at something, Get paid for it.”. You might want to memorize the name I am going to be telling now. The magic word is “SNAPIXEL”.

Snapixel is another service(Like Flickr), where you can add tags, edit descriptions and titles, assign geo-information to photos and interact with other members.You can upload up to 5GB without paying nickel. Currently, Snapixel only supports pictures in JPEG format. The techies from Snapixel at San Fransisco, CA are currently working their way through the matrix of codes to let you have an option to upload files with other extentions (of course, picture related).

I bet all Flickr users are already like – “been there, done that”. Yes Sir, you can tell that however, Snapixel offers something that might interest you. You have an option to sell your picture here. Snapixel’s services are divided into 3 parts – Basic, Pro and Seller. Basic is a free account ( ) with all the ads and other details you usually see on a basic site. Apart from that you also get security features, website embedded codes, drag and drop organization of pictures, photo management tool and several other features. Pro goes for $9.95/yr where you get unlimited storage space, no ads and unlimited bandwidth along with features I’d mentioned for basic account. seller account is where you can actually do all the trading. You can buy, sell and share pictures here. You have a Custom pricing option, will receive 60% commission along with all the other features I’d mentioned earlier. To know more about their buying and selling policies, please visit their credit system and guidelines page.

All I do at this point is wish these guys luck.  Like Plaxo, a small company that started off from the same area, I wish these guys also do well.

Most of you office goers know Meebo in detail without an introduction. When you have that surf control enabled by your tech team or when you cannot use your Google chat feature, most of us turn to Meebo. 

Well, Meebo is an upgraded version of “Socialized” instant messaging service. All you need to use Meebo is a working internet connection and a browser. You do not have to go through the tedious process of downloading or installing anything if you are a Meebo user. All you need is a Meebo account and you can integrate several Instant Messaging service to one webpage.

Between August and October, Meebo jumped from 50 million users to over 90 million users. This “User” figure does not mean that Meebo has 90 million registered users. Since you can use Meebo without actually registering for the services, every page visit/hit is considered as a user. Meebo’s Director of Business Development Daniel Bernstein states that the spike in the user growth doubled because of the introduction of the new Community IM rolling out to a slew of content sites (in other words, news publications and blogs) and the introduction of the service’s drag-and-drop sharing feature.

Meebo’s revenue for the year 2008 was a pretty big zero. Lately, Meebo started advertising Google ads on their portal. Meebo refused to disclose its exact revenue after this induction however, Meebo expects a 10 times jump in its revenue by the end of 2009. COO Martin Green states that this growth in revenue is expected by building relationships with brands who are a now repeat buyers and were in the market for quite sometime.