Facebook updates developer policy after Vine scuffle

Facebook has updated its policies for third-party application developers in a bid to explain why Twitter's new Vine video-sharing app is unable to access Facebook's friend-finder tool.

While the updated policies don't mention Vine by name, the biggest changes appear designed to explain why Facebook decided to block the app, a move that sparked a wave of criticism this week.

In a blog post Friday, Facebook's Justin Osofsky, director of platform partnerships and operations, said the "clarifications" were published after the site received questions about its policies over the past few days.

"For the vast majority of developers building social apps and games, keep doing what you're doing," he wrote. But a "much smaller number of apps" violate its policy by using Facebook to "replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook."

Vine, which is owned by Twitter and launched Thursday, includes a tool that allows users to search for their Facebook friends and add them to their Vine network. Vine also lets users automatically share the videos they create with the app with their Facebook friends -- a function that remains intact -- as well as with their Twitter and internal Vine connections.

Controversy broke out when users discovered later on Thursday that the Facebook friend-search tool had been disabled. Facebook has yet to say whether it intentionally blocked the feature, but the clarified policies it published Friday explain where the site stands on matters related to competitors using its social graph.

One of the amended sections reads: "You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission." The policies don't say what, exactly, constitutes a "core" Facebook product.

The new policies retain similar language about permissions, but give additional guidance about data-sharing with third-party apps. On the topic of reciprocity, for instance, the policies say developers can build their own social network via Facebook's API (application programming interface), but only if the app allows users to share their experiences back with Facebook users. Vine does offer this functionality.

Asked whether Facebook blocked the search tool or if there was a technical issue on Twitter's end, Twitter has said it has no comment beyond the error message users get when they try to perform the search.

The new guidelines also say that if Facebook disables an app, the developer of the app must delete all the user information it collected through Facebook's API, unless it is basic account information or it receives consent from the user to retain it.

Finally, the policies clarify that developers are responsible for "providing users with a quality experience and must not confuse, defraud, mislead, spam or surprise users."

Zach Miners covers social networking, search and general technology news for IDG News Service. Follow Zach on Twitter at @zachminers. Zach's e-mail address is zach_miners@idg.com

Bing beefs up Facebook content in search results

Users of Microsoft's Bing search engine can now see a wider range of Facebook content from their friends appear alongside search results, part of an effort by Microsoft to make the site more social.

When a person runs a query in Bing, the results include general content from the web as well as related information from social networks including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google+.

For instance, if a user is logged into Bing through Facebook when performing the search, Bing's Social Sidebar is populated with related information from their Facebook friends. Bing launched the sidebar feature last summer.

Previously, the results included only the Facebook friends' "Likes," photos and profile information, but Microsoft has now expanded that to include status updates, shared links and comments.

The extended data amounts to a five-fold increase in Facebook friends' content that is searchable in the sidebar, Microsoft said in a blog post Wednesday.

The idea is to give people more useful and personalized results. "This is a much richer set of data that not only helps show what your friends may know, but what knowledge they possess that can aid in your search," a Microsoft spokesperson said. The Social Sidebar is currently available only to users in the U.S.

A person planning a trip to New York, for instance, can find not just information about the city, but also information from Facebook friends who have lived or visited there, Microsoft said.

The information in the sidebar from other social networks works slightly differently -- it's not linked to the person's friends, but to other sources deemed to be experts on the topic. That functionality is not affected by today's changes.

The expanded Facebook content comes at an interesting time. On Tuesday, Facebook announced the beta launch of Graph Search, a social search tool based on connections between users. When there are gaps in Graph Search results, Bing results will help to fill the holes, Facebook said during a press conference.

The new Bing features announced today are not connected to the Graph Search announcement, according to Microsoft. But the company will "continue to power the web search functionality on Facebook," Microsoft said.

Greg Sterling, senior analyst with Opus Research, wondered if the services might work more closely together in future. "It will be interesting to see how the roll out of Facebook Graph Search impacts social search on Bing and whether theres some 'synergy' and increased usage," he said in a blog post.

Others, such as Karsten Weide, vice president of media and entertainment at IDC, say Bing's expanded Social Sidebar is a step forward.

"It's not going to turn things upside down, but it could help Microsoft grow its search traffic more rapidly," and it could become a stronger competitor to Google, he said.

Facebook's price tag for Instagram drops to $715 million

Facebook has paid far lower than the announced US$1 billion in cash and stock for photo-sharing app Instagram, following a drop in its share price.

The social networking company said in its Form 10-Q quarterly report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday that it accounted for the transaction as a business acquisition for a total purchase price of $521 million, consisting of the issuance of about 12 million vested shares of its Class B common stock to non-employee stockholders of Instagram and $300 million in cash.

It also issued about 11 million unvested shares of its Class B common stock to employee stockholders of Instagram on the closing date, with an aggregate fair value of $194 million , which will be recognized as they vest over a three-year service period as share-based compensation expense.

The value of the equity component of the purchase price was determined for accounting purposes based on the fair value of its common stock on the closing date, Facebook said.

Facebook closed the Instagram acquisition in August after receiving approvals from regulators including from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the U.K. Office of Fair Trading.

The company announced in April that it was buying Instagram in San Francisco for about $1 billion, including $300 million in cash and the rest through 23 million shares of its common stock. But as its share price slid, it became evident that the deal would be closer to $750 million.

Facebook's shares had closed at $19.50 -- a little over half of its $38 IPO price in May -- on the Nasdaq exchange on Tuesday, before Facebook released its quarterly results, but rose in after-hours trading after the company reported improvements in the critical mobile market.

During the nine months ended Sept. 30, 2012, Facebook also completed other business acquisitions for a total consideration of $87 million. It did not provide details. It also acquired $633 million of patents and other intellectual property rights. The largest deal was $550 million in cash to Microsoft over patents it had recently acquired from AOL.

Instagram is expected to enhance Facebook's photos product offerings and to enable users to "increase their levels of mobile engagement and photo sharing," Facebook said in the filing.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Facebook proposes revised settlement in Sponsored Stories lawsuit

Facebook has proposed a revised settlement in a lawsuit in which it was alleged to have used the names and likeness of the plaintiffs without their prior consent in "Sponsored Stories" advertisements shown to their online friends on the social networking website.

The company has agreed in a court filing on Saturday to pay Facebook users in the U.S. who appeared in Sponsored Stories up to $10 each to be paid from a $20 million settlement fund, amending itsearlier proposed settlement which aimed to pay $10 million to activist organizations and charities as cy pres fee as direct payment to all members of the class was not feasible. Another about $10 million was earmarked for attorneys' fees and expenses.

Facebook has also promised greater user control including a tool that will enable users to view going forward the subset of their interactions and other content on Facebook that may have been displayed in Sponsored Stories, and the ability to prevent further displays of these Sponsored Stories.

The motion for preliminary approval of the earlier proposed settlement was rejected in August by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco division with the Judge Richard Seeborg ruling that there were sufficient questions regarding the proposed settlement. The question will remain as to whether $10 million in cy pres recovery is fair, adequate, and reasonable, the Judge wrote in his order.

"Although it is not a precise science, plaintiffs must show that the cy pres payment represents a reasonable settlement of past damages claims, and that it was not merely plucked from thin air, or wholly inconsequential to them, given their focus on prospective injunctive relief," Judge Seeborg added.

The settlement relates to a class action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in California in 2011 by Angel Fraley and others in which they alleged that Sponsored Stories constitute "a new form of advertising which drafted millions of (Facebook members) as unpaid and unknowing spokepersons for various products," for which they were entitled to compensation under California law.

The new proposed settlement, which also needs Seeborg's approval, covers nearly 125 million users in the class, which could see each member getting a few cents on a pro-rata basis if all file claims.

Some funds will still go to charity if there are any left after paying for users' claims, attorneys fees and other expenses are met. The entire amount could still go to charity if it is found economically unfeasible to pay all class action members without exceeding the settlement fund, according to the revised proposed settlement. Facebook can also now oppose petitions for fees and expenses by plaintiffs' counsel.

Facebook has argued in the lawsuit that the users had agreed to its terms of use as a condition for using its website, and agreed to the possible use of their name and profile picture in association with commercial, sponsored or related content, before Sponsored Stories was launched. The "clear, express consent posed an insurmountable hurdle for Class Members" who had the burden to prove that the social networking site did not have consent to display their names and profile pictures, it said in the filing on Saturday.

John Ribeiro covers outsourcing and general technology breaking news from India for The IDG News Service. Follow John on Twitter at @Johnribeiro. John's e-mail address is john_ribeiro@idg.com

Think tank's website rejects browser do-not-track requests

Do-not-track technology could hurt the ability of websites to deliver free services to users, the ITIF says

The website for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) now tells visitors it will not honor their browsers' do-not-track requests as a form of protest against the technology pushed by privacy groups and parts of the U.S. government.

The tech-focused think tank on Friday implemented a new website feature that detects whether visitors have do-not-track features enabled in their browsers and tells them their request has been denied.

"Do Not Track is a detrimental policy that undermines the economic foundation of the Internet," Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the ITIF wrote in a blog post. "Advertising revenue supports most of the free content, services, and apps available on the Internet."

Behavioral advertising, which tracks Web users in order to deliver relevant advertising to them, is a service in which "everyone wins," he added. "Ad-supported websites increase their revenue, users receive fewer irrelevant ads and more free content, and advertisers get to be in front of their target audiences."

Many websites do not honor browser do-not-track requests, Castro said. "We are just being explicit about it," he said in an email.

Firefox and recent versions of Internet Explorer include do-not-track options for users. Google plans to implement do-not-track in its Chrome browser.

Privacy groups, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and some lawmakers have pushed do-not-track technology as a way for Web users to control who collects their personal information.

In May, FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz called on U.S. lawmakers to encourage the Internet industry to embrace do-not-track technologies. "A do-not-track mechanism should be implemented universally to cover all parties that would track consumers," he said then.

Over the long term, do-not-track could cause huge problems for Internet businesses, if browser users embrace the technology on a large scale, Castro wrote. "Website operators will see a substantial decrease in revenue," Castro said in his blog post. "A substantial decrease in revenue means a corresponding substantial decrease in free (or low-cost) content, apps and services. Or websites could try make up lost revenue by filling their websites with more untargeted ads."

Some websites may end up blocking users who have do-not-track enabled, just as some websites have put up pay walls to block nonpaying users. There are several plugins for blog platform WordPress that allows blog operators to block users who run ad-blocking software, he noted.

"Website owners will likely have similar tools if Do Not Track becomes widespread," Castro added. "It is my hope that with this alert ITIF will be able to remind people how easy it would be for sites to block users who enable Do Not Track, and by outlining how this will likely play out, policy makers will realize this is a useless endeavor."

Castro called on U.S. policymakers to focus on "meaningful efforts" to protect privacy.

Grant Gross covers technology and telecom policy in the U.S. government for The IDG News Service. Follow Grant on Twitter at GrantGross. Grant's e-mail address is grant_gross@idg.com.

Microsoft SkyDrive: Your ultimate starter's guide

It's become incredibly easy to compute while you commute. Our laptops, tablets and even smartphones offer productivity functions ranging from excellent to serviceable, and pervasive broadband (hello 4G!) gives us the connectivity speeds we need to quickly summon up documents and data from the cloud.

That's how it works in theory, at least. Efficiently accessing all of your personal data in the cloud is rarely quite as simple as it sounds.

Between Dropbox, Box.net, Microsoft SkyDrive, Apple iCloud, and other services, a plethora of cloud-based storage options compete to provide you access to your documents, photos, and other data from all your different devices. Although not quite as popular as Dropbox (which has been around for years) or iCloud (which has a big built-in user base), Microsoft's SkyDrive is poised to make a big splash when Windows 8 officially launches in October. The Windows 8 SkyDrive app is prominently displayed on the Windows Store, and Windows Phone 8 is expected to seamlessly integrate your SkyDrive account with your smartphone.

But you don't need to wait for Windows 8 to start taking advantage of SkyDrive, as SkyDrive apps are already available for just about every major computing platform, and if an app isn't available for your operating system of choice, files stored in your SkyDrive folders are still accessible via a Web browser. In this guide, we'll show you how to set up SkyDrive on your PC, how to access your SkyDrive account from different devices, and how to use a few tips and tricks to get the most from this free service.

How to get started with SkyDrive

With Windows 8 (whether Standard, Pro, Enterprise, or RT), a Windows 8-style version of SkyDrive is installed by default with the OS and is available on the Start screen as soon as you boot up your PC. If you prefer to stay in Desktop mode while using your Windows 8 PC, you'll need to install the stand-alone SkyDrive application. (Using SkyDrive on any platform that doesn't run Windows 8 also requires the installation of this stand-alone app.)

To install the SkyDrive application on a desktop PC, simply open the SkyDrive homepage in your browser of choice and click on the Get SkyDrive button. The installation process is pretty simple: If you're running Windows, you need to click the Download SkyDrive For Windows button and save the file to your system. If you're running Mac OS X, click on the Mac OS X link in the text at the top of the page and then click on the Download button on the subsequent page.

Once the download is complete, simply double-click on the downloaded file to launch the SkyDrive installer. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation; when you're ready to configure your SkyDrive account, go ahead and launch the program. The first time you launch the SkyDrive app, you'll be asked to sign in to a Microsoft account. If you don't have one, you'll see a link to sign up for free; go ahead and set one up now, since you'll need it if you ever install Windows 8. Sign into SkyDrive, and a group of folders will be created on your system--any time a file is placed into one of these folders, it will automatically be synced to Microsoft's servers, provided an active Internet connection is available.

SkyDrive offers users 7GB of storage space for free; you just need to download the app and sign up for a Microsoft account. If you want (or need) more space, Microsoft offers different levels of additional storage for an annual fee. At this writing, 20GB of space is available for $10, 50GB for $25, and 100GB for $50, annually.

If you want to access data stored in your SkyDrive account on your tablet or smartphone, the free SkyDrive app is available for download in almost every platform's respective app store. SkyDrive is available in the iTunes store for iOS-based devices, in the Google Play Store for Android-based devices, and in the Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phones.

Touch the Sky(Drive) from any device

Now that you've set up a SkyDrive account, actually using the service is simple. If you're running Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, your SkyDrive folder will appear in File Explorer; on Macintosh systems, they'll appear in the Finder. By default, inside the parent SkyDrive folder, the app creates three more folders--Documents, Pictures, and Public.

Anything placed into these folders will automatically be synched to Microsoft's servers when a connection to the Internet is available and the SkyDrive app is running (it runs automatically with the OS). When a file is dragged into one of these folders, the SkyDrive icon in the system tray will report the status of the synchronization process and report "SkyDrive -- Up to date" when the sync is complete. Once the sync is finished, the files are stored on Microsoft's servers and will be available to other devices.

Using SkyDrive on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets is equally simple. Once you have the app downloaded and installed, a SkyDrive icon will be available in your list of applications. Open the app, sign in, and your SkyDrive folders will be listed along with some details regarding their content.

Besides allowing you to access your SkyDrive folders, however, the SkyDrive mobile app also adds some neat sharing features based on the capabilities of your mobile device. For example, you can snap a photo or record a video from within the SkyDrive app and store it directly to your SkyDrive folder or send it to a shared SkyDrive folder so that your friends and family can see it no matter what device they're using.

If they don't have a device that has a Skydrive app, they can use a browser to view their SkyDrive storage. Accessing your SkyDrive folders from a Web browser doesn't require any local files to be installed, which saves you the hassle of setting up the app on a PC over which you don't have full control. Provided you're using a modern browser, navigate to http://skydrive.live.com/, sign in, and your SkyDrive folders will be accessible right from the browser window. Keep in mind that you're not only able to download files from your SkyDrive, but to upload files to it as well. Dragging a file (or files) from a PC into one of the SkyDrive folders in the browser window will automatically upload that file so it will be accessible from your other devices--a great way to quickly save photos and documents from a friend's or coworker's PC so you can look them over later at your leisure.

SkyDrive tips and tricks

Once you start using SkyDrive regularly across multiple devices, you'll quickly find a lot of neat things you can do with a remote storage service that ties directly into your operating system, your office software, and your mobile devices. Here are a few of our favorite tips and tricks for using SkyDrive to optimize your workflow; share your personal tips and tricks with our readers in the comments field below.

Sync any folder to your SkyDrive: Setting up folders on your PC that automatically sync with your SkyDrive account is pretty simple thanks to the stand-alone SkyDrive desktop app, but you do have to manually move all the files you want to keep in sync with your account into the SkyDrive folder on your PC. That's kind of a pain if you have all your photos or movies in a separate folder that is already syncing to other services (such as Carbonite's automated backup service, for example) and you don't want to break those links by moving your files into SkyDrive.

Thankfully, programmer Jan Hannemann has released a custom shell extension that you can install (at your own risk) to add a sync option to the context menu that pops up whenever you right-click in Windows. To get it, head over to his public SkyDrive folder and download either the 32-bit version or 64-bit version of SkyShellEx (according to whichever version of Windows you're using). Run the script, and you should see an option to "Sync to SkyDrive" whenever you right-click a folder in Windows Explorer.

Edit Word documents from your browser: SkyDrive is designed to let you edit any Word-compatible document right from your browser, and you can use this trick to open and edit documents on any PC that doesn't have Word installed. This trick could save you some money on a Microsoft Office purchase if you do most of your writing at work and only occasionally need to edit or proofread a document at home, but more important, it means you no longer have to worry about trying to open a document that a friend or coworker has attached to an email and finding out that the PC you're using doesn't have a copy of Word installed (this happens more often than you might think in the publishing industry).

Simply upload the document in question to your SkyDrive account, then log in to SkyDrive via a PC browser (you can try to open your account using the browser on your mobile device, but the mobile version of the SkyDrive website has significantly fewer features) and open the document in question. Select Edit in Word Web App from the Edit Documents menu, and you ought to be able to start wordsmithing right from the website.

Automatically archive Gmail attachments using SkyDrive: Now that Microsoft has made the SkyDrive API available to third-party developers, a number of your favorite apps and services are going to tie themselves into SkyDrive. One of our favorites is attachments.me, a free Google Chrome extension that makes it easy to download, upload, and send attachments back and forth between your Gmail account and various cloud storage services like Dropbox, Box.net, and now SkyDrive.

One of the cooler things you can do with attachments.me is to automatically archive any files attached to email in your Gmail inbox--a simple trick to help boost productivity and optimize your organization. To get started, download the attachments.me extension, and then log into your Gmail account using Chrome. A prompt should appear from attachments.me requesting access to your Gmail account; allow it to do so, then click on the small blue paperclip button that appears in the top-right corner of your Gmail inbox and select Automatic Filing Rules from the drop-down menu. From here you'll be able to customize rules about which attachments get sent to your SkyDrive folder based on such criteria as file type, who sent the email (or who you send the email to), and so forth.

Google Apps drops download support for older Office formats

Google Docs users will still be able to export documents in the older Microsoft formats

Google announced Wednesday that Google Apps users will no longer be able to export word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents as files using older Microsoft Office formats, such as .doc, .xls and .ppt.

Users of the search giant's consumer productivity suite, Google Docs, will still be able to export documents in the older Microsoft formats.

The Google Apps change, which affects all versions of Microsoft's productivity suite from Office 97 to Office 2003, takes effect Oct. 1.

Once the change is implemented, Google Apps users who do not have a version of Office that supports the newer document formats for Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx) and PowerPoint (.pptx) will need to convert documents exported from Google Apps into older formats. Such conversions can be performed with a free utility program distributed by Microsoft.

For organizations with a diverse user base, Google's action makes using its commercial productivity suite a potentially annoying exercise.

Document collaborators using the older formats never needed to worry about whether their fellow collaborators had a newer version of Office because the suite is backward compatible. Even the latest versions of the suite can read the older formats. However, older versions of the suite can't read the newer formats.

The lack of support for older formats could create friction among the collaborators of a document as they struggle to figure out why they can't view a file or why a document doesn't look the same to one user as it does to another.

Google's ditching of support for older Microsoft Office formats is just the latest in a series of purges of its productivity suite in recent weeks. Last month, Google shut down Google Apps for Teams, which let groups use Docs, Talk and Calendar without switching their email system to Gmail. Google also moved the Google Video for Business component in its Apps for Business and Apps for Education offerings to Google Drive.

Amazon rejects false advertising claim in Apple's "app store" suit

Apple had filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Amazon.com last year

The generic use of the term "app store" is not false advertising, and a federal court in California should grant partial summary judgment for Amazon.com on Apple's false advertising claim, the Internet retailer said in a filing on Wednesday.

Apple filed in March, 2011 a complaint against Amazon.com, alleging that the Internet retailer's use of the name "Amazon Appstore for Android" violated its App Store trademark.

Amazon.com's motion asks for judgment on Apple's claim that Amazon's use of Appstore amounts to false advertising, which is the fifth cause of action in the case.

The word Appstore is part of the name of Amazon's store, and not a statement about the nature, characteristics, or qualities of Amazon's store, much less a false one, Amazon.com said in the filing before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Oakland division.

"What Apple is actually contending is that the use of "Appstore" may confuse consumers into believing that the Amazon Appstore is related to or sponsored by Apple," Amazon.com said. "Leaving for another day whether that is a reasonable contention, it is clearly one that sounds in trademark, not false advertising."

The name "Amazon Appstore for Android" appears on the homepage of Amazon.com., for example, but the function of such advertising is to direct viewers to, or identify to the consumer that he has arrived at the online store, the company said.

Amazon.com also cited instances when former Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his successor Tim Cook referred to competitors' stores for apps as app stores, including on investor calls. The use of the term app store to refer to stores selling apps is commonplace in the industry and not a false statement, it said in the filing.

The court denied Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction on Amazon.com's use of the term "Appstore" in the trademark infringement case in July last year.

The term App Store figures in a list of service marks on Apple's website. Service marks are used for services, in the way that trademarks are used for products. Apple's bid to register the mark in 2008 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was opposed by Microsoft, which has asked the USPTO to hold the proceeding until final determination of the civil dispute between Apple and Amazon.com.