Skype on Facebook!! - ***CONFIRMED***

***NOW CONFIRMED***
This recent spoiler that I have heard, doesn't surprise me - Skype is being brought to Facebook! With the recent knowledge that Google+ has a group video feature how will Facebook's compare? Are both skype and Facebook going to see a huge rise in users, almost certainly.

Skype was recently bought by Microsoft for $8.5bn. Microsoft became the "exclusive third-party advertising platform partner for Facebook" and began to sell advertising for Facebook internationally on  Oct. 24, 2007. This shows their close ties and Microsoft's lack of entry in to the social network market other than Facebook. Is this as Mark Zuckerberg put it "awesome"? Tell us your thoughts @snaksocial

Reported on techcrunch - Facebook Announcement on 6th July 2011

To be continued...

Dropbox - in case you drop your device.

Have you come across Dropbox yet because it's quite a nifty tool and simple to use. Basically you have three options 2GB Free, 50GB $9.99 and 100GB $19.99. This allows you to access your files from any your different devices such as a PC, Mac and your mobile. Its was founded in 2007 and received funding from Y-combinator who have also "funded over 300 startups" such as Scribd and Airbnb.

Dropbox revealed that it had over 25million users and it serves over 175 countries. They have "over 200 Million files saved daily" according to their website. Their mobile app is free on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. It also allows you to share files using a link by email or on your social networks etc...

Box.net is a competitor but there are many different solutions to choose from and they have integrations with some of your other business tools such as Salesforce and your Google Apps. Their is obviously more focus around larger organisations with companies such as Dell and Virgin using them. So Box.net has a free plan which gives you around 5GB storage and then 25GB = $9.99 and 50GB = $19.99. If your a big file saver you may need 500GB for 3 or more users at $15 per user/month.

Tell us what you think...

Facebook Announcement

Facebook's making an announcement next Wednesday on the 6th of July. I've had a little look around and I can see some speculation around a new application. Mark Zuckerberg says its "awesome", so would anyone who was releasing a product - so we need to wait and see. After a number of good reviews on the new Google+ (Google plus) this week we'll need to see if Facebook has done again what it is so good at - Innovate.

Next week though, we will display twitter feed from the press conference.

Let us know what you think and will be updating this post.

Foursquare...check it out!

Launched in 2009 and its growing users base suggests you should check it out. "Foursquare is a location-based mobile platform" as foursquare.com says. With that in mind what can you do? well if your at a location you are able to "check in" using a smartphone app or by text. The platform currently has an app on iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Ovi & Windows Phone. The growth in use of mobiles makes it an attractive choice for users to get rewards. The site claims to have over 10million users and 3million "checking in" each day so the site is still growing. In comparison to its counterparts it has a long way to go, but as we've seen before it doesn't always take that long. Foursquare also already has over 400,000 businesses using the merchant platform - the benefits??

So what is the use for businesses? well the person who checks in most to a location becomes a "mayor" and you could reward this person each week with something free - just an example. But the application will allow you to see who checks in and how frequently and offer discounts to those who "check in" a number of times.

Can I use it to get new customers? yes you can offer discounts or freebies for those who check in and get your existing users to share their location on Twitter and Facebook. It also has a stats feature to look at how effective your campaign is.

Let us know what you think of foursquare and how you use it...

Office 365. doing a 180?

I have recently looked at Microsoft office 365 and seen that their new "cloud-based management tools" are somewhat late as this article. Microsoft seem to just be following other services and then shoving them in users faces as we have seen with Bing. This now seems like a bold move as they have to compete with the what is becoming a fast and simple to use product - Google docs. We are all aware that Microsoft have been making office software for years so I don't understand the lateness, although they had tried a partnership with Facebook. Which was Facebook docs by fuse labs but I don't know of anyone using it and couldn't access when I was writing this because its being fixed?! However we know that their are still problems with Google docs in that they don't have all the features Microsoft can provide, which I only assume is why Microsoft are still charging for their software, because they still are market leaders.

The £4 per user/month starting price for using office 365 is fairly cheap and the options to sync your files across the web and mobile devices make it an attractive option but even when I began to sign up for the free trial I was felt it was time to leave as the sign up process was ridiculous. It wanted you to set up a sub-domain then a email address or that... blah blah blah. It may be targeted towards professional and different sized organisations but I never found ZoHo(4m users) that mundane.

To be Continued... Let us know what you think