Google integrated its flagship internet search engine into its 3-month old social network -- with membership now available to the Internet public -- and expanded its "Hangouts" video-chat feature to permit mobile use and broadcasting.
The company said on its official blog its well-received Hangouts feature -- where as much as nine people can link up and chat with a user on video -- is going to be available on camera equipped smartphones powered by its personal Android software. Support for Apple Inc iOS devices "is arriving soon", it added.
And a user can now host an online broadcast with this particular feature -- recording a session and broadcasting it reside for public access online. Black Eyed Peas front guy will. i. am will host the first "Hangout upon Air" on Wednesday, Google said.
"Hangouts should keep pace with the way you socialize in the real-world, so today we're launching it on the one device that's always with you: your mobile phone, " senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra said about the blog post.
For its part, Facebook said it was introducing a brand new "ticker" on its users' home pages, providing real-time notifications of what friends are doing about the service. Facebook also revamped the service's main news feed to flag important items -- like a new baby announcement -- for Facebook users who have not logged on for some days. Facebook also changed the way photos are displayed on the website, increasing the size of pictures that appear in the users' news feed.
Facebook is the world's No. 1 social network service, with more than 750 million users. The company has rolled out a number of improvements to its service recently, many of which seem made to match features Google has used to set apart its rival social network service, Google+.
Google did not say how many people had subscribed to Google+ so far, but confirmed the social network was now available to all, whereas previously it had been invitation-only. Analysts estimation upward of 25 million users have joined Google+ because its inception.
The company also made its search engine available from inside the social network. Users can search from Google+ and get results not only on the network, but from the worldwide Internet.
Google's infant social networking, which counts Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as a fellow member, has met skepticism so far. Some are waiting to determine if it can maintain the rapid momentum of it's first months.
If CEO Larry Page's brainchild -- which some say mimics much better than Facebook the instinctive categorising of friends that occurs in actual life -- takes off, it will come at a pivotal moment because of its bigger rival. Facebook is widely expected to go open public in 2012.
"We're nowhere near done, but with the improvements we've made to date we're ready to move from field trial to beta, inch Gundotra said.
Source : Business-Standard