Facebook holds an awful lot of data on its 600m + users, which is why it needs lots of servers to hold this information. Up until now, Facebook’s data centres have all been based in the US – namely, in Oregon and North Carolina. But we’ve just learned that the social networking giant is likely to open its first data centre outside the US, in a small city in northern Sweden calledLuleå....
Today, Facebook launched its “Open Compute Project” to foster joint collaboration between companies that help run large Internet systems. Products like real time Facebook wall updates are great, but Mark Zuckerberg wants to improve the world’s servers so he can keep releasing new products. While it may be the less flashy side of Facebook, highlighting its infrastructure, server design and data center design is what makes all this sexiness happen....
Facebook is shutting down its Deals service reportsReuters. Facebook’s Groupon-like deal servicelaunched late Aprilin 5 major cities and offered the ability to cash in on deals local to you and your network. “After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” said a spokesperson. “We think there is a lot of power in a social approach to driving people into local businesses. We’ve learned a lot from our test and we’ll continue to evaluate how to best serve local businesses....
Having trouble finding Facebook Messenger? See the updates at the foot of this post. If you’ve used Facebook’s apps for iOS or Android then you’ve already experienced the frustration with trying to get to your messages inside of the fairly robust, full Facebook application. But if you just want the ability to message your Facebook friends easily, nowthere’s Messenger. Messenger is going to look very familiar if you’ve usedBeluga, the group messaging application that Facebook acquired in March of this year....
Facebook has recently been granted a patent for “Giving gifts and displaying assets in a social network environment” in a bid to retain its dominance in the social network scene despite the rise of group buying and e-commerce sites. Patent number 7,970,657, originally filed by Jared Morenstern back in April 2007, describes social gift giving as “a purchase that can be made known to participating parties as well as others connected to them on the site....
