At least 2 million Xbox Live users have logged into Facebook this past week, which I guess means the feature is a bit of a success. (You’ll recall that Microsoft launched Facebook and Twitter to so much enthusiasm last week.) Mysteriously, Microsoft didn’t reveal the number of people who logged into Twitter. Is this the end of Twitter?

No, of course not. Maybe it just means that Xbox Live users don’t see any value in using Twitter when there’s no way to click all those bit.ly links?

In related “social” news, Microsoft says that around half a million Last.fm account were created with the launch of Xbox Live-Last.fm compatibility.

Needless to say, these applications weren’t a total waste of time on Microsoft’s part. I’m still not convinced of the value of using Facebook or Twitter from the couch—don’t you have a Facebook or Twitter application on your phone in your pocket?—but I’m decidedly non-plussed by all these newfound “social” applications. It doesn’t help that, generally speaking, I’m an anti-social jerk :-)

Now, there’s a larger point to be made here about whether or not we actually want our video game consoles to become little more than low spec PCs. If you had a top-of-the-line PC, why would you want to buy the PS3 version of, say, Fallout 3 when you can grab the PC version, what with all those mods and whatnot?

Maybe I should save my beans and buy a gaming-worthy PC in the next year, and actually play games like Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3, and Call of Duty the way they were meant to be played? I’m very much considering it. Too bad I know *nothing* about what makes a good gaming PC these days.

As of next Tuesday, November 17, you’ll be able to access Twitter and Facebook on your Xbox 360. The software update is free, like previous updates, and also includes Last.fm and Zune video compatibility. “What are you doing?” “Losing to 12-year-olds in Modern Warfare 2 over and over again! Not fun.”

The idea, I guess, is that you’ll be able let your friends know just how much fun you’re having while playing the latest game, or streaming the latest Netflix release, without having to go through the trouble of whipping out your phone or walking over to your computer. I see it as a convenience and nothing more. It may also mean that there’s nothing you can to do stop Twitter’s worldwide dominance.

This is what the Twitter interface looks like in motion:

Note that the Xbox 360 isn’t the only video game console whence you can tweet or alter your Facebook status. The PS3 and Wii come with a built-in Web browser, and a stand-alone Facebook interface for the PS3 was leaked just yesterday.

And while the Twitter and Facebook support will get the most attention, I think it’s the Zune HD support that’s most interesting. Say what you will about the Zune HD—Devin liked it, and I went out and bought it I was so impressed—but the idea of an instant-on, HD, 5.1 surround system movie service certainly intrigues me. Of course, its success now depends on what type of movies are released for it.

But that’s just the usual pain that comes with convergence. Facebook integration was announced for the Xbox 360 back at E3, though it’s not yet to the point of an actual client. It’s been given a few test runs, and I have to say it looks a bit ugly in NXE form, but what doesn’t? I think what irks me the hipshot way the avatars stand. It isn’t right.

See?

The one small picture of Facebook on the PS3 is at the top (yes, that’s all there is), and it’s not even of a client. It’s a user accounts configuration screen that happens to include Facebook. So it’s not much to look at, but it was traced to Sony UK’s site, so we’re pretty sure it’s legit. Sony “doesn’t comment on rumor or speculation,” obviously, so we won’t be hearing from them, but it would be ridiculous to think that a all-in-one entertainment device like the PS3 wouldn’t have Facebook on it eventually.

While the ability to post interesting things to Facebook would be pretty limited with a Dual Shock and other inherent console limitations, I’m really loving the development of a meta-layer to the consoles that’s always floating just out of sight. Hit pause, check the latest tweets and status updates, grab another Fresca, and then back to the game. I’m not a part of it yet since the Super Nintendo doesn’t really have that level of connectivity, but I look forward to it once I actually buy into this new generation of consoles.

[via Joystiq]

Sid Meier—yes, the Sid Meier—just posted a note to Facebook announcing Civilization Network, which “will allow you to join together with your friends to create the world’s most powerful, richest, smartest, or just plain coolest civilization.” It will probably be huge, yes.

The game, which comes to Facebook sometime next year, is currently in development, and a closed beta will begin “soon.” Meier describes the game as having been borne from his desire to expose the Civilization world (what an odd phrase) to the “uniqueness” of social networks.

What that means, of course, is anyone’s guess. Details are pretty scare, as you can imagine.

One key point: it will be totally free to play, which ensures that it at least has the potential to go viral, which is all the rage these days.

Now this is the type of radio a fancy gentleman would use. It’s the latest PURE Sensia, a touchscreen European radio that supports FM, DAB (and DAB+), and Internet radio. There’s also Wi-Fi and “widgets,” I guess, for sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Compare this to the old clock-radio you’ve got on your nightstand, and I think you’ll agree: this is better. It has built-in stereo speakers (but let’s be real: you’re not going to be using this to listen to your meticulously encoded FLACs now are you?) as well as a jack to hook it up to external speakers—perhaps you and your Sim friends are having a party tonight?

The best part, though, is those aforementioned widgets. You’ve got the two big guys right now in Facebook and Twitter, along with access to Picasa, Google’s take on Flickr. Then there’s things like weather widgets, news widgets, etc. It’s almost Chumby-like.

Mr. Radio is a tad on the expensive side, however, coming in at £249, or just over $400. Still, it’s a fine-looking radio, and one I wouldn’t mind using it, provided I had $400 to burn, which I don’t. What are you gonna do?

via SlashGear

Writing a book in 2009 is a tricky thing to pull off. Never mind the research, the interviews, or the writing, but then you have to face facts: who reads in 2009? Unless you’re Dan Brown or Stephen King or Glenn Beck, odds are your book, no matter how thorough or well-written, isn’t exactly going to fly off the shelves. What will fly off the virtual shelves, though, is an iPhone App. You see where I’m headed. Adam Penenberg, who’s a contributing writer over at Fast Company magazine (and an old professor of mine from back in my NYU days), has developed an iPhone and Facebook App called “Viral Loop” to help raise awareness of his latest book, Viral Loop: From Facebook to Twitter, How Today’s Smartest Businesses Grow Themselves. Let’s take a look.

The App, which is only in Facebook form right now (the iPhone App will be released within two weeks), basically tries to tell you how much your worth, socially. Let’s say Little Timmy has 100 friends on Facebook, who each have 100 friends of their own. Little Susie, on the other hand, has 150 friends, who each have 200 friends of their own. Timmy, though, uses Facebook all day long, while Susie only uses it sparingly. Viral Loop will take all that into account—number of friends, how “active” you are online, etc. then come up with a dollar amount. Bam! You’re worth $20, you’re worth $50, you’re worth $1,000, etc.

There’s even a leader-board to see who ranks where. Note that Real Madrid’s Cristiano Ronaldo is worth more than God himself. You would think that the being whose image we were all created in would be worth more than a professional footballer!

If all of this seems like a glorified popularity contest, well, isn’t that what all these sites are about? Who has more Facebook “friends,” I have more Twitter followers than you so I’m obviously better than you, etc.

As it turns out, I’m worth a whopping $94.60, which seems about right, both on Facebook and in real life. Sell me, and maybe you can buy a nice pair of jeans.

And as for the iPhone App, which, again, should be available to download in less than two weeks, it’ll be some sort of pseudo gambling game where you can spend your Viral Loop money on certain events. Will Twitter announce a business model by the end of 2010? (I’ll put $20 on that.) How many people will download Google Chrome OS during the first 24 hours of its release? That sort of thing.

You’ll remember that all of this is about a book. It represents the first time, to my knowledge, that an author has gone to such great lengths to promote his book using social media. The over-arching idea is, of course, once you get people hooked on this idea of viral loops and all that jazz, you’ll want to learn all you can about it, and buy the book.

The things you do to get people reading these days!

It has come to our attention that someone is making a movie about Facebook, called The Social Network. It stars Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker and Jesse Eisberg as Mark Zuckerberg. (Note: I’ve never heard of 50 percent of those people. Guess which ones!) To that end, your CrunchGear morning crew—Doug, Matt, Scott, John, and myself—has taken it upon itself to come up with even more movies based on popular Internet destinations and general tech-related greatness. These are a few of our ideas.

Commenters: This is a movie about a group of friends who frequently comment on different Web sites, such as YouTube and Digg. Unbeknownst to the friends, they start trashing each other online—you suck, no you suck—until one day, someone brings up the online feud they’re in. (“Dude, there’s this guy on YouTube who’s a total jerk!”) When the friends realize they’ve been feuding with each other, they either A) break down and cry, vowing to never use the Internet for evil or B) beat the living life out of each other, like it’s a PRIDE match in 2002 .

Windows Update: The Movie: A coming of age film that begins with a boy updating his PC. As the update starts, the boy is instantly transported to an alternate dimension where he is treated as a god. Growing corrupt with power, the boy then begins to abuse his subjects, who soon rebel against the great boy king. As his subjects are about to drop him into a great big fire pit, the boy is transported back to his room. The Windows PC has updated without a hitch.

Twit-tuh: A short, indie film in which a John F. Kennedy impersonator, sitting in a chair, says the word “Twitter” with that classic Kennedy accent. The frame then fades away.

Gmail: The Movie: Another artsy movie, in which a young, 20-something Brooklynite (originally from Georgia, of course) begins to take her Gmail obsession to new heights, labeling everything in her apartment and her section of Brooklyn (“East Williamsburg”) with Gmail-like labels. “Interesting.” “Must try!” “Poor service.” “Cool chill spot.” This all goes great until she labels a young Puerto Rican man’s car “Garish.” The man confronts her, but then they probably fall in love. We’re looking to cast Julia Stiles.

Dell: A biopic about Dell founder Michael Dell. One day, he has to call customer service because his wife says the oven is on the blitz. He is shocked to find that this call center is based in the U.S., and that the service he received was exemplary. Nothing else happens.

The point is, if they can make a movie called The Social Network, then they can damn sure make any of the above movies.

Just like last.fm, Xbox 360 owners looking to socialize with friends on Twitter and Facebook via Xbox Live must have a Gold Membership. Just a little nugget that popped up in the price cut announcement from earlier that we thought you might want to know about.

Xbox LIVE Gold Membership will be required for Twitter and Facebook when they are available, and is required for Netflix. Games, media content and Netflix membership are sold separately; a hard drive is required for storage.

A new poll, conducted by Common Sense Media, suggests that teens are complete idiots when it comes to comporting themselves online. A whopping 13 percent of teens have posted online nude or semi-nude photos of themselves or someone they know. And then some 25 percent of teens have posted something online that they later regretted. You know, drunk photos and the like.

Now, when you’re still a freshman in college no one particularly cares that you drank two beers during an up-all-night Rock Band party, but come senior year? Yeah, all those photos of you running around campus wearing nothing but Scooby Doo underpants while doing so many lines of coke may come back to haunt you when you’re looking for a job. You see, when you send in your resume to COMPANY, odds are the human resources department is going to be combing through your online presence. Racist tweets? Oops! Incriminating Facebook photos? Yikes!

Young people need to keep in mind that what they post on the Internet will always be there. Oh, sure, you can delete the photo, but probably not before interested parties have already hit Print Screen and ricocheted it around the Web.

Of course, it’s not all bad news, per se. Keep a reasonably accurate Facebook profile, and prospective employers can say, “Man, look at this kid. Seems like he’s got a good head on his shoulders. Let’s get him in here for an interview.” Or maybe you’re moving into an apartment and don’t know a damn thing about one of the roommates—oh, he likes “baseball” and “rock music,” too? Great, we’ll be the best of friends.

Of course, all of this assumes that teens still even use Facebook, which seems to be less certain these days.

Sorry, but social networks simply aren’t cool anymore among the 15-to-24-year-old crowd. (I’m 23, and have all but quit Facebook (I stopped tweeting a few months ago), but that’s more of a function of me being an anti-social cad than anything else.) Why? It seems the older crowd—people 25 and older—has given social networks the unmistakable stench of being not cool. Why would an 18-year-old kid want to mimic the lifestyle of a 30-year-old?

Now, while I’m thrilled to read this news, there are a few caveats. It’s not like 15-to-24-year-olds are not using the Internet anymore. (No, they’re using YouTube to listen to music, and using Rapidshare to download TV shows.) And a lot of those older users (25+) are responsible for the growth of Twitter of late.

Breaking down the numbers—all these numbers come from a recent Ofcom study, which I should have mentioned far earlier in this post—some 46 percent of people aged 25-to-34 regularly check Facebook compared to 40 percent one year ago. Meanwhile, 50 percent of kids aged 15-to-24 regularly check Facebook, down from 55 percent one year ago. Our own DBru notes kids don’t like this stuff because it doesn’t feel safe.

And another data set suggests that kids under the age of 16 are still crazy for social network sites. So who knows what’s going on?

In any event, I look forward to the day when the word “Twitter” is expunged from the English language.

Good morning, everyone!

Nintendo pushed out firmware v1.4 last week in Japan and it looks like NA will be getting the same treatment tonight. Sometime after 5PM PT today, Nintendo will be pushing out an update for DSi owners to be able to upload pictures to their Facebook profile page via the DSi. We first learned about this feature back at E3 and I’m still pretty lukewarm about it now as I was back then. But I’m a jaded jerk so don’t listen to me. And remember, kids, this update will bork flash carts so proceed with caution.

Yeah, it’s not that exciting.

via Joystiq

Update: Looks like 1.4 is borking flash carts on the DSi. Uh oh.

via Max

Just got this email. It’s a bit presumptuous considering the common expectation is that you don’t author your own Wikipedia entry.

Basically Jimmy is asking me to become a fan of his Facebook page but does Jimmy really need fans? And does he have to launch such a personal appeal? He’s a heck of a guy, I’m sure, but what’s in it for me?

Here it is, folks, at long last. Its been over a month and a half since details of Facebook v1.5 for BlackBerry spilled all over the place, but it’s now available for anyone and everyone with a compatible ‘Berry.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Movie recommendations have most often been through word of mouth, but Netflix wants you to work harder to talk about the movies you watched over the weekend. The Netflix Updates application for Facebook users allows you to share your movie ratings with friends and view friend’s ratings through your news feed. The most attractive feature of this application for me is being able to add a movie to your queue from your friend’s news feed.

I am expecting the common reactions: “But I don’t want everyone to see my ratings!”, “I hate Facebook!”, “I hate change!” As with any Facebook application, you can control what your friends see. You can have Facebook prompt you before publishing any stories from Netflix Updates, or you can have Facebook update automatically without prompting. There is also an option to have your stories posted in one-line, short, or full. I put mine to one-line because I don’t want to contribute to the clutter already on my friend’s news feeds.

I just started using twitter, and I’m reluctant to integrate my tweets into Facebook status updates. My non-tech friends couldn’t care less about my tweets containing my blog posts and news stories. But with the Netflix app, my non-tech friends can get recommendations on movies to watch through my news feed. Not everyone loves tech, but who doesn’t love movies?

If you’re a Netflix and Facebook user, I highly recommend that you use this. Integrate your Facebook and Netflix account by accessing your Netflix account here.

MOVING TO BROADEN ITS ACCESSIBILITY, NETFLIX INTREGRATES WITH FACEBOOK CONNECT,
ENABLING MEMBERS TO SHARE MORE WITH FRIENDS

LOS GATOS, Calif., March 24, 2009 – As part of its plan to make Netflix features more broadly accessible to members and their friends, Netflix, Inc. (Nasdaq: NFLX), the world’s largest online movie rental service, today announced its integration with Facebook Connect, which seamlessly links a Netflix member’s account with his or her Facebook account. Facebook Connect will extend members’ movie ratings from the Netflix community to Facebook. Netflix members decide if they want to use Facebook Connect and can turn it on or off at any time.

Each time a Netflix member rates a movie, that one- to five-star rating will be posted on his or her Facebook profile and shared with the member’s friends if the Netflix member has enabled Facebook Connect. Because friends can make comments in response to ratings posts, this new feature encourages an enriched movie-watching experience, enhanced by interaction and conversation among friends. Movie rating posts on Facebook will also link back to the correlating movie page at Netflix, enabling Facebook users to learn more about a specific movie and allowing Netflix members to easily add the movie to their own Queues.

“Movies make for great conversations,” said Gibson Biddle, vice president of product management for Netflix. “By integrating with Facebook Connect, Netflix members can now share their movie-watching experiences even more easily than before, allowing for greater exchange of movie recommendations with their friends.”

“Netflix is a clear leader in bringing innovation to renting, viewing and engaging around movies,” said Ethan Beard, director of platform marketing, Facebook. “We think the social features in Facebook Connect provide a tremendous opportunity for Netflix subscribers to share their thoughts and feelings on movies with their friends in the Netflix community and with Facebook’s more than 175 million active users.”

To link their Netflix and Facebook accounts, Netflix members will use the “Connect” button on the Netflix member site at http://www.netflix.com/facebookconnect. Upon first connecting, each member will have the option of pushing all future movie ratings to his or her Facebook profile or to be presented with the option of publishing ratings to Facebook on a case-by-case basis.

Netflix anticipates the integration of additional features through Facebook Connect and encourages user feedback through the Netflix Facebook page www.facebook.com/netflix or on Twitter www.twitter.com/netflix

We’re right in the middle of Lent, a time for certain followers of certain religious beliefs to give something up for the greater good. And more power to ‘em, I say. What’s interesting to us here is: would you consider giving up something like Facebook (that’s for the TechCrunch crowd) or, say, Xbox 360 or your iPhone (for the CrunchGear guys)? Several Fordham University students have indeed chosen to give up Facebook, saying that if they’re going to give something up, they should give up something they use on a daily basis.

It’s not unheard of for people to spend hours on the site, talking to their friends, playing games and generally just wasting time. (I spend maybe five minutes total on the site these days; card-carrying member from 2004 right here!) So, since Lent is all about giving up things you enjoy the most, why not try saying bye-bye to Facebook.

Now, we are a few weeks into Lent so I don’t know if giving up Facebook now “counts,” per se, but surely it couldn’t hurt to cut down on your use if you’re on there all day long or whatever.

via NYConvergence