Facebook wants to hear your life story.

Not satisfied with just being a repository for recent vacation photos, the company is revamping the profile pages on its website to better highlight the milestones in a person's life, executives announced at its annual conference for software developers on Thursday.

This new version is based around the idea of a personal "timeline" rather than the standard profile pages that users have become used to.

"We're more than what we did just recently," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in unveiling the new look. "Timeline is a completely new aesthetic for Facebook."

The pages look more like blogs than a social-networking site. A large photo covers the top of the pages, stretching from one side of the screen to the other. And posts -- like photos, status updates and the locations a person visits -- show up below that, attached to a vertical and chronological timeline.

Facebook is hoping the changes encourage people to publish more information about their daily lives and about their pasts. In his onstage demonstration, Zuckerberg posted a baby picture of himself, which showed up at the bottom of his timeline profile.

"We think it's an important next step to help you tell the story of your life," he said.

Some users got a beta version starting on Thursday, while others will be able to request access. The new profile will be turned on for everyone in the next few months, according to Bret Taylor, Facebook's technology chief.

The world's largest social network, with more than 750 million users, introduced some related new features earlier this week. Zuckerberg said Facebook's reach continues to grow.
"For the first time ever, in a single day we had half a billion people use Facebook," he said.
The company made a second big announcement Thursday when it unveiled a new version of its app network, which also is launching in the coming weeks.

Facebook will make it easier for people to post info to their profile pages without visiting the site or clicking a Like button. The company has partnered with dozens of prominent software developers for applications that integrate more closely with the social network. Some of these features launched on Thursday.
This is "the most significant change we've made to our platform since we launched it four years ago," Taylor said.
Streaming music services, including MOG, Rhapsody, Rdio, Spotify and Turntable.fm, can automatically send data to Facebook about each song a user listens to or about new playlists. These might then show up as a weekly report on the user's Facebook page. Zuckerberg called this "real-time serendipity."

"This rings the friction out of how to share music," Kenneth Parks, Spotify's content chief, said in an interview.
To promote this real-time sharing, Facebook also announced partnerships with Yahoo News, Netflix, Hulu, foodie social network Foodspotting and others. These companies have created Facebook apps that can post all of a person's activities on Facebook's new "ticker," which appears in the top right-hand corner of the site's homepage.

Some video services will similarly be able to notify Facebook each time a user watches a video. Hulu, the TV streaming site, and Netflix, the paid subscription service, will be among the first to adopt the new features. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who is also on Facebook's board of directors, said that in some cases, Facebook friend recommendations can trump Netflix's vaunted algorithms. Netflix's Facebook features will be activated in 44 countries but not in the U.S. because of a law that Hastings described as outdated.

"You don't have to Like a movie," Zuckerberg said. "You just watch a movie."

Miscellaneous apps like Nike+ and recipe sites also will be able to send more info about particular runs or dinner concoctions without asking each time.

"I'm not going to publish a status update every time I walk up to my stove," said Taylor, the Facebook CTO who is also an avid cook. "I don't want to spam my friend's news feed every time I pick up a spatula."

News websites and apps will ask readers to sign in with their Facebook accounts so that they can send info to the social network about every article they read.

For the news industry, "it's huge," said Eric Vishria, the CEO of RockMelt, which integrated some of these features into its Web browser. "It gives a more tailored view."

But Flipboard, a news aggregation app for iPad that is listed among Facebook's first partners, decided not to adopt that particular feature because, according to a spokeswoman, users probably wouldn't want to share so much information. Instead, users of the apps will be able to highlight individual articles using the Like button, as they currently can, or also share sections to their profiles, she said.

The new Facebook features could anger privacy advocates. With these changes, Facebook is seeking significantly more data about people's activity online and about their personal lives.

Some Internet users who were watching Thursday's presentation online reacted negatively.

"Get ready for over-sharing," one Twitter user wrote.

"This is just WAY too much sharing. The end of privacy," a Facebook user wrote on the company's live stream page.

Facebook is hoping to alleviate these concerns during a "slow rollout," Facebook's Taylor said in an interview with reporters after the announcement. The company worked with privacy groups during the development of these features, he said.

"This is actually a major step for transparency and control on Facebook," Taylor said. Users will be able to delete individual items after they've been posted, he added.

Zuckerberg has said he believes Internet users will continue sharing significantly more of their lives online each year. Comedian Andy Samberg, who opened Thursday's event with his familiar "Saturday Night Live" impersonation of the hoodied Facebook founder, poked fun at this idea in a brief introductory routine.

Source: CNN

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Google denies 'cooking' search results

Google's executive chairman has denied that the company fixes its search results to promote its own websites and services.

Eric Schmidt told a congressional hearing in Washington: "May I simply say that I can assure you we're not cooking anything."

The Senate Judiciary subcommittee on anti-trust is looking at whether Google abuses its market position.

The US Federal Trade Commission is also investigating the same issue.

The website search giant faces a further continuing investigation by the European Commission.

'Extraordinary advantage'

Mr Schmidt told the senators: "Google does nothing to block access to any of the competitors and other sources of information."

When asked whether Google was a monopoly company, Mr Schmidt said the search engine giant was "in that area", adding that it recognised it had a special responsibility because of its market power.

In reference to software giant Microsoft - which faced years of anti-competition investigations and subsequent fines - Mr Schmidt said: "We get it. By that I mean, we get the lessons of our corporate predecessors."

Concern over Google's domination of the internet search - it has a global market share of about two-thirds - has grown as the company continues to expand into other internet areas, such as its own price comparison website and buying US mobile phone firm Motorola Mobility.

Sen Michael Lee of Utah said that Google's market dominance gave it an "unnatural and extraordinary advantage", and it had a "clear and inherent conflict of interest".

Mr Schmidt was chief executive of Google for 10 years until April, when he was replaced by Larry Page, one of the company's two founders.

Source: BBC

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Academic selection 'improves social mobility', says head.

Christopher Ray, high master of Manchester Grammar School, says that the current system of state education will struggle to cater for the needs of the very brightest pupils unless ministers reconsider their ban on selection by ability.

Ministers have repeatedly asked leading private schools to set up and run a new wave of state academies funded by the taxpayer.

Earlier this month, David Cameron met representatives from a series of schools including Eton, Manchester Grammar and Wellington in a bid to drive forward the Coalition’s flagship academies programme.
But writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Mr Ray says the move “fails to understand the importance of academic selection in our essential character”.

He says that selecting pupils by ability remains “one of the great engines of social mobility”, suggesting the brightest pupils often struggle in mixed-ability classrooms.

Four years ago, Mr Cameron sparked a backbench rebellion after announcing he was severing the Conservatives' ties with academic selection.

The Coalition has now placed the academies programme at the heart of its attempts to drive up standards.
In the last year, the Government has created more than 1,000 academies – state schools with almost complete freedom to run their own policies on the curriculum, teachers’ pay and the shape of the academic year – compared with just 200 opened under Labour.

But ministers have refused to give them powers to select pupils by ability. Only existing state grammars that convert into academies can select.

Writing today, Mr Ray says successive Governments have “thrown money” at schools and communities in an attempt to promote social mobility and boost education standards.

But he says social mobility “remains stubbornly resistant to such tactics”.

“When the government asks independent schools to share with state schools their DNA, it fails to understand the importance of academic selection in our essential character, one which embraces social diversity which in turn vigorously promotes social mobility,” he says.

Mr Ray claims that a fixation on the “ills and defects” of the 11-plus – the traditional grammar school entrance exam – has made it almost impossible to have a “rational debate” on the issue of academic selection.
Manchester Grammar – an independent day school – currently selects children using day-long assessment exercises in which prospective pupils are monitored by teachers in a series of normal classes to see how they respond.

Mr Ray says it is possible to adjust the method of academic selection to “meet the needs of the 21st century”. (telegraph)

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