Who would bet against Facebook today, as it readies for the largest initial public offering (IPO) in the United States in the coming months?

Yet, amid the excitement, one thing that investors will read about is this troubling reminder of the threat coming from rival social networking efforts from the likes of Google, which can take away key advertising dollars.

Even while Mark Zuckerberg and company are expected to raise an initial US$5 billion from a red hot IPO, there is worry that Google will expand its offerings to target the activities that make loads of money for Facebook now.

Facebook’s 845 million active users upload 250 million photos a day, make 2.7 billion comments or “likes” a day and are part of 100 billion friendships online, according to details released for the IPO. Together, they made the eight-year-old company a neat US$1 billion  profit last year – an achievement, since users don’t always equal dollars.

Facebook’s cash cow? Advertising, which contributes 88 per cent of the company’s revenues. Yes, those little tiles on the side of the page that your friends “like” or recommend. The rest of the revenue comes from Zynga, which creates those addictive – and sometimes annoying – social games for Facebook users.

The issues? The mobile version of Facebook does not display ads, so the company could conceivably lose a stream of revenue as more users go online with their smartphones. The question then becomes one of making mobile users view the ads without irritating them enough to force them to quit using Facebook altogether.

The other issue has to do with the company’s focus on advertising, say analysts. This means it is susceptible to the fortunes of the advertising market as well as moves from rivals like Google, which has been gaining traction with its Google+ efforts of late, said Ovum’s Jan Dawson.

He pointed out: “As Google seeks to ramp up Google+, it will eat into Facebook’s share of the social networking market and with it Facebook’s share of related advertising. In addition, since much of Facebook’s revenue comes from gaming apps, as Google expands the gaming platform it is building with Google+, it threatens to dilute Facebook’s relationships with Zynga, which accounts for 12% of its revenue, and other major partners.”

Indeed, Facebook admits the threat from rivals as much in its IPO documents to the US authorities. Besides Google, it includes Microsoft and Twitter on a long list of rivals going forward.

Most industry watchers say Google+, the closest competitor, still has some way to go to shake Facebook from its deeply-entrenched position, but the search and advertising king’s alternative is ramping up fast.

Google+ already has 100 million users today after just seven months, according to one analyst, and the figure is expected to go up to 400 million by the end of 2012.

Google is spreading some Christmas cheer this holiday season with an “easter egg” that will unleash snow flakes on the screen right after you enter “let it snow” in a Google search box.

Once the screen has been filled with snow, there’s a button to defrost the screen, though snow flakes will continue to make their descent on the first page of the search results.

But before you hit defrost, be sure to doodle something on the screen with your mouse cursor, similar to what you might do on a bus window on a rainy day.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays!

Google started the building of a new data centre in Singapore on Thursday, a US$120 million facility which represents the Internet giant’s expansion of operations in the region.

“More users are coming online in Asia than anywhere else in the world,” said Julian Persaud, head of Google Southeast Asia at a launch event. Projected to go online in 2013, the new data centre promises to serve this growing demand by delivering fast and reliable access to Google services.

In addition, the data centre will boost the local job market in a small way, as Google is hiring a small team of full-time staff as well as a number of contractors in a variety of roles, including computer technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and catering and security staff.

Google will also be launching a community grants programme here in Singapore, which will provide annual grants ranging from US$5,000 to US$50,000 to organizations that focus on four specific topics: technology literacy and innovation, renewable energy innovation, access to high speed internet, and new economy entrepreneurship.

For a start, IAB Singapore will be receiving US$50,000 to conduct digital career training programmes for final-year undergraduates to equip them with the necessary digital skills and knowledge so that they will have an easier time landing jobs in the Internet economy.

One of the most loved Android phones and certainly the most long-lasting – the Google Nexus One – looks to finally have a worthy successor in the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus out in Singapore in January 2012.

For a long time, the Nexus One’s sleek lines, zippy performance and first access to the latest Google Android OS releases have made it a phone to cherish for folks who bought it when it first hit the stores about two years ago.

Since then, brighter and better screens, as well as dual-core chips and faster graphics processors have appeared on newer gizmos, but the Nexus One’s basic design and simple Android OS without any third-party manufacturer add-ons still kept it a favourite among Android geeks.

In the Galaxy Nexus, they will find a worthy upgrade. The Nexus model immediately after the Nexus One, the Nexus S made by Samsung last year, was interesting, but it didn’t feel as slim, as sturdy or as much of an upgrade to the original.

The Galaxy Nexus brings to the table the latest 1.2GHz dual-core chip and 1GB RAM for faster processing and a large 4.65-inch screen and bright Super AMOLED screen, so hardware is top-notch and up to date.

Immediately, the difference between the Galaxy Nexus and Nexus S is obvious, during a quick hands-on I had just now with the media here in Jakarta with a Samsung show-and-tell.

The newer model, unveiled about three weeks ago, feels sturdier with the textured plastic backing and the large screen doesn’t make the phone that much bigger because of the extremely slim edge. In fact, placing it next to my Galaxy S II which comes with a 4.3-inch screen makes me feel that the bigger phone isn’t that much bigger after all. It certainly fits into a jeans pocket easily.

Note too that the Galaxy Nexus’ screen is slightly curved, like with the Nexus S, but this time, the less chunky frame makes things look even sleeker and the contour easily fits your face better than a flat slab of metal, plastic and glass.

What’s perhaps more impressive is that the screen remains sharp despite being bigger, because Samsung has packed in more pixels with the 1,280 x 720 resolution that it supports. Just in case you’re thinking things will look blurry with patched up pixels, the latest Nexus will have none of it.

How does the onboard Super AMOLED display compare to the Galaxy S II’s supposedly superior Super AMOLED plus? I’d have to say it’s hard to tell in everyday use. If you care to compare, then perhaps the Galaxy S II’s screen might seem a wee bit brighter, but that’s if you are looking at them side by side – the new phone’s screen is mighty bright in any case and the difference is small, in my view.

Of course, you can’t talk about the Galaxy Nexus without talking about the star of the show – Google’s new Android 4.0 or Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

There is no fancy “personal assistant” here that only understands certain accents, but instead you’d find really useful day-to-day improvements like a face recognition feature that lets you unlock the phone by simply staring at the camera.

The useful features extend to Gmail, which lets you get a quick glimpse of your e-mail message through a new two-line preview, instead of the current one-liner which doesn’t say much.

There are a good number of other features, like shared bookmarks with your PC’s Google Chrome browser, as well as a mobile browser that lets you easily specify that you want to view pages in desktop mode instead of a stripped down mobile version.

Fortunately, the extra features, from what I can see, doesn’t force a hit on performance. I swiped through the screens, with loads of apps running in the background, as well as Ice Cream Sandwich’s new animations turned on, and didn’t detect a slowdown.

What I think the new OS could have improved on is its looks. They are a little spartan, even if you prefer the simpler “pure” Google experience without third party add-ons. In a strange way, the super efficient, super clean look even reminds me of Windows Phone. This is not a bad thing – just that I had hoped Google would have gone for a fancier interface.

So, how does the phone compare to what’s already out there?

First, let’s compare with the Galaxy S II, Samsung’s flagship Android phone. The main thing here, on paper, is the screen size. But if you put them side by side, you’d realise they are not that different, because the larger screen on the Galaxy Nexus includes the soft keys – back, home and context – which are separate hard buttons on the Galaxy S II.

A couple of things that the Galaxy S II has that its newer rival doesn’t is 1) a micro SD card slot for adding more storage (the Galaxy Nexus comes with only internal 16GB or 32GB storage) and 2) an 8-meg camera over the 5-meg one on the newer model.

To be fair, hardware is not everything. When it comes to the new OS, obviously the S II doesn’t have the updated goodies from Google and it would always be slower than the Google-branded model in receiving future updates.

We don’t know for sure when Android 4.0 is coming to the S II – it’s unlikely Samsung would jeopardise the sales of the new model by pushing out the update earlier than the first quarter of 2012.

How does the Galaxy Nexus compare with Windows Phone models, like Nokia’s Lumia 800? Very well in terms of hardware and design, but the Lumia 800 perhaps has an edge in some areas, thanks to Microsoft’s innovations.

These include a seamless People feature that lets you see what your friends are up to on Twitter and Facebook, SMS conversations you have with them and photos you have shared. This is an integral feature built into Windows Phone that works a wonder, so there’s noneed to search for an app to look these details through.

Google has copied that somewhat with a People app for its new OS, but this still requires you to fire up a separate app. The most popular smartpone OS now, Android has been tried and tested by many users, but it certainly is not always an innovator in some of the latest “smart” features.

And finally, what of the iPhone? Apple’s dated-looking iOS and underwhelming iPhone 4 S will be hardly a fight for the Android 4.0 Galaxy Nexus. Whether this is in hardware (screen size and brightness) or software (true multi-tasking AND speed with Android), the Galaxy Nexus wins clearly.

The main sticking point for me is Samsung’s steep asking price of S$948. I already hear grumblings from some friends who have been waiting a long time to upgrade from a Nexus One to the Galaxy Nexus, though I suspect some of them will still end up forking out the cash for a phone that could last just as long as the Nexus One did.

Some users have held on to that defining gizmo for almost two years now. Just like the Nexus One, the Galaxy Nexus could enjoy the same geeky niche following and perhaps even convince more mainstream users now that Android is not just a “challenger” OS but the leader.

The Galaxy Nexus, the first of many phones bearing Google’s latest Android 4.0 operating system, will hit the shelves in Singapore in January 2012, to the delight of Android fans who have waited a long time for a new Google-branded device.

Though it won’t make it in time for the holiday season, the Samsung-made gizmo will come with all the goodies on the “Ice Cream Sandwich” OS that were unveiled in Hong Kong about three weeks ago. Among these: a face recognition feature that unlocks the phone by detecting a user’s face, and updated Gmail features.

However, all the bells and whistles will come at a cool S$948, said Samsung at a regional media event.

Many Android fans, you’d suspect, are already sold. What’s the big deal about a Google-branded phone? Starting with the original Nexus One almost two years ago and later the Nexus S, these phones are always the first to get updated to Google’s latest OSes. They also offer what’s known as a “pure” Google experience, which suits geeks who prefer their phones without any software add-ons.

Besides the software, the Galaxy Nexus is also a contender with its hardware. From the 1.2GHz dual-core processor to the 4.65-inch XL-sized screen, this is one gizmo packed with the latest gear.

The only thing it loses out to Samsung’s main flagship device – the Galaxy S II – is that this new phone has “only” got a Super AMOLED screen, instead of the ultra-bright Super AMOLED plus on the Galaxy S II.

But the S II has a smaller 4.3-inch screen. And more importantly, the Galaxy S II won’t have Ice Cream Sandwich for a while until the Galaxy Nexus ships, so if you want Android’s latest enhancements, the Galaxy Nexus is your ticket to Android geekdom.

The new phone will also be appealing to folks still using the venerable Nexus One – a phone that has received updates all the way from Android 2.0 to 2.3 and has kept pace with many a rival device launched later – because the Nexus One won’t be receiving an update for Ice Cream Sandwich.

Check out Techgoondu’s quick hands-on experience with the Galaxy Nexus.

The next Nexus phone from Google and Samsung, the Galaxy Nexus, will start shipping in November with new features like an improved Gmail experience and the ability for the phone to unlock by simply recognising a user’s face.

They are part of Google’s new Android 4.0 operating system, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, which will feature for the first time on the Galaxy Nexus, according to a Google show-and-tell in Hong Kong this morning.

Traditionally, Google has rolled out new OSes on its Nexus phones, which are a favourite of phone geeks as these devices have the latest Google OS and do away with most of the add-ons that phone makers add to their Android offerings.

The Galaxy Nexus, previously dubbed the Nexus Prime by fans, will come with a large 4.65-inch screen Super AMOLED screen reminiscent of the HTC Sensation XL. The Samsung-made phone also sports a 1.2GHz dual-core processor that should be able to handle most tasks on the phone, including shooting high-def videos with the 1080p-capable camera.

Among the interesting new features, Ice Cream Sandwich can unlock a phone by simply recognising a user with its camera. So there’s no need to swipe the screen for one of the most oft-repeated actions today.

What’s also noteworthy is the native camera app. It comes with a number of improvements like easy sharing to Twitter, Facebook and other social networks, as well as editing tools that enable special effects and red eye adjustment that used to be available on third-party apps like Vignette. This means there’s less need to buy an additional camera app with the Samsung Nexus out of the box.

Among the other useful but less “magical” improvements is the tweaked Gmail interface. Users get a two-line preview, so they can easily decide whether to fire up a message or leave it in the inbox. There’s also an action bar at the bottom of the screen that lets you select multiple messages at one go and either archive and delete them, for example.

Better yet, you can search for messages for the past 30 days or more when you are offline. Until now, you need an Internet connection for to search your e-mail, but the new offline feature now means you can easily look up a message even when you are overseas and don’t want to incur expensive roaming charges.

There are a lot more features to be explored in Ice Cream Sandwich, which we will have updates for later. Also, as yet, there are no specific details of shipping dates for Singapore, but we’ll have them here once we do.

The Galaxy Nexus looks interesting, and with a souped up Ice Cream Sandwich beefing up already strong OS features, the Android ecosystem looks capable of continuing on its meteoric growth in the past two years.

One question for Google has been whether it could continue to work well with partners such as HTC and Samsung after it bought Motorola Mobility just a couple of months ago. Encouragingly for its partners, the Samsung-made Galaxy Nexus runs the latest Android OS, while Motorola’s Razr launched just hours ago comes with the older Android 2.3.5.

Stand aside, browser wars; a new battle is heating up between Microsoft and Google and this time, the battlefield is email.

Google fired the first shot by launching a new website called Email Intervention, designed to help you stage an intervention among your friends who still use that outdated email address from the 1990s. The accompanying video featuring an “intervention specialist” is cute, funny and completely in Google’s cheeky style.

Out of the blue, a video meant for internal salespeople leaked out from Microsoft and drew quite a few chuckles from us. Unexpectedly hilarious, Microsoft’s clip featured “Gmail Man”, a mailman who goes around reading your personal email and then says, “Who cares?”

In the video, the Redmond company exaggerates the function of Gmail’s advertisements, emphasising the privacy and security of its own product, and throws in a few catchy jingles to boot.

His favourite game is peekaboo,
His favourite words, “So what?”
He smiles in your face when
You stutter, “But, but, but…”
His ads are unsolicited,
Based on what you type,
Makes you wanna ditch Gmail
And go Office 3-6-5.

The message Microsoft is trying to bring across is how Google’s enterprise offerings, although inexpensive, are merely channels for it to sell ads. When you buy an Office 365 plan, there are no ads!

But what Microsoft is forgetting is that there are no advertisements in Google Apps for Business! Ads are turned off by default, and administrators can turn it on if they so wish. And of course, we all know no real person actually reads our Gmail account. It’s a fully automated system that learns as it goes along.

That’s what Google says, and we all trust Google… Right?

(Credit: Screenshot: Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Facebook has taken down an app developer’s ads promoting this Google+ account and promptly banned his other ads on the social networking site, as the tussle for control of the Internet heats up between the online giants.

According to reports over the weekend, Michael Lee Johnson had put up an ad telling fellow Facebook users to visit his Google+ page, where he claimed to be an “Internet geek, app developer (and) technological virtuoso”. But a few days later, Facebook yanked his ads out, saying that he had flouted their terms and conditions.

Facebook also said he was banned from advertising on the social networking site, in a cryptic e-mail that is now circulating over the Internet:

“Your account has been disabled. All of your adverts have been stopped and should not be run again on the site under any circumstances. Generally, we disable an account if too many of its adverts violate our Terms of Use or Advertising guidelines. Unfortunately we cannot provide you with the specific violations that have been deemed abusive. Please review our Terms of Use and Advertising guidelines if you have any further questions.”  (Source: Time TechLand)

And so the app developer’s story has become the latest in a deepening saga between the two Internet giants.

Why are they at each other? Facebook sells the most display ads in the United States now, and is set to collect US$2 billion in ad revenues this year and grab 20 per cent of the market. Google, once the online ad king, is obviously not happy to stand idly by. And in Google+, it seems to have finally found an alternative to make Facebook sit up – or start resorting to some anti-competitive behaviour.

Launching its new service just weeks ago, Google had signed up more than 10 million users in no time and had to temporarily stop invitations to join. Though it is still a long way off Facebook’s expected 750 million users, the search giant has not come this close to upsetting the social media network king for years.

The next year or so will be interesting to see if Google manages to leverage on its e-mail, maps and search services to knock Facebook off the perch. Lest Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg forgets, that’s how fast things change with social media. Remember MySpace?

Everybody is looking at social media as the next gold rush.

It’s not surprising, given that social media has moved beyond the consumer space and into the enterprise.

At a press event last week, infrastructure software company TIBCO showed off Tibbr 3.0, an social media platform for enterprises that will be available in August 2011.

Tibbr was launched in January this year after being in development since 2009.

It may be a little bit late to the game though, and gaining mindshare will be difficult as the market is quite crowded.

There are a ton of niche companies who specialize in this space like Yammer and Socialcast.

Not to mention all the big IT companies, who all have solutions or are looking at this space, like IBM (with Connections and Lotus Live) and Microsoft (with Office 365 and Officetalk) and Salesforce.com (with Chatter).

So what makes Tibbr different?

According to Ram Menon, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for TIBCO, traditional social media platforms — especially mass consumer ones like Facebook — allow you to reach out and connect with as many people as possible.

This is great when it is about our personal lives, but when it comes to the enterprise, things like security and the right information flow is more important.

“In the enterprise domain, you want pinhole access to information, with the right information given to the right folks at the right time,” he said.

And his argument is that TIBCO, being in the space of event messaging, communications and workflow for 14 years, understands the domain and has built a better product in this space.

Tibbr can connect to third-party applications like Oracle iExpense and SugarCRM, and works across mobile platforms like iOS, Android and Blackberry. Ram claims that Tibbr can be deployed in “hours instead of months”.

My take? Call me cynical, but even if the Tibbr product has good reviews, the solution will have a tough time gaining mindshare in the wider enterprise market.

Customers who use platforms like Salesforce.com, IBM, Microsoft, Google, etc. will probably consider social media solutions from these big IT companies, who also integrate social media workstreams into their software platforms.

If it’s bespoke, an enterprise can choose a smaller, nimbler system integrator to implement its vision.

It wasn’t articulated at the press event, but if TIBCO’s vision is to use social media to differentiate itself from other infrastructure messaging players in its middleware stack space, then it makes sense. Upsell it’s existing customer base on the new product to defend and grow its turf (as I’ve argued before on Salesforce.com’s Chatter), and see where the market takes you.

After all, social media is still begining its nascent rise in the enterprise, and there’s lots of room for jockeying in the space.

This is it, folks. No more half-hearted and half-baked social products. Google has revealed their trump card in the war for your online social life and gone all in with their chips.  Google+ is an amalgamation of all of Google’s efforts to penetrate the social sphere thus far.

Although initially open only to a select number of users, the service has since expanded into the hands of quite a good chunk of people. But how will this latest foray into social networking fare for Google?  I spent the last few days playing with Google+ and messing around with it, so here’s my verdict, for what it’s worth.

Google+ is no Facebook killer, but it’s nothing to scoff at either.

The first thing a new user should notice about Google+ is the striking resemblance it has to Facebook. That’s not a bad thing, since Facebook’s user interface generally does a great job at organising the various parts that make up its full service.

Beyond this superficial resemblance, Google has brought some fresh ideas to the online social networking table, including the much-hyped “Circles” feature.

Circles lets us organise the people in our lives in a more sensible manner, instead of classifying them all as “friends” like what Facebook does. I can put my family members in a “Family” circle and selectively share with them only the things I choose to. No prizes for guessing which circle my boss will go into.

Another interesting feature is the ability to start Hangouts: video group chats which, again, you can selectively invite and display to your various circles. This seemed to be Google+’s unique feature, until Facebook recently unveiled its long-rumoured partnership with Skype to bring video chat to Facebook users, complete with an overhauled chat function.

There are numerous other features on Google+, but other than a differing paradigm in handling your online social contacts, it’s not that different from Facebook. Without a unique feature to hook users in, Google+ will remain a plaything for us geeks.

Plus, we’re so entrenched in Facebook that there’s no point moving to a new service if the bulk of our friends don’t move. I, for one, am not going to download all my Facebook photos and then upload them again to Google+.

One advantage Google+ has right now is its overall tie-in with the rest of Google’s services. Google is updating the design of all its major Web apps to provide an overall consistency to their look and feel. There is a huge potential there for Google to integrate their Web apps into a one-stop portal where you spend most of your time online.

Good reviews and optimistic outlooks on Google+ are pouring out all over the Web but don’t forget that these are written by early adopters, who love shiny new tech playthings. Facebook now has more than 750 million users and it’s going to be a mammoth task for Google to win them over. Still, don’t discount Google yet, since being late to the game, it has plenty of time to polish Google+ up.

Have you tried Google+? Let us know what you think of Google’s new attempt at being social!