New York: Facebook and Skype are working on a broad partnership that will include the integration of the two services through Facebook Connect, according to a person briefed on the plans, who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity because the plans were supposed to be confidential. The partnership will be announced in the next few weeks, the person said.
A Facebook spokeswoman and a Skype spokesman declined to comment.
Under the partnership, people who use their Facebook credentials to log in to Skype will be able to see their Facebook friends on Skype. They will also be able to see their news feed and to sent text messages and call their friends' landlines using Skype.
News of the partnership, which was first reported by the blog AllThingsD, comes as Skype is getting ready for a public offering.
Facebook has sought to blend its social network with popular communications services before, for example tying its service with AIM from AOL in February. And Facebook has said recently that it is planning to integrate its service into some mobile phones, though it denied it was building its own phone. The tie-up with Skype presents an opportunity for both companies to grow their usage, especially internationally, where Skype has a strong presence. Agencies
Meanwhile, Facebook has begun to remove pages that refer to the North American Man/Boy Love Association after the presence of the nefarious paedophile advocacy group was revealed in a FoxNews.com exclusive report.
Group pages that have been scrubbed from Facebook include The Greensburg group of the North American Man Boy Love Association, whose page featured a photo of a young child; "N.A.M.B.L.A. (East Lansing Chapter), which had a photo of a child who appeared to be about 5 years old; "NAMBLA" in the "Organisations-Advocacy Organisations" category, which featured a photo of a man being kissed on the cheek by a small child and "N.A.M.B.L.A.," which said it "advocates the legalisation of sexual relations between adult male and under-aged boys".
Facebook was alerted about the existence of those pages on Sept. 23 during an investigation of the group's presence on the website, which led to an article, 'EXCLUSIVE: Paedophiles Find a Home for Social Networking-on Facebook,' which was published on Sept. 28.
The article revealed that NAMBLA, the world's largest paedophile advocacy group, has been using Facebook to connect with other like-minded individuals, share photos and find new victims.
Despite Facebook's policy against the posting of content that supports groups engaged in child exploitation, dozens of pages proudly proclaiming an affiliation with the North American Man/Boy Love Association were easily found. Many of those pages featured numerous photos of unnamed boys, who appeared to be around 4 years old.
No comments:
Post a Comment