There is always plenty to discuss about Facebook as the site continues to grow rapidly. However, there are a few items of interest floating around the blogosphere currently that I wanted to highlight here.
First of all, it has been discovered that Facebook Page owners can have people sign up to become fans via text message. Users can become a fan by texting “fan yourpage” to Facebooks’s shortcode – 32665, which spells FBOOK on your phone. Mashable’s Adam Ostrow says:
The feature appears to be very beta, and hasn’t been enabled for every Page admin yet. An additional caveat seems to be that for Fans to successfully opt-in, they need to have setup their mobile phone to receive texts from Facebook, which can be done from your Settings page. Unfortunately, T-Mobile isn’t on Facebook’s list of supported carriers, meaning I currently get an “access denied” error when trying to Fan stuff via text (most other major carriers are supported, however).
The second item is Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg talking about the ill-received redesign. She says that she doesn’t know why so many people reacted negatively toward the new design, and that a lower percentage had complaints than did for previous site changes. She also mentioned Twitter. CNET’s Charles Cooper quotes her:
“What’s interesting about Twitter is that they are a very good company doing one thing very well, which is real-time update,” she said. “We are, by far, the largest photo-sharing site on the Web…Similarly, we are larger at doing what Twitter does. We think what they’re doing is good. Our redesign is not in reference to them–nor was our redesign in reference to Flickr.”
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And last, but certainly not least, Facebook is reportedly looking for up to $100 milion in financing. BusinessWeek reports:
Specifically, the company is looking for a handful of credit lines that would help it finance leases for the growing number of computers it needs to run its popular Web site. Such leases are used by well-known companies, including Google’s (GOOG) YouTube video service, and are a common way to finance equipment purchases in Silicon Valley.
According to BW, Facebook has already come up with $500 million. The company has gone to Bank of America and other large financial institutions looking for credit.
Discuss your thoughts on any of these three stories with other Murdok readers in the comments section below.
