Facebook has said today that Google is likely to launch a social networking site within six months.
Says Stephen Dolan, commercial director for Asia at Facebook (via Bloomberg): We expect Google to start “a fairly significant social media platform.”
When asked for a time frame, Dolan said he expected “three to six months.”
Google has been quickly moving towards a social networking launch since Facebook overtook the search giant in weekly traffic earlier this year.
“Facebook is the leader in the emerging Social Web and will face challenges from many players, both large and small,” adds Ray Valdes, an analyst for research firm Gartner. “Google is Facebook’s most direct competitor, because Google is dominant in the previous generation of the Web, the content-centric Web.”
Result for: six months
According to CVG, the Nintendo 3DS handheld will be released in October, a full six months earlier than previous reports.
The device will be unveiled at the E3 event, and CVG says “UK industry sources” have told them the handheld will hit store shelves in October, right before the holiday season.
All previous reports, including quotes from Nintendo themselves, had said only that the handheld would be launched before March of 2011.
Says one of the sources: “In my experience, you don’t launch a product that early to Christmas unless you’re confident in it - and going to spend a lot of money on it. We’re reassured that Nintendo is going to give it some decent backing in Q4.”
The 3DS, which has scant details so far, will give users a chance to enjoy “3D” software without need for glasses, and the system will be backward compatible for DS titles.
Nintendo also says the system will not just be a minor reiteration of the DS (like the DSi, and the XL) but instead a brand new console.
Result for: six months
Wikimedia, the company behind Wikipedia has said this week that they have installed a new server, one that should allow for the “huge influx” of video that is starting to be uploaded to the encyclopedia site.
Besides video coming from volunteers, hundred of hours of footage is coming from recent partnerships with national archives and museums.
In 2008, Wikimedia and open source video platform Kaltura joined forces to bring video to Wikipedia, but apparently the process it “taking a little longer” than originally anticipated.
Says Wikimedia’s Head of Communications Jay Walsh about the delay, via NewTeeVee: “We don’t work with proprietary video systems.” Wikipedia will use the free, open-source codec Ogg Theora for video playback, which many browsers did not even support until recently.
Walsh says to expect at least some rollout of an HTML5-based video player and editor in the next three to six months.
