Google takes aim at slow web pages

Google announced a new service Thursday that it hopes will make slow web pages as anachronistic as manual typewriters.

The web—search giant unveiled a new option called Page Speed Service that accelerates web page loading times by running them through a special application that rectifies bottlenecks and loads the pages to end users through Google’s global network of servers.

Google engineering manager Ram Ramani said in a blog post that in tests the service had increased load times by 25 to 60 per cent.

“To use the service, you need to sign up and point your site’s DNS entry to Google,” Ramani wrote.

“Page Speed Service fetches content from your servers, rewrites your pages by applying Web performance best practices, and serves them to end users via Google’s servers across the globe. Your users will continue to access your site just as they did before, only with faster load times.”

The service is currently available to a limited number of website operators at no cost. Google plans to roll out a fee—based service later this year, Ramani said.

New anti-hacking tool from game theory

How can any organization detect the onset of an attack on its computer network, giving it time to respond quickly and block any intrusion or compromise of its data? The answer could lie in game theory.

Modern firewalls and other technology are already in place, but these have not prevented major attacks on prominent networks in recent months. Now, information technologist Heechang Shin of Iona College in New Rochelle, New York, has used game theory to develop a defense mechanism for networks that is more effective than previous approaches.

Shin explains that each incident might not only severely disrupt services affecting thousands of people, but for a commercial operation it can take as much as one percent of annual sales, per incident, amounting to tens of millions of dollars, according to an Iona statement.

Shin has now developed an effective anti—hacking tool based on a game theoretic model, called defensive forecasting, which can detect network intrusions in real time, the International Journal of Business Continuity and Risk Management reports.

The tool, by playing a “game” of reality versus forecast, wins when reality matches its forecast and it sends out an alert to block the intrusion.

Importantly, the tool works on real—time data flowing in and out of the network rather than analyzing logs, an approach that can only detect network intrusions after they have taken place.

The game theoretic model continuously trains the tool so that it can recognize the patterns of typical network attacks: denial of service attacks, unauthorized access from remote machines in which login passwords are being guessed or brute—force tested, attacks by insiders with “superuser” etc.

Transparent battery makes see-through phones possible

A see-through smartphone you can roll up and stick in your pocket – how about that for a must-have product? It's now one step closer to reality, thanks to the development of a transparent battery.

Transparent screens, circuitry and keyboards have already been developed in an effort to produce see-through devices, but the bulk of any phone is its stubbornly opaque battery. Now, Yi Cui, who led the research at Stanford University, California, says his new battery is the last piece needed to make transparent gadgets.

Other transparent components are essentially just ultra-thin versions of their opaque counterparts, but an equivalently slimmed-down battery wouldn't store much energy. Instead, Cui and colleagues created a grid of electrodes, embedded it in a transparent electrolyte gel and sealed it in plastic. The grid lines are smaller than the resolution of the human eye, rendering the entire thing transparent, while the gel allows the battery to be flexible.

"The transparency is tuneable, so it could be as transparent as glass, in principle," explains Cui. "However, there is a trade-off between transparency and energy density. A reasonable transparency is 50 to 80 per cent." Such batteries store between a third and a half of the energy of an ordinary battery of the same size, but Cui says increasing the thickness would allow them to provide comparable levels.

Cui believes we could see transparent batteries in consumer devices in the next two to four years, depending on how easy it is to scale up the manufacturing process. The see-through components also have a scientific application, however: researchers can use optical detecting tools to study a battery's chemical reactions as they happen, which previously was impossible.

Andrew Flewitt, who researches plastic electronics at the University of Cambridge, says the battery will be key in producing transparent devices. "It's a really important step along that road. I've not seen anyone even attempt to put that piece of the jigsaw in yet," he says, though he adds that integrating the battery into a fully flexible device is likely to be an extra challenge.

Google: Patent war is assured destruction

Google Inc General Counsel Kent Walker said the smartphone industry is using patents in an arms race that hurts consumers, leaving the company trying to "sort through the mess" of litigation.

"It's hard to find what's the best path -- there's so much litigation," Walker said in an interview. "We're exploring a variety of different things."

Google is seeking to buy patents that would put it on a level plane with its rivals, and the company will continue to push to have the US Patent and Trademark Office take a closer look at issued patents that are being used in litigation, Walker said. Congress and the Federal Trade Commission also need to do more to rein in software patents and lawsuits, he said.

"The tech industry has a significant problem," Walker said. "Software patents are kind of gumming up the works of innovation."

Google, which had $39.1 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June, put in an initial $900 million offer to buy the patents of bankrupt phone-equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp. It was outbid by a group that includes Apple Inc, Microsoft Corp and Research In Motion Ltd, which all make devices that compete with phones running Google's Android operating system.

More discipline?
Walker declined to say whether Mountain View, California-based Google will bid on InterDigital Inc, the digital-imaging patents of Eastman Kodak Co or any other specific portfolio. He said it's unclear if the $4.5 billion winning bid for the Nortel patents is a sign that other sales will be equally large.

"We want to be disciplined about how we approach all this stuff," Walker said. "We're looking for a reasonable alternative, but we want to make sure Google and the companies Google partners with aren't shut out of the opportunity to bring great new products and features to consumers."

Google's Android software is now the most widely used mobile operating system, with 38.9 per cent of the worldwide smartphone market, compared with 18.2 per cent for Apple's iPhone, according to research firm IDC.

Apple has patent cases against Samsung Electronics Co, HTC Corp and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc over their Android-based phones, and each of them has filed patent suits against Apple. Microsoft and Motorola Mobility also have filed patent suits against each other, and the Redmond, Washington-based software maker has a pending complaint against Barnes & Noble Inc over the Nook reader.

5 reasons why you should switch to Google Plus

Although it's too early to speculate on the fate of Facebook, Google Plus, the social networking arm from the internet giant Google, offers many a thing from ease of use to data privacy that are worth to switch over to it. Creating a new breakthrough, Google has finally come up with its own social networking platform which is rich in content and features. ComScore has revealed that Google Plus has received 20 million viewers in the first three weeks of its operation. Predicted to become the vital part of Google's whole identity, certain features of Google plus give us a valid reason to consider leaving Facebook for Google Plus.

1. Integration with Google services

The integration capability of Google Plus is regarded as the biggest factor that drives people close to this social networking website. It's being integrated with all the products and services from Google which allows the users to monitor all Google Plus events while being tuned to any of its services.

2. Data backup

Personal data protection has always been a nightmare for Facebook users and Google Plus is all equipped to solve this trouble in their social networking platform. While Facebook demands you to make some of your personal data public which is hard to delete, Google Plus provides the freedom take back all the data you have entered in the website. The site has a special tool named ?Data Liberation? with which you can download data from different Google services such as Google profile, Picasa, Google+ stream etc.

3. Group chat
Google plus has added greater value to its social networking arm with the strong group chat feature which is said to be one of the biggest disadvantages of its rival Facebook. The webs
ite has made it very simple to create a special group video chat with its Hangouts features. Hangouts features a very sleek interface that does not need additional downloads and it's free forever. 

4. Great mobile app
Migrating content from your mobile phone to Google plus is created in such a way that it?s very effortless, cleaner and is a lot more functional with Google+ mobile app. Goo
gle Plus is eying to attract the huge Android user base with its mobile app that is fast becoming a seamless appendage of the social media.

5. Privacy settings
Google Plus has created the concept of privacy settings much simpler in comparison with the settings in various websites which may lead the users to great blunders. With the f
eature known as Circles, you can create a different page of yours for different groups of people. This gives you the freedom to share the content with the friend circles that you want to. Separate circles for your family, friends, colleagues etc can be created here.

Google+ a little more............

In just two weeks, Google's much-anticipated and delayed foray into the ‘social' Web, Google Plus, crossed the 10 million mark. Despite being launched in an exclusive by-invites-only mode, no less than 1 billion items were shared in a single day and the +1 button (similar to Facebook's ‘Like') is already all over the Web.

Google may finally have got third time lucky with Plus. After two failed attempts to enter the ‘social' sphere on the Web — the lukewarm Google Wave and the controversial Buzz — Plus' “field trial phase” appears to be going down well with users. Amidst reports of Facebook (the social networking giant that has over 750 million users worldwide) losing users — which has been rubbished by the firm — Plus hopes to give users more privacy, more control over their data stream and an integrated Google experience by weaving together its plethora of existing services.

Figures quoted by third-party analytics service provider, Google Analytics, project that India is the second largest country in terms of Google Plus users, comprising over 5.6 per cent of the total share, following the U.S. at 49.3 per cent. The number of active users is pegged at around 18,000 in India. While the accuracy of this statistic cannot be vouched for, experts say this is plausible given that Google dominates the Internet in emerging markets.

Indeed, Google appears to have learnt its lessons. But can it replace the wide appeal of Facebook or provide the simplicity and speed of Twitter? Plus will have to do a lot more than it is doing now to actually get people to make that shift. So what does Plus offer? For starters, Google Plus' Beta already appears to score over its competitors on privacy. Learning its lessons from Buzz, which creeped out Gmail users, privacy controls are fairly ubiquitous. This is particularly important, because unlike Facebook, Google users are bound to be paranoid about the fact that their personal email is closely linked to this new social media platform.

The interface is clean. Not as cluttered as Facebook yet, the minimalist interface offers three principal choices: Circles, Hangout and Sparks. Of these, both Circles and Hangouts score over what's already on offer, while Sparks appears to be attempting to offer you a steady stream of content from the Web, based on your ‘interests'.

In Circles, Plus takes a cue from Diaspora, the Free and distributed social networking alternative to Facebook. Like ‘aspects' on Diaspora, which allows you to compartmentalise your friends and control what you share with whom, Circles allows you to create your own groups too. And discreet it is, for your ‘circles' are only visible to you. This, to date, is the most appealing feature of Plus.

Hangouts, too, are great, and scores over Facebook's recent Web-chat feature, because it allows you to Web-conference with 10 users at the same time.
For brands

Google has announced that Plus is currently only for individual users. However, its separate registration process for brands and businesses has already drawn over 35,000 applications.

Gaurav Mishra, social media expert and Asia Director of Social Media at MSLGroup, says, “In the long term, there are two important players: You Tube, a possible marketing tool, and Blogger, still the biggest blogging platform. It will be interesting from a marketing perspective to see how it integrates with Blogger, Adwords and Search.”

Intel chips to power servers for cloud computing

World's largest chip maker Intel Corporation has developed microprocessors to power modular and scalable servers for cloud computing - that enables use of multiple servers as a single platform - by data centres and infrastructure management service providers, a senior official said Friday.

"As part of our second generation multi-core Xeon processors, we have designed and developed chips that can be used for servers by cloud computing providers and builders to offer high performance and energy efficient solutions to end-customers with security, scalable storage capacity," Intel marketing programme manager Nick Knupffer told reporters here.As the next wave of technology revolution, cloud computing enables use of multiple servers as a single platform through a digital network (website) under secured environment with access to a range of applications and tools for reducing the cost of IT operations.

"Our Xeon processor-based servers can be deployed by data centres and enterprises offering infrastructure management services to end-customers across verticals, especially small and medium businesses (SMBs) which cannot afford to invest in capital intensive IT infrastructure and hire personnel to run it," Intel South Asia director R. Ravichandran said.

According to global market research and analysis firm IDC (International Data Corporation), an estimated 2.5 billion people with over 15 billion devices will access the internet by 2015. The same year, the internet traffic is expected to reach a zettabyte or one million, million billion bytes.

"Under our multi-year vision for cloud computing (Cloud 2015), cloud data centres will be seamlessly and securely connected and fully automated. The centres will also provide secure access and optimal experience across a range of devices from smartphones to powerful notebooks," Knupffer pointed out.

With about 70 percent of chief information officers (CIOs) concerned about cloud security, Intel is working on providing trusted execution technology (TXT) to enhance security at the processor level by ensuring a server is not tampered with at the hypervisor level.

The $44-billion Intel acquired global security solutions provider McAfee in August 2010 for $7.7 billion to enhance security of its processors by embedding the features in the chips.

Bendy solar cells that can be printed onto paper

Imagine decorating your bedroom walls with paper made from the same solar cells that now power your home.

That's the tantalising possibility thrown up by the development of lightweight solar cells that can be printed on paper, be scrunched up like an accordion and still conduct electricity. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology printed them on untreated copy paper using a technique that could help slash the cost of producing solar cells.

The glass or plastic backing typically used for solar cells accounts for 25 to 60 per cent of the total cost for materials and so lightweight paper-based cells could significantly reduce photovoltaic production, transportation and installation costs.

A team led by Vladimir Bulović and Karen Gleason changed an ingredient in the material sandwich that makes up a solar cell. They used a flexible conducting polymer as the bottom electrode in the sandwich instead of a transparent metal oxide.

The researchers constructed the solar cell using a dry fabrication process, depositing each layer as a vapour dispersed in a vacuum. A thin mask patterned with holes restricted the placement of the five separate layers of material into cells: the polymer electrode, three energy-collecting materials and the metal electrode at the top of the sandwich. The fact that the vapour was deposited at a relatively low temperature means that the technique allows solar cells to be created on fabric, plastic, tissue paper and even printed newspaper.

At the moment, these paper solar cells are only about 1 per cent efficient. But that's still enough to run small electronics like an alarm clock. A lightweight solar cell could be used for wallpaper or window shades and simply installed using staples or glue.
ture of other compounds. The average temperature is – 235°C. It is 38.87 times bigger and 17.132 times more massive than the Earth.

The First Real Brain-Like Computer Could be Made of the Same Material That Makes DVDs

Scientists in the UK and in California may have found a holy grail of brain-like computing--a material that can both simulate the behavior of neurons and run on very low power--in an abundant and familiar medium. The very same phase-changing material that allows us to record on DVDs could be used to build a low-power brain-like processor capable of learning and adapting without the need for extensive pre-programming.

The material is GST--so named for the materials it contains (germanium, antimony, and tellurium--and it possesses just the kind of phase-changing properties that researchers are looking for. Phase-change alloys like GST can exist in various phases, ranging from crystalline, ordered structures to chaotic, amorphous structures. Their states depends on various external factors, like heat or charge.

In DVDs, GST allows discs to be embedded with binary ones and zeros that can later be read by a laser. That’s fine for film screening purposes, but GST can actually exist in various degrees of phase change between completely crystalline and completely amorphous, and thus it can store information across a wider range of values--just like a neuron, which fires only when a build-up of incoming signals reaches a certain threshold.

The GST neurons/synapses developed by the University of Exeter and Stanford team also can adjust the strength of the synapses between them--a key characteristic of inter-neuron communication--because of its inherent ability to modify its electrical resistance. This allows the GST neurons to adjust the strength of the connections between them to signify the importance of incoming signals and prioritize signals flowing through a neural network.

All said, those two qualities--the ability to store information across a range of phase states, and a low-power, adjustable-strength synapse--make for a pretty nice electronic analog for a working brain. But the work is very preliminary, and it’s one thing to have a few working synthetic neurons in the lab, and quite another to have a working network of thousands or millions (much less hundreds of millions).

In other words, it’s pretty amazing that DVD tech can do these things, but a proper brain-like computer is still many years and several breakthroughs distant

Google+ Circles: Illusion of privacy

Privacy control is one reason Google+, the new kid in the social media sphere, is getting rave reviews. It's intrigued me enough that I've signed up. But I'm not quite convinced that what appears to be a growing obsession with privacy will power the search engine behemoth's push in an arena dominated by Facebook which in 2010 had users comprising 10 per cent of the Earth's population.

In a Time edition in which Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was named The 2010 Person of the Year, Richard Stengel wrote: "All social media involve a mixture of narcissism and voyeurism. Most of us display a combination of the two, which is why social media are flourishing faster and penetrating deeper than any other social development in memory."

Signs of this abound on Facebook.

Why Facebook is popular?

Alone in your room at night, you open your News Feed, click on a post by a friend you've met through work correspondence, and find out she's enrolled in a pole dancing class. You marvel at the "discovery" for a few seconds or minutes, depending on your level of voyeurism and move on to important tasks.

Some Facebook users want more privacy controls on things they share, while others are glad the Zuckerberg idea of privacy clouds their stream of posts to blow their own trumpets.

Here comes Google+, a social media project that appears to be giving users the dial to regulate the level of their own narcissism and others' voyeurism. It is touted to be the archrival that is taking the cue from Facebook critics.

Introducing Circles. In Google+, you assign people to Circles. When you post, you indicate the people you're giving access to it by specifying a Circle. If you're the type who believes that everything you share is relevant to anyone, you pick "Public" before you click on the share button.

It works in cases when you want a discussion among specific people in your social graph. If you're the type who fusses about unintentionally giving the idea that you are vain, choosing Circles assures you you are not so egotistical to believe that what interests you is worth everyone's time.

Facebook music service 'Vibes' in the pipeline?

By analysing Facebook programming code, a software developer and researcher has found evidence of an unannounced music service called 'Vibes'.

Jeff Rose wrote on his blog that after the launch of Facebook Video Chat, he examined the code that the new feature requires to work. He found that it made reference to features called 'Peep' for video calling itself and also to 'Vibes'.

"I searched around to see what this is all about, and it seems that this is an unannounced feature that has yet to be released," the Telegraph quoted Rose as saying.

"The vibes app connects with a music download dialog in the page though, so I'm guessing that with this release we are seeing the seeds for Facebook's upcoming music offering," added Rose.

As Facebook Video Chat is not called 'Peep', it seems likely that any new music service could have a public name other than 'Vibes'.

Facebook, Skype, and Microsoft's savvy investment

Just after Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer announced plans in May to buy Skype, he and Skype Chief Executive Officer Tony Bates had one more order of business.

"The day we announced, we definitely came to see Mark," Bates said, talking of Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, at a press conference today announcing Facebook's plans to bake Skype's video conferencing technology into its social network. "It was for both of us, Steve and I, the most important strategic relationship."

As Google grows ever more powerful in techdom, and Microsoft's influence slips, the Redmond software giant is building closer and closer ties to Facebook. The Facebook-Skype deal today is more evidence that Microsoft and Facebook are in lockstep as they fight their mutual foe, Google. And it comes even while Microsoft awaits regulatory approval to conclude its Skype acquisition.

"We have a really good relationship with Microsoft, where we work with them on a lot of different stuff," Zuckerberg said at the press conference announcing the new video-conferencing feature. That stuff includes advertising, where Microsoft provides all the search advertising to Facebook. It used to provide display advertising, too, but Facebook took over that task last year.

Microsoft has been criticized for its many missteps on the Internet, ranging from leisurely upgrades of Internet Explorer to being slow to understand the importance of search. But its relationship with Facebook is something Ballmer & Co. got right. Microsoft cemented its bond with Facebook in 2007, when it bought a 1.6 percent stake in the company for $240 million. Today, if reported valuations of Facebook are to be believed--online privately held stock marketplace SharesPost currently has an implied value for the company at $82.4 billion--that 1.6 percent is worth $1.3 billion.

But the Microsoft-Facebook relationship isn't really about savvy investment, of course. It's about fighting off Google. Microsoft's Facebook deals, and you can include the new video chat feature from Skype, are all aimed squarely at the search king. And just as the Web search giant has changed the market dynamics to undermine Microsoft's power--helping establish the Web, not the PC desktop, as the heart of computing--so too is Facebook challenging Google. Its service, with 750 million users worldwide, is becoming something of an alternative Internet, a place where computer users spend huge chunks of time and never touch a Google service.

In May, Microsoft began including recommendations from Facebook friends into its Bing search engine, elevating results that receive a "like" from someone in the searcher's network. That way, when people search for a coffee shop in Los Angeles, for example, a java stop that won Facebook praise from their friends will rate higher in their search results, as long as they are logged in, than other nearby locations.

The Microsoft-Facebook deals are creating services that Google has yet to match. Google has tried to add social networking to search, creating its +1 button to shower favor on a news article, a company, or even a search result. But its network isn't the equal of Facebook. So clicking the +1 button doesn't have the same impact as clicking a Facebook "like."

Google temporarily disables 'Realtime' search

Google Inc has temporarily shut down a search engine feature that allows users to find real-time updates from Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed and other social networking sites.

A message posted early Monday on Twitter by the team behind Google Realtime says the search feature has been temporarily disabled while Google explores how to incorporate its recently launched Google+ project into the feature. The tweet tells readers to "stay tuned."

The company envisions including Google+ information along with other Realtime data from a variety of sources, said Gabriel Stricker, a Google spokesman.

Google+ is the search giant's latest stab at entering the social networking segment of the Internet. The project was unveiled last week and lets users share things with small groups of people.

Ultimate Energy Efficiency: Magnetic Microprocessors Could Use Million Times Less Energy Than Today's Silicon Chips

Today's silicon-based microprocessor chips rely on electric currents, or moving electrons, that generate a lot of waste heat. But microprocessors employing nanometer-sized bar magnets -- like tiny refrigerator magnets -- for memory, logic and switching operations theoretically would require no moving electrons.

Such chips would dissipate only 18 millielectron volts of energy per operation at room temperature, the minimum allowed by the second law of thermodynamics and called the Landauer limit. That's 1 million times less energy per operation than consumed by today's computers.

"Today, computers run on electricity; by moving electrons around a circuit, you can process information," said Brian Lambson, a UC Berkeley graduate student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. "A magnetic computer, on the other hand, doesn't involve any moving electrons. You store and process information using magnets, and if you make these magnets really small, you can basically pack them very close together so that they interact with one another. This is how we are able to do computations, have memory and conduct all the functions of a computer."

Lambson is working with Jeffrey Bokor, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences, to develop magnetic computers.

"In principle, one could, I think, build real circuits that would operate right at the Landauer limit," said Bokor, who is a codirector of the Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S), a Science and Technology Center founded last year with a $25 million grant from the National Science Foundation. "Even if we could get within one order of magnitude, a factor of 10, of the Landauer limit, it would represent a huge reduction in energy consumption for electronics. It would be absolutely revolutionary."

One of the center's goals is to build computers that operate at the Landauer limit.

Lambson, Bokor and UC Berkeley graduate student David Carlton published a paper about their analysis online in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Fifty years ago, Rolf Landauer used newly developed information theory to calculate the minimum energy a logical operation, such as an AND or OR operation, would dissipate given the limitation imposed by the second law of thermodynamics. (In a standard logic gate with two inputs and one output, an AND operation produces an output when it has two positive inputs, while an OR operation produces an output when one or both inputs are positive.) That law states that an irreversible process -- a logical operation or the erasure of a bit of information -- dissipates energy that cannot be recovered. In other words, the entropy of any closed system cannot decrease

Facebook set to introduce virtual currency in India

Facebook is set to move its 31-million Indian subscriber community to a new payment system called Facebook Credits next month. Facebook Credits is a virtual currency that facilitates transactions across games and apps on Facebook.

Users would now be able to feed in their payment information once and buy, earn and spend across different games or apps they use on Facebook (similar to Linden dollars in SecondLife). The move could also benefit thousands of brands that use Facebook to sell them products through their social pages.

Deb Liu, a platform marketing manager at Facebook, writes on the company’s official blog, “Facebook Credits is currently used in more than 350 applications from 150 developers, representing more than 70 per cent of the transaction volume in virtual goods on Facebook.” Liu adds developers get to keep 70 per cent of the revenue from virtual goods transactions using Facebook Credits. They can also offer special incentives such as early access to product features, premium promotion on Facebook and premium targeting for ads to developers who integrate the system in their apps.

Many leading developers like Zynga, Playfish, Digital Chocolate, PopCap, and Arkadium have already adopted Facebook Credits for in-game virtual goods. Social games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and Zynga Poker are already a big part of Facebook’s 700-million user base, of which almost 200 million play games on the social networking site each month.

Facebook’s most popular social gamemaker, Zynga (maker of Farmville), would now allow gamers to purchase virtual products using Facebook credits instead of the developer’s currency called Farm Cash. Electronic Art’s social games arm Playfish, which runs several popular games like Restaurant City, Pet Society and Hotel City has also abandoned its own virtual currency for Facebook Credits. Speaking to gamers on the Playfish blog, the company said, “Rest assured, you would not lose any of the Playfish Cash you have bought up to now.

We are making it quick and easy to convert it into the new currency of your favourite game to Facebook Credits by using the Playfish Cash Converter within each game.”

Developers have been testing Facebook’s new payment system for months. One such developer, Digital Chocolate, is one of the top five virtual goods gaming companies. Chief executive officer Jason Loia says, “People are less hesitant to buy virtual currency if it accompanies a consistent and trusted purchasing process so that there’s a lower barrier to entry and reduced friction in the payment process. Facebook’s involvement solves those problems for consumers.”

He adds when Digital Chocolate switched to Facebook Credits, the company was seeing a period of international growth. “So, we knew they were going to work on the problems we found ourselves dealing with, like finding monetisation partners internationally…Facebook does all the heavy lifting in terms of integrating and localising payments, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time,” he says.