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ShareEvents in cyber space during the last one week have brought the democratic aspects of social networking back to the fore in the web 2.0 discourse. We bring you a run down of events that have changed the way you network with friends using Twitter, Google or Facebook.
Happy Birthday Firefox
On Monday Firefox turned four. Originally an experimental branch of the Mozilla project, a new web browser was launched on November 9, 2004: Firefox 1.0. It was an instant hit among users. Five years later, Firefox holds a quarter of the browser market and while technically not being the most popular (Microsoft's Internet Explorer still clings to that honour), it's definitely the most prominent browser, with thousands of plug-ins (add-ons, as they are called), a busy developer community, and over 330 million users.
Dislike feature on Facebook
One of those add-ons is the dislike feature on Facebook. Users of the social networking site will recall that currently they can only 'like' a fellow user's link or status and comment on it. Users have long been demanding a feature that lets them dislike something on Facebook. With no reaction on this from the officials of the site, Firefox developers have come out with an add-on which lets users dislike something on Facebook.
Retweeting
Beginning last Sunday, Twitter started the retweet feature that lets users tweet something already tweeted by someone else. Readers acquainted with Twitter will recall that currently one is only allowed to retweet links. The new feature is slowly being rolled out and it may be a while before all users get to retweet. Here's a hint: The retweet feature is available on all existing twitter toolbars.
Google's Glasnost
Beginning late Thursday night, Google has started sharing with its users, all the information it has about them. This information contains a user's web search history, includes all user information on any of the Google services like Gmail (including all the small talk on Gtalk), Google Reader, Youtube, Orkut, Google Books, Blogger and Picassa.
Aptly called Dashboard, the feature sparked widespread comment, debate and arguments on the internet as soon as the news spread.
