Facebook Messenger Is Available And Beluga Will Be Shut Down This Year

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Beluga the group messaging app acquired by Facebook is shutting down now that Facebook Messenger which is pretty much a spiffed up version of Beluga is available in plenty of countries.

The move was inevitable especially since the team was no longer working on Beluga and the service was just going forward based on inertia.

The announcement started off "We're excited to announce that we just launched the Facebook Messenger app worldwide in 22 languages! If you haven't used it yet we hope you'll give Messenger a try it has all the great features of Beluga and it's available on iOS, Android and BlackBerry ." .

It said "Now that Facebook Messenger is available everywhere we've decided to stop offering Beluga as a separate service. You can keep using Beluga for now but we'll be phasing it out over the next few weeks ." .

The first phase of the process will be on November 11, when Beluga will stop working i.e. you won't be able to send any more messages though the app and site will still be accessible.

That's a good time to start packing and get your stuff out of Beluga since it will be shut down completely on December 15, making all of the content unavailable.

You can grab an archive of your pods over at belugapods.com/getarchive if you need them. If you have something important in there you may want to hang on to it and grab it now since everything will be deleted in December.

Facebook Messenger replaces the need for Beluga and the Facebook integration helps so users will probably not be missing it too much. Of course there are plenty of alternatives to Beluga group messaging apps were quite the fad a few months back.

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Facebook Notifications Come With Russian Phone Numbers A New Sort Of Trick Launched By A Cybervillain

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Facebook has sent you a notification is a line we see very often these days but the latest such scam is urging users to call a phone number.

Avira's blog reveals an interesting message which implies that your inbox might be full and you cannot receive any notifications. To sort the whole thing out you are asked to call a number that starts with 7 which means it comes from Russia.

Naturally this is some sort of trick launched by a cybervillain who will either ask you for personal information once you place the call or the number might be a premium-rate number which will cost you even more.

For your own safety follow the wise words of Data Security Expert Sorin Mustaca : “Facebook will never ask you to call any number. They will also never send you such a notification and definitely your Facebook Inbox will never get full. We strongly advise all users to never call any number present in such emails.”

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Facebook To Start Rolling Out New Page Width

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Caution, Facebook Page administrators: this week, Facebook is slated to start rolling out the new width – 520 pixels, compared to earlier width of 760 pixels – of Page tabs.

The change has been announced back in October 2009, but was delayed, presumably to let administrators prepare for the reduced tab width. Still, many popular Pages still use 760 pixel wide elements, which will look broken once Facebook implements the change. A good example is this tab on the official Victoria’s Secret Facebook Page.

If your Page contains elements that are over 520 pixels wide, you should reduce them to that width as soon as possible.



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Facebook Places Goes Live in the US

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 Facebook Places Goes Live in the US :

Facebook has finally unveiled its greatly anticipated  geo-location feature. Named Facebook Places, how else, it's pretty standard in terms of features, but also rather complete. Facebook Places enables users to check in at any location and see if any of their friends are there as well.

"Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you're with in real time from your mobile device," Michael Eyal Sharon, Facebook Places product manager, announced.

The feature went live in the US, though it is being rolled out gradually so it may not be available to everyone just yet. You can access Facebook Places from the latest version of the Facebook iPhone app or from any mobile device by visiting touch.facebook.com.

If you want to check in at a location, go to either the app or the website and hit the "Check in" button. You'll have to allow the app to access your location and then choose from a list of places near you. If the place you want is not on the list, you can add it.

If all of this sounds familiar it's because that's how everyone else is doing it as well. Most notably, it's very similar to Foursquare, arguably the most popular if not the biggest location-based service out there, albeit without the 'game' elements.

A nice touch, but one that is already raising concerns, is that you can tag the friends who are with you before you check in. This checks them in as well and it will show up on their profiles just like if they had done it themselves.

By default, based on your global privacy settings, friends are checked in automatically and without confirmation. You can specifically reject the ones you don't want to be able to check you into places, or change your privacy settings to disable the 'tag' feature. You'll also be notified every time someone checks you into a place.

Once you've used Facebook Places at a location, you can see if any of your friends are close by as well. You can also see who else has checked in, even if they're not your friends, in the "People Here Now" section, as long as they shared their location publicly.

Facebook Places is now live in the US, but will be launched internationally later. Facebook hasn't specified a timeline for this to happen. While the feature is hardly revolutionary, it does open up location services to a whole new audience and Facebook could instantly become the leading player in the market, thanks to its huge audience alone.




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