Buddy Media, a NY-based startup that well-known for a Facebook application called AceBucks has raised $6.5 million in a round B financing. This round of financing was led by Softbank, and joined by several other venture capital firms such as European Founders Fund, GreyCroft Partners, a Silicon Valley angel investor, i.e. Ron Conway with participation of fourteen (14) of the Buddy Media’s Series A investors. Prior to this round, they’ve also raised $1.5 million at the time of their official launch in September last year.

Meanwhile, Buddy Media also announced the official launch of its Buddy Media Ad Network. This Ad Network is an eagerly awaited products for the advertisers and social media developers. It represents the next major release of an advertising platform that built-in with some notable features which include pricing flexibility, powerful targeting, quality traffic, and etc.

Since Buddy Media’s first inception on the Web, it has been trying to position itself as a Facebook application provider. Other the aforesaid AceBucks, a virtual currency application, it also released some Skyworks games such as Sudoku, Air Hockey, Pub Darts, Mental Blocks, and Corn Hole. However, Buddy Media’s most significant move is that it has acquired two Facebook app companies, ChipIn in January this year for five of its Facebook app (Vampires vs. Werewolves, Pirates vs. Ninjas, Skiers vs. Snowboarders, Santa vs. The Grinch, Cops vs. Robbers) and Crushes in last November.

Source: Facebook Watcher

There are several hundreds of new startups that I was tracking every week. One startup is always catch my eyes is Deluux, funded by Y Combinator. I think it’s a worth doing startup, which allowed users to deliver the functionality of Facebook or any other social network onto any of their Websites. Though it’s still in stealth mode, but I read that few people who got early access to Deluux are satisfied with their demo. There was a pent up demand among social network users about this new feature.

The co-founder of Deluux is Paul McKeller, who also developed the successful Facebook application called Socialmoth Secrets.

I will post an update about this site when I get a scoop on it. Stay tuned.

I am very pleased to announce that I have another blog, Facebook Watcher. It has been created by using the wordpress.com platform, and later available with my own domain, and hosted on the same grid server as TagEdge hosted on. Facebook Watcher has been existed for nearly half a month, and all the posts are randomly written by me. Despite the fact that my heavy workload, I promise myself to allocate some time to properly write about Facebook few times in a week. Of course, TagEdge will continue as my first and priority blog to look after.

Frankly, I believe that Facebook will be another hot thing not only in North America, but also in South East Asian countries. I hope that Facebook Watcher will join as a blog to disseminate the news of Facebook’s growth throughout the world. In fact, Facebook Watcher was firmly established as a blog to report every important news about Facebook, and aimed to be the best Facebook blog in Asian countries. And sooner or later, all my future Facebook news will no longer be posted here, but posted to the Facebook Watcher.

Lastly, I hope you all will like that blog, and subscribe to the RSS feed of Facebook Watcher.

Thank you.

Google has lost another high-profile executive to Facebook in less than a month. Ethan Beard, Google Director of Business Development has resigned from the company and will start work at Facebook. Why Facebook over Google, Ethan Beard told TechCrunch:

I think Facebook is great for a variety of reasons: the company has an innovative product with amazing growth, the team they have assembled is first rate, and the business is at a very exciting time in its development. I am excited to join Facebook at a time and in a role where I can have a significant impact on its core business and bottom line.

Other Facebook high-profile executives that previously worked at Google include Sheryl Sandberg (now COO), and Gideon Yu (now CFO).

via [TechCrunch]

According to Sohu of China, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing has officially announced his investment about $100 million in one of the world’s hottest social networking site, i.e. Facebook, despite TOM Group, a company he holds a majority stake has denied the news before. According to the Sohu news, his mobile phone division, Hutchison-Whampoa’s mobile products will likely be allowed to access Facebook in the near future.

“Facebook is doing very well and we could have some synergy between the 3G services of Hutchison and Facebook, so the customers could use Facebook on mobile phones,” Li said during an earnings news conference for his company Hutchison Whampoa Ltd.

This investment showed that the value of Facebook in Asia is potentially increasing especially in the Hong Kong and China market.

We’re crazy about making friends online. And if you’re worry you’re not making enough friends on any of the social networks, check this out, the newly launched nclüdr. Frankly, I don’t know how to pronounce the name, but I do recognize it’s another Facebook clone. The landing page, its yellow orange color instead of blue reminds me a lot of Facebook. What make this nclüdr different is the selling point of the site, by attracting potential users to make friends within a minute with billions of members available on the site. If you always ask yourself this question, “How often have you found yourself stuck on a handful of friends?” Then you should join this site.

The sign-up process is relatively simple, just tick a few answers to the questions you’ve given to, nclüdr will assign you a personal profile. One fascinating point is that you can regenerate your profile if you’re not satisfied with the one they assigned you, and you do not need to remember the username and password if you want to re-enter the site again since there’s no username or password you need to fill-up.

I just created a profile which name after “problem,” as shown in the below. I personally feel that it is a prank site, and you do not need to build a personal profile you can proud of, and it reminds me of another proverb, there’s still plenty of time to be a perfectionist. Yeah! I guess.

According to AP, the private photographs of celebrity Paris Hilton and Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg have been exposed by a Vancouver, Canada computer technician namely Byron Ng. Ng was reported that he has started to look for the Facebook security weaknesses since last week and surely he found his way to access to some Facebook private photos that were supposedly be protected. It was a serious blow to Facebook as they just launched two new security features which include a “Friends of Friends” privacy option last week. It seemed like for some unscrupulous hackers, the tricks they’re manipulating could helped them in divulge personal information of all the Facebook users. That is sad, and identified as a predictor that Facebook is still not at its best to protect the valuable users’ data.

Though Facebook spokeswoman Brandee Barker said Facebook was patched the bug after the security alert within an hour, this is neither the first time nor the last time a Facebook photo flaw can be found on the Web. A blog called laatedaa has published a post on the issue of Facebook private photos code in January, on that blog, an user can simply follow the instructions and enter the Web address, she is allowed to access to somebody’s Facebook private photo albums. (Update: A most latest comment showed that the code doesn’t work anymore)

Nonetheless, that such security flaw happen is alarming. For Facebook users, they didn’t have much choice in preventing the revelation of data.

via [AP]

Amazon has recently tapped into the powerful Facebook social network by launching two of its unique applications, Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine. I believed that Amazon has reached a tipping point where these two applications will help them to reach a far more broader user base, a higher chance of success and attaining a higher quality of customer experience.

Amazon Giver, allows Facebook users to see what’s on the Wish Lists of their friends, and thus provide a platform to purchase those items for their friends. Not only Amazon Giver list the Wish List of a Facebook user, it also provides recommendations based on a profile’s interests and likes. On the other hand, Amazon Grapevine updates Facebook users’ friends their recent public activities on Amazon.com, such as write a review of Amazon product or tag an Amazon book, and etc. via Facebook’s News Feed.

“Amazon.com is pleased to bring the convenience of shopping on Amazon to our customers, many of whom are also Facebook users, with the Amazon Giver and Amazon Grapevine applications on Facebook Platform,” said Eva Manolis, Vice President, Amazon.com. “By combining Amazon’s vast selection of products with Facebook’s millions of users, we are able to make activities like gift-giving more efficient and rewarding for Facebook users.” According to Amazon’s press release.