Facebook has notched up a new record by launching two European versions of its site in this month. Firstly, it launched the German version, and now unveiled its French version. According to Facebook, more than 2000 German-speaking users on Facebook have helped to translate the site to the local language in less than two weeks. And for the Facebook French, the site was produced with the help of its 4,000 French users. The launched of these two local sites is a positive development for Facebook, as they’re now targeting to expand into the Europe market.

However, as I said several times before, distance still a matter. For instance, the hottest social networking platform in Germany is studiVZ, leading the industry with reported 5 million of users.

In February, Facebook has also launched its Spanish version, as stated by Facebook, there are more than 1,500 users participated in the project mainly helping to translate the site from English to Spanish. Additionally, Facebook has more than 2.8 million active users in Latin America and Spain and the Spanish site will thus strongly engaging the people there.

Facebook German Version

Facebook French Version

Facebook Spanish Version

I found the video regarding 2008 SXSW keynote discussion between Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and reporter Sarah Lacy, as embedded in the below. If you want to know more about the keynote discussion, there is a further report published by News Blog.

I particularly like the following quotation of The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs on Facebook.

You have to remember what Facebook’s core business is about. It’s not about helping people stay in touch with friends or express themselves. It’s not about changing the world or creating an ecosystem for small apps makers. It’s not even about selling ads. Facebook is a vehicle through which a bunch of investors in the Valley hope to turn a small pile of money into a much bigger pile of money by selling shares in the public markets. That is Facebook’s core business.

via [Valleywag]

Imo.im, a startup that I covered when it launched in September last year released its own Facebook application. With this application, Facebook users can thus communicate with their friends on Facebook platform without having to leave Facebook. IM (Instant messaging), has became a critical real-time communication tool, and this imo.im removes the barriers to IM and video chat to almost 60 million of Facebook users.

All the features of the imo.im are available with this application. You can link your AIM, GTalk, MSN, Yahoo! Messenger or any other standard IM services on your Facebook now, simply with a click of install on your Facebook account. All the while, imo.im served as an IM aggregator, aggregate all of an user’s standard IM services, but now with this Facebook application, we might just realized the true value of imo.im.

There was a buzz on the Web that Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, holds a majority stake in TOM Group has invested $60 million in Facebook, equivalent to 0.4 percent stake in Facebook, however TOM Group has denied such a report.

“TOM Group advised that it has not made any investment in Facebook,” said in a statement issued to the Hong Kong stock exchange, reported by Hong Kong newspaper 明報 (in Mandarin).