The world’s largest social network unveiled a series of products at its developer conference F8 aimed at helping the company achieve that goal.

These tools will make it easier for users to take their friends with them as they browse the web.

“We are building toward a web where the default is social,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder.

“If you look back a few years ago and even as recently as today, in most cases the web isn’t designed to use your friends. They don’t assume you have a real identity but we are seeing that seep in more and more.

“We want to be one of the things that empowers that and right now most users are using Facebook and we hope we can be a good force in driving that forward,” Mr Zuckerberg told the BBC during a news conference.

He added that the “web was at a turning point” and that the way forward was to have friends, or what Mr Zuckerberg called “your social graph”, to guide you online.

“One of the points Mr Zuckerberg was making was that the web has become a lot less anonymous and Facebook is definitely positioning itself as wanting to be the owner of that information,” said Maya Baratz of the Huffington Post.

Personalisation

At the F8 conference in San Francisco, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled a number of products aimed at putting users and their friends at the “centre of the web”.

The most significant was an open graph protocol to let publishers tag their content by type along with a “Like” button that partner sites put on their webpage. This allows users to indicate what they like on a website, be it from photographs to news items and from clothes to music.

The decision reverses an earlier pledge in which it said it would help get Flash working on the gadgets.

Flash is very widely used on the web and many sites use it to power animations, media players and other multimedia elements.

Despite this, Apple’s products do not support Flash and it has made public statements criticising the technology.

Closed tools

In mid-April, Adobe released software called Creative Suite 5 that contained translation tools that automatically turn Flash code into programs that run on the iPhone.

Shortly before the release, Apple updated the terms and conditions of the license software developers must sign to create iPhone and iPad applications. The revisions prompted a lot of criticism from many iPhone developers.

The revised terms placed strict restrictions on what developers can use to create these applications and effectively banned them from using code translators such as Creative Suite 5.

At the time Adobe wrote that it still intended to deliver the translation tools. Now it has said it will halt development of future translation tools for Creative Suite.

“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5,” wrote Mike Chambers, Adobe’s principal product manager for developer relations, on his blog. “However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”

Mr Chambers also commented on Apple’s revision of its terms and conditions. He wrote: “…as developers for the iPhone have learned, if you want to develop for the iPhone you have to be prepared for Apple to reject or restrict your development at any time.”

Apple responded in a statement to technology news site CNet in which it described Flash as “closed and proprietary”. Apple preferred to support more open standards which replicate everything Flash can do, added the statement.

Mr Chambers wrote that now Adobe will concentrate on Google’s Android smartphone software and ensure that its Flash technology works well with that.

“Fortunately,” he wrote, “the iPhone isn’t the only game in town.”

He was responding to a Greek journalist who said Greeks are demonising the IMF and fear the country’s economic crisis will be worse with its involvement.

He replied that the IMF was there to help Greece, but deflected questions about negotiations with its government.

On Friday, Greece asked for an EU-IMF bailout of its debt-ridden economy.

Mr Strauss-Kahn was speaking after the agency’s main ministerial steering committee met in Washington.

‘Act fast’

The agency has a reputation for requiring borrowing countries to make deep cuts in popular government spending programmes, says the BBC’s economic correspondent, Andrew Walker, from the IMF headquarters in Washington.

But Mr Strauss-Kahn said the Greek people should think of the IMF as a “cooperative organisation” where the countries of the world work together to help those in trouble by providing resources and advice on behalf of the international community.

“Greek citizens should not fear the IMF,” he said. “We are there to try to help them.”

Earlier, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called on the IMF, the EU and the Greek government to act quickly to tackle Greece’s debt crisis.

Mr Geithner asked the IMF and Eurozone countries to put together a package of strong reforms and financial support after talks with with Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, Mr Strauss-Kahn and several EU officials.

“Secretary Geithner encouraged them to move quickly to put in place a package of strong reforms and substantial concrete financial support,” said a statement from his office after the talks.

Athens protest

Consideration of Greece’s request for emergency loans totalling 40bn euros ($53bn; £35bn) in the first year has been a focus of talks at the twice-yearly IMF meeting.

Nations using the euro would contribute 30bn euros with the rest coming from the IMF.

The terms of the loans have not been agreed, but Mr Strauss-Kahn has said the IMF will “move expeditiously” in response to Greece’s appeal.

Mr Rehn said he thought the EU-IMF package could be completed by early May.

The funds are needed later that month when a large tranche of Greece’s debt comes due for renewal.

German officials have said Berlin will do its bit.

But there has been public opposition to funding a bail-out and Chancellor Angela Merkel said any aid would come with “very strict conditions”, including a credible savings plan.

The Greek government has already taken austerity measures, including cutting government workers’ pay, freezing pensions and raising taxes.

The cuts have proved unpopular, prompting strikes and demonstrations such as a march through Athens on Friday in which several thousand protesters took to the streets.

The government’s cost of borrowing on international markets has spiralled, making it prohibitively expensive for Greece to borrow money from investors to service its debt.

Athens had hoped that just the promise of EU support, agreed last month, would be enough to reassure markets and help its recovery.

But Greece’s problems have continued to hit investor confidence in the euro and other European economies.

Ahead of the meeting, the Group of 20 big economies said the world was emerging faster than expected from its deep recession.

G20 finance ministers said the pace of the recovery was largely due to the huge amounts of government money pumped into national economies.

Officials said Mohammed Yusuf was shot while trying to escape. They had announced his capture hours earlier.

Mr Yusuf led Boko Haram, which wants to overthrow the government and impose a strict version of Islamic law.

Hundreds of people have died in five days of clashes between his followers and security forces.

Mr Yusuf was held and later shot in the north-eastern city of Maiduguri.

“Mohammed Yusuf was killed by security forces in a shootout while trying to escape,” the regional police assistant inspector-general, Moses Anegbode, told Nigerian television.

A spokesman for the state governor told the Associated Press news agency: “I saw his body at police headquarters. I believe he was shot while he was trying to escape.”

State television showed jubilant police celebrating round his body, AFP news agency reported.

Troops had stormed Boko Haram’s stronghold on Wednesday night, killing many of the militants and forcing others to flee.

Mr Yusuf was arrested earlier on Thursday, after reportedly being found hiding in a goat pen at his parents-in-law’s house.

BBC News website Africa editor Joseph Winter says Nigeria’s security forces have a terrible reputation for brutality and human rights groups accuse them of frequent extra-judicial killings.

‘Gun battles’

The violence began on Sunday night in Bauchi state, before spreading to other towns and cities in the northeast of the west African nation

Crowds of militants tried to storm government buildings and the city’s police headquarters, but dozens of them were shot dead by security forces.

Several days of gun battles between militants and Nigerian security forces ensued, culminating in the assault on the militant’s stronghold.

It is thought more than 300 people have died in the violence – some estimates say 600, although there has been no official confirmation.

The Red Cross said about 3,500 people had fled the fighting and were being housed in their camp.

Witnesses and human rights groups have accused the military of excessive violence in quelling the militants, but the army says it used a minimal amount of force.

Police say Mr Yusuf was a 39-year-old preacher from Yobe state, who had four wives and 12 children.

They described him as a motivational character.

His sect, Boko Haram, is against Western education. It believes Nigeria’s government is being corrupted by Western ideas and wants to see Islamic law imposed across Nigeria.

Sharia law is in place across northern Nigeria, but there is no history of al-Qaeda-linked violence.

The country’s 150 million people are split almost equally between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south.

That is the level above which, the UN says, the Earth’s climate system would become dangerously unstable.

US President Barack Obama said the countries had made important strides in dealing with climate change.

But the G8 failed to persuade developing countries to accept targets of cutting emissions by 50% by 2050.

On Wednesday, the G8 agreed its own members would work towards 80% cuts by the same date.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the G8 had not done enough and should also set 2020 targets.

He said that while the G8′s Wednesday agreement was welcome, its leaders also needed to establish a strong and ambitious mid-term target for emissions cuts.

See how global temperatures have risen

The second day of the summit, in the Italian city of L’Aquila, opened its discussions to take in the so-called G5 nations – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa. Egypt is a special invitee.

In other developments:

* The world’s biggest economies have agreed to work to reach a global trade deal by 2010
* Leaders of major developed and developing nations have agreed not to resort to competitive currency devaluations
* In a joint statement, President Obama and UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the detention of British embassy staff by the Iranian authorities was unacceptable

Significant step

The latest declaration was issued by the Major Economies Forum, of 16 developed and developing nations – the G8, G5, Australia, South Korea and Indonesia – plus the European Union.

The group accounts for about 80% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

“We recognise the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2C,” it said.

It added that the economies would work towards a global goal for substantially reducing emissions by 2050 between now and December, when the UN holds talks in Copenhagen on a successor to the Kyoto treaty.

President Obama, who chaired the meeting, said the countries had had a candid and open discussion about the growing threat of climate change and what must be done both individually and collectively to address it.

“I believe we’ve made some important strides forward as we move towards Copenhagen,” he said.

“I don’t think I have to emphasise that climate change is one of the defining challenges of our time. The science is clear and conclusive and the impacts can no longer be ignored.”

Early agreement ‘unlikely’

RK Pachauri, who chairs the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, praised the declaration’s mention of the 2C limit but said more details were needed.

“It certainly doesn’t give you a roadmap on how you should get there but at least they’ve defined the destination,” he told the BBC World Service Newshour programme.

Mr Obama added that the United States, as a major polluter, had not met its responsibilities in the past, but those days were over.

But his scientific adviser, John Holdren, told the BBC it was unlikely that the US could come to any early agreement on tough reductions in emissions by 2020 proposed by the EU.

“If we had not wasted the last eight years, we could probably achieve that target,” he said.

“But we did waste the last eight years and in consequence, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for us to officially embrace a target that is not realistically within reach.”

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin says the declaration is a significant step, with all big countries rich and poor agreeing there is a scientific limit on the amount we should warm the climate.

But there is still a huge way to go, he says, as developing nations like India will not sign up to any 2050 targets unless rich nations show more determination and offer more cash.

The G8 summit began in L’Aquila on Wednesday, with the first day largely taken up with discussion of the fragile state of the global economy.

The leaders also issued a statement reaffirming that they were “deeply concerned” by Iran’s nuclear programme and condemning North Korea’s recent nuclear test and missile launches.

African leaders will join the summit on Friday to push for a new initiative to fund farming in the developing world and tackle global hunger.

The US military says about 4,000 marines as well as 650 Afghan troops are involved, supported by Nato planes.

Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said the operation was different from previous ones because of the “massive size of the force” and its speed.

Officers on the ground said it was the largest marine offensive since Vietnam.

It is the first such operation under President Barack Obama’s presidency.

The operation began when units moved into the Helmand river valley in the early hours of Thursday.

Helicopters and heavy transport vehicles carried out the advance, with Nato planes providing air cover.

Security aim

Southern Afghanistan is considered a Taliban stronghold.

The security forces will build bases to provide security for the local people so that they can carry out every activity with this favourable background, and take their lives forward in peace

Gulab Mangal
Helmand Governor

“Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces,” said Brig Gen Nicholson in a statement.

At a briefing at the US military’s Camp Leatherneck last week, he told personnel and embedded reporters: “One of the most critical things is to tell people why we’re there, and we are going to have a limited opportunity to gain their trust.”

The operation would have an initial highly aggressive stage lasting 36 hours, AFP news agency reported.

It aims to improve security ahead of presidential elections on 20 August, allowing voter registration where before there was none, Gen Nicholson said.

US soldiers in Afghanistan, 27 June, 2009
US troops are working to flush out Taliban from Helmand province

A US military spokesman, Captain William Pelletier, told the BBC there had been “no enemy contact” in the first hours of the operation, but one marine was slightly injured when an improvised explosive device detonated.

He said the US military was prepared for casualties, but stressed that “it is absolutely essential that no civilians be harmed”.

Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal predicted the operation would be “very effective”.

“The security forces will build bases to provide security for the local people so that they can carry out every activity with this favourable background, and take their lives forward in peace.”

Troop numbers

I am convinced that the addition of those [US] troops is going to improve the security situation
General Jim Dutton
Commander of UK forces

Helmand ‘not a losing campaign’

As of June 2009, Nato’s International Security Assistance Force had 61,130 personnel from 42 countries including the US, Canada, European countries, Australia, Jordan and New Zealand.

The US is the largest contributor, providing 28,850 soldiers.

It also has troops under Operation Enduring Freedom – mostly in the east of Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan – that are not under Isaf’s command.

In December 2008 they numbered 17,100.

President Obama has pledged to send an additional 21,000 extra soldiers to Afghanistan, many of them redeployed from operations in Iraq, to help with training Afghan security forces and to tackle the insurgency.

UK troops are also operating in Helmand, but there has been criticism that British forces have been overstretched and under-resourced.

Last week the commander of UK troops in Afghanistan, General Jim Dutton, denied that the battle against the Taliban was “a losing campaign”.

Gen Dutton welcomed the planned increase in US troop numbers.

“I am convinced that the addition of those [US] troops is going to improve the security situation,” he said.

Make Me White [working title] will look at the increasing pressure among Britain’s Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities to be pale and will ex-amine the booming trade in legal and illegal skin-lightening products.

Rani will also look at the effectiveness and side-effects of the various treatments.

“Anita starts with her own mother’s obsession with light skin,” said the BBC. “She goes undercover to find illegal creams and exposes the use of harmful chemicals in legally available creams.”

The show is being produced in-house in Birmingham and was ordered by BBC1 controller Jay Hunt and Nick Shearman, Knowledge commissioning executive producer in Wales. TX is planned for a 10.35pm slot in the summer.

Jo Ball, who was recently appointed commissioning editor for BBC1 and BBC2 features, will oversee the project.

The website has gone through several branding changes since it was launched. Originally named BBC Online, it was then rebranded as BBCi (which itself was the brand name for interactive TV services) before being named bbc.co.uk. It was then branded BBC Online again in 2008. The Web-based service of the BBC is one of the world’s largest and most visited websites (forty-seventh most visited according to Alexa on 31 March 2009)  As of 2007, it contained over two million pages.

BBC Networking Club

The service’s original home was www.bbcnc.org.uk (the “nc” standing for “networking club”) launched on 11 May 1994 as a paid subscription service. For a joining fee of £25 and a monthly subscription of £12, members of the club were given access to an early type of social networking site featuring a bulletin board for sharing information and real-time conversation, along with a dialup internet connection service.

Within 12 months, the BBC offered “auntie” on-line discussion groups; web pages for select web-related programs and BBC departments; free web pages for associate members; and an internet connection service www.bbc.co.uk was introduced in 1996 though the old address also remained active for some time afterwards.

BBC Online

The BBC Director General John Birt sought government approval to direct licence fee revenue into the service, describing planned BBC internet services as the “third medium” joining the BBC’s existing TV and Radio networks, achieving a change in the BBC Charter. This led to the official launch of BBC Online at the www.bbc.co.uk address in December 1997.

For a time, www.bbc.co.uk was used for the organisation’s corporate and educational site, while entertainment-based content appeared on www.beeb.com. The two sites were merged c.1998 to become BBC Online  at www.bbc.co.uk. In 1999, the BBC bought the www.bbc.com domain name for $375,000, previously owned by Boston Business Computing , but the price of this purchase was not revealed until 6 years later. As of 2005, www.bbcnc.org.uk no longer exists. The beeb.com address now redirects to the BBC Shop website run by BBC Worldwide, at www.bbcshop.com.

BBCi

In 2001 BBC Online was rebranded as BBCi. The BBCi name was conceived as an umbrella brand for all the BBC’s digital interactive services across web, digital teletext, interactive TV and on mobile plaftorms. The use of letter “i” prefixes and suffixes to denote information technology or interactivity was very much in vogue at this time, notably with the launch of the iMac and the iPod by Apple Computer; according to the BBC, the “i” in BBCi stood for “interactivity” as well as “innovation”.

As part of the rebrand, BBC website pages all displayed a standard navigation bar across the top of the screen, offering a category-based navigation: Categories, TV, Radio, Communicate, Where I Live, A-Z Index and a search. The navbar was designed to offer a similar navigation system to the i-bar on BBCi interactive television.

bbc.co.uk

After three years of consistent use across different platforms, the BBC began to drop the BBCi brand gradually; on 6 May 2004, the BBC website was renamed bbc.co.uk, after the main URL used to access the site. Interactive TV services continued under the BBCi brand until it was dropped completely in 2008. The BBC’s online video player, the iPlayer has, however, retained an i-prefix in its branding.

On 14 December 2007, a beta version of a new bbc.co.uk homepage was launched, with the ability to customise the page by adding, removing and rearranging different categories, such as ‘News’, ‘Weather’ and ‘Entertainment’. The widget-based design was inspired by sites such as Facebook and iGoogle. The new BBC homepage left beta stage on Wednesday, 27 February 2008 to serve as the new BBC Homepage under the same URL as the previous version did.

Content

The websites include news from the BBC News website, a sports section, music, science, technology and entertainment pages, amongst other things. As might be expected, the website has a British orientation, although the home page, news section and sports section each give the reader a choice between UK and “International” versions.

In February 2001, BBC Online incorporated Douglas Adams’ previously independent h2g2 project into its group of web sites, and is now replacing all its existing message boards with the DNA software derived from that project. The site’s Collective magazine also uses the DNA software.

The website has extensive technical information available about its operation. The BBC also makes some of the content on bbc.co.uk and the BBC News Website available in XML format on its developer network backstage.bbc.co.uk. Also, through participation in the Creative Archive Licence group, bbc.co.uk allows legal downloads of selected material via the Internet.

Children’s

The BBC runs a comprehensive children’s website subsite. It includes information on all of CBBC’s shows along with several subsites covering art, sport, news, and other current events. Its message boards are especially popular with children who use them to communicate with each other about all of CBBC’s output among other salient topics for kids like bullying, books, and personal problems. The “Your Life” page was especially geared to helping young people sort through their difficulties. ‘Your Life’ was subsequently closed though a professional psychotherapist agony uncle called “Ask Aaron” still provides answers to questions online and on interactive television through CBBC eXtra.

The BBC also runs a message board for young people named onion street.

There is integration between television output and website content with aspects of children’s programming have followup information on their websites.

Streaming media

A service, called BBC iPlayer, was launched in December 2007, which allows users to download both radio and TV content for up to seven days after broadcast. The television version allows users to either stream programmes or to download them using peer-to-peer and DRM technology.

Initially streams were generally broadcast in the RealAudio and RealVideo formats controlled by RealNetworks and the BBC drew criticism with some for using those closed formats which, at the time, could only be played using RealPlayer. In response to such criticisms, the BBC negotiated a deal with RealNetworks a ‘cut-down’ version of RealPlayer which did not contain as much advertising and marketing.

Windows Media has also been adopted and since Autumn 2006, a Windows Media stream of all national BBC radio stations has been available.

More recently, the BBC has been experimenting with MP3 downloads and podcasting facilities for an increasing number of radio shows, with a high level of success; a less publicised trial of Ogg Vorbis streams for certain programmes was less successful, and has now been discontinued.

Tracking cookies and privacy policy

bbc.co.uk uses several third-party companies to log information from users, by means of cookies. The BBC lists the companies it uses in its privacy policy:

• Nielsen/Net Ratings and SageMetrics
• Nedstat
• Websidestory
• Doubleclick
• Bango

Users that block certain of these tracking domains will find certain parts of the BBC’s websites inaccessible. Doubleclick provides a partial optout mechanism, but it requires the user to accept another cookie, a DART cookie, from doubleclick.net. Users blocking doubleclick.net will be unable to do this.

Funding

The BBC’s site was initially entirely free from advertising, this was due to the BBC’s funding, derived primarily from compulsory television licence fees from UK viewers. BBC Worldwide who exploit BBC brands commercially have had several attempts at launching services online including Beeb.com in the late 90s.

In 2006, the BBC began making controversial plans to raise revenue by including advertising on BBC News pages served to non UK users. bbc.co.uk is currently freely available worldwide (via various URLs including BBCNews.com) but planned video services and a lower than expected licence fee settlement paid for by UK residents only has caused the BBC to consider ways of monetising its global popularity online. From November 2007, visitors from outside of the UK have seen banner advertisements on the site.

Prior to this there had been criticism from some, as web users outside the UK could use the services (including the entire BBC radio services) without having to pay for them. It has been suggested in the past that the BBC block users outside the UK. In addition, where rights to sporting events (such as certain football or cricket matches) do not include international online coverage, users from outside the UK are blocked from listening to commentaries.

In defence of its open policy, the BBC’s site is primarily hosted from two locations, New York and London. The London site is funded from the licence fee and the New York server is funded through a series of government grants (similar to the BBC World Service) and not directly by the licence fee.

Graf report

In early 2004, the site was made the focus of a government review, launched by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, led by Philip Graf. Sections of the UK internet industry had argued that the BBC site offered things that were available in the commercial sector, creating unnecessary competition.

The review was published in July 2004 and it was recommended that the BBC “prioritise news, current affairs, education and information which is of value to the citizen.” In response the BBC also shut down a small number of sections of the site, including the Soaps section.

In November 2004, the Governors of the BBC announced a newer, much more tightly drawn remit for bbc.co.uk as part of their response to the review. They also announced, as Graf had recommended, a new approach towards external providers which will see bbc.co.uk aiming to spend at least 25% of its eligible budget on content and services through independent commissions by the end of 2006/07.

The implementation of the Graf report has seen the popular messageboards in the BBC Sport section shut down, as the BBC tries to promote its 606 brand, but these changes have proved unpopular as the interface has proven unusable and large numbers of content providers have abandoned the BBC site.

Cult TV

From 1999 to 2005, the BBC ran a popular subsite called Cult TV. This subsite had news, star interviews, trivia, and other content popular with fans of the cult TV shows they covered. Examples of covered TV shows include The X-Files, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

On 15 July 2005, the BBC announced that the site was closing as of the end of the month, although the Doctor Who section would be unaffected as the series was an ongoing BBC concern. The announcement explained that this was “part of the restructuring of the BBC’s online activities”. It was promised that some of the content would be moved to new places on bbc.co.uk, although as of March 2008 it is currently still all online at the no-longer-updated Cult site.

Vulnerabilities in the system

In March 2007, a vulnerability was exposed in the BBC’s “Most Emailed” and “Most Read” news sections. This vulnerability continues to exist in the system as of January 2008.

Plagiarism allegations

The website of the Irish political party Fine Gael is modelled on that of the BBC. When confronted about allegations of plagiarism, the party spokesdog sheepishly admitted there were “grains of truth in this thing” Steph, a blogger from Dublin said “”A decent effort at a cover-up of blatant plagiarism but anyone who frequents the BBC website for their news fix would still spot the ‘inspiration’ or at least start rubbing their chin and say ‘it looks familiar but I’m not sure why’.”