Hasta La Gadget!

Zynga has announced that it will no longer be requiring people to log into their Facebook accounts when entering its site. Zynga wants to distance itself from Facebook in order to become a more independent game developer. You are now able to access your favorite games, like Farmville, Chefville, Draw Sometihng, and more via a stand-alone Zynga account.

Of course, you can still sign in with your Facebook account if you want. Zynga will keep your games’ progress as well as your Zynga friends list in its database. While Zynga wants to distance itself from Facebook, it doesn’t want to burn that bridge entirely. It relies on Facebook for a huge chunk of its traffic, even though it already has a dedicated fan base of over 3 million people.

Along with removing the Facebook login requirement, Zynga plans on implementing a feature next week that will allow players to find fellow gamers through their Gmail or Yahoo contacts list. Zynga will also be implementing its own payment system for its games, instead of relying on Facebook for its transactions. Before, people would be able to purchase premium content on Zynga through Facebook, however Facebook would take a 30% cut from all transactions.

Facebook isn’t too happy about the change, however both companies knew that this move was inevitable. For people who still connect to Zynga via their Facebook accounts, they will only be find fellow gamers that they have previously interacted with. They will no longer be able to see if one of their Facebook friends has just started playing a Zynga game. This change will most definitely hurt Zynga’s transition, but is no way a deal breaker for the game developer.

[via Zynga]

Zynga distances itself from Facebook is written by Brian Sin & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HTC’s next “Facebook Phone” has been in the rumor mill for much too long, but this morning’s approval by the FCC may speed along its journey to a launch date. The PM33100, which has been long associated with the Myst (or Opera, going even further back in time), just received the go-ahead by the Feds — and it’s carrying the same four LTE frequencies that we normally see accompanying AT&T smartphones. Naturally, HTC is keeping as much to itself as it possibly can, as we were able to glean few other details from the documents, but we know it has dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0. However, if the leaked specs provided by @evleaks are correct, we should also expect to see it come with a 4.3-inch 720p display, a 1.5GHz dual-core MSM8960, a 5MP rear camera and Android 4.1.2.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, HTC, AT&T

Comments

Source: FCC

We all know people on Facebook who updates their status every few minutes, and at the other end of the spectrum there are people who rarely, if ever, update their status. This is a matter of preference as some people don’t see the need to tell the whole world what they had for lunch. However Facebook might not see it that way and it seems that Facebook could soon start sending you notifications to remind you to update your status.

This (annoying) feature was discovered by Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital who tweeted the screenshot of the notification in action. Of course since screenshots can be doctored, the good folks at Mashable reached out to Facebook to confirm this upcoming feature, and unfortunately for most of us, it turned out to be true. Facebook confirmed that this feature is part of a small test that they are running. Hopefully this is only a test and not a feature that they have already put into action, but we guess we will just have to wait and see how it plays out. In the meantime how do you guys feel about this? Annoying or useful?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: HBO CEO Teases HBO Go-Only Subscription Service, Twitter Turns Seven Years Old Today,

YouTube announced that it has racked up 1 billion unique monthly users. About as many people use YouTube (which is owned by Google) as they do Facebook. That’s huge.

Remember last month when we showed you Facebook data of NFL fans across the US? It’s back again, only this time it’s all about the NCAA men’s basketball tournament that just started yesterday. The data is from over 1 million Facebook users who have “liked” a fan page of one of the 68 teams in the tournament.

Just like the NFL fan map from last month, the data from the NCAA tournament is quite interesting. One of the biggest things you’ll notice is that fans are very state-loyal, especially in the midwest, where almost all counties in a state are rooting for one team, even if that state has multiple teams in the tournament. Indiana, for example, is completely rooting for Indiana University, who is a number one seed this year. Other Indiana teams include Notre Dame and Butler, the latter of which made it to the championship game last year.

It’s interesting to see the states that have multiple teams in the tournament, such as Michigan, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Florida. Some states are split in the middle as far as what home team they’re rooting for, but some states are almost 100% loyal to a single team, including Michigan and North Carolina, both of which are rooting for the Michigan Wolverines and the North Carolina Tar Heels, respectively.

What’s perhaps more interesting, however, is that there are 17 teams in the field of 68 where zero counties were rooting for them (one of them being Indiana’s Notre Dame). Furthermore, there are regions of the US that are pretty much scattered as to who they’re ultimately rooting for, Texas being the most obvious, which is just one of the states that don’t have a home team in the tournament this year.

[via Deadspin]

Facebook data shows NCAA tournament fan statistics in the US is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.