Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Controversial social networking service uSocial has been "defriended"
by Facebook, which sent the company a cease and desist notice forcing
uSocial to stop selling Facebook friends.
According to various news outlets, Facebook ordered an investigation into the company's actions in September, but according to uSocial's founder Leon Hill, the social networking service has now sent a letter to the company claiming it has broken several laws, including illegally accessing Facebook.
Facebook said it would take the action against marketing firm uSocial unless it stopped violating Facebook's rights, and also wanted USocial to stop helping members break the site's terms and conditions, specifically "letting people profit from their profile."
In response, uSocial agreed to a change in its practices but would not shut down its service. Hill says the company will no longer sell "friends", it will still continue its business of selling "fans" for marketing purposes.
Facebook sent Cease and Desist letters to USocial claiming that the way the marketing firm operates violates its rights by sending spam, using web tools to harvest pages, getting login names and by accessing accounts that did not belong to the marketing firm.
Customers of uSocial are generally businesses that want to improve sales and product knowledge, and seem more 'popular' as a company that has 10,000 'friends' will be seen as more successful as a company that has 1,000.
uSocial founder Leon Hill hasn't been quiet on the issue. "We have been dealing with Facebook regarding this matter and we have removed our friend-buying service, though we're not budging on selling fans," Hill said in a statement.
"We are well within our legal right to do so and despite the C&D we're not taking the service down."
"We're actually not too worried by this and we'll be ramping up our Facebook services in the coming weeks," said Hill.
No word yet if uSocial will begin to sell 'real life friends', too.
David Bass
| ComOps, a leading Australian provider of business software products and services, has won a competitive tender to deploy its Salvus safety, r…
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