Facebook Releases Firefox Toolbar

Although still primarily the haunt of college and high school students, Facebook has tried to appeal to a broader demographic by opening its doors to the general public and increasing web presence with little Facebook icons that let users share links.

Now, Facebook is looking to take up part of your screen real estate with a Firefox toolbar that lets you search Facebook profiles, get notified about pokes, friend requests, and new messages, interact with your friends' profiles in a sidebar, and share links and media. One annoying "feature" is that notifications appear as pop-ups, but thankfully they can be turned off.

The toolbar is a simple way to increase the stickiness of their offerings by making sure that wherever users surf to, they'll be able to access and interact with their Facebook friends. I'm a little surprised that MySpace hasn't gotten around to the releasing a toolbar, but then again Facebook's toolbar came out of left field. It's also a sign that MySpace and Facebook are headed on different trajectories and might not be such direct competitors as originally thought. MySpace is trying to avoid doing anything that might interfere with their monumental success while Facebook is busy experimenting in order to catch up.

Labels: Technology