Facebook building smartphone with Apple engineers?

Hindustan Times, Facebook is leaving no stone unturned to enter the mobile phone arena with a bang. After revealing plans to increase mobile revenue, the social networking giant is hiring Apple engineers to develop a Facebook smartphone. "The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said" reports the New York Times. Even in 2010, rumours surfaced claiming Facebook is planning to venture into hardware. Again in 2011, reports suggested that Facebook is tying up with HTC to build a Facebook-centric device. But there was no confirmation about these reports. Recently, a study had revealed that people used the mobile version of Facebook most often and Zuckerberg's team seems to have taken it seriously. After two previous attempts at working on a smartphone, Facebook might launch an own-branded smartphone. Facebook representatives didn't confirm or deny the rumors but referred to a previous statement it gave to AllThingsD last year that said,"We're working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers", reports the New York Times. Source; Hindustan Times
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Facebook plans to create new 'search engine'

Facebook
London, Social networking giant Facebook is reportedly planning to create a new search engine which would help people to navigate on the website better. A 'Bloomberg-Businessweek' report said the firm has deployed two-dozen Facebook engineers onto the ambitious project, which aims to improve the search engine currently available on the social network. According to the report, the project is led by former Google engineer Lars Rasmussen. The magazine's unnamed sources said that the project is "to help users better sift through the volume of content that members create on the site, such as status updates, and the articles, videos, and other information across the Web that people "like" using Facebook's omnipresent thumbs-up button". According to The Telegraph, Facebook has done very little to improve its search engine, which currently lets people find other users, brands, status updates and some wider web results, through a long-standing partnership with Microsoft's search engine, Bing. It has yet to properly focus its attention on the small search engine box situated at the top of each users' page. Meanwhile, Facebook has declined to comment on the matter. Source: Indian Express
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