Facebook e-mail could be a game-changer

The announcement of 'Project Titan' could see '@facebook.com' e-mail addresses being unveiled, an overhaul of the site's entire messaging system.

No British event is planned, however, so it seems that the so-called "Gmail killer" may have a limited launch, if at all.

TechCrunch has reported that the product may be limited at launch, while pointing to the significant potential of a service that integrates e-mail with Facebook's popular places, photos and events applications, reports the Telegraph.

Unusually, Facebook has chosen not to use its Palo Alto headquarters for the launch. Instead, the event may be held at Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.

According to social media news blog Mashable, Facebook's current messaging system is "difficult to manage. Users are unable to send messages outside of Facebook, and the system can't handle simple things like attachments and forwarding".

"If Facebook really wants to take on Google, it needs to have a far more robust messaging system, akin to web-based e-mail. Monday may be the day we see that happen."

Project Titan was first mentioned by Michael Arrington on TechCrunch in February. It has not, however, received any official confirmation from Facebook yet.

Google now recommends places via Hotpot

San Francisco: Google has commenced its new search engine that makes location based recommendations. The search results cover local shops, restaurants, theatre among others.

Lior Ron, Product Manager said in a blog post, "We're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy. When you rate places you like, we'll tell you about other related places you'll love."

With a user friendly UI, Hotpot scores where Places lacked. Its fresh presentations appeal both visually and functionally. There are levels in the search. First it presents high impact data like star ratings and images of each place in a grid format without confusing with too many details. Then if the user intends to move to next level, he can dig down to other details such as phone numbers or URL.

Hotpot also allows you to maintain a separate social profile. Users can create a profile nickname to separate their Hotpot account from their general Google profiles. Gmail and other Google profiles help users to track their friends, and find reviews and ratings by friends.

It goes without saying that Google has allowed Hotpot integration to Android phones. So Android phone users can rate and review on the go.

Google's Hotpot comes to news just weeks after Facebook launched its own location based function called Facebook Places, posing competition to the latter.

Facebook worth $ 41 billion, surpasses eBay

Just an hour before Facebook is set to announce its 'gmail killer', it now ranks as the third largest web company, with an estimated valuation of USD 41 billion which is greater than EBay.

According to Bloomberg, the social network's latest valuation, based on the selling price of shares on SecondMarket, an exchange for privately held companies, makes it the country's third-largest online business after Google (USD 192.9 billion) and Amazon (USD74.4 billion).

Since Facebook has yet to go public, its forecasted revenue and worth in the public market is all still theoretical. Facebook, which expects sales of at least USD 1.4 billion this year, has called the figure "fundamentally speculative."

Based on recent private-market transactions, Facebook has a total estimated value of USD 41 billion, exceeding eBay's USD 39.4 billion in market capitalisation.

The only two web companies worth more than Facebook are Amazon, at USD 74.4 billion and Google, Inc., at USD 192.9 billion.

Today's value of Facebook comes from an "off-the-record" conversation that Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Brian Womack had with someone who had access to recent transaction data on SecondMarket.com.

Now if Facebook were trading on an exchange that the public could access, the size of the company's total market capitalization might increase over the course of the trading day depending on the exact details that Mark Zuckerberg announces at today's 10 am PST press conference.

Facebook's value has been growing for almost three years now, but it seems to be accelerating recently.

While there's no doubt that Facebook is one of the biggest websites and one of the biggest companies of the moment, it's hard to know if the company's estimated valuation has anything to do with its actual worth.

And there is no way of knowing that until Facebook finally files for an initial public offering.

Based on what Facebook has been saying so far, that may be at least a couple of years from now.

The reason why Facebook is not jumping ahead and filing for an IPO is that, while the company is growing fast, its revenue is still not spectacular.

Facebook could bring in close to USD 1.5 billion or as much as USD 2 billion in revenue this year, depending on who's doing the estimates.