The Facebook and CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) panic button story has taken another twist today.
If you were reading Techwatch yesterday, you might have seen our story about the social networking site being criticised for not incorporating the CEOP panic button.
If you’ve missed this story, the panic feature is a highly visible button that allows a child to click and directly report any offensive or inappropriate material to CEOP.
After Facebook had a meeting with the Home Secretary, the government declared that the site had “no objection in principle” to installing the button.
This was taken to mean that Facebook had bowed to pressure over the affair. However, the site has clarified its intentions today.
In actual fact, Facebook is saying that it is considering adopting the panic button, but it will be placed in the safety centre section of the site, and not on every page as CEOP would like.
As The Register points out, Facebook believes the button wouldn’t be a positive step forward, as it could be detrimental in giving parents a false sense of security that the site is perfectly safe. Which isn’t the case, CEOP button or no CEOP button.
The issue will be discussed further at a meeting between Facebook and CEOP in America next month.
However, it would seem that the social networking site isn’t for budging when it comes to the issue of having the panic button installed site-wide.
Californian based smartphone manufacturer Palm has announced substantial losses in its third quarter results.
The company’s coffers were emptied to the tune of a $22 million net loss in the three month period.
Lacklustre sales of Palm’s phones, which include the Palm Pre, are to blame for the loss.
And those disappointing sales figures are at least partly due to the rise of Android phones, which are currently gobbling up market share. Not to mention the continuing strong performance of the likes of the iPhone and Blackberry.
According to the FT, analysts expected Palm to shift 600,000 smartphones in the third fiscal quarter, but the company only managed to push through 408,000.
It’s all gloomy news for Palm, and the company’s shares fell again on its airing. Palm’s share value has almost halved since the start of 2010.
No doubt there are some sweaty palms in the boardroom, as it begins to look increasingly likely that newer phones the Palm Pre and Pixi aren’t going to have the impact they hoped for.
