Facebook, CEOP team for teen "panic button" app

Facebook has teamed with the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and will be providing a Facebook app that will serve as a sort of "panic button," allowing teenagers an easy to report cyberbullying and other such incidents. The tool will be advertised on the home pages of teenage Facebook users.

While Facebook and other social networking sites have become examples of the new age of childhood bullying, with some such incidents ending up in suicide. CEOP asked social networking sites to add the button last year, but although Bebo and MySpace did so, Facebook resisted at first, claiming its own reporting tools were sufficient.

However, after Ashleigh Hall, 17, "met" a 33-year-old sex offender posing as a teenaged boy on Facebook, only to be raped and murdered, pressure was ratcheted up. Additionally, it was reported that 44 police chiefs in the U.K. signed a petition in favor of CEOP's idea.

The app, ClickCoep, launched on Monday. The tool will be advertised on the home pages of teenage Facebook users. Install the app and you get a ClickCEOP tab in your profile, which seems to be the only level of integration with Facebook itself, as it really just get a Facebook page that links to the CEOP Report Center.

In addition, you can gain better coverage overall by using the browser add-ons which would allow such reporting from any site. We previously covered IE8's add-on.

Still, given the fact that Facebook will advertise this on teen users' home pages, it will probably be a more apparent aid to such users. However, one might wonder if it might be a good idea to put up the same sort of ad on those users who have teenage children?

Google invests in Farmville, Mafia Wars creator Zynga

TechCrunch is reporting that multiple sources have told them that Google has invested between $100 and $200 million of its own funds (meaning, not VC division Google Ventures) in Zynga. Those who haven't been enmeshed in the social gaming phenomenon that is Mafia Wars or Farmville may not have heard of them, but you others probably have.

That investment, the sources said, was in preparation for a new Google Games service to launch later this year. As Google wants to be all things Web for all people, it's an obvious move to delve into social gaming.

The best clue supplied to the Google Games service is perhaps this job listing. It's for a Product Manager Leader, Games, and is described as follows:

The Product Management Leader, Games will be a flexible, results-oriented, and experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google's games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team. You will have visionary product insight, combined with experience in the online content business, significant technical expertise and extensive leadership and business skills. The Product Management Leader, Games combines a great instinct for developing compelling products with a strong focus on users and technical aptitude to work with a world class engineering team and the business sense to drive product goals and strategies.

It would also be an interesting adjunct to the rumored "Google Me" Facebook rival that seems to be taking shape. Might we see Farmville disappear from Facebook (probably not), or at least see new Zynga games head over to Google Me exclusively (maybe)?


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