What the new Facebook profile looks like

new Facebook profile:



check it out:
http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php

Latest Social Networking News

Yahoo!'s Not-So-Dormant Social Network
Motley Fool - USA
Mail accounts as a "dormant social network" just waiting to be awakened. Yahoo! Mail is a workhorse. Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Hotmail may be time-tested ...
See all stories on this topic

Social Network Site Benefits.
4Hoteliers - Wanchai,Hong Kong
By Ron McNeil Make your social network earn money for you - Choose the right social network software to design your website, and provide the right kind of ...
See all stories on this topic

Aggregating social network data
NetworkWorld.com - Southborough,MA,USA
There was an interesting controversy last week involving Facebook and Plaxo. Robert Scoble was using a script in an unreleased feature of Plaxo Pulse that ...
See all stories on this topic

imeem Teams With MTV Networks to Bring Expansive Library of MTVN ...
Business Wire (press release) - San Francisco,CA,USA
... the imeem community can share their tastes with friends and fans on imeem and across the Web. imeem is the first social network to partner with all four ...
See all stories on this topic

South Africa: Ten Digital Marketing Trends to Watch in 2008
AllAfrica.com - Washington,USA
It is also reasonable to expect a local rise in "social network marketing", something that may sound as foreign now as email marketing or online campaigns ...
See all stories on this topic

Where is the real Google Reader social network?
By Johnt
In this post I mentioned FeedEachOther, this is a true RSS Reader social network…Google Reader could make my day and take a look at this brilliant site. For more on Feed Each Other (FEO), take a look at my post Feed Each Other : the ...
Library clips - http://libraryclips.blogsome.com

Comment on Facebook: A call for openness by Wikinomics » Blog ...
By Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Decentralization...
Decentralization of the Social Network This is a follow up to Mike Dover’s posting on Facebook: A Call for Openness. […]
Comments for Wikinomics - http://www.wikinomics.com/blog

New Business Social Network, Now Open!
I am sure you have all heard about Social Networking. I am sure most of you have your own page at MySpace.How many of you have heard of Business Social Networking? Have you ever wished that their was a MySpace for Business? ...
Digg / upcoming - http://digg.com/

DrupalDojo.com and "social network"
By add1sun@drupal.org
One phrase that has been tossed out there for dd.com is "a social network for drupal wannabes" but I feel that the Drupal community is the social network for drupal wannabes and making some distinction for the Dojo that requires a ...
Drupal Dojo - http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo

Chinese Mobile Social Network Pica Gets $10 Million Funding
By rali@paidcontent.org (Rafat Ali)
Pica, a Chinese mobile social networking service, has received $10 million in its third round of financing. The round was led by Crosslink Capital, IDG Venture Capital and BlueRun Venture Capital, reports Redline China. ...
mocoNews.net - http://www.moconews.net/

Plaxo, Facebook, and Google go 'open' by joining DataPortability.org

In the wake of last week's explosion of attention on data portability on social networks, (that is, being able to take your data from one social network to the other) there is a huge development today. Google, Facebook, and Plaxo have all announced they're joining DataPortability.org.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/08/plaxo-facebook-and-google-go-open-by-joining-dataportability/

Latest Facebook News

Facebook API to open up to other social networks
By Christina Warren
Just hours after social networking site Bebo announced that their Open Application Developer Platform (which goes live tonight) would be "100 percent compatible with the Facebook platform", Facebook has pulled out a trump card of sorts, ...
Download Squad - http://www.downloadsquad.com

Bebo adopts Facebook open platform
Xinhua - China
Bebo's Open Application Platform will be fully compatible with the thousands of applications that have helped fuel growth at social network Facebook, ...
See all stories on this topic

Facebook Counters OpenSocial; Bebo Playing Both Sides
By joseph@paidcontent.org (Joseph Weisenthal)
Facebook is ready to counterattack Google's (NSDQ: GOOG) OpenSocial. The site revealed today that its Facebook Platform would be made available to other social networking sites, allowing developers to easily port Facebook apps to sites ...
paidContent:UK - http://www.paidcontent.co.uk/

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Meebo Brings Chat to Facebook Apps; Hits 20 Million Monthly Users
TechCrunch - Atherton,CA,USA
Bringing more immediacy to Facebook apps from buddymedia, (fluff)Friends, rockyou, Slide, The Broth and the watercooler, Web-based instant messaging startup ...

Facebook targets Google with program for other social networks
Computerworld - Framingham,MA,USA
December 13, 2007 (Computerworld) -- In a direct shot across the bow of Google Inc. and its opensocial project, Facebook Thursday announced plans to allow ...

Israel's New York Consulate launches Facebook page

Ynetnews - Israel
The Consulate General of Israel in New York City recently launched a new Facebook page in its name in an effort to publicize upcoming events and to reach ...

Facebook Profiles Can Foil Job Searches
Smartmoney.com - USA
Popular social-networking web sites like Facebook and myspace are some of the latest vehicles that allow anyone who can use a mouse to create an online ...

Facebook interns rankled by younger bosses [Cubicle Culture]
By Nicholas Carlson
Facebook engineer Charles Cheever tells Intern Memo that one of the "most interesting" aspects of interning for the social network is that "it's not unheard of for interns to be older than the... [[ This is a content summary only. ...
Valleywag - http://valleywag.com

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Did Blockbuster, Facebook Break Privacy Law With Beacon?
PC World - USA
Was a 1988 law broken when movie choices that Facebook members made on the Blockbuster's Web site were made available to other Facebook members? ...

Birthday Calendar Application Reaches 2 Million Users in One Month ...

Business Wire (press release) - San Francisco,CA,USA

application called Birthday Calendar. In just one month since its (BUSINESS WIRE)--BigDates Solutions today announced the launch of a powerful Facebook...

More Facebook news

Facebook Removes Firewall from Applications

NewsCloud writes "Last week, Facebook quietly removed sign-in restrictions that previously hid third party applications from the public Web. In other words, Facebook now allows its third party applications to be viewable on the Web by ...
Slashdot: Generated for rossturk... - http://slashdot.org/

Facebook Beacon's traffic inflation

Many people were enraged when they got a closer look at Facebook Beacon and realized they were giving away so much data (to Facebook) and getting back nothing for it, really. One of the first to stand up against Facebook was GigaOM's Om ...
WebMetricsGuru - http://www.webmetricsguru.com/

Shuddup You, Facebook!

Again, I am not being closeminded to Facebook, but just because I have previously said you have to look at such things from the inside, it does not mean I have to embrace them equally with desire. I see an incredible environment of ...
CogDogBlog - http://cogdogblog.com

Facebook dumper may have staged Digg-linked hack [Sandra Soroka]

Sandra Soroka, the New York videoblogger who dumped her boyfriend through her Facebook status message may not have had her Flickr account hacked by outraged Digg users, as we previously reported....
Valleywag - http://valleywag.com

Latest Facebook News

Is Beacon Inflating Facebook's Visitor Numbers?
By Erick Schonfeld
While Facebook's Beacon program has been drawing the ire of many people because of the privacy issues surrounding it, advertisers might be equally concerned about whether Beacon is inflating Facebook's overall visitor and traffic ...
Techcrunch - http://www.techcrunch.com

OpenSocial Delayed Until Next Year
By Nick O'Neill
Waiting on the Facebook platform competition to come rolling out? It's not happening anytime soon. Even MySpace announced their platform at the Web 2.0 Sumit and there are still no applications available on the site. ...
All Facebook - http://www.allfacebook.com

Facebook Message email notifications now include the actual Message
By Justin Smith
Facebook just pushed a feature that will be welcomed by heavy users of Facebook messaging: actually being able to view the message contents in the notification email Facebook sends to let you know that a new message has arrived. ...

Inside Facebook - http://www.insidefacebook.com

Facebook Founder Apologizes for Ad System
By Gregory Mone
The social-networking site Facebook may have to find another way to cash in on its huge user base. The company's new "social ads" program, called Beacon, has been controversial, forcing company founder Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here) to ...
Popular Science Blog - http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Social Networking with Health Information

There’s a lot of hype (and startups) to go along with trying to get you to buy into their “social networking” websites for health issues. Usually these companies have been backed by venture capitalists who expect both a relatively quick and large return on their money.

When a company is beholden not to its founders’ vision or its own mission (no matter how grand that mission or vision might be), but to financial backers who have little interest in the actual goals of the company other than to see it go public or purchased by the highest bidder as quickly as possible, guess who suffers the most? You’re right if you picked you, the user.

Since a company is an entity, not a person, it doesn’t have to be personal in these decisions. It makes them as a disconnected “other,” simply something that is trying to convince you that it is “helping” you by offering your data to others, even when it does so at times without your knowledge or permission.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/12/02/why-you-shouldnt-trust-social-networking-with-health-information/

Top 6 Social Networking Sites as of Nov.

just a quick list:

1. MySpace - 58.8 million unique visitors.
2. Facebook - 19.5 million unique visitors
3. Classmates Online - 13.2 million unique visitors
4. Windows Live Spaces - 10.3 million unique visitors
5. AOL Hometown -7.9 million unique visitors
6. Linkedin - 4.9 million unique visitors

http://adonomics.com/ - checking out the number of users, frequency of use and valuation of Facebook apps

Check it out, detals below:

What is Adonomics?

Adonomics™, formerly Appaholic, is your source for Facebook analytics. By providing a stock-market-style analysis of the Facebook platform we enable developers and investors to track application growth, activity, and valuation.

(as of Nov 25th 2007):

Facebook Facts

• There are 587,618,810 installs across 9,487 apps on Facebook with over 168,000 developers currently evaluating the platform.
• These applications were used 31,818,152 times in the last 24 hours and have a combined valuation of $504,543,658.
  
• Facebook has approximately 50 million Unique Active Users in the past 30 days and a valuation of $15 billion.
  
• This translates to $300 per active user.

http://adonomics.com/

Facebook Beacon's a flop? and funding news

Flush with cash, allied with Microsoft, growing exponentially, and positively humming with buzz, Facebook is definitely the "it" site on the Internet. Now what?

At the annual Foursquare Conference today, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave some hints about the future of the social networking phenomenon. He described its new advertising initiative, spoke of its relationship with Microsoft, and alluded to its budding rivalry with Google.
First, financing. C.F.O. Gideon Yu told Portfolio.com today that the company is preparing to raise an additional $260 million to close its Series D financing round.

During a question and answer session, Zuckerberg described the company's new advertising initiative, which he announced yesterday.

Among other things, it will allow businesses to set up their own Facebook pages and then reach out to real, live users -- that is, potential customers -- based on the interests they have described in their profiles.

If those interests include not seeing advertising, that is too bad. "There is no opting out of advertising," Zuckerberg said.

If it is any consolation, he added: "The ads are going to feel like content to a lot of people."
He also alluded to a budding rivalry with Google. Asked why Facebook chose not to participate in Google's new social networking consortium Open Social, Zuckerberg replied, "Who says we didn't choose to be a part of it?"

In fact, he added, "We didn't really find out about it until an hour after it launched."
Zuckerberg said it is "conceivable" that Facebook could seek to join Open Social in the future, but the company has no such plans at present.
"If it does really well, we may want to participate in it," he said.

At one point, Google co-founder Sergey Brin emerged from a side room at the conference, which was held at the Pierre Hotel in Manhattan, and headed straight for Zuckerberg. Bystanders held their breath, waiting for some kind of showdown.

But like a couple of championship boxers at a pre-fight weigh-in, they didn't so much as acknowledge one another. Brin just smiled as he walked straight past Zuckerberg, who kept his gaze straight ahead.

Describing Facebook's $240 million partnership with Microsoft, which includes an advertising component, the famously terse, frequently monosyllabic Zuckerberg said, "Microsoft does a lot of things that just make sense for us."

He said Facebook chose Microsoft as its advertising partner instead of Google, which has been much more successful at online advertising, for a simple reason:
"Not having done something before -- we don't see that as a disadvantage," he said, prompting laughter from the assembled media moguls.

Indeed, the lack of a track record has not hampered Facebook. Zuckerberg said the web site currently has 52 million active users, and is growing at 3 percent per week -- essentially doubling in size every six months. At that rate, he said, Facebook could have 200 million users by the end of 2008.

and....

http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/11/facebooks-beaco.html :

Facebook's "social ads" so far appear to be a flop. Not only was the "once in a hundred years" announcement largely a yawn, the complaints of Facebook users and MoveOn about the primal annoying-ness of "Beacon" are right on the money. Although we can't imagine why MoveOn can't find something better to do than complain about Facebook, we do note the speed with which 1) Facebook responded to MoveOn's complaint, and 2) 2,000 Facebook users signed up to support MoveOn. And we don't blame them. We already hate the idea of bombarding friends with lists of the crap we buy.

The fact that Facebook will only let us opt-out of that bombardment on a case-by-case basis (at the virtual cash register at third-party sites) is infuriating.Facebook should immediately make Beacon 100% opt-in. Not because MoveOn is complaining--because the current system will drive users right out the door.

The tiny minority of Facebookers who want to bombard friends with lists of the crap they buy--and friends who are actually interested in hearing about this--can elect to do so. The vast majority who don't should never have to hear about this ridiculous concept again. (And if this embarrassing backtrack hurts Facebook's ability to raise more money at a $15 billion valuation, so be it: This is the right thing to do for the long-term health of the company, and the fund-raising effort seems to be in trouble anyway).

MoveOn.org takes on Facebook's 'Beacon' ads

Online activist group MoveOn.org is poised to announce a campaign targeting Facebook's "Beacon" advertisements, which post information about users' activity on partner sites (movie rentals, purchases from online retailers) onto their friends' News Feeds. According to MoveOn representatives, the organization considers this to be a "glaring violation of (Facebook's) users' privacy," and has launched a paid ad campaign on Facebook, a "protest group" on the social-networking site, and an online petition to encourage the company to allow users to opt into the program at their own volition.

"The bottom line," MoveOn spokesman Adam Green said in an interview with CNET News.com, "is that no Facebook user should have their private purchases online posted for the entire world to see without their explicit opted-in permission."

It's true that Beacon advertisements are limited to the news feeds of the people on a user's friends list, but Green said that doesn't make a difference. He cited Facebook user testimonials that ranged from members who said their entire Christmas lists had been published on their News Feeds (spoiling many a surprise in the process) to student activists who were concerned that sensitive purchases might show up and result in serious consequences--"If a college kid rents Brokeback Mountain and some homophobic person on his campus sees that, that could be a real problem," he explained.

http://www.news.com/8301-13577_3-9821170-36.html

What Facebook Learned from Search

Imagine if Picasso painted a search engine results page from Google. It would probably wind up looking like Facebook, which continually draws inspiration from search engines as it rolls out its services for marketers.

What Facebook did was take the classic search channels of paid search, natural search, and paid inclusion and adapt them to its own platform. Compared to search, Facebook’s ad targeting isn’t quite as precise as advertising to people who explicitly express interest with their queries. Yet compared to contextual advertising, Facebook offers the proposition of targeting to explicitly expressed interests on members’ profiles, and marketing is further amplified with the web of member connections often described as the “social graph.”

>> http://blogs.mediapost.com/search_insider/?p=663

Websites Look to Shine with Facebook Beacon

go description of Facebook's Beacon:

Facebook’s importance as a platform that facilitates business rather than just socializing has been growing day by day. Recently, it has announced that 44 websites are using Facebook Beacon, which allows users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook.

Beacon is the targeted advertising system of the Facebook. Very soon when Beacon is linked to eBay , the business horizons of Fecebook users will further expand to unimaginable levels.

Facebook suggests that reaching millions of people is just 3 lines of code away. With Facebook Beacon, Web site owners can simply determine which user actions they would like publish to Facebook. Beacon supports actions including purchasing a product, signing up for a service, adding an item to a wish list, and more.

>> more: http://internetcommunications.tmcnet.com/..es/15075-websites-look-shine-with-facebook-beacon.htm

One student's intrepretation of Facebook

check this out:

As per this homework assignment, I have actually joined facebook…if you look my status should say that I’m currently looking for my dignity while you read this blog entry……


http://tbgolden.wordpress.com/2007/11/13/major-studio-the-death-of-me/

Facebook To Drop 'Is' From Status Updates

"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Bill Clinton can rest easy knowing that he will soon have more verb options when updating his status on Facebook. Facebook announced to developers last night that it will soon be dropping the word "is" from status message updates.

The developer platform has already been updated so that external applications that update user status can avoid prepending the word "is." For now, status updates on Facebook still include the "is," but Facebook platform engineers promise that the change will be pushed to Facebook at large soon and make the lack of verb a default behavior rather than something you have to specify. "In a few, we will delete that parameter and change the default behavior to be that you must include your own verb," they wrote.

Google Confirms Facebook Violation, No Personal Data Stored

via
allfacebook - the unofficial facebook blog

Earlier this week I reported that applications were secretly transferring personal data to Google via their AdWords system and this was a clear violation of Facebook’s terms of service (TOS). It turns out that no personal data was being stored but some of the AdWords integration was in violation of Facebook’s TOS. Eric Eldon received a response from a Google spokesperson:

“We recently allowed some application partners to send us additional keywords to improve ad performance. A limited number of the keywords sent to Google did not comply with the developer’s agreement with Facebook. When we realized this conflict, we asked the partners to discontinue sending those keywords. We are no longer using those keywords. No personally identifiable information was exchanged between Google and the application developers.”

http://www.allfacebook.com/2007/11/google-confirms-facebook-violation-no-personal-data-stored/