Valleywag: Facebook

National Security Agency spends $2 million on Google

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 12:20:00 PDT

Why did the citizen-spying National Security Agency pay Google $2 million? According to a contractobtained through the Freedom of Information Act and parsed by Blogoscoped, the NSA purchased "four Google search appliances, two-years replacement warranty on all of them, and 100 hours of consulting support." I know, kind of a letdown. But we sincerely hope that won't stop the conspiracy theorists from creating another paranoia-fueled video like the classic we've embedded below.

Facebook still facing existential legal threat

Owen Thomas — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

New Facebook lawyer Ted Ullyot will have his hands full. Before Mark Zuckerberg came along, every college had a facebook — a collection of pictures of the incoming freshman class, distributed in print. But now, there's only one Facebook. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard student who came up with an online facebook called HouseSystem prior to the creation of Facebook, has long disputed Zuckerberg's claim to the idea — and he's been disputing the company's name, too. Records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office now show that Greenspan's suit to cancel Facebook's trademark has resumed, having survived two motions to dismiss. The most probable outcome here: Like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twins who claim they hired Zuckerberg to work on their college social network, ConnectU, Greenspan will get paid off with a piece of Facebook, too.

Facebook hires Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 12:00:00 PDT

Accused of permitting unwarranted spying on citizens, torture, helping to blow a CIA agent's cover and firing non-political appointees for political reasons, former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales left the White House shrouded in ignominy. Facebook just hired his former right-hand man, Ted Ullyot, as its general counsel. The privacy advocates who plagued Facebook during its Beacon controversy might not be pleased, but Washington insider and top Facebook flack Elliot Schrage is giddy. "He has an extraordinary combination of private legal practice and public sector experience. So many of the legal issues we face touch on both of those arenas,” Schrage told the Los Angeles Times. “Ted's arrival really demonstrates we're a little more grown-up.” Ullyot's impressive resume:

Served as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Worked as the top lawyer for AOL Time Warner in Europe.
Joined Gonzales at the ~~Department of Justice~~ White House as a deputy assistant and deputy staff secretary in 2003, earning a promotion to chief of staff that stuck when he and Gonzales moved to the Department of Justice in 2005. "[Gonzales's] leadership style is to listen and engage," Ullyot told the Washington Post of Gonzales. "Our job on the staff is to make sure that he's hearing from all the people that he needs to be hearing from."
Along with Raul Yanes, coordinated the White House's response to the investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The case ended with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff Scotter Libby's conviction.
As assistant to Gonzales when he was the White House counsel, helped defend — or at least did not object to — policies established by the infamous "torture memo," which argued for ways the Bush administration could forgo the Geneva Conventions in order to prosecute the War on Terror. "The tragedy of the torture memo is that it didn't get caught at a much lower level much more quickly," one former Justice Department official under President Bill Clinton told Law.com. "Had that memo received a broader look, there is no question that people would have said this is just wrong, as the administration later admitted it was."
Earned Alberto Gonzales's unwavering praise: “I appreciate the steady leadership, counsel, integrity, and tireless commitment that Ted brought to this job and the cause of justice. I thank Ted for his great service to the President and the Nation in these challenging times. I wish him all the best as he moves on to this next phase of his career, and I look forward to our continued friendship."

Correction: Part of this post originally suggested Ullyot began working at the DoJ in 2003. He began working with Gonzales at the White House and they both moved to the DoJ in 2005.

Clintonista Sheryl Sandberg backs Bush's Treasury Secretary

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:00:00 PDT

During an Advertising Week panel on Monday, a moderator asked Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg how the Wall Street meltdown will effect online spending. Sandberg delivered a carefully crafted response to an expected question touching upon her time at the Treasury during the Clinton years, the Mexican peso, the Asian crises of the 1990s, and contagion, a fancy new term the rest of us can break out at dinner parties. When she's so comfortable talking global economics, why did Sandberg ever leave Washington D.C.? Look how smoothly she endorses Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Most obvious of all: She's clearly enjoying herself. We don't get the same vibe from Sandberg when she's talking up Facebook.

The Facebook generation's pointless protests

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

The "I Hate The New Facebook" group is up to 1.4 million members. Facebook plans to make its redesign permanent next week anyway. That rebuff won't hamper Facebook's popularity, or discourage the creation of new groups motivated by the urge to whine. Starting a group on Facebook is the millennial generation's preferred act of protest, but not because the students who create them hope to change anything. They are popular because, since preschool, my fellow millennials and I — very special snowflakes, all of us — have been told that it's not if you win or lose, or even how you play the game. It's that you participate.

We millennials know there are two things we can do about weighty problems like the Sudan, Iraq and HIV/AIDS: Start a Facebook group, or mock those who do. I'm not about to start a Facebook group. Forthwith, a list of Facebook groups that never achieved their creator's ambitions to become "one million strong" — though I'm sure coach will give them a plastic trophy at the end of the season anyway.

Facebook kicks out users with weird names

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:00:00 PDT

Elmo Keep is a legal name, but the Australian woman who uses it got booted from Facebook because of it anyway. Facebook's customer sevice drones didn't let her back on the site — and in fact wouldn't tell her why she was banned. Until she mailed them copies of her passport and driver's license, always a risky proposition — Facebook once accidentally published a user's driver's license under similar circumstances. This happens to lots of people with weird names like Ms. Keep's, because part of Facebook's pitch to advertisers is that on the site, users are "authentically themselves" and if they're not, as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg puts it in this clip: "We kick you off." The irony, of course, is that people with unusual names often decide to sign up with more common fake names. The Sydney Morning Herald came up with a list of real names that got users banned from the site:

Other names who have previously faced the wrath of Facebook's name police include US political blogger Jon Swift, Japanese author Hiroko Yoda, British member of Parliament Steve Webb, Australian graphic designer Beta Yee, New Zealander Rowena Gay and countless others with names including "podcast", "beaver", "jelly", "beer" and "duck."

3 ways Facebook could impress Madison Avenue

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:00:00 PDT

NEW YORK — Facebook is making a huge push during Advertising Week, an industrywide series of events for media buyers and publishers taking place now. Mark Zuckerberg's marketing minions bought a full-page ad in the program; sponsored sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings; and put Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on a panel. They're throwing a party Thursday night; Bob Marley's kid, Ziggy Marley, will be the entertainment. "We're finally sponsoring something!" I overhead one Facebook employee gush to another on Monday. It's all a big effort to reintroduce Facebook to the New York ad agencies after Zuckerberg botched last year's first try.

Judging by Sandberg's panel appearence Monday, Facebook particularly wants to push its new Engagement Ads — the ones which allow users to comment on advertiser's banners. Yesterday, I sat down with a top executive from one of the major interactive agencies and asked him what he made of Facebook's showy efforts. Engagement Ads? "Eh, those aren't what I want," he said. Then he suggested three things Facebook needs to do right now to win Madison Avenue's money faster than a week's worth of sessions, panels and Ziggy Marley parties ever could.

Build a toll booth.
Everyone knows banner ads don't do it for big-budget advertisers anymore— not even ones that allow users to comment on them and share with their friends, like Facebook's new ads. Instead of creating gimmicky features that users don't want, Facebook needs to come up with ways for advertisers to be seen as providing new functionality on Facebook itself. By way of analogy, my source told me to imagine American Express sponsoring a normally congested toll road for a day. Drivers approaching the toll booths would see them empty and maybe billboard that read: "No toll today. Drive on through and see what it's like to be an American Express cardholder." That's the kind of branded experiences Facebook needs to create for users and advertisers, my source told me. Not gimmicky ones like asking users to design Mazda's new cars or come up with new Ben and Jerry's flavors. Facebook should encourage users to feel like a site improvement was brought to them by a brand. Maybe Facebook's Video application should have been sponsored by Sony's CyberShot line, for example. The challenge: Facebook's site developers work separately from the group which comes up with ad products, a divide Facebook needs to erase.

Facebook needs to stop imagining it will ever reach Google's size.
One reason Facebook hasn't come up with these kinds of advertising arrangements already is that they require lots of creativity, planning and customization. They're one-offs, and Mark Zuckerberg can't simply program a computer to sell them over and over. It's a terrifying reality for Facebook because its investors put money into it expecting it would become the next Google, which is an automated moneymaking machine. (Only 3,000 out of its 18,000 employees are required to run its advertising operations.) The sooner Facebook management and its investors realize that the company will not be the next Google — which, let's face it, lucked into a ridiculously simple way of making money — the sooner it can take advantage of its massive, desirable user base.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg need to hire Madison Avenue insiders.
My source says Madison Avenue avoids spending money on MySpace because no one in New York knows its ad salespeople. Facebook needs to put Madison Avenue insiders in positions where they have Mark Zuckerberg's ear. For example: Zuckerberg could have used someone with advertising experience to challenge him with the baby-name test before the company went forward with its Beacon ads. The baby-name test? "You know," he said, "The one where you take the name and think of all the terrible things it rhymes with and then decide if you still like it."

A gigantic picture of Robert Scoble for no reason

Owen Thomas — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — Fast Company videoblogger Robert Scoble, who has discovered in the Web a popularity which escaped him in high school, has been moderating a panel titled "Web 2.0/Web 3.0 Mashup" at MIT's EmTech conference for the past hour. There are people from Facebook, Six Apart, and Plaxo on stage with him. With no introduction, Scoble launched into a meandering conversation about data portability, online video, URIs, social TV guides, and the Olympics. An hour later, it still has no sign of going anywhere. Joseph Smarr of Plaxo talks very fast. Dave Morin of Facebook seems very tired. Sample quote: "The pace of change is not indexable from a central service." The audience appears to be stunned into stupor. Does it matter that nothing is being said? Perhaps not; perhaps the point is to show this audience of technology generalists how insubstantial the obsessions of the Valley's geek set are.

Interactive agency's favorite new model: free

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 08:40:00 PDT

Here's a new problem for the people running popular online properties like YouTube and Facebook to complain about: Ad agencies love using those sites to market their clients, but advertisers are beginning to realize they don't have to spend a dime to do so.Even when they do, the platform companies aren't the ones who see the profits. Lonelygirl15's creators, for example, make most of their money selling product placements in their videos. YouTube doesn't get any cut of that revenue. A top exec for a major interactive agency told me yesterday: "I keep telling my guys I"m going to do a contest next year to see who can come up with a media plan that costs $0, outside of our fees, of course." It shouldn't be too hard. Marketers create free Facebook pages for all kinds of brands. It's just as free to upload a YouTube video. And if an agency uploads one as clever as the above American Express ad, and its sequel, below, the agency won't need to pay anybody to promote it.

Facebook, YouTube execs whine about slow online ad adoption

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:00:00 PDT

YouTube's Jordan Hoffner, a content dealmaker for the site, told a conference in San Jose yesterday that it's "disturbing" how little advertisers spend online, considering how much time people spend online now. On an Advertising Week panel here in New York, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg shared the complaint, telling the audience: "We are getting a smaller share of budgets than the time consumers are spending would say. Consumers are spending something like 28, 29 percent of the time online, but online spend is like 8 percent of global advertising spend and about 10 percent in the U.S." Maybe the squeaky wheels will get some grease. But Jordan, Sheryl: the big reason online spending is so low relative to how much time consumers are spending online is that those consumers spend much of their time on Facebook and YouTube, which haven't come out with ad products media buyers consider worth their money yet.

Guy who sued Facebook joins Facebook

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

Harvard alum Divya Narendra is on Facebook, one of his classmates noticed today. The social network started at that Ivy League school, so his joining it wouldn't be notable — except Narendra started ConnectU, the social network from which Narendra and his cofounders say fellow Harvard man Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook. The other two founders are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who rowed in the Beijing Olympics and are also very tall. Narendra didn't take advantage of Facebook's excellent privacy features and has his profile exposed to the entire New York network. Narendra has been less vocal than the Winklevosses about ConnectU's continuing fight with Facebook, but according to his Facebook wall, which we've pasted below, Narendra's freinds still can't believe he joined the site. Also below: Guess which company Narendra did not include in the "Education and Work" section of his profile:

Facebook a narcissist haven, say shrinks specializing in obvious

Jackson West — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 05:00:00 PDT

Have a pretty picture and a lot of "friends" on Facebook? Then you may be a narcissist. And if you're on Facebook, you probably know quite a number of them. That's according to doctoral student Laura Buffardi and associate professor W. Keith Campbell in the University of Georgia's psychology department. Not that there's more narcissists generally, you're just more likely to encounter them on Facebook.

Not everyone who uses Facebook is a narcissist. "We found that people who are narcissistic use Facebook in a self-promoting way that can be identified by others," said Buffardi. They gave personality questionnaires to nearly 130 Facebook users, analyzed the content of the pages and had untrained strangers view the pages and rate their impression of the owner's narcissism.

Frankly, whatever content analysis tool they used could be quite valuable in finding "influencers" to connect with your brand. They're naturally productive and efficient online promotion engines, they're young and they come cheap. Start working on your pitch, kids!

Sheryl Sandberg shows us who's in charge at Facebook

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

NEW YORK — We've heard plenty about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's management style without ever seeing it firsthand. Until today. Before joining an Advertising Week panel on stage at the Paley Center for Media, Sandberg rounded up a coterie of Facebookers in the lobby and gave them something of a motivational speech. I was there with my handy Flip camera to capture the two-minute speech. Unfortunately, the lobby was loud and unless any of you are lipreaders (email us if you are), we won't know what Sandberg said. Still, I think there's plenty of body language to examine as Facebook's real boss holds court with her minions and their heavy bags. Does their silence speak of admiring attention, resentment or fear?

Million-member march begs for old Facebook back

Paul Boutin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 08:40:00 PDT

The surprise isn't that someone created a Facebook group to demand that Mark "Zomberg" — a pun on Zuckerberg and Facebook's famous Zombie app — bring back the old Facebook. What's surprising is that nearly 800,000 members have found and joined the group as of this morning. The probability of Facebook's old look and feel coming back are exactly zero, but the group serves a purpose: It proves that people who claim to be cutting-edge and ahead of the curve hate change just as much as the rest of us.

Drunken Economist

Alaska Miller — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:40:00 PDT

As Facebook grows up with the help of its adult chaperones, the changes are starting to manifest themselves. The site has been redesigned; advertising schemes, experimented with. Most importantly, CEO Mark Zuckerberg's voice has been neutered to soothe investors instead of reminding them that he's CEO, bitch. Today's featured commenter, Drunken Economist, comes to us with a joke to explain what's really going on:

Got a little joke for you...

What did one seagull say to the other seagull?

This landfill stinks. Let's fly over to that other landfill.

It's getting to the point where SNS's are trying to out fill each other with... filler. That's all this is.

Facebook mining your Wall posts for more marketing data

Jackson West — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Popular social ~~network~~ utility Facebook has updated Lexicon, the tool for marketers and advertisers to monitor what users are saying about topics or products. It now scans the publicly available updates made by users, such as posts to each other's "Walls," and now the new Sentiment feature produces visual displays of related terms — the better to position your brand and spin discontent by buying ads targeted to the very keywords Facebook users are typing into their profiles.

While it won't identify individual users directly, indirectly it will allow advertisers to reach a class of individual users through more refined placement. Which is kind of the same difference — mention American Apparel, and more porny ads for you!

Shawn Fanning's retort

Owen Thomas — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:20:00 PDT

After Valleywag reported that Napster creator Shawn Fanning may have found a new love, he issued a snappy response on Facebook. Points to Fanning for his innovative use of social-networking technology — think Sean Parker, Fanning's cofounder at Napster and Facebook's ex-president, gave him pointers? But we'd have hoped for a cleverer comeback.

How the Googlers have changed Mark Zuckerberg

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:40:00 PDT

When users revolted against a Facebook redesign in 2006, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote a post in response titled "Calm down. Breathe. We hear you." In it, Zuck came off defensive and condescending. "We're not oblivious of the Facebook groups popping up about this (by the way, Ruchi is not the devil)," he wrote. Now, Zuckerberg's written another post defending the site's latest redesign, which more users — though a far smaller percentage of them — also don't like. It's titled "Thoughts on the Evolution of Facebook." It reads like the inoffensive pablum you'd read on, say, the Official Google Blog. Why is that?

No surprise there: Besides top flack Elliot Schrage, Facebook has hired at least three PR people from Google in recent months — Debbie Frost, Barry Schnitt, and Larry Yu.

Zuckerberg's preprocessed blog post predictably mentions "Facebook's mission," which Zuck tells us "is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." That sounds exactly like the talking points Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — also an ex-Googler, trained in the delivery of political messages from her time in the Clinton White House.

For his investors, an uncontroversial Zuckerberg is a profitable Zuckerberg. If he's to stay CEO through an IPO and beyond, he'll have to practice putting shareholders and analysts to sleep with similar language. We sure will miss the clumsy honesty of Zuck's original post, though. Compare the old versus the new, below.

Mark Zuckerberg before the Googlers came — defensive, condescending and honest:

Calm down. Breathe. We hear you.

We've been getting a lot of feedback about Mini-Feed and News Feed. We think they are great products, but we know that many of you are not immediate fans, and have found them overwhelming and cluttered. Other people are concerned that non-friends can see too much about them. We are listening to all your suggestions about how to improve the product; it's brand new and still evolving.

We're not oblivious of the Facebook groups popping up about this (by the way, Ruchi is not the devil). And we agree, stalking isn't cool; but being able to know what's going on in your friends' lives is. This is information people used to dig for on a daily basis, nicely reorganized and summarized so people can learn about the people they care about. You don't miss the photo album about your friend's trip to Nepal. Maybe if your friends are all going to a party, you want to know so you can go too. Facebook is about real connections to actual friends, so the stories coming in are of interest to the people receiving them, since they are significant to the person creating them.

We didn't take away any privacy options. [Your privacy options remain the same.] The privacy rules haven't changed. None of your information is visible to anyone who couldn't see it before the changes. If you turned off your wall to non-friends, no one who is not your friend will be able to see a post on your wall. Your friends can still see it; it hasn't changed. Secret groups and secret events remain secret from other people. Pokes and messages remain as private interactions. Nothing you do is being broadcast; rather, it is being shared with people who care about what you do—your friends.

We're going to continue to improve Facebook, and we want you to be part of that process. Test out the products and continue to provide us feedback. Use your privacy settings so you can feel most comfortable using the site.

We hear you, and we appreciate the feedback.

Stay tuned... Mark

Mark Zuckerberg after getting Googled — polite, empathetic and dull:

Thoughts on the Evolution of Facebook

After months of hard work, we're at a point where almost all 100 million people around the world on Facebook are using the new design. As we continue to roll this out, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we've built and why I think it's an important step for us.

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. In the last four years, we've built new products that help people share more, such as photos, videos, groups, events, Wall posts, status updates and so on.

As people share more, sometimes we need to change the site to accommodate how much information people are posting. Back in 2006 we launched News Feed, which brought all of the most recent and interesting activity from the people you care about right to your home page. Similarly, the new Facebook design replaces all the big boxes on profiles and brings all of your friends' most recent and interesting activity to front and center.

We realize that change can be difficult though. Many people disliked News Feed at first because it changed their home page and how they shared information. Now it's one of the most important parts of Facebook. We think the new design can have the same effect.

With this release, we've worked harder to get more feedback about what we can improve. Starting in March, we created a Page where we gave updates on the changes we were considering and more than 150,000 people joined and participated. We also wanted to give people a chance to try out the new design before launching it for everyone. More than 40 million people tried it out and 30 million continued using it.

It's tempting to say that we should just support both designs, but this isn't as simple as it sounds. Supporting two versions is a huge amount of work for our small team, and it would mean that going forward we would have to build everything twice. If we did that then neither version would get our full attention.

That said, Facebook is a work in progress. We constantly try to improve things and we understand that our work isn't perfect. We appreciate the thousands of you who have written in to give us feedback. Even if you're joining a group to express things you don't like about the new design, you're giving us important feedback and you're sharing your voice, which is what Facebook is all about.

Thanks for all of your support as we work together to make Facebook better and give everyone around the world a new way to connect and share. The active community on Facebook makes it possible for us to build new things and make them great, and that is why Facebook has been successful so far.

What to know before Facebook recruiting comes to your campus

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 19:00:00 PDT

In the next year, Facebook plans to visit 20 universities and 5 business schools as it looks to staff up its already swelling operations. Students graduating from these institutions need to be prepared. In a post to announce the tour, Facebook recruiter Marcia Velencia writes that the company is "looking for people that are passionate," who, like Facebook, "value working hard, smart, and fast, and following that up with some good fun." Velencia and Facebook will almost certainly find these types of candidates and successfully lure them into the company. They will do so by allowing the candidates to believe — not explicitly promising them — that working at Facebook will make them rich, allow them to change the world, and put them on a fast track toward an exciting career in tech. Here's what graduating students entertaining a career at Facebook should actually expect.

Facebook will not make you rich.
On a job board for University candidates, Facebook says its hiring engineers, product managers and customer service reps. That means unless you're an engineer or you've started your own business during school, Facebook probably plans to hire you into customer service. Its where the company needs bodies as it staffs its ad sales operations and grows its user base. It's also the area Facebook COO and former Googler Sheryl Sandberg knows best. Working Facebook customer service will not make you rich. The job only pays $18.75 per hour.

You are not going to change the world.
At some point during the interview process, Velencia and Facebook HR will expect you to say that one reason you want to work for the company is that like Mark Zuckerberg, you want to change the world by connecting people. It's fine to say this in order to get the job. Just don't believe it. If you want to change the world go work for Teach for America.

You will not be technically challenged. Code will not iterate quickly.
I interviewed then Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo in 2006 and I asked him what he liked most about working there. He said he loved how fast the company moved, pushing new code and making changes to the site. D'Angelo is gone from Facebook now and soon, so will that ethos. The site redesign that's users are just now moving to in September? It was supposed to launch in April.

Minion work at Facebook will be like minion work at Google — awful. Though it could turn you into a champion political in-fighter, which is a crucial talent for a career in tech.
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg built Google's customer service operation. She will try to replicate it Facebook. Here is how one Google employee described her division:

I'm surprised that you guys don't shed more light on this, but AdWorders only make $45,000 base plus meager bonuses that are only a few hundred per quarter. It's the worst department because everyone hates their job "Hello, this is AdWords, how may I help you?" The dreaded phone shift, chat shifts, answering emails is the core job. They don't tell you that when recruiting and hiring kids from elite universities.

Managers that started as entry level and 'made it' to manager level are extremely paranoid and neurotic because they only have measly community college bachelor degrees and feel threatened (and rightfully so) by the new hire managers that are straight out of Harvard, Northwestern, INSEAD & Stanford MBA Programs. Yet they can't get the boot because they're well-connected and the people who suffer from their poor management are lower on the totem pole and could never risk the backlash that would undoubtedly result.

I know of one manager who everyone hated, yet nothing ever happened to her. Instead, her direct reports just prayed that they'd get to switch managers within the quarter. Her name is Tracy-Lee Blumberg. I know of at least 6 different employees who cried every single day that she was their manager. THREE were male. And other bad managers include Heather Huffman and Stacy Brown-Philpot.

It really is a crazy system because everyone is cut throat and if you happen to land a good project or get an opportunity (to work on a coveted project or work from a remote international office) people really try to bring you down.

Facebook bribes NYU coeds with gum

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 13:40:00 PDT

Facebook is going on a 20 university, 5 business school tour of the nation looking for fresh meat. Yesterday's stop was NYU, says a Valleywag spy. "Of course I grabbed some free sandwiches and the best part: FACEBOOK GUM!" Interested? The spy says it "seems like they are extremely interested in programmers that speak multiple languages." Since Facebook gets its users to translate the site for free, we're betting the Facebook recruiter actually meant programmers should know the following languages:

GNU C/C++ 4.2.3
Ericsson Erlang 5.5.5
GHC Haskell 6.8.2
Sun Java 1.5.0_15
INRIA OCaml 3.10.0
Perl 5.8.8
PHP 5.2.4
Python 2.5.2
Ruby 1.8.6

Is Facebook helping Palin foes break the law?

Owen Thomas — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:40:00 PDT

Who says Facebook ads don't work? I've found myself mesmerized by a recent series: "AP Says: Palin Lied"; "Howard Kurtz: Palin Lied"; "Shame: Palin's Iraq Lie"; "WSJ Says: Palin Lied". The online onslaught on Republican vice-presidential candidate's truthiness has an algorithmic catchiness. Each ad links to a news story which casts doubt on some claim Palin has made — though not with the "PALIN LIED!" forcefulness of the Facebook ads which promote them. As much as politicians love to bash the media, they gladly use their stories to bolster negative political ads. But there's the mystery: Who's buying these ads? The Wall Street Journal identified the buyer on Monday as MoveOn.org, a liberal political-activism group. But the ads are still running, and Facebook's website still doesn't say who bought them.That may violate federal election law.

The Federal Election Commission's rules require that all "public communications" include a disclaimer:

... a statement placed on a public communication that identifies the person(s) who paid for the communication and, where applicable, the person(s) who authorized the communication.

That's why, on television ads, you hear Barack Obama and John McCain say, "I approved this message."

But there's no such approval on the Facebook ads — or any other indication who paid for them. Internet politicking is exempt from many election laws. But there's one big exception: paid online advertising is treated the same as other forms of advertising. In a classic piece of regulatory doublespeak, the FEC says:

General public political advertising does not include Internet ads, except for communications placed for a fee on another person’s web site

Got that? No Internet advertising is covered, except for all Internet advertising.

There is one possible loophole MoveOn's Facebook ads could skirt under — a provision for "small items
upon which the disclaimer cannot be conveniently printed." Facebook's smallest ad format restricts the number of words an advertiser can use, arguably making it inconvenient to provide a disclaimer. But that defense seems specious; they could simply buy a larger-format ad, or link to a website which makes the identity of the advertiser clear.

Matt Hicks, a Facebook spokesman, told the Journal that the ads comply with Facebook's policies. It's true that Facebook allows political advertising. But Facebook's terms for advertisers have other rules which MoveOn may be violating:

Ads must clearly state and represent the company, product, or brand that is being advertised.
In both ad text and image, you must not include any content that may be deemed as infringing upon the rights of any third party, including copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity or other personal or proprietary right, or that is deceptive or fraudulent.
Ads may not contain, facilitate or promote defamatory, libelous, slanderous and/or unlawful content.

In fairness to Facebook's rulemakers, this may be an issue above their pay grade. Other forms of online advertising, like Google's AdWords, could easily be used for similar campaigns. Text ads' targeted audience, short duration, and ease of alteration will make it hard for rival campaigns to track such activity. Without a disclosure, only Google or Facebook will know who's paying for a message. The FEC will have to rule on whether its disclaimer requirements apply to short text ads. But it's hard to see why they don't.

Beacon returns, more annoying than ever

Jackson West — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:20:00 PDT

Fantasy football enthusiast Jesse Stay has caught a new instance of Facebook's much-maligned Beacon advertising system, with a Facebook popup appearing on the CBS Sports site asking if it can advertise in Stay's news feed. Don Reisinger at TechCrunch confirmed that Beacon is alive, recreating the situation and finding the offending source code. While users upset at the site's redesign are busy finding workarounds, this development might slip under the radar. In which case: Well played, Facebook. [Stay 'N Alive]

Screenshots of Yahoo's redesign

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 07:00:00 PDT

Here are the screenshots Yahoo published of its upcoming homepage redesign. The big change is that instead of including a long list of Yahoo products and services on the left side of the very popular homepage, there's now a large gray box for Yahoo and third-party created widgets, which will link to places like Yahoo's photo-sharing service Flickr and auction site eBay. The redesign also reveals that like AOL, Yahoo seems to think people will use the portal more if they can check their Gmail there.

I'm skeptical, because since when are Gmail users looking for a portal to bookmark as their homepage? We heard Yahoo tried to get Facebook to design a widget for the new space on Yahoo's homepage, but that so far Mark Zuckerberg and company have refused. Kind of like how they refused Yahoo's $1 billion offer to buy the company two years ago, relegating Yahoo to redesigns that seem little more than deckchair shuffling on a sinking ship.

Top Yahoo brain snubs Facebook for Microsoft

Owen Thomas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:20:00 PDT

Qi Lu, Yahoo's top search scientist, has been rumored to be leaving the company since June. But he's only just recently disappeared from Yahoo's list of top executives. We hear he's taking a job at Microsoft. Microsoft, the land where Web talent goes to die?

Yes, Microsoft. The software house is desperate to catch up with Google, and Lu was one of Yahoo's few standout talents. Nevertheless, Lu's rumored choice of employer is surprising. Kara Swisher spotted Lu dining with David Sze, a partner at Facebook investor Greylock Capital. At the time, she speculated that Lu might take a cushy entrepreneur-in-residence gig at Greylock — or fill the empty CTO spot at Facebook.

The fact that Facebook has yet to name a new CTO suggests they were holding out hope of landing Lu. For Lu to pass on the job would be telling. A year ago, Facebook could hire anyone it wanted, and they wouldn't have spent months dithering. if Lu takes Microsoft's job offer, it will show that Mark Zuckerberg's engineers-first culture at Facebook is fading fast.

How to go back to the old Facebook

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:00:00 PDT

Some 500,000 Facebook users who don't like the site's new design have found a loophole leading back to the old one. The trick is to sign up as a Facebook application developer — and you don't have to even write a line of code! Facebook allows developers to use the old Facebook design if they want, because until every last Facebook user has migrated to the new design, these widgetmakers need to maintain two versions of their applications. Here's how to go undercover and get your old Facebook profile back in three easy steps.

Step 1. Add the "Facebook Developers" application (available here).
Step 2. Click "Go to applications" and then close the page.
Step 3. Follow this link.

Facebook's Brandee Barker hides from camera while denying Microsoft buyout

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:00:00 PDT

BoomTown's Kara Swisher went to Palo Alto’s MacArthur Park restaurant for a luncheon hosted by Germany’s Hubert Burda Media yesterday, the organizers of the DLD conference. A target of her shaky videocam work: Facebook flack Brandee Barker, who hid behind a fern. Asked if Microsoft was buying Facebook, Barker shouted, "Never!" Brave words, if not exactly consistent with Facebook's fiduciary duties to shareholders to consider all reasonable offers. Besides Barker, Swisher captured Silicon Valley figures like nerd chanteuse Randi Zuckerberg; Wired writer Steven Levy, fresh from his fly-on-the-wall writeup of the making of Google's Chrome browser; and layoff-happy Loic Le Meur. The crowd is shown descending into a happy drunkenness, giggling about Wall Street all the way down. After the jump, the full clip and a guide to the best moments:

0:55 Loic Le Meur is worried about the economy.
1:14 Brandee Barker hides behind a fern, says Facebook will never sell to Microsoft
2:30 BillShrink’s Peter Pham says a lot of startups are going to go under
2:36 Randi Zuckerberg wants you to register to vote
3:32 Steven Levy says the arrow points no where but up
5:43 Israeli superinvestor Yossi Vardi says that Lehman Brothers stock isn't worth as much as World of Warcraft shields.

Dr. Ruth warns parents away from "Facelift" social network

Owen Thomas — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:00:00 PDT

Ruth Westheimer, the pundit who brought frank sex talk to middle America, stumbles in a discussion on NBC of the dangers of frank sex talk on social networks, calling Facebook "Facelift." Actually, that sounds like a great spinoff site for Mark Zuckerberg to target the over-40 set.

Friendster flashbacks as Facebook goes after fakesters

Jackson West — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 05:00:00 PDT

It seemed like only yesterday that Jonathan Abrams was waging an all-out war against "fakesters," or made-up public profiles on his social networking startup Friendster — because lord knows, we can't have people misrepresenting themselves on the Internet. Now it's Facebook's turn to play the heavy, with users of the PackRat application getting multiple accounts deleted. Players of the social card game were signing up under pseudonyms in order to give themselves an advantage in the social card game.

Facebook has been notoriously stuck up about making sure users are identified strictly by their government names. Now both heavy users generating an excess of pageviews and an application developer that depends on the company's "platform" are feeling the wrath from above for sinning against the terms of service. Certainly the "tyrannical, omnipotent" style of divine rule didn't end up working so well for Friendster — Facebook is popular and growing, but punishing its most devoted acolytes like Job can't work in the long run.

Business pubs get more stylish, social to appeal to Facebookers

Jackson West — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 05:00:00 PDT

The venerable Wall Street Journal has given up trying to age gracefully after being purchased by News Corp., and today the bandages will come off on a facelift that took six months to complete. The main difference will be that non-subscribers will get a more general-interest homepage full of links to free lifestyle content, while subscribers will have the page tailored to emphasize business news. But sixty percent of the site's traffic never sees the homepage, and pageviews-per-unique visit are actually falling. So bring on the social network!

Meanwhile, just as the Journal is trying to expand its readership beyond managers and executives with expense accounts, Slate is introducing The Big Money — billed by the New York Times as "a Business Site for the Facebook Set," which includes a Journal-watching Twitter feed. Because as we all know, the Facebook set doesn't like to read anything over 140 characters.

Zuckerberg wants Facebook to look like Windows

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

Shortly after Facebook bought Parakey, the Web-desktop startup cofounded by star engineers Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross, Mark Zuckerberg talked about making his goof-off site the "social operating system of the Web." It was just one of a series of failed big-picture metaphors for the tongue-tied young entrepreneur. Facebook may never be an operating system. But is it such a terrible idea to make it look like one? The latest redesign is a virtual copycat of Windows.

As Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer first pointed out, Facebook has removed its applications dropdown menu from the top of the screen and put it down in the bottom-left corner — you know, right where Windows keeps its "Start" button. Just like Windows, alerts pop up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen.

Microsoft Windows isn't deemed sexy by San Francisco's Web-designer crowd, who brag about having to launch VMware to test out Google Chrome. But, like Facebook, Microsoft has a user base in the nine digits. Zuckerberg shows he hasn't just taken Microsoft's money — he's picked up some of the software giant's mass-market, commonsense design.

Botched Yahoo redesign months behind schedule

Jackson West — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 23:00:00 PDT

Yahoo's shares rebounded Thursday from five-year lows. The unveiling of a big redesign, the first in two years, revved up traders. But they may not have been as bullish if they knew, as Yahoo insiders do, that the homepage revamp, originally due in October, is months behind schedule and much less ambitious than hoped. Far from revealing a newly energized Yahoo, the delays reveal that the Internet company still suffers from the same problems that have hobbled it for years.

Mismanagement and bureaucratic balkanization continue to rule Yahoo. The team developing the new homepage, both the front-end design and the back-end architecture, worked in a vacuum as executives above them kept getting reorged. The mockup of the new design looks great (and yes, the logo will be purple). But the amount of incredibly profitable front-page advertising space was significantly reduced. That's because nobody bothered to discuss the project with ad sales until months of work were done. Even then engineers had to step in to fix problem.

Famously unproductive products chief Ash Patel touted third-party widgets, such as a tool that let Yahoo users view upcoming DVDs in their Netflix queue. But Netflix was a consolation prize. Yahoo's product managers have plans to include updates from Facebook and messages from Google's email service, Gmail, on users' homepages. But Facebook and Google have refused to give Yahoo access.

What was supposed to be a big news event ended up as a tease for reporters to placate shareholders and stir up developer interest for an event this weekend. Instead of a seismic announcement to undo the publicity damage from the botched Microsoft deal, Yahoo will have to settle for the slightest of tremors. It's not the shakeup Yahoo needs.

How do you feel about Facebook's redesign?

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 12:40:00 PDT

Facebook users are on a forced march to the "New Facebook" redesign starting today. I IM'd a friend of mine who doesn't work in tech to see what he thinks. His answer: "The single webpage was much cooler. Now with these tabs and all, it's harder to find things." Clearly, my pal's not on board with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's plan to turn Facebook into a "social operating system" — and to be an "operating system," you need dropdown menus and tabs and other whizbang features. (Let me beat all the engineers to the punch — no, Facebook is nothing like an actual OS. If it were like an actual OS, it would crash more.) Zuckerberg's grandiose ambitions aside, I like the new design because it makes sharing video, photos and messages with my friends that much easier. Also, it hides annoying widgets. I figure that people are whining about it because nobody likes change. But that's just one man's opinion. Take our poll below and let Zuckerberg know how you feel.

Facebook design tweak "marks end for applications"

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 08:40:00 PDT

A tweak to Facebook's new site redesign, which goes permanent today, removed a link to "recently used applications" from the site's menu. The change has third-party developers who make those applications up in arms: They say removing the link will make it harder for users to come back to their widgets. One developer wrote us to say, "If this sticks, today marks the end for third-party applications." The "Developer Feedback to Facebook" forum is full of similar complaints.

"I already have users complain that they can't find apps again on the new profile after first using them. the latest changes will make it even harder," writes one developer. Another: "Yup, this is a very intense change. And pretty useless from a user experience point of view. Hopefully they roll it back immediately or it was just a mistake."

Israeli army says Hezbollah uses Facebook to kidnap soldiers

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:20:00 PDT

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg likes to delude himself into thinking his site can bring peace to the middle east. The Israeli Army would like to say thanks, but no thanks. An Israeli intelligence officer says Facebook has "become a major resource for terrorists, seeking to gather information on soldiers." Officials told Yeshiva World News that Palestinian terrorist group Hezbollah monitors specific Israeli soldiers' activities on Facebook, cultivating online friendships in order to learn classified information and arrange kidnappings. (Photo by AP/Malla)

700,000 Facebook users join "I Hate The New Facebook" group

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 09:20:00 PDT

Facebook has 100 million users and around 0.7 percent of them have joined a group called "I Hate The New Facebook" in order to protest a site redesign which will be made permanent sometime this month. The group, founded by a high schooler named Nick Wagner exhorts users to do something, do anything: "THE NEW FACEBOOK WILL PERMANENTLY BE THE ONLY FACEBOOK. THIS IS A PETITION TO STOP IT. PLZ JOIN AND INVITE. Will be changed in a COUPLE OF DAYS!!!" Wagner also uploaded a screen shot of the site's new redesign, annotating it: "The New Facebook is Retared [sic]."

Facebook will ignore this petition, just like it largely ignored users when a far greater percentage of them revolted when the Facebook News Feed came out. Why? Because that feature soon proved to be a crucial and useful element of the site, proving again that while Mark Zuckerberg may not know how to talk to other humans, he knows how people want to use his product better than those people themselves. Even you, Nick Wagner of Laval Catholic High School.

What does online gossip profit us?

Melissa Gira Grant — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:00:00 PDT

In an upcoming New York Times magazine, already teased online, Wired contributor Clive Thompson argues that Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are not alienating us from one another as human beings, as social-network fearmongers claim. We're just becoming more digitally intimate, present in the lives of our 500 "friends," one update at a time. “Sometimes I think this stuff is just crazy, and everybody has got to get a life and stop obsessing over everyone’s trivia and gossiping,” a 20something Facebook user Thompson interviewed said. We know how well that goes.

We can't stop — and that's okay, Thompson writes:

Ahan knows that she cannot simply walk away from her online life, because the people she knows online won’t stop talking about her, or posting unflattering photos. She needs to stay on Facebook just to monitor what’s being said about her. This is a common complaint I heard, particularly from people in their 20s who were in college when Facebook appeared and have never lived as adults without online awareness. For them, participation isn’t optional. If you don’t dive in, other people will define who you are.

This is the geek utopia of socialization, Thompson explains: Every time you Twitter a complaint about your head cold, upload a photo of yourself making a squishface, or comment on a story you read, you draw your new social circle in closer.

But to what end? While we make pals, others are making money. Thompson argues that Facebook's News Feed, introduced in 2006, revolutionized friendship. Perhaps. But a year later, Zuckerberg spoke before a Madison Avenue crowd and made clear that what he really wanted to do was revolutionize advertising.

With Zuckerberg's visionary skills, perhaps he can do both. Ideally, he'd just collapse commerce and conviviality into a single phenomenon. If you can't stop gossiping about yourself, why not at least profit from it? Twitter and Facebook could drop the question "What are you doing?" in favor of "What are you selling?" That seems clearer.

(Photo by Dominic Campbell)

Facebook's search engine second fastest-growing on the Web

Nicholas Carlson — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

What did Microsoft get when it signed a deal in August to serve ads against search results on Facebook? The right to make money off the second-fastest growing search engine on the Internet, according to a ComScore study. Facebook served 173 million search queries in July 2008, up 10 percent from 157 million in July 2007. Facebook doesn't allow its users to search the rest of Web from its site. Even then, its search engine reached a sixth the size of Microsoft's own.

A dandy of a deal for Microsoft? Perhaps not. Look closer at ComScore's chart and you'll see that the fastest-growing search engine is MySpace, which gets all of its search ads from Google. Google doesn't make much money from them, though, CEO Eric Schmidt admitted earlier this summer. Probably because no one searches MySpace for something to buy. Will Facebook prove any different?

France's "electronic Bastille" sounds a lot like Facebook

Jackson West — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 08:40:00 PDT

The French government plans to create a database called Edvige that will log information about anyone in the country over the age of 13, including whether or not they are "likely to breach public order." The idea is to help crack down on crime, an issue President Nicholas Sarkozy successfully campaigned on. Other information that would be included?

The information that can be collected includes addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, physical appearance, behavioral traits, fiscal and financial records, and details about people who have personal ties with the subject.

Funny, because that's exactly the kind of information most of what Americans willingly share about themselves on social network sites like Facebook.

Valleywag mangles Marc Andreessen, and we think he likes it

Owen Thomas — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:00:00 PDT

PALO ALTO — Thursday night in a Crowne Plaza hotel, with an Elks Club banquet roaring next door, Netscape cofounder, Ning king, and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen sat down with Portfolio writer Kevin Maney for a Churchill Club interview. This wasn't exactly what Andreessen had planned. Back in May, he wrote on his blog that he planned to stop speaking in public: "Used to be, if you wanted to get a message out into the market, you would give a talk at a conference, a reporter would write down some of what you said and mangle the rest, and you'd call it a day.... Mid-year resolution #1: No more public speaking. Mid-year resolution #2: More blogging." Two weeks later, he stopped blogging. Here follows a thoroughly mangled version of his comments. Marc, you have no one to blame but yourself.

On Microsoft:

Microsoft can build software, when they choose to.

On investing in startups:

I usually put in $25,000 to $100,000 per company. My philosophy is to put in a small enough amount of money that I won't get mad at the founder if I lose it.

Translation: Marc Andreessen is so rich that he can lose $100,000 and feel nothing.

On the failure of Friendster:

Friendster was very restrictive on what users did. You were supposed to connect because you know each other in real life, not, as [founder Jonathan] Abrams said, 'because you both like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.' But sometimes you want to put your chocolate in her peanut butter.

Yes, he really said that.

On his deathwatch for the New York Times:

I don't want to become the crazy anti-New York Times guy. You have to do what Intel did in 1985. The Japanese chipmakers were killing Intel in the memory-chip market. It got out of memory chips and focused on the much-smaller microprocessor market. I would turn off the printing presses.

On his mentor and Netscape cofounder, Jim Clark:

I could tell you a lot of stories about his life [in Florida], but I won't. He's dating a 26-year-old Australian swimsuit model. I just ran into an entrepreneur who said, "I just ran into Jim Clark at a resort town in Italy. Jim was in a hot tub carved into the side of a mountain." I said, "Yes! That was Jim Clark."

On the iPhone's price:

Give it a year, it will be down to $99. Give it another year, it will be free.

On his motives for giving away his money:

My wife teaches philanthropy at Stanford Business School. I would be in big trouble if I weren't hugely committed to it.

On his relationship with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:

He's my Facebook friend. He's my Facebook 'friend.' [makes air-quotes gesture] I'll stop there.

58 percent of Internet users haven't even heard of social networks

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

Sheryl Sandberg's right! We've teased Facebook's overserious COO for talking up Facebook's need to sign up more users before figuring out how it's going to make billions of dollars off of them. But analytics firm eMarketer says only 42 percent of the Internet-using world knows about social networks. Translation: A lucky 58 percent are not burdened with worrying about whether they've made anybody's top friends list. Heck, while we're at it: Less than a quarter of the world's 6.6 billion people have access to the Internet. That means 5.97 billion people have no reason to have ever heard of Sandberg, let alone blame her for global warming, violence in the Middle East, and cat allergies. Not yet, anyway.