E-Commerce Revs Up on Facebook

(NEWSER) - 1-800-Flowers.com continues its record of early technology adoption, Robin Wauters writes in TechCrunch, opening a storefront within Facebook. The company hit the Internet at the surprisingly early date of 1992, and was the first retailer on AOL two years later. It claims it’s the first retailer operating on Facebook, evidence that the site is “quietly turning into the Internet on top of the Internet.” More»

Rumor mill heats up that company is going public soon

(NEWSER) - Here come the Facebook IPO rumors again. An insider tells Business Insider that employees expect the company to go public soon, possibly next month. "The IPO talk inside Facebook has ramped up the past 6 weeks and Zuckerberg repeatedly has said that it is 'coming,' which he *never* said in the history of Facebook," says the source's email. More»

Users gain control over types of updates to view

(NEWSER) - Facebook is rolling out a revamped News Feed, featuring a drop-down menu that lets users isolate what kind of news they want to get. They can, for example, choose to see only friends’ latest photos, only status updates, or only updates from Pages (rather than friends). They can also opt to see only news from members one of their Groups. Whether this is a test or a permanent feature is still unclear, Mashable notes. More»

Also: Site poised for $2B in revenue this year

(NEWSER) - Get ready for another Facebook update: Next week, the site will start rolling out new face-recognition technology for photos, the Huffington Post reports. It’s “comforting” to know that the service won’t be automatic, writes Larry Magid. If the site thinks it recognizes someone, it will ask you for confirmation. Ignore it, and no tagging takes place. Privacy settings won’t change—you’ll still be alerted when you’re tagged and able to remove any unwanted tags. More»

Tim Berners-Lee blasts those chipping away at its 'egalitarian principles'

(NEWSER) - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British engineer credited with inventing the World Wide Web, has a message for us: Social networking sites, app developers, and other entities, if left unchecked, will ruin his creation—which now belongs to all of us. "The web evolved into a powerful, ubiquitous tool because it was built on egalitarian principles," he writes in Scientific American , but "some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles." His complaints:

• Social networking sites: They are "walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web," making each site "a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it."
• Smartphone apps: "It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers," rather than a "closed" smartphone app, he writes, adding that he is especially wary of the iTunes store, which is not an "open marketplace."