Look Up Exes on Facebook at Your Own Peril

(NEWSER) - Facebook is graying, and the Web has already produced an outlet for youngsters fleeing the site to escape friend requests from—gasp!—their parents, Time reports. MyParentsJoinedFacebook.com collects horror stories of parental incursion into the once uniformly young realm of social networking. “No matter how embarrassing your mom is,” one of the founders says, “there's someone who's a thousand times worse.” 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»

Those 'friends' you don't know may serve a purpose

(NEWSER) - Facebook "friendships" may seem superficial—but they actually strengthen social ties, a study suggests. “Facebook is not supplanting face-to-face interactions between friends, family, and colleagues,” a professor behind the study tells Reuters . After surveying 900 college students and recent grads about their Facebook activities, researchers found “evidence that social media afford opportunities for new expressions of friendship, intimacy, and community.” More»