Company's first generation behind $30 billion of cutting edge companies
CNN Nov 15, 07 4:55 AM CST
(Newser)
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They may be the most brilliantly successful—or luckiest—or both—small group of entrepreneurs in history: PayPal alumni who, like founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin, left the company to create $30 billion worth of innovation: YouTube, Facebook, Slide, Yelp, Digg, investment firms, philanthropies, solar-power companies, an electric car maker and a Mars colonization plan. Fortune Magazine infiltrates the "PayPal Mafia" for clues to their success.
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Investor puts exclusive attention on site he thinks is worth $100B
MarketWatch Nov 14, 07 12:26 PM CST
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Venture capitalist Lee Lorenzen is so enamored of Facebook that he started an investment fund just to finance developers creating applications for the social network site. Not only is Lorenzen investing in a month-and-a-half-old industry, last month at a conference he said Facebook might be worth $100 billion, more than six times the $15 billion valuation that came with Microsoft's purchase of a 1.6% stake.
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Is 'social search' worth banking on?
VentureBeat Nov 12, 07 10:19 AM CST
(Newser)
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With a new option allowing users to search for advertising pages, Facebook has crept another step closer to a search engine. Will the social networking site take the ultimate plunge in its battle against Google and roll out a full-fledged search engine? VentureBeat 's Doug Sherret explores how this engine would look and how it could succeed.
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Using member's images without consent could violate laws
New York Times Nov 9, 07 3:20 AM CST
(Newser)
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Facebook's new cutting-edge ads which cherry-pick the names and faces of members who use featured products may violate privacy laws. The ads attach photos and identities of members to products they've purchased or endorsed, but without explicitly obtaining members' consent, reports the New York Times . That could open Facebook to invasion of privacy lawsuits.
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Seems employees can troll, control, and fiddle with personal data
Valleywag Nov 7, 07 12:49 PM CST
(Newser)
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As the advertising industry prepares to harness the personal data of 50 million Facebook users, new privacy concerns are whipping through cyberspace. Valleywag reveals that Facebook employees not only have access to users' profiles and inboxes, but can alter them. And they do—frequently enough that management had to tell developers to "knock it off."
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Info to stay private; plan unveiled day after MySpace does same
CNET Nov 6, 07 6:49 PM CST
(Newser)
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Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad-selling strategy today that will allow companies to create their own pages on the social networking site and zero in on customers based on their profiles. Users can sign up with advertisers they like and share information about them in their network. Advertisers also will get detailed information about the people who see their ads to hone their marketing.
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Journal's Matthew Rose experiences mid-life crisis in cyberspace
Wall Street Journal Nov 3, 07 1:00 PM CDT
(Newser)
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Facebook has matured from an e-frat house where co-eds post pics of their hedonistic exploits to a cyber-cocktail party where the well-heeled gather to display baby pictures and taunt each other like, well, school kids. “I am so telling Rupert,” a columnist teases the Journal’s Matthew Rose, after discovering Mr. Murdoch’s future employee playing Scrabble on the site.
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Site might be ready to give up its proprietary approach for new standard
Fortune Magazine Nov 2, 07 4:49 PM CDT
(Newser)
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The day after MySpace announced it was joining a Google-led alliance meant to let applications written for one social networking site be used on others, it looks like lone outsider Facebook could join up, too. That's according to Fortune Magazine , which reported that Facebook and Google representatives met yesterday and that a board member said Facebook is open to the OpenSocial standard.
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'OpenSocial' to lure software developers away from Facebook
New York Times Oct 31, 07 11:56 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Google couldn't buy a piece of Facebook, so it's going after the social networking site's software platform instead. Tomorrow a Google-led alliance will introduce a common platform for software developers to write programs for Google's social site, Orkut, along with LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo, Ning and others. The hope is to one-up Facebook, the New York Times reports.
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Instant messenger site allows outside developers to create new applications
Fortune Magazine Oct 31, 07 4:34 AM CDT
(Newser)
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Meebo, an instant-messenger startup, is following in the footsteps of Facebook by allowing certain hand-selected developers to create new widgets for its pages. Unlike Facebook, however, it plans to lure developers by offering them half the revenue gained from the features they create and will sell the ads itself, instead of leaving the task to the more code-oriented developers.
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Upcoming rollout could revolutionize social networking
TechCrunch Oct 29, 07 2:35 PM CDT
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Google is set to launch its hush-hush rival to Facebook next month. Code-named “Maka-Maka,” the watershed social networking service will introduce a completely open source platform and a slew of new applications. Details are scarce, but the vision is a social layer that combines all of Google’s existing services—think GoogleChat, iGoogle, Orkut—and incorporates outside data, TechCrunch reports.
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Protect your offline reputation on social networking sites with these six steps
MarketWatch Oct 29, 07 1:35 PM CDT
(Newser)
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Social-networking sites make it easier to connect with friends and make new ones, but they also let casual acquaintances like co-workers—or your boss—look you up on a whim. Protect your privacy with these six steps from MarketWatch : Look for tools that allow you to restrict access to your profile, like the "private" setting on MySpace or the "limited profile" function on Facebook.
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Fictional presidential campaign rocks online fans
New York Times Oct 29, 07 4:30 AM CDT
(Newser)
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The Facebook group "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T. Colbert" reached a million members in just over a week, making the organization devoted to the comedian's phony presidential campaign the fastest-growing political group in the four-year history of the social networking site.
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