Facebook Talk

I hope you’re sitting down as you read this, because I have some shocking news. The faint of heart should turn away now while they still have a chance. Okay…here goes.

Folks, there are bad people on the Internet. There, I said it and just crushed your little bubble filled with unicorns and flowers that you’ve been living in for all your life. But it’s true people and we need to face the facts. Our children are in danger, but thankfully, there are heroes like New York’s Attorney General What’shisface who recently has focused his attention since he claims Facebook isn’t safe enough for minors.

“My office is concerned that Facebook’s promise of a safe web site is not consistent with its performance in policing its site and responding to complaints,” Cuomo said in a statement issued yesterday. “Parents have a right to know what their children will encounter on a web site that is aggressively marketed as safe.”

The OAG launched a preliminary review of Facebook over the past several weeks by posing as underage users between the ages of 12 and 14, and discovered “deficiencies that stand in contrast to the reassuring statements made on the web site and by company officials.” Specifically, the OAG’s undercover accounts were approached almost immediately by adults clearly looking for something more than friendship, and the accounts continued to receive repeated messages along the lines of “i’d love to get off on cam for you hun ;P” and “call me if u want to do sex with me [number deleted] ok.” The OAG says that several other undercover accounts received solicitations of a “more graphic nature” that it prefers not to repeat.

Ouch. On one hand, it’s clearly crazy talk if you expect Facebook to be able to police and filter every single new member that signs up. It’s just not feasible. On the flip side, Facebook needs to be doing everything in it’s power to make sure my little sister isn’t seduced by some creepy guy in his 40s living down the street. If this means working hand in hand with law enforcement agencies around the country and sharing private data about who is and isn’t signed up on Facebook, then so be it.

Facebook, lawsuit

If you’ve recently made a Facebook application and you’ve gotten yourself some users, you’re probably wondering what the hell to do with it now. Well never fear, for I’ve compiled a short list of all the websites out there were you can sell your application and make a little quick cash or where you’ll find ways to monetize your application for the long haul.

AppMrkt - I guess AppMarket.com was already taken. Anyways, this is by far the coolest site out there if you’re in the market for selling your application in the present. It’s basically like a Facebook Application E-Bay, where creators can list their applications and people can in turn bid on them. There’s a Buy It Now feature as well, so that you can go for the quick sell if you need to. The only downside is that people don’t seem to be using it all that much.

Social Media - They’ll help match you with advertisers for your application. Both advertisers and apps creators can join the site and then they magically pair you. Or something like that. It still seems worth it to sign up with them if you think you might be interested in displaying ads in your app.

Adonomics - They track Facebook application stats, ranking the most popular ones based on total users as well as showing you a top 10 weekly shakers. They also claim to help users monetize their apps, but I’m not entirely sure how and their website is absolutely no help in explaining this any further.

Sitepoint Marketplace - There’s already been a few apps showing up on Sitepoint’s marketplace, so it deserves to be here. You can pretty much sell any web service imaginable there and Facebook apps are no exception.

Do you know of any other websites that specialize in buying/selling apps? Then share it with me either in the comments or through the contact link above!

Even though Face-Book.com was registered back in 2004 right around the same time as TheFaceBook.com was (and plenty of months before it every became a popular site), the Facebook site we’ve all grown to love has filed suit against the hyphen website because…well, because they can.

There’s a pretty established history of cases like this being “won” by the more established company, so I fully expect Facebook to own Face-Book.com in the near future. But does that mean they might in turn be interested in my own little Facebook domain here? Here’s to hoping the answer to that question is “no.” That is, unless they’re offering twenty gazillion dollars. Then I’d take it. Suckers.

[via FacebookObserver]

Facebook

Well not really, but from all the whining this guy is doing over having his Facebook account closed, you’d think Mark Zuckerberg personally came over to his house last and killed his dog. Don’t get me wrong, I love Facebook just as much as the next (normal) guy. But does that mean I’d freak over my account being closed? Na, probably not.

How about an example. During my senior year in college, I lived in Australia for 6 months or so. While there, my Internet connection was extremelly fickle over what sites it would and wouldn’t load, to the point where I didn’t get on Facebook for at least half a year. And yet here I am, alive and well, in the flesh! I lived! In fact, it was nice to get away from Facebook - and the Internet, for that matter - for a while. Refreshing, some might say.

So here’s my question to y’all. Think about the last time you went an extended period of time without logging into your Facebook account. How long did it last for? And be honest, it was a little bit nice, wasn’t it?

Facebook

So you may have heard how Google is planning to take on Facebook in the coming months, which I guess is big news in and of itself. But I want to look past the obvious here and again argue that Google would be the best suitor by far to purchase Facebook.

Google is a great company and all, but they’re not indestructible nor invincible. They’ve made a few products and releases that didn’t quite catch on as fast or strong as say their Gmail feature (I’m looking at you, Orkut! Wow, that was/is a crappy website…) But where other companies may have given up in that sector, Google has shown a history of in turn buying out an already successful site or product.

Take Google Video. After it was clear that the YouTube phenomenon wasn’t just a flash in the pan, Google rolled out their Google Video (GV) feature. But after a few months, it wasn’t quite the smash hit that YouTube still was at the time. Don’t get me wrong, GV had it’s share of loyal users, but it didn’t become the mega, all dominating video site on the Internet. At the same time, YT was running Google Adsense ads on their site, which meant in a sense Google was paying YouTube while at the same time trying to compete against them. So the minds over at Google got together and realized there was either one of two options to take. First, they could deny YouTube the right to display Adsense ads on their page, which would have created a huge negative buzz on the Internet AND allowed Yahoo to swoop in and make a deal with YouTube to use their version of advertisement. Or, they could right out purchase YouTube, add them to the Google Empire, and keep running strong. And I think we all know which road they went down.

Now you can argue the merits of their YouTube purchase until the cows come home, which for me would be a very long argument since I don’t live on a farm. But let’s think about this: Facebook is already one of the most established websites on the Internet. They’re not going anywhere. There’s been rumors for years now that Yahoo has unsuccessfully tried to buy Facebook as well. And Google has already found out the hard way that getting a strong foothold in the social network scene is a pain in the ass.

So how much longer is it going to be before Google makes a serious bid for Facebook, which would piss off a main competitor, expand their reach and depth of user information, and make them even more of a powerhouse in the Internet world?

Before Facebook, there was Myspace. Before Myspace, we had Friendster. Throw in Digg, Twtter, Flickr, Pwnce, and every other popular website out there were people have “identities” and you suddenly realize how hard it is to track somebody from one site to the next. The digg user Goob and the Fickr user Goob might be two completely different people. Which is where Plaxo comes in. They have essentially a Facebook clone called Pulse, but which has one small distinction. Instead of limiting the news about your friends only to pulse, it allows you to see what they’ve been doing on all of their web 2.0 accounts.

So as you can see from the image above, if John updates his flickr photos, Mary diggs a story, and Paul adds something to his Amazon wishlist, Pulse will tell you all about it. Now, like I said earlier, this is basically just a ripoff of Facebook and Plaxo has a history of being a huge douche. But this doesn’t mean the idea itself is all that worthless and it’s something I’d love to see on Facebook.

I doubt Facebook will copy the idea, but it’s still a good one. I’d much rather have my newsfeed tell me what stories my friends just dugg instead of telling me about the millionth pointless application they just cluttered their profile with. I can understand why Facebook wouldn’t want to tell you when your friend just uploaded photos to Flickr since Facebook would rather have the photos uploaded to their own site, but the fact of the matter is people still use Flickr and other sites that might compete with Facebook’s features. To pretend they don’t exist wouldn’t work. Facebook would either need to include all the popular 2.0 sites out there that people use or not run with this idea at all. In the end, I’d say Facebook’s users would appreciate the move and would only help to increase the value of the social giant.

[via Internet Duct Tape]

Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg sat down with with Mike Arrington at the Tech Crunch 40 event recently, which you can watch below. It’s a bit grainy and hard to hear at times, but it’s better than nothing if you’ve got 40 minutes to burn.

[via SomewhatFrank]