In 2005, Facebook had 5 million users rather than 500 million. And instead of being at the center of an Oscar-winning Aaron Sorkin movie, CEO Mark Zuckerberg was answering questions from a goofy guy with a camcorder—and explaining the perils of growing Facebook beyond the college market.
The British Home Secretary will meet with the companies behind Twitter and BlackBerry to discuss whether they can help curb the nation's riots. It was only a few months ago that cracking down on social networks was considered the province of despots. Now the British government is making it sound like an essential step for safety.
It's a sad fact that you must join every single social network in existence or risk vanishing from the face of the earth. But this is leading to "digital fatigue" among social networkers. How to deal with this? We have the answer.
They were going to build a fantasy island together, a floating libertarian utopia where outsiders like them might finally feel at home. They were two walking contradictions: Peter Thiel, the billionaire Facebook investor torn between his Christianity and fleshy gay parties, and Patri Friedman, the commune-dwelling offspring of America's "grandmaster of free-market economic theory." But the Thiel-Friedman professional partnership has come to an end, and right in the media spotlight.
The internet is quaking with the news that the hacktivist collective Anonymous plans to "destroy" Facebook on November 5th. We spoke to the Anonymous member who was there at the start of "Operation Facebook," and he told us the whole thing is a misunderstanding that's spiraled crazily out of control.
Paul Ceglia has decamped to Ireland in the middle of his lawsuit to seize control of Facebook. The convicted felon says he fled following harassment from Facebook private investigators. But maybe Ceglia, described by neighbors as a con man, is more worried about the suspicious emails he submitted as evidence.
Hackers are not particularly well-known for having coherent, well thought-out plans, but, man, this one might really take the cake: John Joaquim III has been arrested and accused to taking control of a friend's Facebook and Gmail accounts and demanding that she send him nude photos as ransom.
Facebook has gotten pretty good at filtering garbage out of people's "News Feeds." Too good, as far as advertisers are concerned: They want the garbage put back, so they can spam people, and logically Facebook is complying.
After advocating the end of anonymity, Randi Zuckerberg slipped a bit further into it, leaving her job at Facebook. Let's hope her stock options were vested. Also in today's Valleywag roundup, more Airbnb complaints from readers, Yahoo Mail went down, and Ashton Kutcher was shown up on Twitter.
A new bill in Missouri effectively outlaws teachers befriending their students on Facebook. This is because the only thing adults do with kids on the internet is prey on them.
Facebook's absurdly prude content standards sparked another twisted saga this week when the company censored, then promptly un-censored, the iconic cover of Nirvana's Nevermind. Facebook welcomes all your (non-sexual) baby penises!
South Korean officials say that Chinese hackers stole the personal information of 35 million users of the Korean social networking site Cyworld. This is pretty crazy, considering South Korea's population is about 48 million. So basically everyone with an internet connection in South Korea was hacked.
Taunting police on Facebook when they're out searching for you is, admittedly, pretty funny. But if you're going to do it, it's important that you not get caught. Otherwise you end up like recently-apprehended fugitive Victor Burgos: In jail, and looking really dumb.
