Some days I wonder if Facebook would have been better off restricting its social network to college students, as it did when it first launched. Watching Steve Doocy, an anchor on "Fox & Friends," talk about updating his Facebook status in this clip confirms my opinion. His profile picture, which shows him "playing Santa," does nothing to reduce the skeevy-old-guy vibe. A tip to Doocy: When you're maxed out on friends, you can set up a Facebook fan page for your virtual acquaintances, saving the stalker-friendly details for people you actually know. And it requires no more egotism than was necessary to get the anchor chair in the first place.

Randi Zuckerberg, the limelight-seeking sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has learned a key lesson of media success: As you scale the ladder, make sure to jab your stiletto heels into the faces of those you climb over. Zuckerberg, whose day job is in Facebook's marketing department, has been writing weekly for former magazine editor Tina Brown's mostly ignored Daily Beast website since it launched — but only recently has she turned mean. We love it, of course. The target of her freshly poisoned pen: the hipster lip dub, those single-shot singalongs so popular with startups and would-be Internet celebrities. What Zuckerberg does write: "In case there was any doubt that the chief purpose of the Internet is to perpetuate narcissism, lip dub videos put that to rest." What she does not write:She has participated in many a lip-dub video herself, including one with Julia Allison, the New York party attendee who parlayed a career of writing about nothing for magazines to appearing on the cover of magazines for doing nothing. Allison is not mentioned in her piece, but she is surely present within it; Zuckerberg mentions "Flagpole Sitta," a lip dub performed by the employees of Connected Ventures, the ex-startup of Allison's ex-boyfriend Jakob Lodwick. Allison dispatched, Zuckerberg moves to targets closer to home, taking on the Camp Cyprus 20, the Internet 20somethings who filmed themselves singing along to "Don't Stop Believin'" at a seaside vacation home in Cyprus right as Wall Street imploded. What she does not mention: That the first person we see in the video is her Facebook coworker Dave Morin; Facebook engineers and designers appear later. Zuckerberg slams them all equally: "You hate them for having so much fun — damn that unbridled, financially secure joy!" Next target: Revision3, the San Francisco online-video startup best known for recording Diggnation, a podcast by Digg founder Kevin Rose. "They probably won't be recording any more lip dubs any time soon, we hear they laid off a third of their staff this week," Zuckerberg writes. Ouch! She could have added that after reading her article, Revision3 also won't be lending out its production facilities for any more of Zuckerberg's music videos, as it did for "Dontcha," a spoof about the iPhone. Ah, the smell of burnt bridges. Zuckerberg, in person, comes across as shy and self-effacing. The only hint of bile I ever detected was in a previous video, "Valleyfreude," where she mocks Friendster, an also-ran social network crushed by Facebook, and scoffs at Yahoo for offering Facebook a mere $1 billion in an acquisition offer her brother turned down. But Randi Zuckerberg has always had her eyes on a bigger stage than the Valley. Even her job at Facebook, running the site's election-related features, has been helpful in this regard, landing her on ABC and other news broadcasts to talk about online get-out-the-vote efforts. Now she's moonlighting for Tina Brown, in the hopes of getting her hooks into New York media circles. The Daily Beast, an unwieldy, overstaffed website, is an unlikely candidate to emerge from next year's economic wreckage. But that won't matter to Zuckerberg: She's already perfected the art of stepping over those she can safely discard. Watch out, Facebookers: Do you think she'll forget how you made her take "Valleyfreude" offline?

Hysteria over protecting children from the internet swept the Times' public editor column Sunday, when reporter Jodi Kantor was criticized by no fewer than three editors for sending Facebook messages to 16- and 17-year olds, trying to find parents to interview about Cindy McCain, wife of the former Republican presidential nominee. The political editor was scared for his own kids! The standards editor made a special new rule! The public editor said she should have run smarter Facebook searches and found the kids' parents! And yet none of them seemed particularly upset at the Times reporter who interviewed a 12-year-old, at home, without adult supervision.

This time around, dotcom exuberance is a lot more restrained than the first one. Except for Facebook and its legions of workers. Today's featured commenter, Sir Winston Thriller, wonders out loud why exactly Facebook needs so many workers:

The revolving door at Facebook has been swinging less of late. Two top designers, Katie Geminder and Eston Bond, left in August and September. But the economic crisis seems to have scared the rest of the social network's staff into their seats, wondering when the ax will fall. There have been no layoffs, but we keep hearing tips from inside there's a hiring freeze on. In fact, there's not: Facebook's unofficial second-in-command, COO Sheryl Sandberg, asked CEO Mark Zuckerberg to institute a freeze, and got turned down cold.And yet Facebook will end the year with 750 to 800 employees, Zuckerberg has said — a far cry from the 1,000 employees he projected at the beginning of the year, when Facebook had only 450 employees. Call it what you like, but those are 200 jobs that have gone missing. One would think that Facebook, more than ever, would have the pick of the litter. But its potential employees can do math. Facebook's hiring managers do not have the hot hand they played earlier this year. The turmoil within Facebook has made an impression on potential hires. As have Facebook's financials. Facebook raised $240 million from Microsoft in a deal that valued the entire company at $15 billion. And the company is making real revenues, though they're small by comparison to MySpace; the most solid projection for 2008 is $265 million, down considerably from the $300 million to $350 million Zuckerberg once thought it could make this year. All the while, it is spending heavily on servers; Facebook's pages, which must chart a user's social connections to determine what news from friends to display, are more computationally intensive than, say, a trivially simple Web search engine like Google. That means, in essence, more money spent on servers per user. What that means: Facebook will have to make more money on advertising per user just to stay even with Google's cost structure, let alone exceed it. It's far from that point. Most importantly, it's hard for outsiders to see the upside in Facebook shares. Most assume Facebook will issue them options, and wonder how those will appreciate enough to make them rich. In fact, Facebook has been switching to grants of restricted stock — a maneuver Google and Microsoft, too, has used when a lofty share price made options less attractive. Add skittish candidates and skittish managers, and you get a very tough hiring process; Facebook executives might actually like to hire more people, especially in engineering, but they're having a hard time finding people who meet their requirements and are willing to take the job. Zuckerberg doesn't have to institute a hiring freeze; his lofty opinion of his own company is putting enough of a chill in recruiting to keep costs down.

The Underground at Facebook has four reviews: 5 stars, 5 stars, 5 stars, and one guy who dares ask what's up with reracking the dishes? The secret to success seems to be executive chef Josef Desimone, a steal from Google who brought several of his buddies over. Valleywag scored spy photos of the place in August. I confess I'm eyeing that plate of sushi and my résumé right now. Sheryl Sandberg can't be all that bad to work for, especially right after lunch. (Photo by donn l.)

The New York Observer pulled together a crib sheet of Facebook facts from the personal pages of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and others likely to end up on Obama's team. It's a bit snoozy, since no one admits anything shocking. Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who may be reappointed, lists his interests as "espionage, defense policy, national security and Soviet studies." The only surprise on the list is John Kerry, who claims Animal House as a favorite movie.

Since Facebook doesn't quite know how to make money, our commenter of the day, marcsiry, has a better business model:

A tipster tells us that Project Playlist, the online-music startup which has just hired former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta and raised $15 million, has hired Mike Sheridan as its CFO. Sheridan served less than a year at Facebook, where he was replaced by Gideon Yu.

Facebook has made a bold bet on being the next Google. The problem is that it may have made the wrong bet. The Wall Street Journal has taken tardy notice of Facebook's "engagement ads," first launched in August. They are not an easy sell; they require advertisers to come up with some compelling "action" for Facebook users to take, which will then be shared with their friends, and thus spread virally through the social network. And yet the chief way Facebook hopes to sell these ads is through an automated sign-up process. Facebook has a direct-sales team, but its top management lacks experience in managing large sales teams. Which may explain why MySpace, which has built a large salesforce by recruiting heavily from Yahoo, has 15.9 percent of the display-ad market, while Facebook has a mere 1.1 percent. (Chart by WSJ/ComScore)

A tipster reports overhearing two Facebook employees bragging about the Jack Spade computer bags bought for them by their employers. Facebook has some 700 employees; the Spade bags retail at the Apple Store for $99.95. If you figure Facebook got them for about half that price, it still shelled out $35,000 unnecessarily. Is this the kind of spending CFO Gideon Yu is trying to persuade Middle Eastern investors to underwrite?

What does Camille Hart know about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's plans that we don't? Hart, Sandberg's longtime executive assistant who followed her from Google to Facebook, has left the company after less than a year, we've learned, confirming a note left by commenter insidefb. We can't wait to hear Sandberg's spin on this departure. Remember her now-classic line about the series of executives leaving Facebook this summer? "There is no specific underlying story behind the few execs leaving our company,"As much fun as Hart seemed to be having at Facebook, there's a long list of reasonable reasons for Hart to leave: She already made money by joining Google before its IPO. She's shortening her commute by taking a job with the San Francisco Giants. She doesn't want to keep working from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. But I am skeptical. Why not stay a year and vest a first round of stock options? I can't help wondering if the timing of Hart has something to do with the election — and the opportunities a Democratic administration has opened up for former D.C. power player Sandberg to return to Washington.

Facebook's COO is mounting yet another PR offensive. But not on behalf of her current employer, though it could use some good press. No, Sheryl Sandberg is defending former boss Larry Summers against charges of sexism. Summers, who was Treasury Secretary under Clinton, is being talked up for the same role in Barack Obama's Cabinet. A controversial speech Summers gave as president of Harvard University — speculating that innate differences might have to do with women's lack of progress in math and science — could ruin his chances. Hence Sandberg's timely defense.But the defense is timely for Sandberg as well. Sandberg served as Summers's chief of staff before she moved to Silicon Valley and joined Google, setting her up for her current job at Facebook. Summers and Sandberg had a close professional relationship; he even escorted her as his guest to a White House dinner in 2000. At Google and Facebook both, colleagues roll their eyes as they recount how often she brings up her Washington experience and brags about how working in tech is a cakewalk compared to D.C. But Sandberg's tenure at Facebook has been controversial. She's been acting as if she's the company's No. 2 executive, despite CEO Mark Zuckerberg's reassurances that her role is limited and she's not a CEO-in-waiting. Several key tech and product executives have left since she's arrived — and, crucially, she has not made visible progress in improving the company's ad-sales operations. At least one prominent investor has been talking about "reining her in." So why not head back to D.C.? If Summers gets the Treasury job, he'll surely call on Sandberg for advice, and perhaps more. Will she be able to resist the call to public service? Her husband, Dave Goldberg, is an entrepreneur-in-residence at Benchmark Capital — a placeholder job he could easily leave. Her children are young enough that she could move back east without disrupting their schooling. It might be a now-or-never opportunity. It must be on her mind — and on the agenda at Facebook's next board meeting. Sandberg leaving Facebook for the government gives everyone a graceful out from a bad situation. Zuckerberg could help give her a nudge; his cofounder, Chris Hughes, was the director of Obama's Web campaign. Perhaps he could put in a good word for Sandberg? If Summers gets the Treasury job, the only question is whether, having made millions at Google, she really wants to work as hard as she tells everyone she used to.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has learned to make safer prognostications. At this year's Web 2.0 Summit, he observed that the amount of information people share on Facebook seems to double every year — a claim he might be able to back up with data from his social network. Zuckerberg's Second Law will surely go over better than his first — the assertion, made as he launched new Facebook ad formats, that "once every hundred years, media changes." Zuck, how about this law? Once a year, a CEO has to come up with something impressive to say at conferences. (Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

We've always been impressed by Facebook CFO Gideon Yu's ability to snooker investors around the world. The list of people he's taken for a ride include Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Hong Kong telecom mogul Li Ka-Shing. Just last Friday, he returned from a trip to Dubai, where he tried to shake loose some petrodollars from the Middle Eastern emirate's sovereign wealth funds. Some people seem to think Yu is still in Dubai. Which would be quite a feat, considering he's been spotted in Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters multiple times this week. Perhaps he's using CNN's new hologram technology?

Remember Clarium Capital, the $7 billion hedge fund run by former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel? Oops: Make that the $5.2 billion hedge fund run by Thiel. The fund was down 18 percent in October alone. August was also a disastrous month, as Thiel's bets on the economy went sour. After running up 58 percent from January to June, it's now down 3 percent for the year. Thiel is also an investor in Facebook, but that doesn't seem like much of a hedge right now.

On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sported sneakers instead of his once-trademark Adidas slides. Come to think of it, when's the last time anyone spotted him wearing mandals? It's just another sign that Facebook isn't the same company it was a year ago. Got a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post's new headline. Yesterday's winner: m0nty.au, for "Help me, Anderson Cooper, you're our only hope!" (Photo by Brian Solis/Bub.blicio.us)

What does $240 million get you these days? That's what Microsoft invested in Facebook, but the software giant hasn't gotten much love in return. On election night, whose online maps did Facebook use? Google's.

I imagine most of you won't blink an eye if I tell you that Serena Software just laid off 10 percent of its 900-employee workforce. Layoffs have become a predictable, opportunistic excuse for poorly managed companies to conduct house-cleaning, a reflexive overreaction to turbulent markets which may well end up lengthening the recession. Serena Software is a software company whose software other software companies use to make software — right, exactly, the kind of boring company people do their best to ignore. Last year, CEO Jeremy Burton forced employees to spend an hour every Friday using Facebook. As late as June, the policy managed to garner press for the company from credulous hacks. But we think some of those employees now wish they'd ignored the Facebook diktat and spent Fridays working.

The Barnumesque blather of Facebook's platform evangelists is matched only by the bombastic inclarity of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff. How fitting that the two companies came together earlier today to obfuscate their joint efforts. When Facebook agent obscurateur Dave Morin posted about the incident, his colleague, engineer Luke Shepard, bravely scratched his head in public, on Morin's Facebook profile.