To celebrate the company reaching 100 million users, Facebook employees are holding an impromptu toga party at a park near the company's office on Waverly in downtown Palo Alto, a tipster reports. (Dave Morin, Facebook's ubiquitous evangelist, also Twittered about the party, so it must be true!) Is this the last hurrah for the collegiate youth culture 24-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg created, before COO Sheryl "No Fun" Sandberg moves the company to an anonymous office complex next year? It's hard to imagine Facebookers donning sheets and running around the manicured lawns of the bland former Hewlett-Packard building. Here, Sheryl — somehow we can't picture you taking part in toga parties even when you were in college. For you, from eHow, some step-by-step instructions for holding a toga party. Bonus points to any reader who sends in a photo of Zuckerberg in a toga. (Photo by andyfitz)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg should be relieved to learn that someone is at last "leveraging the social graph," as he might put it, for financial gain. Problem is, it's not Facebook. It's hackers pulling a phishing scam. A tipster tells us his friends at Facebook are busy fighting a virus that tricks a user into opening "a YouTube phishing site," delivered in the form of a Facebook message from one of the user's Facebook friends.

DeveloperAnalytics, a research firm which analyzes Facebook applications, put out an appealing bit of linkbait this morning that purports to show how much money popular applications could earn each month. It calculates the metric based on "hundreds of real CPM, and CPA/Virtual Goods revenue data points collected directly from developers and partners." That's CPM as in "cost per thousand" — the traditional way ads are sold, based on the number of people they reach — and CPA as in "cost per action," which is usually based on linking payment for an ad to its generation of sales, signups, or other results. Virtual goods? Those are the cheesy little icons you can send your friends on Facebook. Yes, some people pay money for them.The list is topped by an widget called Mob Wars, which exhorts users to "Join the Mafia, and start your own mob. Band together with your friends to become the most powerful force in the elite criminal underworld of Facebook." DeveloperAnalytics says Mob Wars' users return to its page 60 times a day. Facebook's most popular application, Slide's FunWall, only shows up fifth on the list, because users load its pages just two or three times a day. Here's what DeveloperAnalytics didn't account for in running the numbers: Slide's opening an office in New York to sell its inventory to major brands, while Mob Wars ads ask if you want to take an IQ challenge.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced that the site had reached a nice, round 100 million active users by way of a status update on his profile. Though he may have been scooped by Dave Morin, a senior manager in Facebook's platform group — on Twitter. Which should make for an awkward meeting. Marketing at least used the right tools to trumpet Facebook's reach, but they might also expect a grumpy young master soon, too. Why?

Four out of five Facebook users have yet to move to a redesigned version of the site which launched earlier this summer. It's an overwhelming rejection of a project that was said to be Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's "baby." A Facebook flack tried to put a positive spin on the stat: "Around 20 percent of our users have now migrated to the new platform and it has been received well after people get used to it."The redesign is one of those things we actually like, so at first I was a bit surprised to learn that users hate it so much. I asked a non-tech scene friend whether he uses the old or new design. His answer: "Old, because the new one is ugly and annoying." And then I remembered that Facebook users also hated the News Feed so much when it came out that 587,715 of them joined a group called "Students against Facebook News Feed" in just one day. Expect similar riots in September when Facebook will force its users to migrate to the new platform.

With thousands of Arabic speakers already using Facebook, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg convinced that he can personally bring peace to the Middle East by convincing teenagers to trade bombs for pokes, it's only natural the company would want to expand in the region. Facebook is hiring an operations analyst who can demonstrate "fluency in written and conversational Arabic."The company has been aggressively expanding overseas, and the effort has been working. Though growing the user base on the Arabian peninsula might prove difficult, with one Saudi Arabian woman murdered for using the site, which one sheikh has deemed "a door to lust." No wonder the Mormons aren't interested. Well, that, and there's no relationship setting for polygamy. Arabic-speaking users shouldn't give up quite yet, though: Give fun-hating COO Sheryl Sandberg enough time, and she'll render the site safely and profitably sexless.

An LDS spokesman dropped by to tell us that no, the LDS folks did not try to buy into Facebook. I was going to say, this'll teach us to listen to barroom rumors. But it won't, it won't.

OK, Facebook is bringing Beacon back in the next 6 to 12 months, with plans to charge advertisers when Facebook users buy their products. We're sure social-graph enthusiasts are enthused. But for those trying to make money with Facebook widgets now, there's better news today. With the launch of a new "Demographic Restrictions capability" that can tell under-21 users from over-21 users, Facebook has decided to allow itself and widgetmakers to sell ads to the alcoholic-beverage industry. You know, the one known to spend as much as $915 million a year on beer ads, and which might be keen to reach Facebook's college-and-after demographic

Tim Kendall is Facebook's director of monetization. (We were sad to learn his job has nothing to do with the French impressionists.) He says Facebook can make its notoriously low-performing Social Ads work — basically by bring back Beacon. The key, Kendall told AllFacebook, is keeping track of Facebook users' commercial activities on and off the site and then, when a user buys a product, offering the product's marketers a chance to pay Facebook to tell that user's friends in their Facebook News Feeds. "Marketers will be able to pay for increased or enhanced distribution above and beyond what News Feed already provides," explains AllFacebook's Nick O'Neill.

Brooklynite Zack Klein claims that "an employee close to the deal" — translation: somebody was drunk — told him the church San Franciscans love to hate "made an unsolicited bid to acquire Facebook." The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was estimated in 1997 to have $25 to $30 billion in assets and a $5 billion annual revenue stream, making a Facebook buy-in a possibility. True? Maybe. Fodder for lunch discussion all over the Bay Area? Definitely. (Photo by AP/Douglas C. Pizac)

Sequoia-backed RockYou, the second-largest widgetmaker on Facebook, is considering plans to staff a New York office with 2-5 ad salespeople — copying a move made by archrival Slide two months ago. Funny, it normally doesn't take these two so long to imitate each other. It's a much-needed move: RockYou has a reputation for being slow to respond even when advertisers come knocking on its door. The startup has been content to coast on charging other appmakers for promotion, and we hear it's on track to take in $10 million in revenues this year. But at some point, the company will have to give up that business model — which strikes some as suspiciously pyramidal — for legit dollars from Madison Avenue.

Inside Facebook's Justin Smith used Google's Insights for Search tool to map Facebook's spread across the United States and the world. We converted a few of his slides into a time-lapse video, above, revealing how Facebook ping-ponged between the coasts before finally filling in most of the country's middle, except for a few farm states where teenagers are probably still asking "a/s/l" in AOL chatrooms or something.

Maybe you haven't heard, but there's drama. Paul and Melissa have started a breakaway Leave Sheryl Sandberg Alone movement, dividing the 'Wag. Jackson and I don't know what to say. Someone going by Fake Sheryl Sandberg does. She begins her comment on Owen's last post:"Dear Owen Tummy"

The best thing Valleywag ever did for Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg was to call her a liar. That's just not done in the genteel office parks of Silicon Valley. It garnered the embattled executive a much-needed wave of sympathy within her company, on which she's now planning to capitalize.Valleywag's coverage last week of Sandberg's spinning in response to the departure of a key employee was deemed, in some quarters, a "character attack." Yet Sandberg's character is the very issue here. Her response is very telling: First, she wrangled a long followup story from her frequent dinner guest Kara Swisher that called our story sexist, over-the-top — and factually correct. Swisher's report is damning for Sandberg. It acknowledges that Facebook executive Matt Cohler, who left to join Benchmark Capital, was unhappy with Sandberg's leadership. It reports that Jonathan Heiliger, the company's infrastructure chief, has also been unhappy with Sandberg — Swisher errs only in saying that the two have patched things up. Swisher's new report also means that the version of Ben Ling's departure fed to her by the company last week was false. Facebook executives have acknowledged all these facts. But characteristically, Sandberg has steered the discussion away from the real problem — the bad decisions she's made, the poor judgment she's demonstrated — and toward massaging reality. She is, even now, planning a new PR campaign to buff her image. Did it ever occur to Sandberg to figure out why she rubs so many of Facebook's technical leaders the wrong way? Could it have anything to do with her meddling in matters that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said aren't her job? Facebook has real problems in Sandberg's area of responsibility. Billing, customer service, and other mundane-but-critical aspects of the social network's advertising operations are chaotic, and require fixing. Sandberg's moves to shore up her image suggest the real reason for her unpopularity within Facebook: Her overwhelming concern for style over substance. How ironic that that pointing that out has sent Sandberg spinning.

"Dating isn't dead, it's just changed names!" So the newspapers reassure us. Don't blame today's "hookup culture" on Web-driven moral decay or the rapid-thumbed narcissism of the Youngs. The Internet has actually saved romance. "They may not call it 'dating,' but they still 'go out,'" a Contra Costa Times reporter explains. "And when it gets serious enough, they announce it online and become 'Facebook official.'" Facebook has saved dating? Fine, one fewer thing to blame Sheryl Sandberg for. But it's still not true.Facebook's most hardcore users — young men pretending not to be looking for sex — can now mark their latest target as theirs in public. But this is no great victory, for women or for dating. Or, for that matter, for them. For one, it kills their prospects of picking up someone new as a stopgap before their current relationship fails. Unless they can somehow convince their current partner that really, talking about one's relationship in public is only for cads and showoffs, and she's gullible enough to agree. Even if they do "cancel" their relationship — to use Facebook's lingo — between tagged photos and archived News Feed items, users can no longer count on the one thing that fuels serial monogamy — consensual amnesia. What we can credit Facebook for, maybe, isn't saving romance. But it is saving a little bit of our honesty.

After slapping our beloved sweaterbear Owen Thomas for his description of Sheryl Sandberg's "reign of terror" at Facebook, Kara Swisher has left the lower 48 and hopped on a boat bound for Alaska. While bears may seem cuddly, danger may lurk in their embrace. Since we wouldn't want anything bad to happen to our favorite mommyblogger, here are some helpful tips on bear safety from your friends here at Valleywag. (Photo by B Mully)

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes working for his campaign, text messages and email alerts set up, 1,349,295 supporters signed up on Facebook, Silicon Valley's money in his pocket, and a fresh Google-esque brand image manufactured. But the Grand Old Party gets the tech youngs, too, OK? Hence BarackBook.com, on which you can read Barack's "Friend Feed" and learn, for example, that "Barack Obama is now friends with Jodie Evans," whom you may be shocked and alarmed to learn is an anti-establishment, anti-war activist! Anyway, according to its legal disclaimer and joke explainer, BarackBook.com "is a parody of Facebook.com." See a screen grab, below.

Facebook's new bosses don't let the peons throw drinking-game parties anymore, but at least the drones get to go to work in a pedestrian-friendly urban setting, right? Nope. Facebook plans to move "a substantial portion of its operations" in the first quarter of 2009 from downtown Palo Alto to one of HP's old office parks on to 1601 California Avenue, reports Palo Alto Online. The lot, about 8.5 acres in the Stanford Research Park, used to house HP's spun-off subsidiary Agilent, but by the looks of it, we would've guessed Dunder-Mifflin.

A Fox News exec let it slip that Facebook users are "more sophisticated" than Myspace users. But, honestly, what does that even mean? Today's featured commenter, random_play, explains with SAT-style analogies:

A year and some after the Facebook platform's launch, few of its widgetmakers have made any real money — unless you count the venture capital they've raised. Just a month after the iPhone 3G launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that $30 million has already changed hands through the iTunes App Store. Even the guy behind the do-nothing "I Am Rich" application made a few thousand bucks. So you, wantrepreneur Web developer, you're thinking: Gee, I made, like, four-and-a-half Facebook Zombie widgets this past year. Maybe I should cook myself up an iPhone app. But hold on there, Steve Jobs Jr. Do you really know what you're getting yourself into?According to Iminlikewithyou's Charles Forman, who's working on porting his startup's copycat games to the iPhone, there's not much in common between the platforms besides the word "app."