A tipster—who insists in no uncertain terms that he is not "friends" with the former governor of New Jersey and noted Gay American—forwards us this adorable image of Jim McGreevey's brand-new puppies. Sooo cute! Unfortunately, Dina Matos will sell them all to a puppy fur-obsessed heiress and use the money to buy more helicopters. [Facebook]
Little-known MySpace "cofounder" Kyle Brinkman announced new rules for application developers on the social network's platform today. They're meant to prevent the spam bubble Facebook went through after it launched its platform last year. In response, Facebook tightened up its rules, and offended developers in the process. MySpace's new rules:
Facebook will update its profile design in the next couple of weeks, a change rendered momentous if only by the millions who have known no other interface to their obsession. Below, check out the new look. Then compare it to Facebook profile designs from a past as distant as 2005. You remember the time, right? It was before Facebook's spammy apps, before the stalker-friendly News Feed, and before they let in all the jailbait high-schoolers. Come, journey with us into the lost youth of Mark Zuckerberg.
Soon America's most bright-eyed graduates will enter the workforce and make their workaday homes in cubes at Google, MySpace, or Amazon.com. And they will suffer not just the indignity of having to work for a living, but also the dispiriting realization that a job at a cool company isn't always that hot. These employers, and the others hiring for tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs, listed below, will look spiffy on a resume someday, but for now the only good these jobs promise the world is the pleasant feeling you and I can share knowing we're not the ones stuck in them.
Facebook released screenshots of its soon-to-be updated redesign today. Of note: The social network's designers moved the applications menu and search bar to the top of the screen. Banner ads will move to the right of layout, leaving the left mostly blank. Because we know change is hard, we've embedded screenshots of Facebook's older designs below.
What fun would the Internet be if we let socially awkward people onto it? Here are five things that everyone does on Facebook even though they're awkward or annoying. These rules are more nuanced than "don't add me to your zombie game;" I assume we've all added those people to a special friend group labeled "MySpace orphans."
A Facebook sale to Microsoft is practically taken for granted by whipped-up bloggers, wishful thinkers, and tech pundits. By everyone, in short, except for those who would actually decide such matters. Kara Swisher says a sale is unlikely. My sources are more definite: Microsoft has asked if Facebook would sell, and gotten an unequivocal "no." Founder Mark Zuckerberg controls three out of five potential Facebook board seats, and he doesn't want to sell.
Facebook launched its Japanese-language version today and vision-questing, globe-trotting CEO Mark Zuckerberg magically appeared in the land of the rising sun to take reporters' questions. Among the queries: What's the deal with Facebook dropping Google Friend Connect, the search engine's new service that sucks data out of rival social networks? Zuck explained:
What's so bad about Mozilla's Toronto workspace? Besides the fluorescent lighting, the colorless white walls and the folding tables, the worst thing about Mozilla's Toronto workspace is how we're sure management would improve it. With corporate graffiti, company logos and too many colors. That was management's trick at Facebook and look where readers ranked it in our poll on tech's ten worst workspaces — as tech's second-worst workspace, just after Mozilla. Check out the full list, below.
Kongregate, a sort of YouTube for Flash games backed by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as well as Greylock Partners, will adapt some of its 4,500 games to Facebook's platform this week, Kongregate CEO Jim Greer told Inside Social Games. Kongregate makes money, or tries to, through advertising it shares with third-party game developers. Facebook doesn't need more gimmicky games, but with other widgetmakers like RockYou and Slide asking for (and getting) nine-figure valuations, don't expect the deluge to let up any time soon.
We've never gotten a straight story on why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took off for a trip around the world. Work or pleasure? Our latest tipster says that Zuck's travels are really about about avoiding the unpleasantries of business — specifically, easing out some of Facebook's old guard, like CTO Adam D'Angelo. Here's what he passes on:
Greylock Partners VC David Sze is no doubt thrilled to have been caught endorsing Blackberry via Facebook. Such "social ads" are the very reason his firm invested in the social network. If you're more chary of inflating Facebook's valuation while giving a thumbs-up to its advertisers, here's how to keep Facebook's endorsement ads from appearing in your friends' News Feed.
Due to "PR concerns" — or rather, new COO Sheryl Sandberg's excessively grownup attitude — Facebook bailed on a scheduled game of beer pong against CollegeHumor. The people at CollegeHumor, an IAC subsidiary, were certainly nonplussed. But Facebook is flush with cash. Sure, it's supposed to go toward server upgrades, but sometimes bribery through food is a better investment.
After reviewing our post "The 10 worst workspaces in tech," commenter AdmNaismith described Facebook's office, pictured above, as "foggy, dank, dim, and utterly depressing." Commenter mothra1 hated Yahoo's New York offices more: "They suck! Lifeless and impersonal. Kinda like the douchebags who still actually work there." Meanwhile, Adobe apologist BlairHapjo told us we "clearly didn't get past Adobe's lobby," and the rest of the office features "Aeron chairs, real offices (with doors!), big picture windows." For us, the worst offices we found on Office Snapshots and elsewhere were the the ones that try too hard to seem Internet-hip, like Jajah and Google. Now it's time to settle the disputes. Below, vote for your least favorite and help us rank tech's 10 most dismal places to work:
Designer Marc Jacobs recently got a new boyfriend and changed his Facebook relationship status to "It's complicated" from "In an Open Relationship." Does that mean Jacobs is loyal to his upscale new boy toy in a way he never was to threeway-friendly ex Jason Preston? Perhaps! But Preston isn't going to send the new man threatening text messages as he did with Jacobs' last guy, Austin A. No no, he's moved on, and in fact has a new, awesomer boyfriend, who Preston wants all his Facebook buddies to know about, at least according to the status update above, forwarded by an email tipster. Let the race to a Facebook-able California gay wedding begin!
Facebook has shut off access to Google's new Friend Connect, citing privacy issues, saying that the service "redistributes data" in ways that users don't "expect or understand," according to a blog post by Facebook developer Charlie Cheever. Google Friend Connect collected and displayed information available through Facebook's tools for third-party web developers to use on their own sites. Funny, Facebook hasn't had a problem with tracking users on third-party sites in the past, but then Facebook just launched a similarly named tool, Facebook Connect.
Money isn't everything. Mark Zuckerberg may have the highest net worth among his generation of entrepreneurs, but the Facebook CEO only gets 21 out of 294 pages in Sarah Lacy's new Web 2.0 book, Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good. That's 16 more than his sister, nerd chanteuse Randi Jayne Zuckerberg, which tells us Lacy has her priorities all wrong. The Zuckerbergs' index page:
