"Cathy Brooks is a typically unapologetic Silicon Valley Web addict," writes Brad Stone in the New York Times. "Last week alone, she produced more than 40 pithy updates on the text messaging service Twitter, uploaded two dozen videos to various video sharing sites, posted seven photographs on the Yahoo image service Flickr and one item to the online community calendar Upcoming." Usually, when one identifies a friend as an addict, an intervention is in order. But Stone, who seems to have spent so much time in San Francisco's tech circles that he's gone native, suggests more technology instead: Specifically, FriendFeed, which gathers all of this online activity in one place, making it marginally easier for Brooks's benighted friends to keep up with her online logorrhea.

It's hard to count the ways Mark Zuckerberg botched the launch of Facebook's "Social Ads" last fall. From the portentous talk of a once-every-100-years "change" in media, to the privacy brouhaha over Facebook's Beacon technology, Facebook's inexperienced CEO did just about everything wrong. At last, he's starting to get things right. Facebook has begun encouraging advertisers with sponsored groups to shift to Facebook Pages instead. Apple, with the largest sponsored group, has moved 400,000 members of its Apple Students group to be "fans" of the Apple Facebook page instead. It's a big, risky, and potentially costly change.

Makers of Facebook applications have seized control over the social network's latest redesign. So who are these mighty developers capable of bending the stubborn Mark Zuckerberg to their will? Among others, the makers of "You're a Hottie," which tops the "Recently Popular" list in Facebook's "Just For Fun" application category — the most popular on the site, according to this handy reminder from FlowingData. Here's CLZConcepts.com pitch for their popular app:

Updated mockups reveal that Facebook has added a new tab to its soon-to-be-released user profiles. It's a small but telling detail that illustrates how the obsessively controlling Mark Zuckerberg has ceded power to independent Facebook-app developers. In his original plans for Facebook's redesign, Zuckerberg planned to integrate the Wall — the place where public messages from other users are displayed on user profiles — with Facebook's News Feed, which is where Facebook serves ads between "stories" about other users' activities. This integration was a way for Facebook to finally serve ads in the Wall, a placewhere users spend a great deal of their time on the site.

Facebook's redesign — originally planned for early April, but delayed due to objections from widgetmakers like RockYou, Slide, and Zynga — is no longer a Mark Zuckerberg production. Third-party developers have hijacked it. A source close to the redesign process tells us "Facebook has made some changes to the original design, reflecting developer concerns." Below, screenshots of Zuckerberg's original plans for the redesign, annotated with the objections Facebook-application startups raised.

Spotted in an alley behind the offices of SocialText were a group of Facebook employees participating in a team building exercise:

Web 2.0 Expo this week persuaded that not only was Web 2.0 over, but saying it was over was over. To celebrate other Internet clichés, the 250 — that is to say, the 250 people on the Internet who matter to the 250 — decamped for ROFLcon in Massachusetts. Thank goodness, because some of us had actual work to do. Yahoo showed what it could do with its first-quarter earnings — which is to say, not much more than it had been doing before. Now Yahoos are bracing for more layoffs — when they're taking breaks from stealing credit and stabbing colleagues in the back. Facebookers, meanwhile, buzzed about a rumored feud between founders Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz. Moskovitz denied the tiff, but then displayed enough 'tude to explain why even the contentious Zuckerberg might want to stay away. Who wins the dyspeptic crown? Anyone who made it through this week. (Photo by AP/Kevin Sanders)

The blokes over at Stupid Business Ideas were trying to come up with just that — a new, stupid idea for a business — when they brainstormed the concept of AdAid. But when they actually looked up the domain, they found that it redirects to social network Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has a soft spot for charities, if proto-application Causes is any indication. So perhaps the company is looking to Bob Geldof to sign up a roster of superstar celebrities who will sing songs and give heartfelt lectures in the hopes of guilt-tripping corporations into maintaining their ad budgets through a possible recession? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet $20 that Moby is composing an original song for the event already. (Illustration by Stupid Business Ideas)

When we ran screenshots of Facebook's new profile pages back in late February, what you saw was a classic Mark Zuckerberg production. A source close to Facebook tells us the profile redesign was Zuckerberg's pet project, his baby. Well, that baby is dead.

We know what Facebook cofounders Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes are up to. Zuck lets COO Sheryl Sandberg run most of the company now while he plays industry visionary; Moskovitz is hiding from Valleywag's fearsome scrutiny; and Hughes is busy spamming your inbox with updates from Obama campaign director David Plouffe — sorry, revolutionizing politics on the Web. But where have unacknowledged cofounders Andrew McCollum and Eduardo Saverin gone? Their Facebook profiles aren't open to the public, but rival social network LinkedIn isn't nearly so skittish. Here are their profiles, with our notes:

Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard roommate, recently stopped speaking to him. This has made things awkward at Facebook's Palo Alto campus, as Moskovitz is the last reminder walking around that Zuckerberg was not Facebook's sole founder. The two have resumed talking, but Moskovitz, seeking to dissociate himself from his college chum's creation, had dropped the title of vice president and asked for his bio and photograph to be taken off the company's PR website. He's now taken the title of "technical lead," and is working behind the scenes on Facebook's infrastructure. (Moskovitz was not always so publicity-shy: He gladly spoke about Facebook's wireless initiatives at the CTIA conference last fall, and, in a comment left after this post was published, denies a rift and blames Valleywag for his lowered profile.) Why the reported split, after they've worked together so long?

We already knew that before Facebook hired Google ad boss Sheryl Sandberg as COO in early 2008, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg interviewed former eBay executive Jeff Jordan for the gig in 2007. What we didn't know, until a source familiar with Facebook told us, is that Zuckerberg actually offered Jordan the job. Jordan turned the offer down and took over as CEO at OpenTable instead. Why was Jordan so comfortable spurning a pre-IPO social network gaining users at a rate of 3 percent a week? Our source says the infamous workaholic blamed it on Zuckerberg's propensity to sleep-in. "It was a cultural thing," our source says. "Jeff has two kids and needs to keep a regular schedule. Mark doesn't show up at the office till 11."

In this excerpt from Harvard alumnus Aaron Greenspan's book, Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era, Greenspan gives an example of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg copying a feature idea from Greenspan's own Harvard project, HouseSystem.

Aaron Greenspan's Authoritas, a self-published history of his time at Harvard with Mark Zuckerberg, is full of passages the Facebook founder would rather you not read. In this excerpt, Greenspan recounts the moment when, as a member of Harvard's Student Entrepreneurship Council and creator of the
HouseSystem Face Book, he met a supersecretive wantrepreneur named Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook lawyers want to bar Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard chum of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, from marketing his new book, Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era. Their rationale: It uses the company's trademarked name improperly in the title. But their real goal is surely quashing Greenspan's story. In this excerpt from Greenspan's tell-all, the author argues that Zuckerberg stole the name Facebook from Greenspan's creation, HouseSystem.

Sheryl, Sheryl, Sheryl. Was it something we said? Come on — Valleywag adores you! Remember how we recommended Mark Zuckerberg hire you away from your job as Google's top advertising-operations exec to replace Owen Van Natta as Facebook's COO? Zuckerberg took our advice, and we're growing happier with this call every day. The latest reason why: In your farewell address to Google's AdWords team, you said that you're going to "shoot the guy who writes Valleywag."

Facebook lawyers won't let Think Computers founder Aaron Greenspan use the company's name to market his new self-pubished book, Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era . These lawyers say it would violate Facebook's trademark. So Greenspan has petitioned the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel Facebook's claim to the name. The suit rehashes Greenspan's old arguments that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole his idea.

In the month since San Francisco-based social network Hi5 launched its platform for independent applications, users have installed widgetmaker RockYou's applications 2 million times. The most popular third-party application on MySpace only has 100,000 installs. The difference? Hi5 links to its application directory from user profile pages and allows application makers to send notification messages to users. Those simple interface elements allow Hi5 users to see which applications their friends are using, which then prompts them to add them, too — the main factor in their spread. MySpace is still working on those kinds of tools, reports VentureBeat. Facebook built those types of innovations into its platform nearly a year ago.

Facebook flack Meredith Chin said the company would roll out a new profile design by early April. Didn't happen. And it won't until later this spring, Facebook developer Pete Bratach writes on the company's developer blog. "We're still iterating on the design, making sure we get it right," Bratach explains. BoomTown reports that third-party developers are greatly relieved by the delay. "They really have to roll this out perfectly," one told Kara Swisher. "It really is the biggest thing since Beacon, and you know how that went." (Poorly, and ruining more than a few Christmases by disclosing people's online purchases to Facebook friends.) But we disagree that Mark Zuckerberg should try to "roll this out perfectly."

Mark Zuckerberg dodged a bullet. His mug got featured on TMZ next to a picture of his secret mistress, and luckily she happened to be his actual girlfriend. Michael Arrington kicks Valleywag out of a party, giving our party report far more attention than it probably deserved. And Robert Scoble strikes a Roman Polanski-esque pose with an underage tech-starlet in his lap. As a captain of online industry, a hack covering the beat and a publicity-hungry B-lister, all three share one thing in common — they want the good stuff that comes with being public figures (free publicity, adoring fans, access to wealth) without the bad (salacious press, limited privacy and expensive hangers-on). The world, of course, doesn't work that way. So here's eight tips from the entertainment industry that might help them navigate the nascent perils of Internet fame.