The No. 1 Danger of Using Facebook

The No. 1 Danger of Using Facebook - Spending too much time on it and neglecting other stuff? Your boss finding embarrassing photos? Nope, and nope. People have been getting obsessed with stuff long before Facebook, and "Facebook addictions" making the news now mostly because it's so new. Meanwhile, not everyone finds themselves turned down from a job because of embarrassing pictures, but every Facebook user is affected by the No. 1 danger.

It's not Facebook addiction, in the sense that you need to get your fix like a shot of caffeine. It's Facebook dependency, in the sense that you need Facebook. And that a single, profit-driven corporation is becoming as much a part of our lives as email and the Internet. No one individual controls either of those, but Mark Zuckerberg holds the keys to Facebook. And he doesn't answer to you.

A single point of failure

The danger isn't that Facebook will stop working all of a sudden, a la Twitter's "fail whale." It's that a lot of power is being given to someone who wasn't elected, and who has no accountability to the people on Facebook. The only people Mark's accountable to are Facebook's investors, and they have only one request of him: Make money.

That's why Facebook can experiment with stuff like its unpopular new "Timeline" system and make everyone who uses Facebook deal with it. Where are you going to go if you don't like Facebook? LiveJournal? Maybe that new thing Google is doing? Yeah, right. How are you going to see what your friends and favorite brands are up to if you're not on Facebook? Plus all your crops in Farmville will die!

Having a Facebook account is like having a car. Everyone assumes you have one, and there are things you can't do and places you can't go if you don't. Even online games and websites' comment forms require you to have a Facebook account these days. Unless you want to give all that up, you're not allowed to stop using Facebook.


And Facebook's not like other companies

Not even other monopolies like AT&T and Verizon are in some places. Because to the phone companies, you're the customer, even if it's mostly because there's no one else you can buy from. But to many Internet companies, like Google and Facebook, you aren't the customer. You're the product.

No, they're not grinding you up and making Soylent Green. They just need your eyeballs, because they're selling advertisers the right to put ads in front of them. And while there's nothing especially sinister about online advertising (please do click on one of our fine sponsors), in Facebook's case you can't just change the channel or go to a different website.

You're the perfect, powerless, captive audience. And Facebook can censor what you say about it, too. ( yahoo.com )

READ MORE - The No. 1 Danger of Using Facebook

Facebook vs Google

Facebook vs Google - Facebook and Google are separately considering a tie-up with Skype after the web video conferencing service delayed its initial public offering, two sources with direct knowledge of the discussions said.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has taken part in internal discussions about buying Skype, according to one of the sources. Another source said Facebook had reached out to the Luxembourg-based company about forming a joint venture.

Google has also held early talks for a joint venture with Skype, the second source said. A Skype deal could be valued at $US3 billion to $US4 billion, the first source said. Skype's IPO is expected to raise about $US1 billion, several other sources said.

The discussions are in early stages, and it is not clear which option the companies favour, the first two sources said.

Although an IPO is still in the cards for the second half of 2011, Skype remains in discussions with other companies, two of the sources said. If it goes through, a Skype IPO would be one of the most hotly anticipated debuts by a US technology company this year.

File picture shows a woman as she displays a new Nokia N900 smartphone which can make Skype calls during a news conference in Taipei June 23, 2010. Nokia and Microsoft have teamed up to take on Google and Apple in the fast-growing smartphone market as the Finnish cellphone maker attempts to regain its leading position in the sector. Nokia said on February 11, 2011 it would use Windows Phone as the software platform for its smartphones as part of new chief executive Stephen Elops overhaul of the worlds biggest cellphone maker. Picture taken June 23, 2010

Securing Skype as a partner would expand Facebook's user base, help it grow in international markets where Skype is popular, and give its half-billion users another reason to remain active and connected to its online community.

Analysts say a tie-up between Facebook and Skype would make more sense than one with Google, which already has a similar service - Google Voice. Skype and Google declined to comment. Facebook was not immediately available to comment. The information is not public and the sources declined to be named. Good timing

With a partnership, Facebook can tack another service onto its ever-expanding menu - a crucial feature given that many mobile devices, including tablets, now come equipped with front-facing cameras.

"This is very synergistic," said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. "It puts Facebook two steps ahead of Google because of the number of Skype users."

"In your social network, you will now have another very compelling service - Skype," he added.

Last year, Skype had about 124 million connected users every month by the end of June. But 8.1 million were paying customers, using Skype to make calls to traditional phones at discounted rates.

Analysts have said that while Skype's growth has been impressive, investors would be cautious about its prospects for revenue growth due to the size of its base of nonpaying customers. The company was founded in 2003. eBay bought it in 2005 for $US3.1 billion.

In 2009, eBay sold a majority stake in Skype to an investor group that included Silver Lake, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz for $US1.9 billion in cash and a $US125 million note. eBay retained about a third of the company.

Handicaping the IPO Last August, Skype filed a registration statement to go public. The October appointment of a new chief executive, Tony Bates, a former senior vice president of Cisco Systems, put the eagerly anticipated IPO on hold until the second half of 2011.

But rivals including Apple and Google have marched into Skype's territory, undercutting the value of the pioneer service. Now, Skype might again change hands.

Although Facebook and Skype would benefit from each other's large community of users, neither has proven revenue models, said a separate source familiar with the companies.

For Skype, the clock is ticking, as large social media and software companies pour into the public markets. On Wednesday, shares of Renren, China's largest social networking company, surged nearly 57 percent in its first day of trade.

LinkedIn said on Wednesday it would list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The social networking site for professionals filed to raise up to $US175 million in an IPO expected later this year.

The flood of internet public offerings this year will give Skype backers a clearer sense of its prospects, another source said.

"When a company is not going public and it has been on file for a long time, one way or another something is going to happen," that source said. ( reuters )

READ MORE - Facebook vs Google

Google's answer to the Facebook 'like' button: +1

Google's answer to the Facebook 'like' button: +1 – The tech powerhouse unveils a new tool that allows users to recommend search results to their friends

On Wednesday, Google announced a new feature called the +1 button, which will appear next to search results, and allow users to easily recommend search results to their Google contacts, giving certain sites prominence over others based on approval from friends. After multiple failed efforts to harness the power of social media, +1 is Google's latest attempt to to keep up with Facebook and Twitter's rapidly growing influence. Will it succeed? Here, a brief guide:

Google's answer to the Facebook 'like' button: +1

How does it work?

Google users will see the +1 button next to the site's usual list of search results. By clicking, they will notify their Gmail contacts of that particular site's usefulness. "Say, for example, you're planning a winter trip to Tahoe, Calif.," says Google's blog entry announcing the initiative. "When you do a search, you may now see a +1 from your slalom-skiing aunt next to the result for a lodge in the area. Or if you're looking for a new pasta recipe, we'll show you +1's from your culinary genius college roommate."


Why is Google doing this?

Mostly to keep up with Facebook. "Google and Facebook, which long operated in different realms on the Web, increasingly look like they are on a collision course," says Amir Efrati at The Wall Street Journal. While Google remains the undisputed leader in search, Facebook has harnessed social media to change the way people find information online.


Why are recommendations from friends so important?

"Endorsements are proven to be far more powerful than marketer messages," says Bryan Wiener, chief executive of digital advertising agency 360i, as quoted by the Journal.


So can I get +1 now?

Probably not. Initially, the results will only be available to 2 percent of English-language users on Google.com. Eventually, it will be rolled out to all Google users, and the company hopes to reorder search result based on the preferences of friends and acquaintances. Google will also likely integrate +1 into its repertoire of other services, like Google News and Google Maps.


Will it work?

We'll see. Google may have learned its lesson from two social-search failures, says Caroline McCarthy at CNET. Google Wave was deemed too confusing to use, while privacy concerns over Google Buzz led to FTC charges (that were settled Wednesday). But "Google +1, for now, seems to be the sort of thing that could actually help the dominant search engine get some social-media cred and innovate more." ( news.yahoo.com )

READ MORE - Google's answer to the Facebook 'like' button: +1

'Anti-Facebook' From Google

Google to Launch the 'Anti-Facebook' - You can be my friend on Facebook, dear reader, but if and when Google launches its new social network, I probably will not accept friend requests from people I do not intimately know. That is because I, like most Google users, do not want my Google account to be more social. I am perfectly happy being social on Twitter and Facebook but when it comes to Google, I cherish my privacy.

Rumors swirled this weekend that Google would once again throw it’s hat into the social ring with the launch of ‘Circles,’ a new social network, at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Google denied that it would launch this week and refuted the claims that such a project is in the works.

Even if Circles is not a real thing and just a labs project, Google’s eventual re-entry into the social circle is inevitable. Make no mistake, Google wants to be more social and I have some theories about why they have never really succeeded.

Oct. 8, 2010: FILE - The Google logo is displayed outside Google headquarters in Mountain View, Cali

Google has tried again and again to play in the social networking space. Orkut and Google Buzz are just a few examples of good intentions gone awry. I think that this happens because very few people want Google to be social. When you trust Google with such private information as your daily prescriptions on Google Health, you don’t feel motivated to start to friend request your high school classmates.

In fact, I am writing this column in Google Docs. I have a lot of work in my Google Docs folders. I am fine sharing certain documents, giving people preview permission on other documents, but I would be uncomfortable participating in social networking with people who would be one click away from such private information.

Google’s rumored network, Circles, is supposed to have more focus on privacy and inner circles. You would be able to share certain information in very targeted ways. I can relate to the need for that. When I post photos of my son, they are shared online for my family and friends but friends of friends often can see and comment on them on Facebook and that’s okay but sometimes I just want my immediate family to see my son’s face covered in peas. And when I promote my Fox Tech Take pieces on Twitter, my family and friends have to endure my self promoting. Perhaps Google has found a way to fix this. Perhaps they have found a way to add targeted sharing to all Google services and not just a new stand-alone social network.

I for one would love to see a new social network that did not feel like a popularity contest. When a new social network starts to gain traction, it seems to follow the same trajectory as its predecessor. You see a few Weblebrities gain big numbers of followers and then you feel like you need to catch up, find a lot of “friends,” and start sharing like a madman. What if the next up and coming social network were not quite so social, for lack of a better word? What if the communication inherent to the social network felt more like real life, more authentic? What if it were targeted towards the circles in my life that were actually meaningful? It may not be quite so valuable to marketers because the volume of traffic to any given link or page would be lower, but it would be more valuable to me. So Google, if you want to give social another go, I’m willing to try again. ( foxnews.com )

READ MORE - 'Anti-Facebook' From Google

How to hack your Facebook profile picture: a step-by-step guide to 'refacing' your profile

How to hack your Facebook profile picture: a step-by-step guide to 'refacing' your profile - Thousands of people are hacking the new-look Facebook profiles to jazz them up. Here's how to do it yourself.

A French artist has kicked off a new trend by ‘refacing’ his Facebook profile. Alexandre Oudin tweaked the photos on his Facebook page to make them look like pieces of one large photo. Since then, other Facebook users have been repeating the trick to create their own versions: see our gallery here.

If you want to ‘reface’ your Facebook page, here’s how you do it.

• You’ll need to have activated the new Facebook profile page - if you have, you’ll see your basic biographical information at the top of the page and, below that, a photo strip of five recent photos that have been tagged with your name.

• You’ll also need a photo that’s at least 692 pixels wide - that’s the width of the page from the left-hand edge of your profile picture to the right-hand edge of the photo strip.

• The final thing you’ll need is a photo-editing program that allows you to crop images. If you don’t have a program on your computer, try an online editing service, such as Photoshop Express.

• Now you’re ready to get started. Crop your photo to 692 pixels wide, based on how you want it to appear on the page. The left-hand side of this image will be your profile pic and the right-hand edge will appear at the end of the photo strip. Let’s call this image your Base Photo.

• Next, create your new profile pic by taking a crop of the left-hand side of your Base Photo. Start in the top left corner of your base image and, moving down and right, make a crop that’s 180 pixels wide and 540 pixels high.

• Now we need to create the images for your photo strip. The profile pic you’ve created will extend 20 pixels higher on the page than your photo strip so to create the photo strip you’ll need to start the crop 20 pixels below the top of the image. So, from the right-hand edge of the Base Photo, 20 pixels from the top, take a crop that’s 492 pixels wide and 68 pixels high. This crop will almost meet the right-hand edge of your profile picture but not quite - there is a 20 pixel gap between your profile pic and the photo strip. It’s important to leave this gap if you want the final profile page to look right.

• Still with us? Good. Now you need to chop the photo strip image you’ve created into five pieces. The images in the photo strip are separated by a line two pixels wide so you need to make sure you leave those gaps. Essentially, what you need to do is this: starting from one side of the 492x68 image you created in step 6, crop an image that’s 96.8 pixels wide and 68 pixels high, then leave a two-pixel gap, crop another 96.8x68 image, leave a gap and so on. When you’re finished you should have five small pictures.

• That’s the difficult bit over. Now you need to upload the images to Facebook. Set the image you created in step 5 to be your profile picture but don’t tag it with your name. Then tag the five images you created in step seven. The order in which you tag them is critical: you have to tag them from right-to-left based on the order in which you want them to appear on the page. So the image that you want to appear on the far right should be tagged first and the far left image should be tagged last.

• Now all you need to do is tell your friends to come and admire the handywork on your profile page.

It might take a couple of goes to get this right but once you’ve worked through the instructions once, it should be easier for you to adapt them to suit the image you want to create. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - How to hack your Facebook profile picture: a step-by-step guide to 'refacing' your profile

Facebook Launches "One-Stop Conversation Shop"

Facebook Launches "One-Stop Conversation Shop" - Mark Zuckerberg announced the launch of Facebook's "modern messaging system" in San Francisco Monday, but it wasn't quite the Google-gobbling monster some analysts had predicted. Zuckerberg himself said Facebook mail won't replace e-mail (yet).

But he made it clear that he doesn't think the future of communication lies with Gmail, because it's just too stuffy for all these kids umbilically attached to their iPhones. Zuckerberg said that in recent conversations with high school students (surely these weren't face-to-face conversations?), he learned that teens don't use e-mail because it's "too formal." "There's a subject field, a formal greeting, a closing," TechCrunch explains.

That's just way too much going on, so Facebook's new clutter-free messaging system dispenses with subjects, CCs, and BCCs. "It's going to feel like chat," Gizmodo says. "A lot of times, it's going to be chat." It's going to be more powerful than chat, though, automatically collecting all the e-mails, chats, Facebooks messages, and texts between two people in a single place. "It's a one-stop conversation shop," Gizmodo says, "a way to tell the full story of a conversation." Facebook's conversation shop will also be able to filter incoming messages according to whom its algorithms say you actually want to hear from.

"Zuckerberg insists that this isn't going to be a Gmail killer, and for the time being, at least, he's right," Gizmodo concludes. But Facebook doesn't care about the time being; it cares about the future, and "a generation that's steadily and increasingly been abandoning e-mail for instant communication. And the more we abandon e-mail for text and chat, the more Facebook's going to be the communication hub."

Facebook Messages: Every Email, Text, and Chat In One Place

As expected, is announcing a "modern messaging system" today. Mark Zuckerberg says it's not email. But it might just replace it. Get ready for your @facebook.com address

Every Ping In One Place

What are the difference between Facebook messages and regular email? It incorporates emails, Facebook messages, SMS, other chat clients. Eventually VoIP may also be in play. Instead of having some chats here and some texts there, every time you talk to someone it'll be come part of a stream of information.

And while you can collect it all at an @facebook.com email address, it's not mandatory. You can redirect your Gmail messages there, for instance. And yes, an iPhone app update is coming shortly that incorporates Facebook Messages.

Notable differences from regular email? There are no subject lines, no CC or BCC. You can send a message just by hitting the Enter key. It's going to feel like chat. A lot of times, it's going to be chat.

Hanging On a Thread

There will also be a threading solution, which records every type of contact you've had with a person in one place. It's a one-stop conversation shop, a way to tell the full story of a conversation.

A Friends-Only Inbox

Facebook will also introduce the Social Inbox, which sorts your personal messages, prioritizing notes from friends and setting aside people you aren't as close with. This is the killer function: as a default, you'll only see messages from your friends (and friends of friends). Junk—from people who are outside of your Facebook circle—will go into a separate folder. And you can move people from one folder to the other (which is nice for those of us whose family doesn't have Facebook). You can also choose to actively bounce any email that's not from a friend.

As much as I enjoy Gmail's Priority Inbox, it can't filter nearly as effectively as Facebook can. That's the advantage of the "social graph" that Facebook can access, and why you're going to want to give this a serious look.

Why It Matters

Zuckerberg insists that this isn't going to be a Gmail killer, and for the time being, at least, he's right. But Facebook's looking towards the future, towards a generation that's steadily and increasingly been abandoning email for instant communication. And the more we abandon email for text and chat, the more Facebook's going to be the communication hub. ( gizmodo.com )

Send an email to Brian Barrett, the author of this post, at bbarrett@gizmodo.com.

READ MORE - Facebook Launches "One-Stop Conversation Shop"

Is Facebook about to offer email?

Is Facebook about to offer email? Reports say it plans a 'Gmail killer' - Facebook may be on the verge of offering e-mail to the 500 million members of its social-networking site, making it the largest e-mail service on the planet.

More significantly, the offering could lead to a fundamental transformation of e-mail. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are already scrambling to retool their e-mail services to build them more around people's social connections. Facebook would have a tremendous advantage because it owns a vast trove of data about people's relationships and would find it easier to graft e-mail onto its existing social services such as photo-sharing.

Facebook has invited the media to what appears to be a significant announcement in San Francisco on Monday morning, adding a prominent hint that the news could involve a new e-mail service -- a press invitation bears a message icon. However, while tech blogs hummed Friday with speculation that Facebook will release "a Gmail killer," the Palo Alto-based company declined to confirm or deny those rumors, and a source with knowledge of the social network's plans said at least part of the speculation was incorrect -- adding even more uncertainty.

If it is announced, a Facebook e-mail service would allow its more than 500 million members to communicate with anyone inside or outside the walls of the social network. If they use it, Facebook would leapfrog the 361 million global users of Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo Mail's 273 million users and Gmail's 193 million users, according to comScore.

However, a Facebook e-mail service would be most remarkable not for the size of its network, but for how it could use its web of social connections to transform one of the oldest -- and perhaps still the most important -- functions of the Internet.

"There is a huge opportunity for these guys to fundamentally change the nature of e-mail," said Matt Cain, an analyst for the research firm Gartner who expects Facebook to unveil an external e-mail service Monday.

Imagine, Cain said, a Facebook system that could prioritize mail from any external source based on the closeness of your relationship to the sender, or that allows you to easily flip a one-to-one e-mail exchange into a conversation with a group of friends.

Facebook now offers an internal message service that is less functional than most Web-based e-mail, and only allows members to communicate with other Facebook accounts. But Facebook may hope to use a new external e-mail service to capture even more adherents, said Augie Ray, senior analyst for social computing for Forrester Research. Forrester says that while about 90 percent of U.S. adults check e-mail regularly, only 59 percent use social networking tools such as

Facebook or Twitter.

An e-mail service "makes sense just largely from a reach perspective. Facebook has grown so large that we forget that it still has room for growth," Ray said.

And by adding e-mail to the Internet's most popular photo-sharing service, smartphone location-sharing service and social gaming site, Facebook would make an even stronger claim as a hub of personal communications, placing "Facebook as much into competition with AT&T as it is now with Google," Ray said.

The tech blog TechCrunch first reported in February that Facebook was working on an e-mail service, internally dubbed "Project Titan." And while it is possible that Monday's announcement will be something more modest, both TechCrunch and VentureBeat claimed Friday to have confirmed the e-mail service with anonymous sources.

Google and Yahoo are working to make e-mail more reflective of people's personal connections by adding social-networking features to existing e-mail services. Google had disastrous results when it based its Google Buzz social-networking service on people's Gmail contacts, running into a privacy Waterloo when it automatically imported people into the service. Yahoo, the most popular U.S. e-mail provider, recently launched a new version of Mail that allows users to broadcast their status on both Twitter and Facebook -- just as if they were actually on those sites.

Unhappy with Facebook's unwillingness to let people export their contacts from Facebook into a service like Gmail, Google last week blocked Facebook from allowing users to import their Google contacts directly into the social network.

Gmail is the hot property in e-mail right now, with its global audience up 21 percent during the 12 months ending in September, while Yahoo Mail and Hotmail have both lost share, according to comScore data.

Given Gmail's momentum, a Facebook e-mail service "puts tremendous pressure on Google," Cain said. "Gmail is the place to be, and all of sudden, in one fell swoop, Facebook can enable e-mail for 500 million users, and I would suspect there is a huge overlap." ( mercurynews.com )

READ MORE - Is Facebook about to offer email?

Facebook ranks first in display ads

Facebook ranks first in display ads - Facebook has become an online advertising magnet, capturing the greatest number of display ads of any Internet publishing site in the third quarter, according to ComScore.

In the third quarter, Facebook grabbed 23 percent of all Internet display ads, or 297 billion ad impressions, which was more than the total display ads on Yahoo, Microsoft, Fox and Google sites combined. But that doesn’t mean Facebook made the most money from display ads, according to the ComScore report.

Facebook ads are generally cheaper than display ads sold on traditional Web portals like Yahoo, according to Evercore Partners analyst Ken Sena in a report by Reuters. One industry source said Yahoo is known to make the most from online display ads.

The effective CPM (cost per thousand impressions) for Facebook's U.S. display ads is roughly $1, compared with the $3 CPM for display ads on Yahoo's family of Web sites in the United States, Sena said.

The growth in advertising shows the value of Facebook’s social network to advertisers who want to tailor ads to users who are constantly feeding new information about themselves to the site. Facebook doesn’t share personally identifiable information about their users, it says. And lawmakers have introduced legislation that could curb an advertiser’s ability to serve up ads based on Internet user activity. (Disclosure: Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham is a member of Facebook's board.)

Overall, the online advertising display market is up 22 percent compared with a year ago.

Jeff Hackett, ComScore’s senior vice president, said in a release that the growth comes from the ability to target ads, or “buy specific audiences,” and that the site has improved the creativity and formatting of the ads.

Top advertisers – cellphone providers AT&T and Verizon -- bought a combined 35 billion ads. Scott Trade bought about 14.9 billion ads, and cable industry buster Netflix bought 9.5 billion ads in the quarter. ( washingtonpost.com )

READ MORE - Facebook ranks first in display ads

Is Bing More of a Threat to Google Than Facebook or Apple?

Is Bing More of a Threat to Google Than Facebook or Apple? - According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Bing is its main competitor - not Facebook or Apple. He sat down with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal, who was kind enough to post an embeddable video of the conversation.


"What's interesting is we think of neither [Facebook or Apple] as a competitive threat...our competitor is Bing. And it's interesting, for years, people have asked about Microsoft and everyone has forgot about Bing."


He calls Bing a "well run, highly competitive search engine". He doesn't get into Bing's partnership with Yahoo, but that clearly has to be considered a big part of Google's headache in search competition.


When asked about being more concerned about Bing 5-10 years down the road, he said, "Facebook is too early to tell. Facebook is a company of consequence, and they're doing an excellent job building a social network." He also says that people forget Apple is a partner of Google.


Schmidt talks about a number of other topics, such as privacy, China, his thoughts on the "web is dead" article, President Obama, social media, and more.

READ MORE - Is Bing More of a Threat to Google Than Facebook or Apple?

Facebook's Filters Fall Short in Blocking Pedophiles

Facebook's Filters Fall Short in Blocking Pedophiles - Facebook is failing to prevent child predators from posting suggestive and potentially illegal photographs of children on its website, a weeks-long investigation by FoxNews.com reveals, despite its claim that it's doing all it can to keep pedophile materials from being displayed.

The world's largest social network employs content filters that automatically scan for basic keywords that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) identifies as being commonly associated with child exploitive material. Those filters, if they are properly employed, should flag much of the offensive material found on the site, cybersecurity experts say.

But in a lengthy telephone interview on Oct. 6, FoxNews.com took two Facebook executives on a click-by-click tour of their own website, bringing them face-to-face with some of its vile contents and forcing them to admit that their efforts to block child predators were not working.

During a 90-minute phone interview with Facebook spokesman Simon Axten and the company's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, the two executives were guided by FoxNews.com through the site’s seamy subculture – an encounter that left Sullivan sounding dumbfounded, unaware of and unable to explain the extremely graphic content on the site.

In the interview, FoxNews.com told the executives to enter "PTHC" in the website's search box. The term “PTHC” — short for “Pre-Teen Hard Core” — is frequently found in connection with child sexual exploitation activity and materials, law enforcement officials say. Multiple sources confirmed that “PTHC” is on the NCMEC list of keywords.

Having searched for "PTHC," the two Facebook executives were then instructed to click on the first result — a public group Page called “PTHC,” with 197 members. That's when the executives came face-to-face with a post directing users to a video purportedly featuring an 8-year-old boy being sexually abused.

Then, when asked to click on the profile of any of the group’s members, the executives were ushered into a subculture dedicated to using Facebook to traffic child pornography and to target and interact with children.

At this point, there was silence for nearly a full minute, except for the sound of furious, rapid typing. Axten and Sullivan sounded stunned, unable to explain why this happened and how their filters could have failed.

Facebook later said it had launched an investigation into the pages, profiles and video links they had found during the interview. That same day, the “PTHC page” and others were removed from the website.

But much of what FoxNews.com found in its investigation remains active.

During the interview, the Facebook executives emphasized that identifying and removing content that may exploit children is a top priority. They said material flagged by the NCMEC keywords filter is evaluated and, if merited, promptly removed.

“We’re constantly looking to improve our filter system. As we get more information and tactics, we’ll use that to inform our system to make it even better,” Sullivan said.

“Believe me, it’s incredibly frustrating to all of us that they’re trying to share this, I’m so repulsed by the fact — I have three daughters — we have a large number of people who care greatly about these issues throwing a lot of money and technology at them.”

But despite their efforts, FoxNews.com found an entire underworld of widely recognized terms, code words and abbreviations on Facebook -- hundreds of pages with “PTHC” and “Incest” in their titles, and many others that are unprintable. Both terms are on the NCMEC keywords list, sources said, and they were found on Facebook's public, private, group and profile pages. Many of those pages purported to host video links to child pornography, and many had been active for months.

Most if not all of the content appears to be in clear violation of Facebook’s terms of use, and cyber safety experts said much of it may be illegal.

“A fair question to ask after a period of time is, why is it still up?” said NCMEC President Ernie Allen, who told FoxNews.com his organization was encouraged — but unaware — that Facebook was filtering by its keyword list.

He said there could be three explanations for the content's presence:

— Law enforcement officials asked Facebook to keep the content up on the site for investigative purposes;

— Facebook’s internal investigation concluded the words used, in the context being used, did not rise to an actionable level;

— Facebook might have just missed it.

“With half a billion members, my guess is they haven’t seen everything,” Allen said.

But the problem, in some ways, is just the tip of the iceberg: In the same way that Facebook users can “like” a page dedicated to a television show, they can similarly “like” pages that suggest or host photos of pedophile activities. And Facebook’s automatic aggregation system pulls “global posts” on certain topics to community pages dedicated to those same topics.

This means that someone who innocently writes on her wall that she's going out partying with "her girls" can wind up appearing on a "young girls” community page created, “liked” and monitored by a pedophile.

Similarly, Microsoft’s collaboration with Facebook has also inadvertently brought links to what presumably is hardcore child porn onto the social network. Search for a user with “PTHC” in his name, and Bing's Internet search results at the bottom of Facebook's results page links out to what appear to be child porn websites.

Following the phone interview and in response to a follow-up request to clarify if and how “PTHC” is used by the filtering system, Facebook’s spokesman said via email:

“We're constantly improving how we integrate NCMEC's list and others into our proactive systems. As we explained on the phone, these systems use keywords to either block content from being created or flag it for review by our team of investigators. Some terms on these lists, including code words and acronyms, have multiple meanings, which makes it difficult to block them upfront without also preventing legitimate uses. We do a careful evaluation of each term and consider both the potential for abuse and the frequency with which the term is used in other contexts when making decisions on whether to block or flag. We're reviewing this term (“PTHC”) again to make sure we have the right implementation.”

But the mass of pedophile content on the site would have been rooted out if Facebook were doing its job properly, said Hemanshu Nigam, co-chairman of President Obama's Online Safety Technology Working Group.

“The fact that Facebook missed the most basic terms in the terminology of child predators suggests that they’ve taken a checkbox approach instead of implementing real solutions to help real problems facing children online,” Nigam said.

“To not be focusing in on a word like 'PTHC' or 'Incest' means you’re not stopping the problem proactively.”

He said that if Facebook were using the keyword list as it should — as a set of clues to follow and as part of a multi-dimensional approach — it would need to take a deep dive into the network of friends, groups and fan pages surrounding the keyword hits.

“Rather than use the list to find the match and delete that one single match, Facebook should say we found one, now let’s look under the covers,” said Nigam, who headed security divisions at Microsoft and MySpace and now, in addition to his co-chairmanship position, runs SSP Blue, an online security consulting firm. (SSP Blue consults for News Corp., which is the parent company of Fox News.)

“You either look under the covers or close your eyes and check the box.”

But Facebook executives said they face greater challenges than any other social networking site, many of which can be tied to the evolution of what once was a closed network for college students to a global behemoth facing real-world criminal threats. Add increasingly savvy criminals and the sheer volume of content — more than 1 billion files shared daily by its half-billion users — and the challenges grow.

Plus, Sullivan said, scrubbing users from Facebook will be a game of whack-a-mole until law enforcement figures out how to track down predators who hide behind computers.

“We have a pretty big team focused on keeping the site clean of child exploitative content, and we’re always looking to get better,” Sullivan said.

“We really believe there is no place for this on this site.” ( foxnews.com )

READ MORE - Facebook's Filters Fall Short in Blocking Pedophiles

How to find travel deals on Facebook and Twitter

How to find travel deals on Facebook and Twitter - They sound too good to be true: $10 flights. $93/night hotels in Miami (including a free night's stay). $9.99/day weekend car rentals. Half-off trips to Australia. Believe it or not, these were all recently available—but only if you knew where to look.

If you haven't yet gotten involved with social media, now's the time to start. Savvy travelers have been looking to Facebook, Twitter, Loopt, Foursquare, and other social media sites to find the latest available bargains from airlines, tour providers, cruise lines, hotels, and restaurants. Even convention and visitors' bureaus have gotten in on the action, publicizing deals and promotions through their respective Facebook and Twitter feeds. Travel providers are using these sites to unload last-minute airfares, hotel rooms, and other unsold inventory.

Where to look

Virtually every major player in the travel industry has a presence on Facebook and Twitter. If you haven't set up accounts on these social media giants, do so. Once you're a member, search for your favorite travel companies' pages, and "like" (for Facebook) and follow (for Twitter). Similar to email alerts, companies will now notify you through their Facebook and Twitter feeds about the latest company happenings, including new sales, ultra-limited-time offers, extra perks, and more.

JetBlue, for example, is highly active on Twitter; AirTran often announces short-term sales exclusively on Facebook.

You may also want to follow key industry players. Columnist Eileen Ogintz tweets about family vacation deals and other family travel news; Rick Seaney covers the latest in air travel; and Pauline Frommer discusses all things travel. If you have favorite travel columnists or publications, there's a high likelihood they're tweeting about their picks and pans within the industry. If you're wary about following a bunch of companies (e.g., don't want a ton of alerts in your daily feeds), keeping abreast of a few experts can be as close to one-stop shopping as you can get using social media.

When to look

Once you've been tracking your favorite providers for awhile, you may start to notice several patterns. For example, JetBlue releases its "Cheeps" fares (ultra-cheap, ultra-last-minute) on Tuesday mornings around 10 a.m. ET. Flights tend to start around $10 each way and are available for travel on select days within the coming week. With other providers, you may find no pattern at all; some deals are catch-as-catch-can, and it's best to monitor on a regular basis. AirTran, Frontier, United, and Virgin America, for example, offer unsold inventory at rock-bottom prices over Twitter, but with no set schedule, fares, or amount of seats—the deals truly are first-come, first-served, and once the low fares are sold, they're gone.

Even if you miss a sale deadline, though, sometimes you might still get lucky. We've occasionally found Cheeps in the evening well after the sale has been removed from the JetBlue site. This may be the exception to the rule, however, and booking once you find a good price for your budget is the still the best strategy.

The get-it-before-it's-gone mentality also reigns supreme at hotels. It's not unusual for individual city hotels to have their own Twitter feeds and Facebook pages, with updates on events, sales, and more. For example, the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco recently tweeted a 24-hour sale; the Hilton Milwaukee publicized a special promotion for the city's Wine and Dine Wisconsin weekend; and the Venetian Las Vegas posted a gaming-perks and discounted suite package. Be sure to check the social media feeds from your favorite properties and brands to get the latest deals and updates.

Other perks

Beyond deals, social media sites are becoming effective tools for customer service. Delta uses its Twitter feed to provide real-time customer service assistance, as does Hyatt with its HyattConcierge Twitter account.

"Without question it's been very helpful [for customer service]," says Pete Myers, co-owner of EuroCheapo, in regard to his company's presence on Twitter. "We can receive direct questions and comments about how our site works, and we can answer directly. Frequently we'll have people following, asking us for advice on hotels and we can have an ongoing conversation with them. They benefit from it, we love it, and then others who aren't directly involved with that conversation can still view it and see some helpful tips and feedback."

Perhaps the biggest benefit, though, is the fast response time that Twitter affords. Unlike calling in to a customer service number, where you could lose a lot of time on hold waiting for a human representative, Twitter broadcasts your message to staff waiting to interact with you. "There's never a question that's too small or large," says Myers. "One of the biggest benefits of these social media sites is the ability for travelers to get in contact with real people at these companies. It's a chance to receive feedback quickly through these new channels, and people should take advantage of it."

When you consider the broadcast nature of Twitter, its one-to-many form of communication, the value of a speedy response becomes evident—especially if you have a negative comment, experience, or complaint. Companies know that addressing your issue quickly will score points both with you, the customer, and other potential customers seeing your feedback. ( usatoday.com )

READ MORE - How to find travel deals on Facebook and Twitter

Paul Ceglia. Web designer files lawsuit claiming he owns 84% of Facebook

Paul Ceglia has filed a lawsuit against Facebook

Paul Ceglia. Web designer files lawsuit claiming he owns 84% of Facebook. A web designer is taking Facebook to court claiming he owns 84 per cent of the social networking site.

Paul Ceglia has filed a civil lawsuit in the Supreme Court in New York claiming he signed a contract with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in 2003 to develop and design a website.

According to the suit, the terms of the contract entitled Ceglia to a $1,000 fee and a 50 percent stake in the product, which eventually was launched as thefacebook.com.

The contract also stipulated that Ceglia ’would acquire an additional 1 percent interest in the business, per day, until the website was completed,’ meaning that Ceglia's stake in Facebook totaled 84 percent by 2004.

Facebook has described the suit as completely frivolous.

The firm's lawyers are contesting a decision by a New York judge to issue a temporary restraining the transfer of Facebook assets while the lawsuit is assessed.

'The order will not affect our ability to do business but we do not believe it is legally supported and we have moved to have it vacated,' said Facebook's Barry Schnitt.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is having to fight another suit claiming he owes fellow designers money

According to The Wall Street Journal, the contract is ‘for the purchase and design of a suitable website for the project Seller [Mr. Zuckerberg] has already initiated that is designed to offer the students of Harvard university [sic] access to a wesite [sic] similar to a live functioning yearbook with the working title of 'The Face Book.'"

Facebook, which has nearly 500 million users, is the world's biggest internet social networking site and ranks among the web's most popular sites, alongside Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

The date of Ceglia's suit clashes with Facebook’s official history which claims that Zuckerberg did not start the site until after 2003.

Some of the previous accounts of Facebook's history have said that Zuckerberg was at work on other projects during that period and did not come up with the idea for Facebook until later.

The internet domain name for "TheFacebook.com" was registered in January 2004,

Zuckerberg is believed to own 24% of the company, with the rest belonging to employees and investors.

Last year it was reported that Zuckerberg paid out $65 million to two former classmates to end a lawsuit claiming that he stole the idea for the massively successful social networking site from them. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Paul Ceglia. Web designer files lawsuit claiming he owns 84% of Facebook

Government to use Facebook for ideas on cuts

Government to use Facebook for ideas on cuts.David Cameron aims to use social network Facebook to harness ‘civic spirit in this country where people want to take control’

Government ministers will use social network Facebook to ask British citizens for ideas on spending cuts, the Prime Minster has announced.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg has praised the UK Government's attitude to social networks

The site, which has 26 million UK users, will invite people to submit their ideas for where public money might be saved via a “Spending Challenge Channel” on its Democracy UK page. There will also be microsites specially tailored to focus on key issues open for discussion and debate among the voting public.

“We are really excited about having Facebook involved in The Spending Challenge,” said David Cameron. “There's enormous civic spirit in this country where people want to take control and do things in a different way. We are giving people an opportunity with Facebook and I am sure that they will take it.”

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's Founder and CEO said “We’re really delighted to be in partnership with the British government, in order to harness the energy and ideas that Facebook users have to help the UK public save money. The Government’s willingness to reach out and engage with Facebook users is going to go a long way. It’s really innovative to open up policy making and engage the public in this way to try and create more social change.”

The Government has called the exercise is “the largest public engagement project” it has ever launched. Chancellor George Osborne has pledged that the Government will look seriously at adopting suggestions, and will meet some of those who submit them.

The Your Freedom website, launched at the beginning of July, aims to allow users to submit suggestions for legislation they would like to see cut. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Government to use Facebook for ideas on cuts

Facebook bows to user pressure with privacy control shake-up... BUT falls short of EU demands

Facebook bows to user pressure with privacy control shake-up... BUT falls short of EU demands. Facebook has completely redesigned its privacy settings, founder Mark Zuckerberg announced today.

The overhaul was in response to a massive backlash against how the social network had handled the personal information of its 400million users.

However, the 26-year-old CEO has stopped short of introducing an 'opt-in' rather than 'opt-out' system for sharing certain personal information, which European authorities called for this month.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social network site's new privacy settings were 'drastically simplified'

In a press conference held at company headquarters in California, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook's privacy system had become too confusing for members.

'It has become hard for people to effectively control their information,' he admitted.

'Unless you feel in control, then you won't be comfortable sharing and our service will be less useful for you. We agree we need to improve this.'

Murder victim: Ashleigh Hall met her killer on Facebook

There are some 23 million Facebook users in the UK, with the highest number aged between 20 and 29 years old.

But more than two million people aged over 50 also use the site.

Critics have complained users' privacy is being dangerously breached, even putting people's lives at risk.

In March, Peter Chapman, a convicted sex offender, was jailed for 35 years on Teeside for raping and murdering 17-year- old Ashleigh Hall after meeting her on Facebook and duping her into meeting him.

And yesterday, a 15-year-old boy who fatally stabbed a former friend over a 'loss of face' after they traded insults on Facebook was found guilty of murder and is facing a life sentence.

The teenager knifed 18-year-old Salum Kombo in East London last December for the 'pathetic' reason that he had called him a 'pussy', the Old Bailey was told.

Trust nobody: How the Mail reported Ashleigh's story last October

Facebook has come under fire in recent months from security experts and members alike, after making it it more difficult for users to keep their personal details private.

In response, Mr Zuckerberg said Facebook had 'drastically simplified' the system in response and that these changes would be rolled out across the network in the coming weeks.

From tomorrow tens of thousands of the UK's 23million Facebook users will see a banner at the top of the homepage that will introduce a raft of changes.

They concentrate on three key areas: a single control for content, more powerful controls for sharing basic information and an easier way of stopping your information being shared with third party applications.

Privacy controls will now be displayed in a simple grid that will appear on a single page. Mr Zuckerberg said Facebookers could choose to share with friends, friends of friends or everyone 'all just with one click.'

He added that it will now be easier for people to turn off platform applications and the 'Instant Personalisation Pilot Program', so that none of your information is shared with applications or third parties.

However, Mr Zuckerberg refused to recognise calls from European and Australian authorities who wanted far stricter controls with a full 'opt-in' system that wouldn't make any use of a member's information without clear consent.

'Users haven't told us that is what they want,' Mr Zuckerberg said, referring to introducing far stricter privacy controls.

'They want to share their information with their friends, that's what Facebook is all about.'

The new privacy controls are now all on a single page

Facebook has introduced a number of stronger security features. The company now allows you to restrict the information visible to everyone. Although your name and profile picture will still appear, you can stop strangers from seeing your list of friends.

Also the privacy settings you create under the new system will be rolled out with any new products. So should you decide you want 'Friends only' for sharing on Facebook, new products will automatically be given the same setting.

'We are trying to balance trying to innovate with being sensitive to these issues,' Mr Zuckerberg told the conference.

Mr Zuckerberg in front of an image of the first version of the site. He said the privacy settings had become over-complicated as the website evolved

The company hopes the alterations will stop a mass protest on May 31, with hoards of members threatening to quit the network on the same day.

Simon Davies, the director of the global advocacy group, Privacy International, said: 'These measures go a small distance towards solving Facebook's overall privacy problem.

'The biggest challenges are yet to come though. The first of these is that the vast majority of people don't use privacy settings.'

While Mr Zuckerberg admitted they had experienced a rather large backlash he was at pains to point out that they were actively listening to the feedback.

'I think people still trust that Facebook will give them a good experience,' he added.

Richard Allan, former MP and Director of European Public Policy for Facebook, said: 'We hope people will see we at Facebook have responded to their concerns and that those losing confidence with the network will regain it.'

Mr Zuckerberg had admitted earlier this week that the global website had 'moved too fast' and had 'missed the mark' in terms of privacy. ( dailymail.co.uk )

READ MORE - Facebook bows to user pressure with privacy control shake-up... BUT falls short of EU demands

Facebook: privacy changes ‘as soon as possible’

Facebook: privacy changes ‘as soon as possible’, says Zuckerberg. Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said that Facebook sometimes moves ‘too fast’ but is working to fix mistakes made on privacy

Facebook chief executive and founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that users find the social network’s controversial privacy controls “too complex”, but has said that the website will move to adjust them so that they are simpler “as soon as possible”.

Writing in the Washington Post, Zuckerberg said that the site’s 400 million users were “a challenge to keep satisfied”, but continued to claim that “if people share more, the world will become more open and connected. And a world that's more open and connected is a better world”.

Facebook: privacy changes ‘as soon as possible’

He said that, however, user reactions to new changes to privacy settings suggested that “sometimes we move too fast - and after listening to recent concerns, we're responding. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted. We just missed the mark”.

Zuckerberg conceded that “there needs to be a simpler way to control your information," and said that "in the coming weeks, we will add privacy controls that are much simpler to use”.

He added that the site operates under five principles, which give users control over their own information, and which also ensure that Facebook is free and does not provide access to private information for advertisers or users or services that individuals do not wish to permit.

Some campaigners, such as those behind the website Quitfacebookday, may however continue to be worried by Zuckerbergs’s commitment to “keep focused on achieving our mission of giving people the power to share and making the world more open and connected”. More than half of Facebook’s users have already indicated that they could quit the site, and Google searches for how to leave Facebook have increased substantially over the last few weeks. ( telegraph.co.uk )

READ MORE - Facebook: privacy changes ‘as soon as possible’

Quitting Facebook: What Happens When You Deactivate?

Quitting Facebook: What Happens When You Deactivate?. What Happens to Photos, Wall Messages, Games If You Deactivate Facebook Account?

For most of us, it will likely never be more than an idle threat. But what happens if you actually do decide to sign off from Facebook -- for good?

Frustrated by privacy changes or perhaps simply overwhelmed by the non-stop online chatter, Facebook users sometimes say it's time to go cold turkey. But a few really do follow through.

After Facebook's most recent changes and the discovery of a (now-fixed) security hole that let users see friends' chats, complaints from Facebook users erupted last week in comment threads and even a dedicated protest page on the site.

But Peter Rojas, co-founder of the popular user-generated gadget site gdgt, announced on Twitter that he was actually going to cut the cord.

Quitting Facebook

"I was spending more time managing my account than actually using my account," he toldABCNews.com. "Having to constantly monitor the privacy settings was way too complicated. You can never be sure if you actually caught everything."

Before Deactivation, Facebook Lists Friends Who Will Miss You

Rojas said that though he never expected others in the tech community to respond to his action, he thinks the Facebook privacy issue is a big one.

"I'm happy to use the site, but I don't want to be sharing my private updates [and] personal information with other Web sites," he said.

After hitting the "deactivate" button listed under "Account Settings," he said the site tried to convince him to stay.

Before completing the process, Facebook asks the question "Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?" and displays pictures of a few friends, captioned with the lines "[Friend's name here] will miss you."

"It just seemed really desperate in a way that Facebook doesn't need to be desperate," he said.

Maybe someone at Facebook thought it might be a clever way to bid departing users farewell, he said, but it "just seems kind of weird to be so almost pathetic. They certainly don't need to do that. It's not like they're hemorrhaging users."

But according to the tech blog Search Engine Land, more and more people seem to be at least curious about how to delete their Facebook pages.

Tech Blog: More People Searching for How to Delete Facebook Accounts

In a blog post Monday, editor-in-chief Danny Sullivan said that while doing a "how do I" search on Google he noticed that "how do I delete my facebook account" was one of the top suggested search topics.

According to Google, suggested search topics are based on the queries of others and are determined algorithmically without human intervention. The popularity of search terms is one of the factors used in the algorithm.

To see how recent the Facebook trend was, Sullivan used Google Trends, which shows the popularity of certain searches over certain periods of time.

Although there was not enough search volume for "how do I delete my facebook account," he said he found something interesting when he entered "delete facebook account."

"Yes, there is definitely a rising trend," he wrote. "Over time, more and more searches at Google have involved it, it appears."

Facebook Users Can Deactivate or Permanently Delete Accounts

He also wrote that if you start typing in "delete" into the Google search box, the first suggested topic is "delete facebook account."

Facebook gives users the option to deactivate or delete their accounts, though listed under "Account Settings," the deactivate option is much easier to locate. To find the delete option, users have to search for the option in the site's "Help Center."

If a user decides to deactivate an account, the profile information is no longer available on Facebook, but the site still saves all of the information in case the user returns.

"We preserve the account in its entirety. People often deactivate for temporary reasons and expect their content and information to be there for them when they return," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement.

The user is taken off Community pages, photos tagged with her are de-tagged and status updates or other information posted to her own page are taken down. Posts on friends' walls remain, but the person's name appears in unclickable text.

Facebook Waits 14 Days Before Deleting Account

Still, Facebook said third-party applications or sites might be able to hold on to that information "to the extent permitted by our policies." If a user turned over credit card information on Facebook to buy virtual gifts or make other purchases, that information is also retained by Facebook.

The social network said there is no limit on how long a user can keep her account deactivated.

But if a Facebook user really wants to make the separation permanent, she can choose to delete the account altogether. If a user goes to the "Help Center" and searches for "delete account," she is directed to a link that lets her send a deletion request to Facebook.

Once they receive the request, the spokesman said the site waits 14 days before deleting the account.

"Because deletion is irreversible, this allows people who mistakenly submitted a request to let us know so we can cancel it," the Facebook spokesman said.

After the 14 days, Facebook said it purges the user's information from the site. The policy says copies of some materials may remain for "technical reasons," but Facebook did not immediately explain this further.

Though Facebook said it collects information about how many users have deactivated or deleted accounts, the spokesman said it generally does not publicize that information.

Industry Watcher: Facebook Continues to Grow

Still, despite user complaints and possible curiosity about leaving the site, industry watchers say Facebook appears to be attracting even more people.

"The site is still growing really fast as far as we can tell. It's growing fast, especially some of the younger [users], men and women in their 20s," said Eric Eldon, co-editor of the Inside Network, which runs the Inside Facebook blog.

He said Facebook grew by at least 4 million U.S. users in March to reach 117 monthly unique visitors and added about 20 million global users to reach more than 400 million users worldwide.

"One concern at this point is that Facebook can do so many changes that eventually people get fed up and delete their accounts, or at least stop using the site regularly," he said. But "that's always a concern but it hasn't happened yet."

"Maybe Facebook is so ingrained in people's lives so it's not a risk," he continued. "This is all such new territory." ( abcnews.com )

READ MORE - Quitting Facebook: What Happens When You Deactivate?

Facebook’s Dr Evil wants to be your closest friend

Facebook’s Dr Evil wants to be your closest friend. Opposition to the social networking site is growing as it seeks to milk users for ever more personal information.

Mark Zuckerberg will be 26 on May 14 but he looks younger. He is worth $4 billion and he runs a website with 400m users and rising. This website could be worth £15 billion. Or next to nothing. Everybody used to love this website. Not any more.

Zuckerberg’s Facebook — dreamt up in his Harvard dorm room in 2004 — is to social networking what the iPod is to MP3 players. It is the industry standard.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Teenage girl using laptop

Once used overwhelmingly by teens and students, it now crosses all demographic groups. All it does is connect people. Joining, you rapidly acquire lists of friends, learn what they are up to, see their photographs and so on. Increasingly, however, it is used by companies to generate a buzz about their products or to trawl for information. And this is where things get tricky.

You see, Zuckerberg has a problem. He doesn’t make much money. In fact, since almost everything about Facebook is free, it is hard to see how he makes any. Yet in 2007 Microsoft paid $240m for a 1.6% share in the company. It did not do this to make people happy. It did it to make money. But how?

The answer is, or should be, obvious. Facebook’s database appears to be pure marketing gold. It will soon embrace every detail of the likes, dislikes, habits, obsessions, love lives and shopping of half a billion people. These are people who can be targeted by advertising and marketing.

That means selling their details, and at that point the Facebook friendly mask drops to be replaced by something far harsher.

Down the phone line from Berkeley, California, Jaron Lanier chuckles. “It’s a bizarre dotcomedy to me. Facebook keeps trying to become more sinister, keeps trying to be Dr Evil, and keeps fumbling it,” he says. Lanier is a Silicon Valley aristo who is credited with inventing virtual reality and has now turned against the culture of the place. His latest book, You Are Not a Gadget, is a scathing attack on the Valley’s betrayal of its early ideals.

Facebook has made three attempts to “monetise” its database. The first, in 2007, was Beacon. This linked commercial sites to Facebook and was presented as a new sharing tool: in fact, it allowed companies into the users’ personal details. There was a class-action lawsuit and it was shut down last September.

Then, in December, Facebook changed its privacy settings — the ways users can determine what information is made public. This became known as Facebook’s Greatest Betrayal because it forced previously private information out into the open. Worse, the new settings were almost impossible for a casual user to keep track of.

“If you’re a skilled computer programmer,” says Lanier, “you could probably understand the privacy settings, and if you aren’t, then you don’t have the skill to use Facebook in a knowing way.”

Now — Dr Evil attempt No3 — Facebook has announced a series of radical changes called “social plug-ins”. We can instantly tell our friends what we like by pressing a “Like” button on whatever website we happen to enjoy. Superficially, this gimmick sounds innocent. But it reveals your details to companies that can then target you. It personalises your web browsing, but at the expense of exposing you to commercial pressure. All of which has turned out to be slightly less popular than toothache.

“So now you’ll have the most comprehensive database concerning people and their interests,” snarls SJ Buckner on her Anti-Facebook League of Intelligentsia blog. “You’ve made an information-sharing deal to help companies target consumers. Good. Because that’s what we all desire deep down inside. To be targeted. We all want to be the deer behind the hunter’s gun.”

The big geek blog TechCrunch reported that, after the Facebook announcement, “a lot of geeks are considering leaving Facebook” and “veritable droves of Google software engineers are among them”.

Anti-Facebook feeling is not new. As long ago as 2008 students were setting up “Facebook refusenik” groups. But that was a generic protest about people spending too much time on their computers. This is different; this is the anger of net idealists who feel they have been sold to The Man, the faceless embodiment of corporate power.

Most worrying of all for Facebook, four US senators wrote to Zuckerberg after the social plug-in announcement, raising concerns about publicly available data, third- party storage of data and instant personalisation, which threatens to hand out friend lists and personal data to “third-party partners”.

Should you worry about this? Well, yes. Your sex, postcode and date of birth are all that is needed to steal your identity. For millions, those details and, thanks to Facebook, many others are out there. We can be sloppy about this.

Mary Madden, of the Internet & American Life Project, run by the Pew Research Center think tank in Washington, points out an alarming disconnect between what people say about preserving their privacy and what they do on the internet. “The young say they do care about their privacy and control over their information but we don’t see a great level of vigilance. There are contradictions. The important point is that privacy is often discussed in binary terms — either they do care or they don’t. But in reality there are many shades of grey,” she says.

So maybe we should think of “privacy” slightly differently when considering Facebook’s relentless attempt to make money by getting inside our heads and sifting through our tastes, habits and compulsions.

Certainly, Lanier is pretty relaxed about the threats of privacy invasions and identity thefts, but about the Facebook land grab on the space in our heads, he is not so laid-back. The way the internet has developed, he believes, is hollowing out our humanity. “We are gradually installing a social contract in which what we do with our brains isn’t worth anything so we’re gradually reducing all of our prospects. We do pay for it but in a sort of slow, gradual way,” he says.

If you really must be hollowed out but want to avoid the attentions of The Man and his data miners, here is my advice. Mislead. Misdirect. Where possible, put in false birth dates, wrong postcodes; invent weird interests. Remember, out there on the internet, lying is the new truth. ( timesonline.co.uk )

READ MORE - Facebook’s Dr Evil wants to be your closest friend