The developers that are making money on applications placed on Facebook are generally selling virtual goods and games on the social network.  Facebook itself hasn’t created a payment platform yet.  However Facebook is currently testing a payment system platform over the next several weeks where real money can be exchanged.

A payment system made available through the social network could be huge.  Similar to how Apple sells music and applications for a small cut of each transaction, Facebook could do something similar.  Facebook currently makes most of its money from advertising and hasn’t done much to monetize applications on their own website.

Last month Facebook tried an experiment called Credits.  Credits was a virtual currency where users could give virtual points to each other for things such as favorable shared links.  As we receive more news on the payment systems rumor, we’ll continue to update Pulse2.com.

[via VentureBeat]

Before Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard University, he attended a private boarding high school called Phillips Exeter Academy.  Education at this elite high school has a tuition cost of $37,960 for boarding students per year and $29,330 per year for day students.  The school was established in the 1780’s and has alumni that comprises of politicians, major executives, celebrities, etc.

When Zuckerberg was at Harvard he worked for a company on campus called ConnectU that was started by Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra.  He quit that company to start his own company called TheFacebook.com.  Zuckberg reportedly turned down offers to be acquired by both Microsoft and Yahoo! after it had started growing rapidly.  The origins of the name TheFacebook.com may have started at Exeter itself.

Below are a couple of images from Exeter of their annual student directory.  The student directory is titled “The Photo Address Book” but has the nickname of “The Facebook.”  David W. Farrant, a student at Exeter that graduated in 2000 confirmed with ReadWriteWeb that The Photo Address Book was called The Facebook by students because the original name was a mouthful.

When Zuckerberg was a senior, student body president Kris Tillery pushed to have the student directory published online in 2000.  It turned out that they did take the student directory online under the URL: http://student.exeter.edu/facebook.  This website is not online anymore.

While Zuckerberg was at Exeter, he developed an artificial intelligence music player software that Microsoft and AOL both had interest in.  Both companies also wanted to recruit Zuckerberg to their companies, but he decided to go to Harvard instead.   At Harvard, Zuckerberg also started a service called Facemash which was similar to Hot or Not, but pulled photos of student dorm photos.  Admins at Harvard were not happy with that service so they had him take it down.

And that is one of the origins of Facebook.  If Zuckerberg did not attend Exeter, there probably would not be a Facebook today and Friendster would still be the place to be.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Over the last week, Facebook has been criticized for not deleting groups that promote the denial of the Holocaust.  The biggest debate around these groups was the issue of free speech and Facebook’s terms of service (TOS).  Brian Cuban, a Dallas-based attorney and brother of Mark Cuban, has been pushing for the removal of the Holocaust denial groups.

“The Holocaust Denial movement  is nothing more than a pretext to allow the preaching of hatred against Jews and to recruit other like minded individuals to do the same.  Allowing these groups to flourish on Facebook under the guise of ‘open discussion’ does nothing more than help spread their  message of hate,” wrote Brian Cuban on his blog.  “Is this the kind of open discussion that Facebook wants to encourage?  Is this really where you want to draw your line?”

Since Cuban started pushing for the removal and additional coverage was made at TechCrunch, two out of the five groups have been disabled.  Three of them remain.  Facebook has pushed for the removal of pictures that show breastfeeding and even recently banned a Ku Klux Klan group.  Why they are taking their time removing the Holocaust Denial groups is a mystery to me.

Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt responded the controversy being stirred by Brian Cuban and Michael Arrington (TechCrunch).  Schnitt wrote “Many of us at Facebook have direct personal connection to the Holocaust, through parents who were forced to flee Europe or relatives who could not escape. We believe in Facebook’s mission that giving people tools to make the world more open is a better way to combat ignorance or deception than censorship, though we recognize that others–including those at the company, disagree.”

[via CNET]

Social network company Facebook.com has launched their service in 6 new Indian languages.  These languages include Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil, Telegu, and Malayalam.  The Facebook page that people in India connect from are asked “Do you speak Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Telugu, Tamil or Malayalam? Now you can use Facebook in any of these languages to connect with your Indian friends all over the world.”

Last year, Mark Zuckerberg went on a spiritual journey tour around India after some major changes were made at the company.  One of the co-founders had recently left and the company was getting tons of funding. Fortunately the addition of the Indian languages may encourage more users in India to join the social network.  Worldwide, about 770 million people speak the 6 languages that were added.

[via TopNews]

Social network company Facebook is switching offices from downtown Palo Alto, California and moving to a 150,000 sq. ft. office building at Stanford Research Park.  The Research Park is located at 1601 S. California Ave.  This move directly affects 850 of Facebook’s local employees.

Facebook’s engineers will be on the first floor, marketers on the second, and operations on the third.  Everyone will get snacks and this move is designed to make employees closer.  Facebook will also be giving Bay Area employees a Caltrain GO Pass for unlimited rides from San JOse to San Francisco.

[via Mercury News]

The Palm Pre is getting closer and closer to their release date (which has yet to be announced). However the company is getting ready to market their phone.  The Palm Pre appeared in a Sprint commercial recently and it was leaked that Sprint employees will start training for the phone tomorrow.

Photographer Jaime Wilson let a picture of the TV ad leak on Twitter.  She even uploaded a photo of the Facebook set being used (pictured above) for us to check out.

On the set, there are protruding ledges for actors to sit on and the profile picture has a big empty area.  There are a few cutaways on the scene where embedded videos can be shown.  Palm will most likely use the TV set to demonstrate how easy it is to use Facebook features using the Pre.

[via SlashGear]

Chris Kelly is making an attempt to return to politics.  Kelly is the former Clinton campaign and White House staff member.  Kelly is currently the Facebook chief privacy officer and head of public policy.

“Ever since I worked in public life when I was very young, I thought it was something that I might do at some point,” stated Kelly.  “Over the past few years at Facebook, it’s become clear to me that the role of the attorney general is incredibly able to help make change in the world, and that’s what I got into technology to do, too.”

While Kelly’s team is campaigning, he will be staying with Facebook.  He also implied that he will not formally step down from the company unless he wins the election.

Recently Facebook revamped their terms of service that gives ownership of user content to the social networking company.  It doesn’t matter if a user quits the social network or not, the data still belongs to Facebook.

About 56% of users wanted the old TOS back where Facebook did not own the data submitted by users.  But then Facebook held a democratic process to define the new terms.  Facebook came up with the “Statement of Rights & Responsibilities.”  Several mothers complained when Facebook had removed pictures of them breastfeeding babies.

According to The Telegraph, the Isle of Man KKK group was removed from Facebook.  The group stated “Keep the Isle of Man white and free from foreigners.” The profile picture featured a hooded KKK member.

The description of the group was “There are too many comovers (sic) [non-British] on the Island. They are taking all of the jobs, houses and most of all they are taking advantage of our ****ing Island. …. join us and help clense (sic) the Isle of Man.”  One member posted this message on the wall of the group: “Damn blacks and indians (sic), coming over here taking our jobs – who the **** do they think they are?”

The person that wrote the “Damn blacks and indians” comment was actually mixed race and decided to write it as an ironic comment rather than being serious.

This group is a violation of Facebook’s terms that state “You will not post content that is hateful, threatening, pornographic, or that contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.”  This is why Facebook shut it down.

The Isle of Man is an island situated in the center of the British Isles.  Queen Elizabeth II holds the title of the Lord of Mann for the Isle of Man.

[via Mashable]

“We’ve seen attacks like these before,” stated Ryan McGeehan, threat analyst at Facebook. “We expect them. It’s nothing out of the ordinary.”

This past week, several scams have hit the social network that tried to convince users to enter passwords in to a fake website.  This has been going on for the last several days.

The two websites linked to the phishing attacks are FBstarter.com and BAction.net.  Facebook users themselves respond very quickly to the phish attacks on the security pages of the social network.  After that Facebook runs a “remove and clean” trace to have the phish messages wiped out.  Users affected by the phish attack are then expected to change their passwords.

MarkMonitor, a security firm then goes after the hosting companies of the phishing sites to have them shut down.  Google and Microsoft are notified to block the fraud websites from a browser standpoint.

[via PCW]

Facebook enthusiats that are all about networking and handing out creative business cards may want to take a note from designer Jean-Baptiste Gouraud.  He designed a business card that has a snippet from his Facebook profile picture.  The business card’s design looks similar to the screen where you are asked to confirm a friend on the social network.

This is just as clever as the “Google Me” business card.  I knew a Facebook business card was going to be made at some point, now all we need is a LinkedIn business card.

[via Walyou]

Swiss insurance company Nationale Suisse has fired an employee for surfing on Facebook while she was taking a sick day.  The woman said that she could not come to work because she had to lie in the dark rather than sitting in front of a computer.  Nationale Suisse reported that they lost trust in the employee.

“This abuse of trust, rather than the activity on Facebook, led to the ending of the work contract,” wrote the company in a statement.  The woman said she was surfing Facebook from her iPhone and wrote that her employer was spying on her and several other employees.  They were able to do so through a mysterious friend request which gives access to employee activities.  Nationale Suisse denied the spying accusation and said that they obtained the information from one of the woman’s colleagues.

This is the second time I’ve heard of an employee getting fired because of their use of Facebook.  Anglo Irish Bank fired intern Kevin Colvin for taking a “family emergency” day off to dress like a fairy at a Halloween party.

Yesterday night, it was announed that Facebook would be opening up a new set of APIs to build an ecosystem of applications around profiles and the user homepage.  Xobni, the plugin made around Microsoft Outlook is one of the first companies to jump on board with the new set of APIs.  In the sidebar of Mirosoft Outlook, Xobni will display links, pictures, status messages, contact info, and current position listed on LinkedIn.

Xobni will also show recent wall posts made of the contact’s Facebook profile and will give you the option to comment or “Like” the data listed.  Xobni users won’t have to upgrade software because all the changes run from the servers.  Xobni is only available on Windows machines so Mac users won’t have the benefit of the new application.

Xobni is based in San Francisco and expects to have the new application launched by around 6PM Pacific Time.  Xobni has over $14 million in funding and started out as a Y-Combinator company.

Tomorrow Facebook is expected to launch a new set of APIs for developers to build applications revolving around profiles and the homepage itself.   As you all know, Facebook recently redesigned the homepage to make it appear similar to the user homepage of Twitter.

This means that developers will be able to build services that revolve around photos, videos, notes, comments, the Like button, etc. with the permission of users.  This service will work with Facebook’s current standards.

Building applications around the homepage of Facebook may be beneficial because it has been a proven model for Twitter.  Many Twitter applications that track user activities have become widely popular with TweetDeck being an example.

Facebook currently has 200 million users and they are expected to make the announcement to the developers at a conference in Palo Alto, California tomorrow.

[via WSJ]

Facebook is looking for ways to increase their revenue and they are actually asking users whether they would pay for certain servies.  In this case, Facebook is asking if you would pay for a unique username that points to profiles (example: www.facebook.com/amit).  Several celebrities have already been given profile URLs for free in order to encourage them to update regularly and lure them away from Twitter.

For short URLs with certain keywords, it may end up turning into a bidding process.  For example www.facebook.com/john would get many offers.  MySpace.com already offers vanity URLs for free so this move may end up driving more people to create them on the other social network instead, but still maintain a Facebook profile.

Would you pay for a Facebook vanity URL?  Leave a comment.

[via AllFacebook]

Chris DeWolfe is one of the MySpace creators and was the CEO as of yesterday.  Now that he is out of the CEO position, there is a chance that former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta will be recruited.  Supposedly Natta left Facebook because he wanted to be CEO, but Zuckerberg did not accept that.  Sheryl Sandberg ended up replacing Natta.

Jon Miller is working on the details with Natta according to AllThingsD.  News Corp. was not planning to have DeWolfe leave the company but then TechCrunch reported that the company was looking for a replacement.  DeWolfe and Miller then started negotiating over the phone.  Both MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson will end up on different roles within News Corp.

Below is the internal e-mail sent out to News Corp. (Fox Interactive Media) employees:

To FIM Employees:

I am writing to share the news that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe will be stepping down from his executive role in the near future. He has agreed to serve as a strategic advisor to the Company and will remain on the board of MySpace China.

In addition, I am currently in discussions with MySpace President Tom Anderson regarding his role within the organization.

I want to take this opportunity to thank them both for their incredible contributions to the Company, and for pioneering one of the greatest social media revolutions of our time. I wish Chris nothing but the best in any new endeavors and, like many in this industry, am eager to witness his next innovations.

I understand the importance of having a dynamic, inspiring and innovative management team, and am dedicated to ensuring that MySpace continues to benefit from the highest levels of passion and enthusiasm.

I also want to thank everyone across FIM for giving me the opportunity to work with all of you. With MySpace, IGN, Photobucket, Fox Audience Network and our Digital Publishing Group, this is an exciting collective of properties and I’m enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead.

I hope to meet and work closely with many of you over the weeks and months to come.

Best regards,

Jonathan Miller