I recently tagged some of my closest friends to a random photo of people I don’t know in India eating ice cream for the sake of adding humor to their day.  Little did I know that my friends would write a lot of comments on that random photo, thus sending a lot of e-mails to everyone that I tagged.  Facebook is a total nuisance for that feature.

So what is Facebook doing about it? 

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Buddy Media, the owner of Acebucks was said to have received $1.5 million recently by a variety of well-known investors.  The investors include Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus, James Altucher, and Howard Lindzon.

The purpose of the funding is to expand the operational and marketing abilities of the Acebucks Facebook Application.  Acebucks’ aim is to become the leading virtual currency on Facebook.  Acebucks will be opening an API soon and other developers will be able to integrate Acebucks into different applications.

“”Facebook members can earn AceBucks by playing games, adding applications, completing surveys, inviting friends, opening a store and more. AceBucks can be used to buy both virtual and real goods and services through the AceBucks Mall and user-created stores,” states Buddy Media’s homepage.

Buddy Media is founded by Michael Lazerow.  Lazerow sold companies, Golfserv to Time Warner and U-Wire to Student Advantage.  Lazerow’s personal web site is available at: http://www.lazerow.com/.

Information Source:
[1] AllFacebook: Breaking: Acebucks Raises 1.5 Million
[2] Mashable: Facebook Virtual Currency AceBucks Raises $1.5 Million

For the last couple of days, Facebook’s search engine wasn’t working functionally.  I thought it was a problem with their Applications, but now I see why it was not working before.  They simply were rebuilding search functionality so that as you are typing a friends name, the search engine will provide suggestions based on who your friends are.

Allow me to demonstrate.  Lets say that I was looking for my Facebook friend, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and Wikia.  Below is a screen shot of the results that appear when I type in Jimmy:

Since I have only one friend named Jimmy and because Mr. Wales does not belong to any networks, only one name appeared and below his name is blank.  Here is another example, this time I will type in Mike:

Had I wanted to see any of these particular Mike profiles above, I would simply click on their name.  Showing the school name also helps the user remember how they associate with particular searches.

I really like this setup.  It makes finding friends a lot faster.  Before if I wanted to find a friend on Facebook, I would have to type Jimmy or Mike in the search engine, hit Enter, and my friends would show up at the top results and below my friends would be other Jimmys or Mikes on Facebook that I do not know.  That functionality still exists, but this measure makes search more efficient.  Thank you Facebook developers and good luck with opening the London office.

According to AllThingsDigital’s Kara Swisher, Facebook is considering raising additional funds for expansion or potential further acquisitions. Facebook’s first and only acquisition thus far is Parakey, a company created by two of Mozilla Firefox’s core programmers.

Considering the costs of maintaining Facebook between staffing, facilities, and server costs, I am not surprised that Facebook would be looking for more money. If I remember correctly, Facebook has roughly 40 million+ members, is expecting to make around $150 million this year in revenues (compared to $50 million in 2006), and is expecting to file for a possible IPO in the future. If Facebook decides to pursue an IPO, it would be around 2009 or beyond.

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In January 2002, Yahoo! acquired New York-based, HotJobs.com for $436 million.  HotJobs gained popularity by having a $1.6 million TV advertisement run on Super Bowl XXXIII in 1999.  HotJobs’ revenue at the time was only $2.5 million.  HotJobs was started by Richard Johnson.  Today, the service is known as Yahoo! HotJobs.  Matt Martone runs the Job Search Marketing blog as a Manager of the Media Sales Strategy group for Yahoo! HotJobs in New York.

Yahoo! HotJobs recently launched a Facebook application:

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When I subscribed to Time magazine through a solid deal that a Best Buy cashier promised me, I signed away my credit card with the intention that it will provide me information that related to current events, not things that I already know about. 

The cover page of this past Time magazine had a picture of Mother Teresa and the cover title was The Secret Life Of Mother Teresa, so how come when I turn to page 54, I find myself reading redundant news about Facebook’s refusal of Yahoo!’s $1 billion offer, controversial News Feed feature, and how it evolved from a Harvard University directory?  This information was already known in 2006.  The year, 2007, is 3 months away and between the old news coverage of Facebook and reading about Digg’s overhyped homepage redesign, I find myself slightly agreeing with Mark Cuban.

Does anyone agree with me when I say that I fear for America’s web technology future?  Innovation needs to persevere once again.  Where is the next Wales,’ Roses,’ Zuckerbergs,’ Jobs,’ Pages’ and Brins’, Yangs’ and Filos,’ and Gates’ today?  Under a rock?  Someone needs to make a further impact so that Time has something fresher to talk about.

After reading TechCrunch tonight, I read that Dave Winer “discovered” that Facebook news feeds are now accessible. Winer believes that these RSS feeds are new features, such as the Friends Status updates and Friends Posted Items. I believe that this feature has been around for a while. When you think about it, how else would the Netvibes Facebook application work without it?

Whether it was made public in the status update pages, I do not know. Winer strongly believes it is true, but I believe that looking at today’s Facebook applications, it must have been available within the depths of the API pages.

Winer seems to hope that these RSS feeds will be integrated into some sort of Twitter application.  So users can send Status updates through Twitter.  For reasons unknown, I never got into Twitter.  This is why I am not too excited about the speculation of being able to send Status updates through Twitter.

After all, users have tons of other ways to find out quickly what my Status on Facebook.  The easiest way is just to log in and find out in my Profile or looking on the Home page.

The source code of Facebook.com just leaked^[1].  This definetely does not bode well for Zuckerberg and his Facebookies considering the net worth of the source code at hand.  Some say that Facebook is valued at well over $2 billion.  But this is not the first case I’ve heard where a company has lost their application code to leakages.

Microsoft has had similar problems.  On February 12, 2004, CNET posted an article^[2] mentioning that Microsoft is investigating Windows 2000 source code leakages in chat rooms and underground web sites.  While the source code of Facebook was not completely revealed, there was enough to do some damage.  The damage is that the algorithms that make the site move through functions swiftly was revealed.  That is grounds enough for developers (who can make sense of the code) to replicate similar strategies for their on web sites.

“For instance, the structure doesn’t follow any object oriented development practices, and it seems that the application is one large PHP file with a large number of custom functions living in the same namespace (they also seem to be using the Smarty templating engine),” wrote Nik Cubrilovic of TechCrunch.

How much damage is caused here financially, I cannot say.  Nor can I confirm whether this code is real or if it is a dud.  If it is real, the consequences are irreversible.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook revamps their source code.  I think I can speak for Facebook when I say that they don’t need this mess happening especially with a pending lawsuit from ConnectU.

[update]: Response from Facebook staff.  Note comment #29 on TechCrunch story:
Brandee Barker
August 11th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Hi Nic-I wanted to clarify a few things in your story. Some of Facebook’s source code was exposed to a small number of users due to a bug on a single server that was misconfigured and then fixed immediately. It was not a security breach and did not compromise user data in any way. The reprinting of this code violates several laws and we ask that people not distribute it further.Thanks to you and the TC readers for helping us out on this one.

[1] TechCrunch: Facebook Source Code Leaked
[2] CNET: Microsoft probes Windows code leak

Ever since Facebook opened its APIs and encouraged companies, independent developers, and users to create their own applications, there was a flood of programs entering the market. There is no barriers to entry except having to deal with Facebook’s framework. I am still a proactive Facebook user and think its a great social network tool, but I believe that it makes a crappy “operating system.”

I honestly had mixed feelings when I saw NPR created a Facebook application. I had these apathetic feelings because I’m simply sick of all Facebook applications, both practical (like this one) and useless (like Top Friends, SuperPoke, Zombie, etc.). I definitely enjoy listening to NPR on occasion and I was a fan of Marshall Kirkpatrick’s work on TechCrunch and in the few times I interacted with Kirkpatrick, he seems like a genuine guy. Therefore, I am rooting for SplashCast to do well also.

I’d say I first truly appreciated NPR when I listened to a streaming episode of Tavis Smiley interview John Cho and Kal Penn about Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle and how their characters busted stereotypes. I regret not getting into the whole podcasting scene and adding NPR podcasts to my iPod, but perhaps I’ll start doing so.

I’d like to see a way for NPR to utilize SplashCast technology independently of Facebook. Perhaps have a YouTube-like user interface for it. But I do think SplashCast has truly added value to their partnership to NPR. SplashCast has taken a traditional form of media and integrated into a Web 2.0 world. And the intention for doing so seems to be another way to consolidate information and make it more accessible.

References:
[1] SplashCast blog: NPR Podcast Player Launches in Facebook, powered by SplashCast

The Facebook application on Netvibes seems to be useful for the most part.  Friends’ mini-feed content is aggregated and summarized either in detailed views or thumbnail views are at the bottom.  And at the top there is a  list of whose birthdays are coming up (which I blurred on my screen shot).  The top portion of the application also lists friend requests, group invites, event invites, messages, and pokes.

Other than that, there is not much to the application.  Any link that a user clicks on will just open Facebook in a new window to that particular instance.  You don’t really get much use for this other than saving 30 seconds from typing in Facebook.com in your browser window and logging in because either way, this application will send you there. 

The search is pretty useful for finding friends within the RSS box itself, but after searching and clicking on the results, a new window is open again.  If Netvibes kept Facebook within their own site and places all outgoing links into a window pane instead, I would find this application more useful.  But this just seems to be just another way to be notified of friend updates and I’ve seen it before when using the Facebook Firefox toolbar plugin and when I go to m.facebook.com itself on my HTC Mogul. 

The main bullet point of my presentation is that the Facebook application on Netvibes does not benefit Netvibes users much.  Netvibes is more intended for ease of reading RSS feeds and this application just seems to be a unessential component.

Facebook Bug:
Today, Facebook went down for a few hours and then blogger/IBM employee, Matt Dibb reported: “Earlier on today I was getting some trouble connecting to Facebook’s login page - after trying to log in the connection just kept timing out instead of taking me to my home page like it usually does.” Dibb continued: “A couple of hours later I came back to my computer after finishing up some work elsewhere and tried logging in again (I’m not addicted - I can stop any time I want…!). To my surprise my login details - usually stored and prefilled by Firefox - had gone and were replaced by an unfamiliar email address^[1].”

Then the blogosphere reacted.  People are clearly concerned about the type of data that is stored on Facebook and that is understandable.  Facebook has tons and tons of pictures uploaded by users carelessly.  These users expect that none of these pictures will leak into the wrong hands.

However, in a PR group, Facebook released a statement:
“This morning, we temporarily took down the Facebook site to fix a bug we identified earlier today. This was not the result of a security breach. Specifically, the bug caused some third party proxy servers to cache otherwise inaccessible content. The result was that an isolated group of users could see some pages that were not intended for them. The site has now been restored and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Audio App Killed:
The Facebook Audio application had about 750k users as of last week.  The Audio application allowed users to upload MP3s and place it on their profile. Facebook banned the app, reinstated it, and now banned it again.  VentureBeat^[4] has a full explanation of the product lifecycle of the Facebook Audio Application.

References:
[1] mdibb: Did Facebook get hacked today?
[2] TechCrunch: Facebook Outage
[3] Scobleizer: Facebook outage
[4] VentureBeat: Facebook kills Audio for copyright violations

I have a problem with you, website formerly known as thefacebook.com. When I joined you back in 2003, you were a nobody. I was a dumb college kid running around looking for a way to show off the number of friends I have in a more fashionable way than Friendster. I wanted to know who my friends’ friends were, their favorite quotes, their favorite movies, some of their contact info, and that is it!

Why the hell should I care if my friends SuperPoke me? Why should Facebook tell me to bite my friends in a vampire vs. werewolf adventure. Nor do I want to Grow-a-Gift. In the below screen shot, there are thousands of users that belong to certain applications. Why do they decide to join these applications? SPAM!! Almost every application asks a user to invite all of their friends. What is Facebook turning into? I’ll tell you what… Facebook applications are pretty much emulating Tagged.com, a social network that I consider to be spam.

Tagged is a social network based in San Francisco that automatically by default invites your friends via email to join their social network. To join a majority of Facebook applications, there is a form that by default has your friends check-marked to be invited to use the same applications. There is a way to opt-out of inviting your friends from the application, but many people do not pay attention to that. Tagged penetrates its users contact information from e-mails and insists that these so-called references join Tagged.com as well.

Some of America’s top bloggers are declaring Facebook bankruptcy, meaning they’re going to de-activate their account. And to be honest, if it wasn’t for Facebook’s photo album system, I’d be gone too. Facebook, Zuckerberg, get back to the basics. There is nothing to look forward to for incoming college students, especially since Facebook is open to everyone and to those who are finding ways to gain users a much easier way. Its only a matter of time until an exclusive Facebook alternative is released for people who want to be part of something elite and not have third-parties solicit.

Gideon Yu has been travelling from job-to-job around the Valley lately. I read a little bit of background on the guy from ValleyWag^[1]. Yu recently left Yahoo! working as a Treasurer to work as a junior partner at Sequoia Capital and YouTube’s Chief Financial Officer. But today, I read an article that Yu signed on to work as Facebook’s new CFO to oversee their accounting books.

This move enhances the speculations that Facebook will be going public. Facebook has been on a hiring binge for industry experts since F8 (Facebook Applications) was unraveled. Last week, Facebook acquired Parakey, a company that was started by a couple of Mozilla Firefox’s developers.

“My heart is first and foremost with venture-stage companies and consumer Internet companies,” stated Gideon Yu. “I’m hoping this is my last job for a long time.”

“I consider it kind of a coup that we were able to recruit him here,” stated Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg. “He’s just excellent.”

“We’re not looking to sell the company, and we’re really not looking to IPO any time soon,” continued Zuckerberg. “Our board and we believe it’s probably best to push some of these things off as long as possible.”

References:
[1] ValleyWag: Sequoia’s newest initiate
[2] Wall Street Journal: Facebook Hires Yu as Finance Chief

Social network, Facebook.com is becoming more and more mainstream everyday.  Bloggers are publishing thoughts about whether the company will go IPO due to a new financial-related job added to its list of jobs for the first time.  Facebook is also being compared to the success of Google as well.  Some bloggers even wrote that Microsoft is considering offering Facebook more than $5 billion for an acquisition recently. 

Today, at the Fortune iMeme conference in San Francisco, Calif. Jim Breyer of Accel Partners discussed Facebook’s future.  More specifically, a question that was asked to Breyer was, “What would be one example of catalyst where you and Mark would say we should sell the company?” 

To which Breyer replied:

“Part of it is always price…The company will do well over $100 million in revenue, and profitable, and significant EBITDA positive this year. Right now our job is to build out the company as significantly as possible. In our case, sold best companies too early…sold Perabit to various networking companies, a series of our networking companies that today would have been possible IPO candidates.”

There you have it, folks.  Straight from the mouth of a Facebook Board member and investor.  Facebook would be interested in going IPO, but if the price is right, Facebook would hand over the keys.  A question that I’d like to pose to the readers is that if you own a media/software/search engine company and had about a $150 billion market cap, what is the maximum amount you would pay to own Facebook?  Add a comment and discuss.

References:
[1] PaidContent: Fortune iMeme: Facebook Will Make Over $100 Million Revnues This Year
[2] Barron’s Fortune:  iMeme: VCs Talk About The New Tech Economy; Facebook ‘07 Rev To Top $100 Million

If you cannot already tell, I like the way Yahoo! Music Videos Facebook application is put together.  Having the ability to play videos on your profile is great and all, but it has done before (YouTube). 

What really stands out about this application to me is that it has an internal search engine that scans through Yahoo!’s artist database.  Also, Yahoo! Music leverages the ability to pull-together Facebook user information and provide contextual videos.  For example, on the Yahoo! Music Facebook application homepage, there are video thumbnails that link to videos that are made by the artists that my Facebook friends like.

Below is a screen shot:

Through the application, users can embed videos on the Facebook profile both on the main content division or on the left-side bar.  Users can also click on New Videos, Most Popular, save favorite videos, and send a video dedication to users publicly or privately.

“I got involved (even though I was already pretty busy on other projects) because a Yahoo!/Facebook app would amount to a mashup, and I love making mashups. Mashups are challenging because they involve multiple colliding technologies. In this case, not only would we be combining the Facebook and Yahoo APIs, which are very different, but I would need to be working in both PHP and Flash Actionscript, and I’d need to do a little image rendering on the back-end. I had been hired by Yahoo! pretty much on the strength of the mashups I had created with Flickr, using those same technologies, so here was a chance to exercise those skills, but also to get to know a new platform I had little familiarity with,” wrote Jim Bumgardner of Yahoo! Music^[1]. 

Bumgardner also has an interesting blog where he writes about some of the projects he’s involved with at: www.krazydad.com/blog/^[2]

The Yahoo! Music Facebook application is available at:
http://apps.facebook.com/yahoomusicvideos/^[3]

[1] Yahoo! Music Blog: Yahoo! Music Videos on Facebook
[2] Jim Bumgardner’s blog: Krazydad
[3] Yahoo! Music Facebook Application