Who Founded Facebook? A New Claim Emerges
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The Web site has been fighting claims that its founder stole the idea. Now another man says he was the creator.
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If it was created in the course of business Employers could have grounds to demand ownership of employees' social networking profiles, such as those generated on Facebook, MySpace or Bebo, according to a leading intellectual property lawyer.â¦
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Blog: Popular social-networking site makes its first buy: Parakey, a Web start-up created by Firefox's co-founders.
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Facebook.com, the No. 2 U.S.  social network site that is quickly expanding beyond its  college student base, has been met with a sudden privacy  backlash by users after it made design changes this week.
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Facebook.com reveals even more than its online exhibitionists want.
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Facebook's application platform could be the next battleground in the privacy wars. Will Facebook fold and finally respect user privacy?
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The matter of Scoble vs. Facebook is not about either. It's about the deeper choice we face in all the relationships we choose on the Net: the choice between dependence and independence. read more
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Microsoft's overture toward Facebook may be a prelude to an IPO.
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I don't know what Bebo is, I guess it's a social network, they say it's #3 in the USA, #1 in the UK, but they just did something that's pretty likely to work, if it's technically possible. They're cloning Facebook so that their service will run Facebook apps. What this means, if they can pull it off, is that they won't have to fight to get support from developers. That's a big deal. Google could have done this with OpenSocial. Watching the panel assembled by Marc Canter at LeWeb3, I was reminded of every tech conference I've been to for almost 30 years. Some big company sitting in the center, and lots of smaller ones sucking up to them, not daring to say what's obvious, that the big company is only interested in limiting the growth of an upstart (not present on stage of course). That's where the Fear comes in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. We don't say anything because we're too scared to. Even the outspoken Marc Canter, who's smart and has been around this block many times, doesn't dare say what's obvious.  Now Bebo decides to get in lockstep with Facebook, not Google. Of course! Facebook has the juice. But this is a dangerous place to be if Facebook doesn't want them there, and being a big company, they probably don't. The only value of having clones to FB is that it negates the threat from Google. Sometimes having clones is a good thing, but usually the clones take over the market. Witness MSIE and Netscape, and then Firefox. Compaq et al and IBM. dBASE and Fox. It's possible to depose an installed leader if it's possible to clone them. As a user and developer, I'd like to see FB be open to cloning. If I were a FB shareholder I'm not so sure. One constituency that's sure to like the existence of clones are Facebook developers. Without choice in platform vendors, they have nowhere to go when the sole vendor decides to take over their market. With a viable alternative, unless FB is incredibly aggressive and builds its competitive features so they can run on competitive platforms, at least developers will have a place to run their apps when FB encroaches. Platforms are a game, like Risk, with rules and strategies. Google did not play the game wisely with OpenSocial. I chalk this up to inexperience on the part of the strategists. So far Facebook has been doing what's needed to keep its dominant position. Bebo deciding to clone the Facebook API ratifies that position, it's a gutsy move, but the best one available to them, and to other would-be Facebook competitors. PS: The news is slow to reach Europe. Facebook said yesterday that they support what Bebo is doing. Very enthusiastically. That should be the end of OpenSocial.
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I just figured something out, and it's the kind of thing that's best said publicly, even though it's likely to: 1. Be misunderstood and 2. Upset some people. But since it's all about this blog it really is best to air it here. First what triggered the epiphany. I was over at Loic Le Meur's house in San Francisco yesterday having lunch with his family and friends. We were all drinking wine (very good wine of course), enjoying the view, and talking about this and that, when the subject turned to Mike Arrington. Loic said that Mike told him that we used to be best friends. I couldn't figure out what that meant, because our friendship was the business kind of friendship not the personal kind. What does it mean to best friends in that way? And how does that relate to having a blog? It never occurred to me that friendship meant that (here's the epiphany) that I would only say positive things about Mike's business. It didn't occur to me until I heard Loic's side of a blog-fight that I saw happen from a distance, with Sam Sethi, Mike and Loic.  Complicated? You bet. Too complicated. An unspoken deal that I never agreed to. When Mike was starting TechCrunch, I pointed to his blog all the time, with glowing phrases. Because I was truly impressed with what he was doing and because I wanted to encourage other people to do it too. I wanted people to write about technology products based on how they used them, not based on alliances, investment, posturing of execs, the crappy stuff that means almost nothing to users, and imho is just a substitute for actually understanding the technology. Mike was approaching products the way I felt they should be approached. Hence the praise. Fact is, my opinion of Mike, as a person, hasn't changed much in the last couple of years. He has a personal charm and charisma that not everyone finds appealing, but I do. I like hanging out with the guy. However, that doesn't mean that if my opinion of TechCrunch, his business, isn't uniformly positive (and of course these days it is actually fairly negative) that I will withhold it. But it's also part of Mike's way of dealing with people that he sees criticism as betrayal. I just don't see it that way. I've had the shit kicked out of me so many times, and as a programmer I understand that criticism is necessary to perfect a user interface, even to get the damned thing working, that even when it hurts, I have to push the hurt aside and listen to what people are saying, and try to respond to it. Professionalism demands it.  Anyway, one of the reasons I want to write this now is that I've written about Loic's business here a couple of times in very positive terms. I don't want anyone, esp Loic, to assume that this will always be so. If they get in the way of other creative people, or otherwise act as a poor example of entrepreneurship in technology, of course I will write about it, and will say what I think. I would expect Loic and people at his company to take what I write to heart, and consider it. My feelings won't be hurt if they don't do what I say.  Same as when I said Facebook sucks. Or when I criticize Techmeme. This isn't in any way meant to reflect on the quality of the people at Facebook (some of whom I know to be outstanding people of high principle) or Gabe Rivera who I know to be a very smart and competent and honorable person. It's possible to critcize someone's work and still admire the person. My epiphany is that a lot of people who thought were my friends, didn't understand this very basic thing about me.
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Facebook lands a Web-based operating system company with pedigree papers.
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Blog: Bay Partners is launching a special program for Facebook entrepreneurs.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended the company's Beacon advertising system in a 60 Minutes interview set to air on Sunday.
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Microsoft's $240 million investment is much smaller than the rumored $750 million that Facebook sought. Why the difference? Epicenter's Terrence Russell analyzes the deal.
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Last week Democratic presidential hopeful Barak Obama launched his own social network, MyBarakObama.  Thereâs been a lot of discussion as to who made this and how well it works. Iâm not really concerned with either. What Iâm wondering is: Why was this made? MyBarakObama offers features already available on free sites like MeetUp, MySpace and Facebook [...]
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Facebook founder says advantages of using social sites might take decades to become fully apparent.
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Networking website Facebook is to face legal action on Wednesday in a suit brought by a rival site's founders.