Facebook

The crew at Facebook has done well to amass a huge war chest (Microsoft's $240 million investment), 66 million members, 200,000 developers, 16,000 applications, 500 employees and somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in revenue for last year.

With the appointment of Sheryl Sandberg as COO, the odds just increased for Facebook to survive its adolescence (more on Techmeme).

Sandberg is 15 years senior to Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. She has been through the gauntlet, working in the Clinton administration and then at Google for six years, starting when the company had less than … Read more

Facebook announced on Tuesday that it has hired a new chief operating officer to replace the outgoing Owen Van Natta. Starting on March 24, veteran Google employee Sheryl Sandberg will take on the executive role at the social network.

For six years, Sandberg was vice president of global sales and operations at Google, where she helped to grow the company's AdWords and AdSense products, as well as its Google.org nonprofit division.

As part of her new job, according to a statement from the social-networking company, she will "be responsible for helping Facebook scale its operations and expand … Read more

Ben Ling, director of product marketing for the Facebook platform, gave a brief peek of the upcoming profile page update and outlined Facebook's vision at Graphing Social Patterns conference. The new profile page will combine the Wall and Minifeed, and additional tabs have been added to showcase users' favorite apps.

Ling said that Facebook has 200,000 developers and 16,000 applications so far. Of the 66 million current Facebook users, 98 percent have used at least one third-party application, and a significant number use six or seven applications, he said.

Ling described Facebook's vision as making its … Read more

The social Web is spawning more than millions of widgets, applications, and people connections. It is also has its own themed conference. Graphing Social Patterns got under way today in San Diego with a keynote by Charlene Li of Forrester Research on the future of social networks.

In the future social networks will be like air, Lee said. "No matter what you do, your social networks will be there. The social graph and your identity will be at your fingertips."

She predicted that by 2013 social networks will be open and ubiquitous. Reaching that plateau won't be … Read more

Facebook has denied giving the Moroccan government information to identify a man who was sentenced to prison for posting a fake profile of a Moroccan prince.

A Moroccan court last week sentenced the 26-year-old IT engineer to three years and fined him 10,000 dirhams ($1,320) for setting up a Facebook account in the name of King Mohammed's brother, Prince Moulay Rachid.

Some civil-liberties groups questioned whether Facebook helped the Moroccan government locate Fouad Mortada.

But The Wall Street Journal on Friday quoted Brandee Barker, a Facebook spokeswoman, as saying in a statement that while the company's … Read more

You know the warp feature on YouTube that's been kicking around for a while? Well video community YourTrumanShow has launched a similar tool this morning in the form of a Facebook app that lets you view your network of friends in a large array, and watch videos they've uploaded to various services without leaving the page.

Like YouTube's implementation, each video has its own collection of related clips, creating a large Web of videos that you can navigate around like an online map. You're also able to meet new social networking buddies based on your shared … Read more

Business social-networking site LinkedIn unveiled a redesigned homepage with a number of updates on Wednesday night. It's the latest step in an ongoing initiative to prove that LinkedIn is more than a glorified address book by encouraging more professional interaction among users.

The newly revamped home page, with its focus on a left sidebar and tabs along the top of the window, certainly echoes of the wildly popular but far less business-centric Facebook.

New updates to the site include "status" messages to indicate current activity, similar to Facebook's, and a number of new personalized "modules&… Read more

Facebook first announced last year that it was working on a redesign of members' profiles; now, the social-networking site has unveiled previews of its upcoming new look. The Facebook profile redesigns will start rolling out in the next few weeks.

With the new updates, you won't be able to see a member's entire profile on one screen. Personal information about someone will be included on one "tab" of a profile, whereas the "wall"--public messages, developer-created applications, News Feed updates, and other activity-related information--will be on a separate tab. A third tab will link to the photos that the member has uploaded. Facebook has also said that members will be able to create separate tabs for their favorite applications.

Part of this is because of technical issues, Facebook has said, telling members that the changes will make the interface cleaner. "As more and more information is available on Facebook--more photo albums, more applications, and more history--we've realized that Profiles have become cluttered and slow as a result," a release from the site read. "We're trying to make profiles more simple and relevant, while still giving you control over your profile and how you express yourself."

… Read more

Just a short while after abandoning Facebook due to being overwhelmed with friend requests, Bill Gates plans to experiment on rival service LinkedIn.

On Thursday, the Microsoft Chairman will post a question related to "how technology can be better utilized for charitable causes" to LinkedIn's entire 19 million members. I'm interested to see whether Gates finds LinkedIn scales to someone of his stature any better than Facebook.

The move comes as part of a set of announcements that LinkedIn plans to make on Thursday. A pitch from LinkedIn noted the company will have a revamped home … Read more