Rich Guys Club

Facebook is simplifying its privacy controls amid growing unrest from many of its users. Protesters have been organizing campaigns to quit Facebook and privacy groups have complained to regulators after Facebook announced new features last month, including “instant personalization” that tailors other websites to users’ Facebook profiles.

“A lot of people are upset with us,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged at a news conference Wednesday at the company’s Palo Alto, Calif., headquarters.

One complaint has been over the fact that while Facebook allows users to hide their list of interests on their personal profile pages, the user would still show up elsewhere as “liking” that band, company or hobby. Zuckerberg said that under the simplified controls, privacy preferences will be extending to those other places as well.

Zuckerberg said the company is also making it easier for users to decline the instant personalization feature.

He said that as Facebook offered more granularity in its privacy choices, the settings have become too complex for many users. He said Facebook is trying to simplify the controls  –  and making them apply retroactively and to new services that have yet to launch.

Read More: – the Associated Press

After 10,000 users banned together for Quit Facebook Day, CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg knew there was a problem.

The site’s new privacy policies have enraging Facebook users. And that only adds to further allegations that Zuckerberg stole the source code from a rival company.

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Might want to rethink your decision to keep you Facebook after this.

The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is in some hot water this morning as some transcipted IM messages have just been released from back in 2004. Back then, Facebook was just for Harvard students and Mark was a 19 year-old eating Ramin noodles. But even then, he knew the power of the website he had created…and he knew how he was going to use it.

The following conversation was between Mark and an unnamed friend:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Read More:

Just as he hoped to clean up his image, Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, is to be portrayed in a Hollywood film as a ruthless and untrustworthy sex maniac.

The website and its 400m users have been beset in the past week by rows over changes to its privacy settings.

However, they have nothing on the invasion of privacy facing Zuckerberg in a £40m black comedy called The Social Network, adapted from The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich, with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, creator of The West Wing.

Six years ago Zuckerberg created what was to become the internet phenomenon Facebook in a “tidal wave” of grief after being dumped by his girlfriend.

On Friday, as Zuckerberg celebrated his 26th birthday, he faced another tsunami of anger, this time from Facebook users who turned the socially awkward youth into the world’s youngest billionaire.

Read More: – By John Harlow, the Times Online

By Spencer E. Ante, Business Week

So much for cutting back during the downturn.

As Facebook ramps up hiring from about 1,000 employees today to as many as 1,200 by the end of the year, the social networking giant is recruiting technical and business leaders from some of the best known firms in Silicon Valley to help accelerate its financial performance.

Among the new hires at Facebook are Arturo Bejar, who will soon join as a director of engineering from Yahoo! (YHOO), and David Recordon, an open-source software expert from blogging software maker Six Apart, BusinessWeek.com has learned.

Bejar led Yahoo’s security team, and Recordon was one of the developers of the OpenID authentication software, according to Facebook. Other new hires include former Genentech Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman, now doing the same job at Facebook, and Greg Badros, a senior engineer from Google (GOOG) and now an engineering director at Facebook.

The new technical and managerial talent is part of a 40%-to-50% expansion of Facebook staff that was reported by Bloomberg News on Aug. 24. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Bloomberg that the recession presents an opportunity for the Web’s largest social network—and one of techdom’s hottest young companies—to scoop up talented engineers and managers. “No one else has been hiring,” Zuckerberg told Bloomberg. “It’s been a great environment for us because the economy has helped out.”

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By Kristi Oloffson
Time Magazine

Facebook has long been viewed as the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the social-networking juggernaut that’s garnered more than 200 million users in five short years. But Ben Mezrich, author of the 2003 smash hit “Bringing Down the House,” wants to make sure readers learn a few more of the names behind Facebook’s runaway success — including Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s former best friend and an original Facebook co-founder, and twins Tyler and Carmeron Winklevoss, the classmates who originally hired Zuckerberg to code a Web site of their own.

In “Accidental Billionaires — The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal,” Mezrich, a 1991 Harvard grad, traces the company’s progress from its 2004 origins in a beer-soaked dorm room to the worldwide phenomenon it has become. The book, which is labeled non-fiction and has already been optioned for a movie, uses some of the same controversial literary techniques Mezrich deployed in “Bringing Down the House,” including re-created dialogue, imagined details, and compressed conversations. He talked with TIME about his controversial methods, why he considers himself a journalist, and how Facebook is permanently shaping our lives — whether we like it or not.

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By David Gelles

Facebook has begun tapping a new revenue stream with the introduction of an internal payments system, a move that might help the fast-growing social networking website achieve profitability while being less reliant on advertising.

The long-rumoured payments system, which is in its early stages, will allow users to purchase Facebook “credits”, then use those credits to buy virtual goods from the third-party applications that run on the site, or from Facebook itself.

“Over time, this will be very significant,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner Research. “Social networking sites have suffered with monetising [their services], but this leverages [the fact that] users are there on Facebook.”

Mr Valdes said revenue from its payments system could soon represent one-third of Facebook’s income.

Users are increasingly spending real money buying virtual goods and credits on the applications that run on Facebook’s platform. Zynga, the largest applications developer on Facebook, with 42m users of its games, is reported to be nearing annual sales of $100m. Together, developers working on Facebook’s platform are expected to make more than $500m this year – perhaps more than Facebook itself.

“Control equals revenue,” said Bruce Cundiff, director of payments research and consulting at Javelin Strategy and Research. “They have that [captive] user base, and they’re going to make it as easy as possible to buy Facebook credits and use them.”

Facebook has more than 300m registered users and continues to grow rapidly. Last week, it accepted a $200m investment from Digital Sky Technologies, a private Russian internet investment group, which valued the company’s preferred stock at $10bn.

Though the payments system is being tested on just three applications at the moment, it is expected to be rolled out more widely in the coming weeks.

The payments platform could position Facebook to become a significant e-commerce player. “Potentially you’re looking at Facebook as a shopping portal and a source for music downloads,” said Mr Cundiff.

The question of how Facebook will monetise its significant traffic has dogged the company of late. But last week Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, said his company had been profitable before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for five quarters and was expecting revenue growth of 70 per cent this year. He said Facebook would be cash flow profitable sometime next year. Outside estimates put 2009 income at about $500m.

Developers have had to cobble together payments solutions to enable commerce on their applications. Using Facebook’s payments system could make it easier for developers to monetise their applications.