Facebook

Mondo Times editors    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 10:45pm on Saturday, October 10th, 2009

5 steps to stay safe and private on Facebook, written by Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb on September 16, 2009:

"People everywhere are mindlessly over-sharing on the world's largest social network, without a second thought as to who's reading their posts or what effect it could have on them further down the road. For example, did you know that 30% of today's employers are using Facebook to vet potential employees prior to hiring? In today's tough economy, the question of whether to post those embarrassing party pics could now cost you a paycheck in addition to a reputation."

The full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/09/16/16readwriteweb-5-easy-steps-to-stay-safe-and-private-on-fac-6393.html

Eric Kallgren    Boulder Colorado USA

Posted at 11:32am on Thursday, May 28th, 2009

The Russians are buying into Facebook, the New York Times reported on May 26, 2009:

"A Russian investment firm, Digital Sky Technologies, has invested $200 million in the social networking company Facebook in return for a 1.96 percent stake, the two companies said Tuesday.

The investment values Facebook’s preferred stock at $10 billion, a $5 billion drop from October 2007 when Microsoft paid $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake. With the latest round of financing, Facebook has raised about $600 million since it was founded in 2004."

The full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/technology/internet/27facebook.html

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 12:23pm on Friday, April 10th, 2009

Advertising is the business strategy of Facebook, COO Sheryl Sandberg told BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler in early April 2009:

"It's a really simple answer, which is that our business is advertising. We're not waiting to find our business. We found it, and it's actually working very well. Marketers all over the world have to sell products and services, and they have to generate demand for those services. They do that typically where people are spending their time. But there is a real imbalance right now: Between something like 28% to 29% of people's time is spent online, but only 8% to 10% of the dollars are spent online. So there is this migration of ad dollars from other places going online.

Then the question is how do advertisers make that useful? What we do is we enable connections. We enable people to connect with users and provide advertising in such a way that it's not obtrusive at all, but it's part of the advertising experience and part of the user experience. And so we're doing really well financially."

Read the full interview:
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc2009048_429871.htm

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 5:08pm on Monday, March 30th, 2009

Facebook may be getting too big too fast, according to an article in the New York Times on March 28, 2009:

"When Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this five-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user.

That staggering growth rate — doubling in size in just eight months — suggests Facebook is rapidly becoming the Web’s dominant social ecosystem and an essential personal and business networking tool in much of the wired world.

Yet Facebook executives say they aren’t planning to observe their latest milestone in any significant way. It is, perhaps, a poor time to celebrate. The company that has given users new ways to connect and speak truth to power now often finds itself as the target of that formidable grass-roots firepower — most recently over controversial changes it made to users’ home pages."