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Ashura
Unstopable
Posts: 370

Quote:
Facebook is a social utility that connects
you with the people around you.

http://www.facebook.com/
Quote:
Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/6980454.stm
Published: 2007/09/06 07:16:30 GMT
Facebook opens profiles to public
Popular social networking site Facebook has added a public-facing search function in a move which is likely to anger privacy advocates.
The function will initially allow anyone who is not registered with the site to search for a specific person.
More controversially, in a month's time, the feature will also allow people to track down Facebook members via search engines such as Google.
The firm said that the information being revealed is minimal.
Privacy erosion
The public search listing will show the thumbnail picture of a Facebook member from their profile page as well as links allowing people to interact with them.
But, in order to add someone as a friend or send them a message, the person will have to be registered with Facebook.
Users who want to restrict what information is available to the public or opt out of the feature altogether can change their privacy settings. They have a month to do so.
Despite assurances from Facebook, critics have expressed disappointment at the move.
"This move transforms Facebook from being a social network to being a quasi-White Pages of the web," commented technology writer Om Malik in his blog GigaOm.
Mr Malik, and others, are concerned about the data trail that people are routinely leaving behind them on social networking and other sites.
There are concerns that personal content will become aggregated for marketing or other purposes.
Security experts have pointed out the dangers of publicising your date of birth - one of the options in a Facebook profile - because of the way it has been traditionally used as a way of identifying bank customers.
Facebook began life as a way of keeping US college students in touch with each other. Devised by Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg, the site now accounts for 1% of all net traffic and is the sixth most visited site in the US
The social networking site is thought to have about 39 million members. Numbers have jumped since the firm removed the need to have an academic e-mail address in September 2006.

Ashura
Unstopable
Posts: 370

Quote:
Cash reward for Facebook programs
Software developers will be offered up to $250,000 (£125,000) to develop applications for popular social network Facebook, the site's founder has said.
Mark Zuckerberg announced incentives to firms and individuals who create "innovative and disruptive programs".
There are already around 4,000 of the small programs available on the website.
They include music and digital gifts, games of scrabble and fortune cookies.
The fbFund grants, announced at the TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco, will come out of a $10m pot gathered by Facebook's primary backers Accel Capital and The Founders Fund.
"With just a little bit of capital, a company can grow to hundreds of thousands of users," Mr Zuckerberg said.
Growth spurt    We're doing this at Facebook to support the ecosystem and help it grow
Mark Zuckerberg
Applications - small programs that can be embedded in a user's profile page - have exploded on Facebook in the last four months since the social network allowed outside developers to write programs for the site.
Popular applications include the scrabble game Scrabulous, and the music-sharing service iLike.com.
These applications have added to the popularity of Facebook.
The firm says it now has 41 million active users, whilst some estimates suggest that the site now accounts for 1% of all web traffic.
Mr Zuckerberg said he hopes the new scheme, known as the fbFund, will help continue that growth.
"We're doing this at Facebook to support the ecosystem and help it grow," he said.
The awards will be determined by a panel that includes Mr Zuckerberg, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Accel's Jim Breyer.
"Any application developer can submit their application and a little business proposal to us," said Mr Zuckerberg.
"If we think the project is good we will give a grant for somewhere between $25,000 to $250,000."
The only restriction is that companies must not have taken any venture capital money previously.
Any firm that wins money will not have to give up equity to the fund.
Instead, it asks that they are given first chance to invest in any successful company that sprouts as a result of the grant scheme.
"This is a grant to help these companies get off the ground," said Mr Zuckerberg.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/technology/7000403.stm
Published: 2007/09/18 09:45:46 GMT