.jpg "Why Facebook borrowed $100 million for servers")
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exits
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online advertising
CollegeHumor smack talk hits Facebook where it hurts -- the click-through rates
When Google took on Facebook in ultimate frisbee, Facebook took the series 2-0. Now we hear a contest of beer pong — the drinking game involving ping pong balls, Solo cups and Milwaukee's Best — has been scheduled between Mark Zuckerberg's finest and the New York-based, IAC-backed CollegeHumor. CollegeHumor cofounder Ricky Van Veen began the smack talk early posting the above image to his blog. It reads:Dear Facebook, Looking forward to Thursday. Your winning percentage will be even lower than your click-through rates. Love, CollegeHumor
lawsuits
Judge forces Facebook to out fake profile creators
The person who created a fake Facebook profile for Dean Tim Puntarelli of Roncalli High School in Indianapolis likely felt comfortably shrouded in Facebook's seeming anonymity as he sent "inappropriate" pictures from the account to students. No longer. A local judge ordered Facebook to reveal the prankster's IP address to Puntarelli; the Archdiocese of Indianapolis which runs the school calls it "identity theft." (Photo of a priest with a cane by Paweł Kabański)
internet famous
Facebook investor Peter Thiel No. 10 in Out's list of powerful gays
Peter Thiel, the famed venture capitalist who cofounded PayPal and funded Facebook, has not spoken about his private life since Valleywag broke the curious silence about the gay entrepreneur's sexuality in December. (He hadn't really discussed it before then, either.) But it has again become the topic of conversation. Out has put him in tenth place on its Power 50 list of prominent gays and lesbians. The magazine praises him for his multibillion-dollar hedge fund (Out says it's worth $3 billion, but we've heard $5 billion) as well as his $1 billion stake in Facebook and his funding of the Methuselah Foundation, an anti-aging research group. Knowing Peter, we suspect that none of this bothers him particularly — except for the fact that he wasn't No. 1.
hires
Toogle many Googlers -- at Facebook
Despite her protestations of innocence, it's pretty obvious that Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg had a hand in getting top Google flack Elliot Schrage to follow her to her new employer. She's not alone. One Facebook insider recently observed that for every Googler hired at Facebook, they pull another four former colleagues with them. The place is getting "overrun," says one close observer of the company.
Google's Friend Connect bad news for Marc Andreessen
By offering a suite of tools for websites to add a social network layer, Google isn't challenging established players like Facebook and MySpace, but instead sites offering customizable, turnkey social networks. In other words, look out, Marc Andreessen: Larry and Sergey just declared themselves the Microsoft to Ning's Netscape. [News.com]
hires
Facebook CTO Adam D'Angelo's next move
Adam D'Angelo's departure "broke my heart," one Facebook insider told us. But Facebook's backers are shedding no tears. We hear that both Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Accel Partners are considering D'Angelo for an entrepreneur-in-residence role — a sinecure venture capital firms offer Valley executives while they're looking for a new startup idea. He's also talking to Google, which is surely eager to reverse the flow of its employees to Facebook..jpg)
mythbusting
Why Facebook borrowed $100 million for servers
Technologists are instinctively averse to debt. The cycles are too swift and mistakes too punishing, the conventional wisdom says, to subject a startup to the burden of debt; cash is better spent on growth opportunities than interest. But Facebook has never followed the usual script for a startup, and its CFO, Gideon Yu, is no herd-follower, either. No wonder that the news that Facebook is leasing $100 million worth of servers, after raising a $360 million round of venture capital from Microsoft and Li Ka-Shing, is causing such a ruckus — and some misconceptions. Here are the instant myths that have arisen: More »
the official filthy rich handbook
"The Nerdling"
His patron saints are Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley. He wears Robert Marc spectacles his publicist picked out for him, and last summer, when he rented a Villa next to Jade Jagger's, Nicole Richie called him a "dork loser." He's the "Nerdling" from The Official Filthy Rich Handbook by Christopher Tennant, due out in June. An excerpt, below. More »
exits
Facebook CTO leaves a company that's graduating from high school
The Facebook Prom was prophetic, signaling farewells, graduation, and the ending of teenage ties. As his colleagues were preparing to dance the night away at the Metreon, CTO Adam D'Angelo, a high school buddy of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, was saying his farewells. BoomTown reports that D'Angelo, 23, is leaving the company because "his responsibilities no longer fit well with his skills and interests." Even as the company tries to recreate a high-school environment to keep its employees tightly knit, Zuckerberg's own social network is fraying. More »
party report
Inside the Facebook Prom
It's true: Facebook held a prom for its employees in San Francisco last night at the Metreon. The shopping mall-cineplex's fourth floor was tastefully decorated with white flowers, and the gathered Facebookers were dressed up — and so youthful, you might think it was an actual prom, save for the booze being poured at the open bars. (Ubiquitous photographee Julia Allison, who was invited, did not attend, staying in New York for a book party instead.) Why throw a prom? Facebook is going all-out for prom season this year, with a tie-in to Sony's Prom Night and a prom-dress partnership with Sears. Why not reward employees working on prom marketing campaigns with a throwback prom of their own? More »
events
Secret Facebook event at the Metreon tonight
While out and about, a possibly over-enthusiastic Valleywag correspondent heard rumors of a Facebook "prom" being held
your privacy is an illusion
Facebook making sure there's nowhere on the Web to hide
Facebook's formal announcement of Facebook Connect is at once a transparently timed response to MySpace's announcement of partnerships with eBay and Twitter yesterday and the culmination of things the social network has been working on for ages. Facebook Connect, at its simplest, lets websites like Digg and Twitter integrate their users' activity into Facebook users' News Feeds. Those two companies, as well as Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa, have been using Facebook Connect well before it was unveiled under that name. It cements Facebook's role as a central place to keep up with one's friends. Yet I'm not sure how I feel about it. More »
once you're lucky, twice you're good
F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
LiveJournal founder Brad Fitzpatrick is a prankster, as evidenced by his Halloween costume last year, when the new Googler dressed up as Facebook to mock his coworkers' fears of the social network. I'm told that in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's new book about Web 2.0, there's an anecdote about Fitzpatrick submitting an expense report — successfully! — for "hookers and blow" when he worked at blog software startup Six Apart. That was likely a reference to the early days of LiveJournal, when users made ridiculous accusations that Fitzpatrick was spending money meant for servers and bandwidth on "hookers and blow." We'd love to hear more, but alas, Fitzpatrick only got 8 out of 294 pages, according to the book's index. Here's the page for "D" through "F": More »
Mark Zuckerberg on "vision quest" in India
"According to sources, Zuckerberg is in India and, in fact, all over the world, on a trip that is mostly for pleasure and contemplation, but also mixing in with some business." — Kara Swisher on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's travels [BoomTown] (Photoillustration by Webyantra)
third prize is you're fired
Should Facebook and MySpace can their salesmen? Only if they're not into this thing called "revenue"
Everyone wants to sell ads like Amazon.com sells books — one click and it's done. Social networks Facebook and MySpace as well as ad networks AdBrite, AdReady and AdItAll have all followed Google to offer advertisers do-it-yourself buying options. The trend has led both the Wall Street Journal and PaidContent to wonder if online ad sales teams will go the way of the dodo, or at least the travel agent. The answer — especially for social networks MySpace and Facebook — is no. More »
9:00 AM on Fri May 9 2008
By Nicholas Carlson
1,546 views,
4 comments
Latest by raincoaster: Fuck, now I'm hungry. Want to make money? Tell me how to download ribs. more »
Social network popularity just like high school
"Like the popular kids, Facebook will end up living in a trailer — just down the gravel road from Friendster." [Details] (Photo by AP/Jack Plunkett)
cubicle culture
We've toured the top 10 workspaces in tech. Now, we've gone back to Office Snapshots to find the 10 worst. What makes them so bad? Some offend with exposed fluorescent lights, gray cubicles and a dystopian corporate sheen. But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations — all in a desperate attempt to seem "Internet-y" — come off even worse. We'll start with Yahoo's New York digs.
More »
The 10 worst workspaces in tech
We've toured the top 10 workspaces in tech. Now, we've gone back to Office Snapshots to find the 10 worst. What makes them so bad? Some offend with exposed fluorescent lights, gray cubicles and a dystopian corporate sheen. But others, with their pseudo-hip graffiti, kindergarten toys and plastic decorations — all in a desperate attempt to seem "Internet-y" — come off even worse. We'll start with Yahoo's New York digs.
More »
