There are two valuations for startups like Facebook — the one set by the company's most recent investment round and an internal one, often lower, established for tax purposes. Why the discrepancy? For one thing, Microsoft bought preferred shares, with some liquidation rights, while employees get common shares, which could get diluted. Going by the reports, it sounds like common shares are the ones up for sale. There's also no established market for Facebook stock; shares that are hard to unload get discounted accordingly.

The selling spree does reinforce what we already know: Shareholders — including employees, some of whom even took to cheating the company out of a $600 housing subsidy — want Zuckerberg to hurry up and sell or take the company public.

Too bad for them. Zuck controls three-fifths of Facebook's board and is in no hurry.

The silver lining: The difficulty in placing their shares with a buyer may pay off in the long run. Instead of selling their Facebook shares at a discount, these shareholders will probably have to hold on to them and — despite themselves — make a whole lot of money when Zuckerberg finally does take the world's most popular social network public. Just so long as Facebook's sales team keeps treating ad buyers to juicy steaks.

Through voting rights, Zuckerberg controls both the seat Andreessen fills and the remaining vacancy, so it's not surprising to see Zuckerberg picked an entrepreneur-friendly, don't-sell-if-you-don't-have-to mentor like Andreessen to join the board. Some Facebook shareholders are already offloading stock, perhaps growing impatient with Zuckerberg's slow progress toward an IPO. Other CEOs might be worried about retaining investors' goodwill. Zuckerberg, free to pack the board with another ally after Andreessen, doesn't have to. Jealous?

Apparently, in October 2007, Facebook and Microsoft issued a press release stating Microsoft would “take a $240 million stake in Facebook’s next round of financing at a $15 billion valuation.”... Defendants [Facebook] proffer evidence that subsequent to the press release, in the regular course of its operations, Facebook’s Board of Directors determined a value of the company’s “shares” which was different than the valuation disclosed in the press release.

So while Facebook was happy to sell 1.6 percent of the company to Microsoft for $240 million for a $15 billion valuation last fall — and tell the press all about it — remember, that doesn't mean the company is actually worth $15 billion. In fact, a Silicon Alley Insider commenter reports: "Try $2 billion to $3 billion. An owner is out trying to peddle common stock to VC's right now. The price is under $4 billion for sure."(Photo by AP/Ruttle)

What would have happened had Rachel Marsden was left with more than just a few articles of clothing after those steamy days with Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales? Nothing good.

I have to admit, out of all the babies, Marissa Mayer and Zach Bogue's faux-offspring is the least horrifically ugly.

"IT Girl" Julia Allison is ostensibly dating I'm In Like With You founder Charles Forman. But with that lack of resemblance, could Allison be covering for another lover?

Because Forman and Tumblr founder David Karp are very, very close. Looks like Allison is just the beard and Karp is the Forman baby's daddy.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn't want to make the move, preferring Palo Alto's quaint Main Street USA feel to the parking-lot archipelagos up and down the peninsula which house the likes of Google and Yahoo. But Zuckerberg doesn't make business operations decisions anymore. Those belong to Facebook's new adult-supervision, ex-Googler COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is charged with scaling the company. If Zuckerberg's allies CTO Adam D'Angelo and Matt Cohler can't or won't survive Sandberg's tough-love rule, then neither will Facebook's dank, cluttered and spray-painted home on University Avenue. (Photo by by antony_mayfield)

The school already had an online database known as the facebook ... The fact that a couple of other students had the same idea at the same moment doesn't mean he is a thief. And the fact that many consider Zuckerberg a grade-A asshole doesn't mean he did anything illegal. "There are lots of things that an average person might consider reprehensible that aren't against the law," says James Boyle, who co-founded the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. "I'd warn against assuming that the 'Ew, what a slimeball' reflex be equated with what is illegal."

Zuckerberg's immaturity and megalomania might make him intolerably arrogant to anyone around him, but that's pretty much what the Valley rewards. So unless it gets in the way of his management of the company (which it may yet), he has nothing to worry about.(Photo by Andrew Feinberg)

Users got angry when Facebook dropped the News Feed on them out of nowhere in the fall of 2006. Developers are still grumbling about the pending redesign. Now, when Facebook introduces a change, it's announcement by slow drip — tremendously boring. Just like a Zuckerberg keynote. If Zuckerberg really wants to be like Jobs, he's going to have to stop worrying about the users, stop worrying about the developers, and start trusting his gut. Jobs displays utmost confidence in how his fans will receive his products — and that, not his presenting style, is what makes him so compelling.

(Photo by AP/Ruttle)

One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.

Chan recently squired Zuckerberg to his sister Randi's wedding. No word on who caught the bouquet, and Facebook insiders are mum about the couple's prospects of an engagement. Come to think of that, perhaps that's a good thing. If dating was this tough, can you imagine working out the prenup?

U.S. District Judge Douglas Woodlock called ConnectU's move to ditch the settlement a case of "buyer's remorse" after the company perhaps unwisely agreed to a settlement before all the documents in the case had been turned over. "The parties chose to do what they did based on imperfect knowledge of what the outcome of the case might be," Woodlock said. "You knew at the time you entered into the agreement it wasn't complete." ConnectU lawyer John Hornick said that if ConnectU isn't allowed out of the settlement, "the next step is going to be a fraud claim."

Byron Ng, the inquisitive Canadian computer technician who found a hole in MySpace's linkup with Yahoo, tipped me off to this trick, which works with a wide range of widgets, he says, whether or not you're friends with a given user. (SuperPoke has a private-actions option, but it's hard to find and few people seem to use it.)

Is it scandalous to learn that, say, Slide CEO Max Levchin has "bitten" Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg? Not especially (though Levchin went through a rather disturbing biting phase last month). What it tells us, really, is just how unseriously people take the widgets on Facebook. That these applications have remained wide open just goes to show that they don't do anything worth hiding. And where's the fun in that?

The news, long expected, that Facebook would open-source its platform is not reviving the buzz. And the comparisons people are making now are not as complimentary.

A revamp of how Facebook handles third-party applications is "Orwellian," one observer says, which I suppose makes Zuckerberg Big Little Brother. "We've heard from many users that adding applications is cumbersome," writes Facebook developer Pete Bratach. And yet application-tracker Adonomics reports that Facebook users have installed more than 912 billion applications. The real effect of Facebook's redesign is to make it less likely that Facebook users will install applications their friends use. This may reduce complaints about annoying applications, but it will also slow the spread of applications on Facebook from user to user — an overwhelming part of the Facebook Platform's appeal.

It's sensible for Facebook to do something about its reputation for being all about zombies and pirates. What doesn't make sense is dissembling about the reason it needs to. Facebook's problem isn't that applications aren't popular enough; it's that they've become too popular, and grown out of control. The changes to how applications get added, as well as changes to the design of profile pages which downplay applications, will put more of Facebook's screen real estate back in its control. Why not just say that?

Because Facebook needs to maintain the loyalty of developers, if only for appearance's sake. I've never been convinced that widgets add that much to Facebook in a business sense. But they gave Facebook Valley buzz, which it cleverly, and profitably, capitalized on. Microsoft would never have invested in a mere social network — but start talking about Facebook as a computing platform, and the likes of Bill Gates get interested fast.

Which is why, when Facebook executives get up on stage talking to a Wall Street crowd, as Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg did last week at the D6 conference, they're swift to talk up the work of developers. But on the site itself? They'd just as soon the developers disappear.

(Photo by Brandee Barker)

Somebody said that we were allowed to wreck the house because the birthday girl's parents were getting divorced and there were kids behaving like gangsters from a rap video, throwing stuff around and smashing things. There were chairs, tables, even a TV in the pool.

Wrong, in practice if not in theory. Sandberg, who now oversees Facebook PR, was Zuckerberg's companion on stage. But she added nothing to the conversation; she wasn't even able to explain why she left Google for Facebook coherently. (Mentioning Google's stock price would have at least gotten some heads nodding.) We'll cut Facebook flack Elliot Schrage slack for not preparing his bosses adequately; he just got there himself. But at some point, Zuckerberg and Sandberg will have to find something to say. They kept saying Facebook is about letting users "share information and share themselves." It's beyond embarrassing that Zuckerberg and Sandberg can't manage to do so.

(Photo by Asa Mathat/AllThingsD.com)

First they raise way more than any private Internet company —- ever! Then, they pre-announce via some strange conference call that they will have a flat to down revenue year, now they are cutting these rent subsidies.

Something is wrong with this picture. Does anyone recall these types of occurences as Google was making their climb? Nope, me neither.

My guess is that their expenses are running way ahead of plan and their revenues are way behind. Why? Because Beacon failed, which is probably why Owen [Van Natta] got fired, and they have no viable back-up plan. They also have a very high strike price so it's hard to raise traditional VC money at this point. Watch these guys closely —- their revenue and overall story doesn't match their growth/traffic numbers. Something is broken IMHO!

How huge is huge? Facebook is Justin Timberlake performs at your high school big. The iPod's share of the MP3-player market big. The Dalai Lama's preeminence over other lamas big.

Atwan and Lushing would say Facebook is a fad in the sense that Friends was a fad in 1990s. Except bigger. More like guitar-based Rock 'n Roll was a fad in the mid-20th century. Or pants, starting sometime in the 15th. Facebook is so big it's a new culture, and therefore deserving of it's own book. It's certainly worth flipping through a copy at the bookstore and admiring Aurora Andrews' illustrations.

Us? We'd rather read a book about the struggle to create a Facebook business model or a tale of the company's beginning, full of insider dish. We want to know: who was Jessica Alona and what'd she do to Zuckerberg that made him so angry he had to distract himself by creating Facebook? While it contains no such secret it does present a humorously satirical look at the impact of Facebook on the cultural landscape. See for yourself in the excerpted "Facebook Index" embedded below. Click to expand the image.

Rumor has it Sandberg was also the one who forced Facebook to drop out of a scheduled beer pong game against CollegeHumor. Poor Facebookers. On one hand, they've got a CEO in Zuckerberg who won't take Microsoft's $10 billion because he wants to keep the company independent until a magical IPO in 2011 or 2012. And on the other, there's Sandberg who's taking all fun out of being an independent company. Surely, you people need to vent. We're here to listen.

Baba's teachings include the precept that showing kindness to others is the highest form of devotion to God, and writings compiled by noted mystic Ram Dass in the book Miracle of Love. It's an opportunity for Zuckerberg to appear deep when discoursing on management philosophy. More importantly, he can now share the experience with other tech titans as a sort of rite of passage in the tightknit world of the Valley's ultrarich. (Photo by Ken Wieland)

The earliest Facebook profile we could find comes from 2005, though the site started up in 2004. Back then, you needed an SAT score of 1350 to use "thefacebook.com" Or at least a good personal essay "revised" by your guidance counselor.

A fuller look at the profile in later 2005. Note the Matrix-y 1s and 0s flowing around the departed "Facebook guy."

By 2006, at the time this profile screenshot was taken, thefacebook had become just "Facebook" and already founder Mark Zuckerberg had caved to hoi polloi. Bennington.

Here, from 2007, the Facebook profile almost as it is now. But without Vampires, Zombies or that ever-begging "Causes" application.

The Facebook profile as it is now. Accessible to high schoolers, the unemployed and even those at state schools. Note how it's carefully armored against your pervy eyes.

The Facebook profile of the future, arriving on your 3G iPhone in just a few weeks.

Part of the issue with Google's Friend Connect is that when users grant access to Google's product, Google might share their information with another application, or some part of it, maybe not all of it, without that user knowing. And part of what makes our system work is that people know exactly who they are sharing all their information with.

Funny thing is, Google claims an employee did talk to Facebook before launching the product. At least, according to Google engineering director David Glazer. No matter, said Zuck. "Google's a big player in the space and they make good things and our goal is to work with them to figure this out." Hear that Larry, Sergey? You guys make good things, so Mr. Zuckerberg will deign to speak with you. After he's done with his round-the-world trot.

1. Mozilla
2. Facebook
3. Mahalo
4. DoubleClick
5. Yahoo
6. Microsoft
7. Google
8. LinkedIn
9. Jajah
10. Adobe

More recently, a very high up manager in Facebook contacted me saying that Mark is a senstive soul about some matters, and did not want to be around when his friends were being "let go"/"leaving to pursue other passions."

Put another way, Zuckerberg is giving new COO Sheryl Sandberg room to run the place unsentimentally. It's a reminder that Zuckerberg is both brilliant and young, having just turned 24 on Wednesday. He's immature enough to be uncomfortable firing people, and yet self-aware enough to realize that's a problem. (Photoillustration by Jackson West

Gawker Media polls require Javascript; if you're viewing this in an RSS reader, click through to view in your Javascript-enabled web browser.

Facebook's PR and Legal dept said they can't participate. I guess that's what its like working in corporate America as opposed to a fun Internet company.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg


• B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big


• F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"


• L is for Levchin, who never goes slow


• P is for Parker, the Valley's bad boy


• R is for Rose, who made Digg his toy


• T is for Twitter, which turned blogging small

Dear Facebook, Looking forward to Thursday. Your winning percentage will be even lower than your click-through rates. Love, CollegeHumor

Cofounder Chris Hughes left a while ago to work on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Another cofounder, Dustin Moskovitz, has been rumored to be on the outs with Zuckerberg, though Moskovitz attributes any disputes to normal friction between founders. And now D'Angelo — though not a founder, one of the small group who helped Facebook relocate from Zuckerberg's dorm room to Palo Alto — is gone, too. He may be leaving for his own reasons, but his departure is a sign that the company is fitfully growing up.