UPDATE: The Craigslist post in question has been flagged for removal.

A Craigslist ad for an available room in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan's pricey West Village claimed that the asking price was $1 per month--and a fresh batch of cookies every day. (As of Wednesday morning, the ad was flagged for removal and is no longer available on Craigslist.)

Yeah, it's tongue-in-cheek. As Gotham gossip blog Jossip put it, "There's no way someone would really rent out a room in the West Village for $1 a month and daily fresh baked cookies. In the West … Read more

Anne Milgram, the attorney general for the state of New Jersey, issued a subpoena on Monday against popular social-networking site Facebook, requesting that the company turn over information as to whether registered sex offenders have profiles on the site. The return date for the subpoena is October 12.

Milgram's office has additionally sent letters to 11 other social networking sites, asking that they release similar data. It's unclear as to which social-networking sites those are; representatives for the attorney general's office were not immediately available for comment.

"This is a matter of public safety, and more … Read more

I'm a smidgen skeptical of this rumor, if only because it seems so darn obvious: TechCrunch reported on Tuesday morning that Time Warner's AOL may have found a use for its Wow.com domain, which it acquired in 1998 as part of the offal of what had once been CompuServe.

The source's big scoop? Wow.com has been transferred to the AOL Games division and will become a World of Warcraft social network. If this turns out to be true, expect plenty of level-28 half-elf mages to be typing "Wow.com" into their browsers soon.… Read more

Sugar Inc., the women's-oriented blog network that grew out of a single celebrity gossip title and now encompasses about a dozen others with the word "Sugar" in the title, has now branched into social news. On Monday, the company launched SugarLoving, which is a way for you to submit links that you "heart." Essentially, the model is similar to that of social news pioneer Digg. But SugarLoving is so cute and huggable, there isn't even a way for you to "bury" links that you don't like! Aww! We're all friends … Read more

The New York Observer reported Monday that Greg Atwan and Evan Lushing, two recent Harvard graduates living in New York, have reportedly earned a five-figure book deal for a satirical take on social-networking phenomenon Facebook. The book pitch, called The Facebook Book, sold to Harry N. Abrams, Inc. for somewhere around $50,000, according to The Observer.

Facebook famously started in a Harvard dorm in 2004, with founder (and eventual dropout) Mark Zuckerberg and several friends creating the social network as an alternative to the school's physical "facebook" with photographs and contact information for the student body.… Read more

The office of New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has stepped up its warnings against social-networking site Facebook, with a representative from the office saying the company may face a consumer fraud charge for misrepresenting how safe the site is for minors. The problem, according to an Associated Press story, is that Facebook claims its closed-site model makes the service safer for minors than other social networks, and that privacy and harassment concerns receive prompt responses.

The attorney general's office says those asserations simply aren't true. "We expect an immediate correction eliminating the dangers exposed by our … Read more

This post has been updated to include a statement from YouTube on why the Project Direct contest is only open to Web users in seven countries.

"I demand an explanation for these shenanigans. What do you have to say?" If you're a regular YouTube junkie, you might be hearing that phrase a lot more in the near future.

The massive, Google-owned video-sharing site announced on Monday a new initiative called Project Direct, a contest sponsored by Hewlett-Packard in which aspiring filmmakers are encouraged to submit films between two and seven minutes in length. A total of 20 … Read more

The Financial Times reported on Sunday that Facebook is working to make its rabidly popular social-networking site available in languages other than English. It's been known for quite some time that translation has been on the company's radar as it expands beyond its U.S. roots--executives have mentioned it amorphously in speeches and panels--so there is very little "real news" here other than the fact that the Financial Times story indicates that there may be evidence that this translation project is a major priority.

Nevertheless, Facebook has been unclear about timing, and has not released any … Read more

It hasn't happened yet, nor is there a timeline for it, but Facebook has stated that it's working on allowing its members to "organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what." No formal announcement was made, but you can see the little tidbit--along with something about forthcoming "daily digest" e-mail options--on the What's New on Facebook page. It looks like TechCrunch was the first to spot this.

"Friend grouping" is a move that, unless the company really screws it up, Facebook members … Read more