The Social

This ticked-off cat isn't too thrilled about the snow, but plenty of online retailers are.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

A blizzard that pelted much of the Eastern Seaboard with over a foot of snow also led to a spike in last-minute online holiday shopping last weekend, traffic firm ComScore said Tuesday.

Online shopping continues to eat up a bigger chunk of holiday retail each year, but this season, with roads snowbound and temperatures well below freezing in some of the most populous areas of the country at the tail end of the holiday season, it was even more than usual. (Several cities in the mid-Atlantic, like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., pulled in more snow in a single snowfall than they typically do in an entire season.) For the weekend of December 19-20, U.S. traffic to non-travel retail sites was up 13 percent from the equivalent weekend last year--and on Tuesday, December 15, right when the storms started hitting weather forecasts, it was up 21 percent.

That Tuesday marked the biggest online spending day in history, ComScore says.

"The major snowstorms hitting the eastern seaboard over the weekend appear to have given holiday e-commerce an additional boost, resulting in the heaviest online spending week on record at $4.8 billion," ComScore chair Gian Fulgoni said in a release. "Consumers have clearly continued to spend online later into the season this year, with several very strong spending days in the most recent week including the heaviest online spending day in history--Tuesday, December 15, with $913 million. Retailers have been very aggressive with late season promotions while informing consumers that they could still get their purchases shipped in time for Christmas, and these tactics seem to be paying off."

A survey from Coremetrics said that sales for "Cyber Monday," the Monday after Thanksgiving and typically a day for big online deals, showed healthy gains this year.

Looks like Facebook will be throwing another big "F8" developer conference in the spring, after taking 2009 off. According to a sparse post on the company's developer blog, the event will be held April 21 and 22 in San Francisco. No more details are currently available.

"F8 has always been about empowering a community of developers to hack, to build and to delight users," the post reads. "We're looking forward to continuing this tradition at our third F8 in San Francisco on April 21-22, 2010. Please save the date!"

This is a big deal because Facebook's past two F8 conferences have marked the debut of some of its biggest products: in 2007, the groundbreaking Facebook developer platform, and in 2008, Facebook Connect. It's likely that the 2010 version will involve some kind of high-profile launch, too.

What could it be? The obvious possibility is Facebook's long-rumored payment platform or virtual currency system, which currently only powers the internal "gift shop" feature along with a few test developer apps and nonprofit partners. This is more or less Facebook's worst-kept secret: it's been in development for quite some time, but appears to have been repeatedly modified internally. Once said to be a straight-up PayPal competitor called "Facebook Wallet," the project has evolved to fall more in line with the meteoric rise in virtual goods-based social gaming, one of the biggest and most profitable runaway hits on Facebook's platform. It could also mean that Facebook starts to make some serious money from transaction fees and become a real power player in the e-commerce space.

Still, we don't know for sure. We'll keep you updated as more details become available about F8 2010 over the coming months.

This post was updated at 11:42 a.m. PST with a link to the post on Facebook's developer blog.

Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.

"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.

"We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes, and we're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them," a retaliatory statement from Facebook read. "We're pleased that so many users have already gone through the process of reviewing and updating their privacy settings, and are impressed that so many have chosen to customize their settings, demonstrating the effectiveness of Facebook's user empowerment and transparency efforts. Of course, the new tools offer users the opportunity to decide on privacy with every photo, link, or status update they wish to post, so the process of personalizing privacy on Facebook will continue."

It's one thing when Facebook users start complaining about new features that they deem excessively creepy--just look at the outrage that surrounded the News Feed, now a mainstay of the site, when it launched in 2006.

It's a bigger fish entirely when government regulatory bodies get involved, particularly the FTC, which has major sway over the advertising and marketing industries. It was only when privacy groups flagged concerns about Facebook's Beacon advertising program two years ago that participating advertisers started to pull out amid bad publicity. A class action settlement over the Beacon program was resolved recently.

Since then, Facebook hasn't had a privacy-related debacle on the same scale. Much of the philosophy behind Beacon was baked into its Facebook Connect universal log-in tool, which shares information from third-party sites on Facebook profiles and lets users log into other sites with their Facebook credentials. But with the public-relations pitch geared toward making the entire online experience easier for users (fewer passwords to remember, no more registration headaches) rather than helping advertisers exploit social-networking channels, the debut of Facebook Connect wasn't subject to the same scrutiny.

The controversial new privacy standards at Facebook have been a long time coming, considering the fact that the social network started to publicly set the groundwork nearly six months ago with a series of announcements about modified privacy controls. It's clear that the company was trying to avoid the sort of press bloodbath that came after the debut of Beacon.

That didn't happen. Facebook has already backtracked on one component of its new privacy regulations, one which made users' friends lists publicly available. It's unclear as to how much EPIC's coalition, not to mention the FTC, will prioritize this most recent controversy.

Behind Facebook's traditional willingness to make tweaks and modifications to new features and products, if they spark some kind of concern among government regulatory bodies or marketers, is a fight that the company will not give up easily. What it all comes down to is that Facebook's once-watertight log-in wall--remember the time that representatives mulled banning a blogger who'd posted Facebook-hosted photos publicly?--is getting in the way of the social network's potentially central role in one of the digital world's crazes du jour, searchable real-time information.

Search companies have been announcing big deals to pull Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets into results, and the media business has gone nuts over the potential to harness the "real-time Web."

Facebook, dependent on advertising revenues and still looking to expand its base of more than 350 million users, obviously wants in on this. But if it doesn't have enough status messages, shared links, and other information pulled into search results, it stands a chance at losing ground to the much-smaller Twitter--already the top name, in terms of a massive, searchable clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute information.

Plus, there are marketers and advertisers for Facebook to consider: more search results equals more page views and more ad revenue, and more public information on users' profiles means more ways for the advertising industry to reach them. But if those same marketers and advertisers are the ones pressuring Facebook to change course, in terms of user privacy, it could cause some friction between the social network and the businesses that have finally begun to accept it as a choice destination for their ad dollars.

Now EPIC is alleging to the FTC that Facebook's new regulations can be outright dangerous: "Dozens of American Facebook users, who posted political messages critical of Iran, have reported that Iranian authorities subsequently questioned and detained their relatives," an item in the complaint reads. "Under the revised privacy settings, Facebook makes such users' friends lists publicly available."

That's not good PR for Facebook, which has repeatedly pitched itself as a destination for open dialogue and grassroots organization across zones of political and ethnic conflict.

Mark Zuckerberg should be proud: The top search term of 2009, according to Experian Hitwise, was not "porn," "poker," or "Britney Spears." It was, for the first time, "Facebook."

In 2008, Facebook had been the tenth most searched term on the Web, according to the traffic company's annual survey of search queries.

The rest of the list for 2009 is also made up of "navigational" searches, which Hitwise reps say actually always dominate top search queries despite the common wisdom that top searches tend to be for online gambling or racy pictures. In spot No. 2 is last year's leader, "myspace," followed by "craigslist," "youtube," "yahoo mail," "google," "yahoo," "ebay," "facebook login," and "myspace.com." If you add up all four Facebook-related terms in Hitwise's top 300 search terms, they make up slightly over a percent of all searches on the Web. The #1 term alone accounts for 0.67 percent.

Meanwhile, searches for "porn" came in at No. 16. Britney, unfortunately, didn't crack Hitwise's top 300, but the most searched for celebrity was Michael Jackson at No. 95, and "Twilight" hottie Robert Pattinson came in at #221. (Hitwise representatives say that they are currently reevaluating the data to see if recently beleaguered golfer Tiger Woods has moved up in the rankings, too.)

Update at 2:10 p.m. PST: So where's "Twitter" on Hitwise's list? It's hanging in there at #56, the company says.

It's been a matter of days since Facebook's new privacy controls went into place, and the company is already making modifications in response to user complaints that they expose too much information. Namely, the company has made it easier to prevent people from seeing who your friends are.

For one, Facebook no longer makes a link to a list of your friends publicly available, and it has added an option for members who want no one at all--including other friends--to see their connections. Third-party applications, however, can still access it.

"In response to your feedback, we've improved the Friend List visibility option," an update to Facebook's blog post about the new privacy settings read. "Now when you uncheck the 'Show my friends on my profile' option in the Friends box on your profile, your Friend List won't appear on your profile regardless of whether people are viewing it while logged into Facebook or logged out. This information is still publicly available, however, and can be accessed by applications."

Facebook's reasons for making this move likely have something to do with the fact that it wants to be a safe place for professionals: in some fields of work, people may be uncomfortable with basically opening up their Rolodexes. There was a high-profile incident that highlighted these potential pratfalls of making one's Facebook friend list publicly available: Business Insider revealed earlier this week that Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne was keeping a list of journalists covering the company as well as their professional connections found through Facebook.

The new privacy settings give members more control over how much they share in general, but they additionally encourage them to make more content public as the site moves from a closed-off, login-required site to a potentially huge player in the new real-time search craze. But the company remains under pressure from not only its 350-million-plus users, but also lawmakers in multiple countries who have voiced concerns about how much the company is doing to protect users' privacy.

Could the geolocation wars be the next browser wars? Maybe. There's a fresh $8.4 million in venture funding for Gowalla, a game-like mobile app that lets you "check in" to locations around the world, see where your friends are, and swap virtual goods along the way.

The Series B funding round, announced Wednesday, is led by Greylock Partners with contributions from Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, previous investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund, and individual investors Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis, and Chris Sacca.

Interestingly, at least two of Gowalla's individual investors--Conway and Rose--are also investors in Foursquare, another game-like "geo" app that lets you find your friends and collect "badges." And at least four of them--Conway, Rose, Sacca, and Vaynerchuk--have additionally backed location software company SimpleGeo, whose funding CNET first reported late last month.

This either means that there are some well-moneyed people in Silicon Valley who throw greenbacks around blindfolded, or that some prominent folks think there's room for more than one "geo" app out there.

Regardless of where the investment money goes, it's clear that geolocation is, after many tries and missteps, finally one of the hottest spots on the Web. Early players like Loopt and Brightkite are still around and kicking, but Foursquare and Gowalla's game-like interfaces have proven more press-friendly these days--not to mention more addictive among hardcore users.

Gowalla, available as an app on the iPhone and Android, was founded in 2007 but formally launched ten weeks ago (its iPhone app has been around since last spring). The company says it now has 50,000 users in 92 countries and logs 20,000 "check-ins" every day.

Foursquare, which launched at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in March and which is rolling out its launch in packs of cities, says it has 146,000 registered users who have logged 3.4 million check-ins.

This post was updated at 10:47 a.m. PT with data from Foursquare.

Onetime social-networking pioneer Friendster unveiled a new design on Thursday, and it's focusing on the demographic that has kept it afloat for the past few years: the Asian youth market. And according to Reuters, Friendster may also be sold to a buyer in Asia by the end of the month for at least $100 million.

Yes, Friendster still exists. The first big social network to take off, it was surpassed by the likes of MySpace and Facebook, and its popularity in much of the world quickly faded. Now, it says it has 75 million registered users (no word on how many are active), and that 90 percent of its traffic comes from the Asia-Pacific region. It started offering translated versions of the site two years ago.

New to the revamped Friendster are a suite of features designed to capitalize on the social-gaming craze: a virtual currency, an array of games, and virtual gifts.

Friendster CEO Richard Kimber confirmed to Reuters that the company was shopping itself to buyers, and that investment bank Morgan Stanley had been hired to handle the sale and that the company is working with "a shortlist" of potential suitors. It won't be the first time it's been looking to sell: CNET reported in 2005 that investment bank Montgomery & Co. had been hired for the same purpose.

Kimber, a former Googler, joined Friendster last year right around the same time that it raised $20 million in venture funding in a round led by IDG Ventures.

An orangutan in the Vienna Zoo takes pictures that are uploaded to Facebook. No, she didn't take the self-portrait.

(Credit: Nonja's Facebook page)

She's like the Ashton Kutcher of the ape world: an orangutan in the Vienna Zoo now has a Facebook fan page to showcase the photos she takes with a digital camera. The orangutan, named Nonja, uses a Samsung ST 1000 point-and-shoot that automatically uploads the photos.

When this post was published, Nonja had over 9,000 "fans" subscribed to her page.

But there's a catch: coverage of the camera-toting ape in the U.K.'s Daily Mail explains that the camera has been modified to dispense a raisin whenever the shutter button is pushed. So Nonja is evidently more interested in tasty treats than in artistic endeavors.

The non-orangutan version of the Samsung ST 1000 was released this summer (though not in the U.S.) and is equipped with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS.

Following modifications to its "First Click Free" policy that gives Google News users access to some content that would otherwise be behind a pay wall, Google has released an additional tweak that lets publishers decide whether they want their sites to show up in Google News, Google Web search, both, or neither.

Previously, if a publisher wanted to request inclusion in one or the other, but not both, sending a request to Google was required. This now automates the process.

These updates to Google's news indexing come at a time when media outlets are once again pointing fingers at the search giant as a revenue suck--and in response, Google insists it's good for publishers because it drives traffic. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has made concrete threats that he will pull his publications' content from Google and is reported to be in talks with Microsoft to strike an exclusive deal on its Bing search engine.

By offering more flexible options for choosing where exactly news outlets want their content to appear, Google comes across as friendlier and less authoritative--at least on the surface.