The Social

Maybe they read the Yelp review that says Google's headquarters is infested with skunks and raccoons.

Just a few days after reporting that Google was about 80 percent likely to be acquiring business reviews site Yelp for a totally sweet $500 million, TechCrunch has backtracked. Late Sunday, TechCrunch reported that Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman personally walked away from the deal and that company representatives informed Google over the weekend they aren't selling.

Or it might have been the skunks.

(Credit: CC Out at Bob's/Flickr)

That's odd. People seemed to think it was generally a good deal. TechCrunch isn't exactly sure what went wrong but speculates that Yelp may have gotten a better offer for a potential acquisition or strategic partnership that caused it to bail.

What could also have something to do with it: Google does a lot of things very, very well, but one thing it's never nailed is community. (Knol most certainly didn't kill Wikipedia, Orkut was big in Brazil but then faded in the wake of Facebook's growth, and YouTube's commenters seem to come from a very special place somewhere between the sixth and seventh circles of hell.) That's evident from looking at what Yelpers had to say about the potential deal last week. Proudly opinionated and devoted to the Yelp brand, many Yelpers were concerned that a Google buyout would degrade the site's sense of community--something that could, effectively, kill it.

Perhaps Yelp's execs thought the same and figured that strategic partnerships might be a better route for now.

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.

If Google's rumored $500m acquisition of Yelp goes through, the search giant may finally get a solid lock on the "hyperlocal" Web. But it'll also be acquiring a big community site--and those are notoriously hard to wrangle.

Restaurant industry blog Eater might have put it best: "One can only assume that with Google's muscle behind the site, the millions of users who log on to complain about restaurants would be able to say stupid stuff faster, and with more efficiency," editor Amanda Kludt wrote on Friday.

All snark aside, it's the same sort of issue that arose a few years ago amid persistent rumors that Google was going to acquire Digg, another site reliant on heavy participation from a loyal and extremely vocal community. The questions are more or less similar: What would Google change, and how much would they change it? Does Google's massive scope make it untrustworthy?

Yelp's official word: "Yelp is approached frequently by numerous entities to discuss partnerships, investments and more, and the company does not comment on private discussions that may occur."

Truth be told, the state of Yelp's forums on Friday indicated that many were more interested in talking about "Why are NYC apartment brokers such d-bags?" and "The official 'Jersey Shore' on MTV thread" than about whether Yelp might get sucked up by the Google monster. But a few threads did emerge, and the gist seems to be pretty much the same: They better not change too much. And please keep throwing parties.

"I wonder how this will effect Elite parties as well as Yelp Talk?" one Yelper asked in a Bay Area-centric thread about the acquisition. Another said, "So long as it's not Rupert Murdoch buying it." Some Yelpers were optimistic, suggesting that maybe there would be better integration with Google maps or additional technical improvements.

But others were concerned about quality control. "It means more trolls and fake reviews," one Yelper griped.

"Anyone ever look at the comments on YouTube videos?" another asked. "That is what is gonna happen here."

There were a few threats of account deletion, like "If this happens, I'm deleting my profile" and "Yelp is big because of us. Let's demand money or delete our accounts en masse." Generally, those aren't any real indicator of community revolt, but they're a reminder that it's extremely possible for a big buyer of a community site to mess things up big-time. LiveJournal users weren't thrilled about its Six Apart ownership, which ultimately failed. Likewise, when News Corp. acquired social network MySpace, mismanagement and a lack of innovation were likely what led to a drop in traffic and the eventual dominance of Facebook.

Worth a read: Yelpers' reviews of Google HQ in Mountain View, Calif. Choice bits range from "Google has lots of yummy, organic snacks and drinks" to "They have way too many skunks after 7 p.m. nightly and raccoons living on the Google campus."

This post was updated at 10:48 a.m. PT with comment from Yelp.

We didn't know much about Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies before it invested $200 million in Facebook this spring. But it's been in the news a lot more recently: Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Thursday that the firm has purchased more Facebook stock, sending its stake in the massive social network past 5 percent at a $10 billion valuation. Its original stake was 1.96 percent. It's reportedly still looking to buy more.

A Facebook representative told CNET via e-mail that because it's a private company it opts not to discuss shareholder percentages.

According to the Russian-language publication (first referenced in English by Quintura), DST's increased stake comes from its offer to purchase employee stock as part of the buyback program announced this summer. It's continued to pay $14.77 per share, Kommersant added. But if DST's stake is indeed over 5 percent now, it's purchased far more than the $100 million originally stipulated in Facebook's terms (its total stake is now over $400 million, according to Kommersant).

That's not all DST has been up to. Earlier this week, social gaming company Zynga--arguably the most profitable company to grow out of Facebook's developer platform--announced that DST had led a $180 million funding round designed to "fuel Zynga's growth and...facilitate liquidity for employees and investors." It's a "passive investor," meaning that it will not take a seat on the company board.

"Our earlier investment in Facebook and now in Zynga underscores our premise that social networking and social entertainment will define the next generation of the web," DST head Yuri Milner was quoted as saying in a release from Zynga.

Additionally, earlier this month another Russian newspaper reported that DST was in talks to acquire ICQ, an instant-messaging service that AOL is looking to sell off.

This post was updated at 7:56 a.m. PT with comment from Facebook.

The Winklevoss twins will probably be scary, too. This is a 'Jurassic Park' promo shot of actor Joseph Mazzello, who was recently cast as Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. NB: He's nearly two decades older now.

(Credit: Amblin Entertainment/filmdope.com)

This isn't particularly Earth-shattering news, but it's sort of hilarious.

Dustin Moskovitz, one of Facebook's co-founders and its head of engineering until he left last year, will be played by the little boy from "Jurassic Park" in the tell-all flick "The Social Network."

According to details in the Internet Movie Database, the role of Moskovitz has been filled by Joseph Mazzello, the actor best known for playing Timmy, the skinny 8-year-old who fell out of trees, nearly got electrocuted, and narrowly escaped getting eaten by all kinds of meany dinosaurs in the 1993 blockbuster. In other words, he already has experience as a member of the supporting cast of over-the-top movies about high-tech innovations.

Mazzello is now 26, which should make you feel very old.

Moskovitz was instrumental in Facebook's origins, but in "The Social Network" (helmed by "Fight Club" director David Fincher with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin) he has a relatively minor role. The film is not supported or authorized by Facebook or Mark Zuckerberg, its CEO and co-founder. And the book that the movie is based on--Ben Mezrich's "The Accidental Billionaires"--relies on sourcing, much of it anonymous, from other figures early in Facebook's history. We can confirm that Moskovitz, who has been loyal to the company even after leaving, was not one of them. Putting too much of him in there could lead to legal problems.

The young cast of the movie has proven to be an amusing blend, with "Adventureland" star Jesse Eisenberg starring as Mark Zuckerberg (likely a very good fit), pop star Justin Timberlake playing Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker (really?), and "Gossip Girl" actor Armie Hammer playing both Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who claimed Zuckerberg's founding of Facebook amounted to a theft of their own idea.

It looks like the brouhaha surrounding social-app moneymaker Offerpal Media is bigger than founder Anu Shukla's "sh*t, double sh*t, and bullsh*t" response to the accusation that its business is built on scamming consumers. It's got upcoming developments in two lawsuits, one in which it's the plaintiff and one in which Shukla is a defendant.

VentureBeat's Dean Takahashi reported Thursday that a lawsuit was filed in an Alameda County, Calif., superior court against Shukla and co-founder Michael Liu on behalf of Kevin Halpern, who alleges that he helped found the company and was then shut out. In a court complaint, Halpert says that in exchange for offering his social-networking expertise to what would become Offerpal, Shukla promised him a 15 to 20 percent stake in the company that never came to fruition.

The defendant's motion to dismiss the breach-of-contract suit is scheduled for November 24, according to public court documents. On Wednesday, Offerpal had announced that Shukla would be leaving her post as CEO and would be replaced by digital-ad veteran George Garrick.

But that's not the only legal dispute that Offerpal is in. There's a judicial settlement conference scheduled for Friday in the trademark infringement lawsuit that Offerpal filed against Kickflip, a former customer that went on to create a competing business, called Gambit, according to a person familiar with the court details. The suit was originally filed in April, and the status of a potential settlement is currently unclear because most of the events thus far, as well as Friday's scheduled meeting, have been behind closed doors.

But the reason why Offerpal has been in the news so much as of late has been because of Shukla's public altercation with TechCrunch's Michael Arrington at last month's Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco. In response to Arrington's allegations that Offerpal's profitable business, used by many social-gaming companies as a way for users to earn virtual goods in-game, actually misleads players into signing up for paid offers and subscriptions.

Following the Arrington-Shukla spat, a number of high-profile names in the gaming and social-networking world came out against developer-app scams and misleading ads. Offerpal maintains that it runs a legitimate business. But it's clear that this company's issues run quite a bit deeper than a single PR fiasco.

What's former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe up to these days? He wants to be the next big name in the social-gaming craze, we hear.

In late July, TechCrunch floated a report that DeWolfe was hitting up big private equity outlets to amass cash, at least $100 million, for a new venture that would involve "a roll-up of an Internet industry vertical," but TechCrunch didn't specify what that sector was. Three months prior, DeWolfe had been ousted from the troubled MySpace and replaced by former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta.

Former MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe

(Credit: Michelle Meyers/CNET)

Now, several well-placed sources have told CNET News that DeWolfe intends to make a move in social gaming, a red-hot space currently dominated by the Mark Pincus-headed Zynga, and that his "roll-up" plans involve buying up a number of smaller social gaming companies so that he and Pincus can go directly head-to-head.

Multiple sources have indicated that DeWolfe is working on this new venture with Aber Whitcomb, who left his role as the News Corp.-owned MySpace's chief technology officer in late September.

We don't know what kind of progress DeWolfe, who did not reply to a request for comment, has made in securing that private equity money he was reported to be hunting for this summer. We don't know what the company's name will be--if he's settled on one yet. Nor do we know which smaller companies he wants to agglomerate.

But social games are on the brains of multiple ex-MySpace bigwigs, who were able to witness from the front lines the explosion of the industry when game developers started tapping into the viral channels on big social networks. Another MySpace executive, Jason Oberfest, left the company after just over a year to join social gaming start-up Ngmoco.

One source said that Ngmoco's valuation may already be too high for DeWolfe to consider it for his roll-up plans. Rather, DeWolfe is likely looking at very small gaming companies run by a handful of stellar developers but that lack the legal, business development, and dealmaking resources to make any kind of a dent in the current social-gaming market. He also may be looking at companies that had some initial buzz but have since seen their growth plateau or drop off.

We hear that in the months before DeWolfe's departure from MySpace, there was a lot of talk of gaming as the social site, rapidly losing ground to Facebook, attempted to refocus itself as an entertainment destination. When DeWolfe was in charge, MySpace inked a deal with casual-games maker Oberon to power a gaming platform, but that deal is no longer in place. (We've contacted Oberon for comment.)

Now, under the direction of Van Natta and several former MTV execs like Courtney Holt and Jason Hirschhorn, MySpace's "entertainment" direction is much more focused on music, and gaming has taken a back burner for the time being even though there are some hugely popular games on MySpace's developer platform.

Things couldn't be more different in the social-media industry at large, where gaming is currently front and center. While there was early on a close rivalry between two companies, SGN and Zynga, the far and away leader right now is Zynga--which is pulling in between $100 and $250 million in revenues depending on which industry blog you read, and spends tens of millions of dollars each year just buying up Facebook ads for marketing.

A few companies, like Playfish and Playdom, have also grown big (though still smaller than Zynga), and there are persistent rumors that one of them may be sold to an established gaming-industry player like Electronic Arts.

Most other companies in the space are easily several orders of magnitude smaller. Trying to make inroads when there's already a clear, formidable leader is difficult, and the economic climate means the private equity sector might be skeptical about handing a blank check to someone because he happens to have CEO experience.

What we have heard, though, is that DeWolfe already has someone to model himself on: Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. CEO whom DeWolfe was reportedly very close to during his tenure at MySpace. With a roll-up of acquisitions, he would plan to do for the gaming industry what Murdoch did for newspapers: pluck them up across the industry, and build an empire.

Ambitious, yes.

We've been hearing a few sneaky tips from folks within earshot of the Boston, Mass., set of "The Social Network," the Columbia Pictures movie about the contested origins of Facebook. This week, the film crew has been on the Charles River working on scenes in which Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the identical twins who had a lawsuit against Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are depicted at a Harvard crew practice.

That Boston Globe report about the Harvard heavyweight crew team getting cast in the background? Not quite.

Ivy League athletic restrictions bar current athletes from being film extras, and filming has been an all-day operation while classes are still in session, so an open casting call was held at the new Community Rowing Inc. boathouse on the Charles River in Newton, Mass.--and former Harvard and Northeastern University rowers are among those in front of the cameras. The CRI boathouse, tipsters tell us, has also been the filming HQ for the crew scenes.

The rowers are serving as body doubles for the actors and extras, as well as the actual muscle to power the boats in team scenes. And a few of them indeed have their faces marked up for the CGI superimposing of actor Armie Hammer's visage--he's playing both of the Winklevoss twins.

One thing we've heard is that one of the characters in the scenes is Harry Parker, Harvard's longtime varsity heavyweight crew coach. He's not playing himself, nor does it appear that a well-known actor has been cast to play him (because this would be a great cameo role), but rather a lookalike actor has the role instead.

Most interestingly, a tipster also tells us that while filming of the crew scenes is expected to wrap up this week, that it'll be headed to the iconic Henley Royal Regatta in the U.K. this June. There is indeed a scene in the "Social Network" that takes place at Henley, and it sounds like they're hoping to film it on-site--though we haven't been able to confirm that the formal, buttoned-up annual regatta will allow a movie crew on the grounds.

Other confirmed filming locations for "The Social Network" are Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, which will be standing in for Harvard's campus. Will the cast, which includes "Zombieland" star Jesse Eisenberg (as Mark Zuckerberg) and pop star Justin Timberlake, actually do any filming in Silicon Valley? No word on that yet.

"The Social Network," directed by David Fincher ("Fight Club"), is based on Ben Mezrich's recent book, "The Accidental Billionaires." Facebook has maintained a stance that it stretches the truth.

A boat rows on the Charles River in Boston in the fall of 2006.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET)

Now, these are some guys you don't see at the average Silicon Valley hackathon: The Harvard heavyweight crew team is filming scenes for "The Social Network," according to a Boston Globe gossip column on Tuesday. Film crews have been on the Charles River in Boston recently, the column reports.

That's because two of the main characters in the juicy, David Fincher-directed tell-all about the origins of Facebook are Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, would-be social-network entrepreneurs who claimed that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the code and business plan for their project, ConnectU. The identical twin Winklevosses were also members of Harvard's crew team, they and ultimately wound up on the U.S. Olympic squad last summer in Beijing.

The Globe column also notes that one of the rowers had some red dots painted on his face so that ultimately, the face of an actor could be superimposed on it--which, though it sounds technologically complicated, is probably easier than trying to teach an actor how to row. Besides, "The Social Network" already has some smoke and mirrors to deal with: the Winklevoss twins are being played by a single actor, Armie Hammer.

(The Globe assumes that the face to be superimposed is that of pop star Justin Timberlake, who plays Napster co-founder Sean Parker in "The Social Network." But Parker, we're pretty sure, never rowed on Harvard's heavyweight crew team.)

Meanwhile, though the Charles River is apparently fair game, it looks like Harvard didn't let the film crew on campus: Johns Hopkins University in Maryland put out a release on Tuesday saying it will be standing in for Harvard, in some scenes shot in early November.