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I'm not going to lie: Wednesday's announcement from Facebook wasn't a huge one. The social network unveiled a moderately redesigned home page that puts the news feed even more front-and-center, and has tweaked the "fan pages" that it encourages brands to create to tap into Facebook's 175-million-strong membership.

The "streaming" nature of the revamped news feed is an obvious answer to Web users' seemingly endless thirst for instant news and opinions--I'm looking at you, Twitter. That's a pretty understandable step. So are the easier filtering controls, which make a lot … Read more

Facebook's all set to make a product development announcement of sorts on Wednesday in the form of what it calls an "Open Door" event featuring CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several other executives. The most notable portion of it--according to an e-mail from the company's press corps--is that it'll unveil "the next evolution of Facebook Pages."

Facebook Pages, as you may recall, are the free profiles that brands can set up to establish a presence on the social network, which now has over 175 million members worldwide. Members can sign onto the pages as &… Read more

Facebook has had another awkward coming-of-age moment.

Late on Tuesday night, the massive social network reversed a change to its terms of service (TOS) that had meant that its license on user content--a longstanding but little-publicized claim to an "irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license" for promotional efforts--would no longer expire if a member deleted his or her Facebook account.

Over the weekend a popular consumer advocacy blog, The Consumerist, declared the change a cause for alarm. Buzz started to spread: could Facebook make your personal photos public? Or could it hand over that drunken karaoke … Read more

On an otherwise placid holiday weekend, one blog's commentary on a change to Facebook's terms of service created a firestorm of banter on the Web: does the social network claim ownership to any user content on the site, even if the user deletes it?

Facebook reorganized its terms of service last Wednesday. In a blog post, company legal representative Suzie White provided an explanation. "We used to have several different documents that outlined what people could and could not do on Facebook, but now we're consolidating all this information to one central place," White wrote. "We've also simplified and clarified a lot of information that applies to you, including some things you shouldn't do when using the site."

The blog post sounded benign. But the brouhaha arose on Sunday over a revision in the wording of Facebook's policy over what happens to profile content--shared items, blog post-like "notes," photos--when members delete their accounts.

Consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist phrased Facebook's fresh policy as "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever," pointing out that Facebook's ToS spruce-up removed several sentences in which the company said its licenses on user content expired upon account deletion. And that's where the hysteria began.

"Facebook should now be called The Information Blackhole," one Consumerist commenter proclaimed. "What goes in never comes out. Be careful what you huck in there."

Truth be told, most Facebook users won't give a hoot, the same way that the flurry over the Beacon advertising program in late 2007 was fueled by a few vocal privacy advocates while the general population didn't seem to care about it one way or the other. But for advocates of copyright reform and privacy, not to mention photographers and writers who may want the photos they upload or "notes" they write on Facebook to eventually lead to some kind of profit, the news was alarming.

Some prominent Twitterers and bloggers, like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, announced that they were deleting their Facebook accounts or pulling all uploaded content.

So Facebook issued somewhat of a clarification on Monday to explain what the change really meant.

"We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload," a statement from Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt read. And indeed, Facebook's terms of service do say that "User Content and Applications/Connect Sites" are exempt from its claims on content ownership.

"The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site," Schnitt's statement continued. "That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc...), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend)."… Read more

It's been a long time since I was this cynical about Valentine's Day. I guess it's not as bad as the year when it was freezing cold and I had the flu, or the year when I had a blind date with that pretentious guy who thought he was destined to be a famous economist. But this year, I'm kind of bitter about the advent of everyone's favorite love-to-hate-it holiday for a different reason, and I blame my job.

I write about the Web. I'm used to an in-box full of press releases from … Read more

Here's a message for all the tech bloggers and reporters freaking out over the alleged Associated Press bombshell that some copy-paste legerdemain led to the revelation that Facebook valued itself at $3.7 billion at the time of the ConnectU vs. Facebook court settlement:

Please, chill out! This is not news!

While it had not yet been reported that the ConnectU settlement was a reported $65 million (though since it was in cash and stock, that value may have dropped with the onset of the recession), the $3.7 billion Facebook valuation has been around since July.

The New … Read more

Unless you have been inhabiting the underground bunker formerly occupied by Dick Cheney, you've probably seen loads of press coverage over a "25 Things About Me" Internet meme that was spreading on Facebook. Basically, members would create a Facebook "note" containing 25 facts about themselves, and then "tag" 25 friends encouraging them to do the same.

Yes, it was a bona fide phenomenon, but I avoided writing about it, because I thought the whole thing was...dumb. Internet memes of that nature have been around since goodness knows when. Breathless press hype over … Read more

NEW YORK--Were there an anthology of gadget launch announcements, the unveiling of Amazon's Kindle 2 e-book reader would have one of the more anticlimactic storylines.

It started out like any other big press conference, with a line of reporters and photographers streaming out the door onto the chilly sidewalk outside the historic Morgan Library & Museum.

The Kindle 2's arrival had been preceded by the usual blog blitz of leaked photos, rumors, and breathless wish lists. (A color screen! Better PDF support! International versions of the Kindle store!) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage, Steve Jobs-style, with a slide show recap of the original Kindle's success before making the big debut.

But the announcement itself was underwhelming. The price, $359, remains the same. The battery life's been improved by about 25 percent. The Kindle 2 is much skinnier than its predecessor, slimming down to 0.36 inches in thickness from 0.7, but it's only a tenth of an ounce lighter. The storage capacity has jumped from 256MB to 2GB, or about 200 to 1,500 books, and the electronic ink display has improved from a 4-shade to 16-shade grayscale.

The layout of some of the buttons has been restructured, and the new Kindle also has a text-to-speech reader. In short, the improvements seem worthwhile, but there was no real curveball to give the Kindle a mainstream appeal.… Read more

As Facebook hits its fifth birthday on Wednesday, it's nearly impossible to find a recent news story that doesn't refer to its growth with terms like "lightning-fast," "exponential," "skyrocketing," or some other expression that would be quite at home in a space-age comic book from the 1950s.

That might be true now. And with an executive lineup sourced from Bay Area elite (including a handful of former Google leaders), high-profile conferences and parties, not to mention developer "hackathons" all over the world, it has all the makings of a landmark … Read more