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Google's Horowitz: Facebook is social network of the past

NEW YORK--Facebook is the social network of the past, and the way it implements advertising doesn't really work, a Google executive overseeing the search giant's social-networking product said today.

Bradley Horowitz, the Google vice president of product for Google+, said Facebook isn't set up in a way that's compatible with the real world. People should be able to have a conversation with a certain group of friends without involving others. And they should be able to have real conversations, he said, not 140-character blurbs like Twitter.

"In designing Google+, we keep thinking about the real … Read more

Give annoying Facebook friends an imaginary time-out

A new Facebook app lets you poke fun at your friends who post annoying content by putting them in a virtual time-out and announcing it to the Facebook world.

Defriendtion, which launched today, has users fill out a form explaining why they want to "dislike" their friends temporarily, along with evidence in the form of links, photos, or quotes and the number of hours of "defriendtion" you want them to serve.

When you put your friends in this virtual detention, the app posts a message to their wall and Timeline, as well as the news ticker. … Read more

Animoto turns Facebook photos into 'Best of 2012' videos

Animoto, the app that turns Facebook photos into slideshow videos, added a highlight reel feature today that lets users create videos based on their most popular photos of the year.

The magic behind the highlight reel is Facebook's Open Graph. Animoto pulls the photos and captions from your profile -- these include ones you posted and those you're tagged in -- based on how many times your friends commented or liked them, or how many people were tagged in it. The videos are set to music and can include text.

The result, Animoto CEO Brad Jefferson said, is … Read more

Ceglia fights to keep lawyer trying to quit lawsuit against Facebook

Paul Ceglia has chased away his lawyers before and now another one is begging to get off the case. But, Ceglia doesn't want to let him go.

Ceglia, who is suing Facebook with the claim that he owns half of the social network, is up to his neck in legal woes. But, his lawyer Dean Boland, has said he can no longer represent Ceglia because of threats he's received, according to the Associated Press.

Boland has filed a motion to withdraw from the lawsuit but Ceglia has opposed the motion.

"I appreciate the fear for his own … Read more

Commenters push Facebook policy changes to public vote

Facebook is about to take its policy changes to an official vote among its users. And if history is any guide, turnout will be low and Facebook will proceed to make the changes it wants. That includes how it collects data from Instagram users, which has privacy advocates protesting and urging CEO Mark Zuckerberg to reverse course.

Facebook last week proposed a series of policy changes that, along with changes to how it handles your data, would abolish the social network's practice of allowing users to vote on policy changes.

That's right. Facebook wants to do away with … Read more

Facebook increases Fab's Thanksgiving sales by 20 percent

Fab can put another notch on its trendy Facebook belt -- the quirky e-commerce site said it's made at least 20 percent of its Thanksgiving revenue from shoppers who joined Fab through Facebook.

Overall, Fab saw at least 25 percent of its revenue between Black Friday and Cyber Monday come from social media sites. Facebook led the way during the four-day period, now one of the biggest shopping times of the year.

While Fab didn't say how other social media contributed to its revenue overall, CEO Jason Goldberg did post the traffic breakdown in his blog betashop:

• 65 … Read more

Facebook ads really work, just ask Samsung

Do Facebook ads work? Of course they do, says company global marketing head Carolyn Everson.

"The biggest myth is that Facebook ads don't work," she said today, reiterating Mark Zuckerberg's comments on Facebook's ad business. And, Facebook's rising stock price seems to support the notion that advertising dollars are flowing faster these days into the company's coffers.

The shift to mobile is a major factor in how Facebook will grow its advertising. "If you look at time spent on mobile devices -- we have 600 million of a billion users on … Read more

Privacy watchdogs aren't happy about Facebook's site changes

Facebook has incurred the wrath of privacy groups because of proposed policy changes it announced last week.

The executive directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy penned a letter (pdf) to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to withdraw changes that they say would impact the privacy of the social network's 1 billion users and break its previous settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The battle began when Facebook announced a proposal to overhaul its system last week, saying that it had outgrown its old model. The two groups say there are … Read more

Facebook removes pic, confuses elbow for breast

Facebook's breast police might just be more efficient and ruthless than that of several dictatorships.

I imagine them stationed in all parts of the world, trained on anatomical textbooks and pornographic movies, moved at the sight of a breast like a gambler desperate for his horse to cross the finish-line first.

Here a breast, there a breast, everywhere they're abreast of images that Facebook deems offensive -- even if they're merely being displayed to a tiny coterie of friends.

The Web magazine Theories of the Deep Understanding of Things decided to exercise the breast police's intelligence … Read more