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How Facebook stays afloat adding 250,000 users per day

A few weeks ago I talked with Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, about the challenge of innovating quickly and building stable infrastructure while 250,000 new members are added to the social network every day. Check out the video on ZDNet.

Q: You've been at Facebook, I think, for about a year and it's been quite a ride I guess, scaling up from zero in 2004 to over 80 million today. How do you keep up with that hyper growth? Heiliger: You're absolutely right--we've had a lot of growth. We add over … Read more

AOL to developers: We'll guarantee revenue if you use Platform-A

Fighting the common wisdom that it's tough to make money off a social-network application, AOL announced Monday that it will guarantee CPM revenues to developers on Facebook and Bebo's platforms if they opt to use its Platform-A ad technology. If a developer pulls in three unique ad impressions, AOL will pay an undisclosed flat fee.

"Advertiser interest in social networks is rising at a steady rate, and Platform-A is making an unprecedented flat-fee commitment to help application developers generate revenue and guarantee monetization of their applications," Dave Jacobs, Platform-A's senior vice president of publisher services, … Read more

Will Andreessen befriend Zuckerberg?

The rumors have been floating around for a while, and now Mike Arrington is reporting that Marc Andreessen is going to join Facebook's board of directors. (Kara Swisher had the original news break back in May.)

Best known as the founder of Netscape, Andreessen these days is involved with Ning, which supplies a platform for "white label" social networks that you can brand as your own.

We'll try later to get more clarity about how all of this is supposed to shake out.

If the move indeed goes down, Facebook will pick up a plugged-in entrepreneur … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 755: Issues of men and womthem

Thorny gender issues arise on Facebook, Bill Gates takes his leave, Sony announces movie downloads without any movies but their own, and anyone in North Carolina who's offended by their own, inadvertently rude "WTF" license plate can get it replaced at no cost. But we say: drive it with pride! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 755

For Bill Gates, the next phase begins http://news.cnet.com/For-Bill-Gates%2C-the-next-phase-begins/2009-1014_3-6242476.html

Sony yet to sign PSN movie download deals http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11133&Itemid=2… Read more

ConnectU founders score spots on U.S. Olympic rowing team

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss might not have gotten their way with Mark Zuckerberg, but they've got a different prize in mind now: Olympic glory.

The identical twins, who founded one-time Facebook rival ConnectU with their Harvard classmate Divya Narendra, have earned spots on the U.S. Olympic rowing team that will compete later this summer in Beijing. The team's roster was announced Friday and is currently pending approval by the United States Olympic Committee.

Recently, the Winklevoss twins have been in the news because of their long-running lawsuit against Facebook founder Zuckerberg, whom they had once hired as … Read more

Facebook 'gender policy' has grammar in mind

A blog post from Facebook product manager Naomi Gleit early on Friday announced an update to the site that initially may seem extremely minor: after years of using the grammatically abhorrent reflexive pronoun "themself" to describe actions in members' activity feeds (i.e. "Dwight Schrute tagged themself in the album 'Booze Cruise '08'"), the social network will be using the proper "himself" and "herself" instead.

My initial reaction to the announcement: big deal. Sounds like someone high up at Facebook was guilt-tripped into making the change by a finicky former English teacher.… Read more

Facebook in threat to national security

When power is given to those who routinely post online pictures of themselves wearing nothing but a garland of ivy and a beer stain, bad things must follow.

I am moved to the point of jiggery by a report authored by the esteemed Sir Edmund Bunton (in the UK, only Sirs or Ladys can author reports).

Sir Edward, no relation, as far as I can tell, to Emma 'Baby Spice' Bunton, is the Chairman of the Information Advisory Council. And his problem is that he fears he has hired a bunch of Facebook-forward netwackos into the UK's Ministry of … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 754: Molly.wood, here I come!

ICANN approves its plan to totally overhaul the Internet domain structure, but all we can do is make fun of the name "Winklevoss." Hee. "Winklevoss." Also today, Microsoft wants to shut off your gadgets from afar (or at least, their patent filing suggests that they do), the Samsung Instinct is totally the new iPhone, and torrent freaks think JJ Abrams' new show, Fringe, will be a hit. Phew! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 754

Judge Ends Facebooks Feud With ConnectU http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/judge-ends-facebooks-feud-with-connectu/

Facebook suspends app that permitted … Read more

Court enforces Facebook-ConnectU settlement

A U.S. District Court judge has decided to enforce the settlement that Facebook and would-be rival ConnectU signed in February, rejecting the ConnectU founders' claims of fraud.

The legal battle between the two social-networking sites has gone on since 2004, when ConnectU founders Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra initially sued Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and several other early employees for allegedly stealing ConnectU's code and business plan while they were all students at Harvard. Facebook countersued in 2005, claiming that ConnectU had hacked into its user database to mine e-mail addresses.

Both parties must still show … Read more