The Social

A class action lawsuit filed earlier this week targets Facebook and eight of the participants in Beacon, its ill-fated advertising product that shared information about third-party site activity with the social network. The set of 20 plaintiffs, mostly residents of Texas, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Tuesday. Named as defendants are Facebook, as well as current or former Beacon participants Blockbuster, Fandango (owned by Comcast), Overstock.com, STA Travel, Zappos, Hotwire (owned by IAC/InterActiveCorp), and GameFly.

A Facebook representative told CNET News on Thursday that the company had not yet actually been served with the lawsuit, and that its legal team consequently did not have a formal statement at the time. STA Travel, Gamefly, and Overstock all declined to comment; none of the other defendants could be immediately reached.

"Until we're served, we're not being sued, so we don't have any comment," Overstock general counsel Mark Griffin told CNET News.

Beacon gained almost immediate notoriety when Facebook unveiled it as part of its Facebook Ads announcement last fall. Privacy advocates, most notably liberal activist group MoveOn.org, lambasted the program for not allowing users to disable it easily. Facebook has since modified the program and the controversy has wound down. But in the lawsuit, the plaintiffs point to the window of time before Facebook instituted the new controls--between November 7 and December 5 of last year--and claims that the social network still has access to a large amount of user data that was gathered in that period.

"If the user was not a member (of Facebook), Facebook still obtained the notification from the Facebook Beacon Activated Affiliate," the filing for Lane et al v. Facebook, Inc. read. "Information regarding user activities was sent in real time to a third party Web site--one which was not open or active in the user's browser, and one which, in many cases, the user may never even have visited or heard of."

There's one odd law that may make the plaintiffs' case stronger: the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988. The law was passed amid the fracas surrounding Robert Bork's controversial nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, when a journalist obtained Bork's movie rental record from a local video store and published it.

That's why there's already been a suit involving Beacon that specifically targeted Blockbuster for participating in such a program: a Texas woman filed suit against Blockbuster in April, claiming that the VPPA bars it from Beacon. Facebook was not named as a defendant in that suit, and though the plaintiff sought class action status for her case, she does not appear to have any involvement in this week's suit.

The defendants named in the suit don't encompass all of Facebook's original Beacon partners, but several of them could tie into VPPA protections: GameFly rents video games, Fandango sells movie tickets, Hotwire and STA deal with travel bookings, and Zappos and Overstock are both online retailers with a large scope (Overstock sells DVDs, for example). The suit also names the California Computer Crime Law and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act as grounds for the suit.

One of the plaintiffs, Sean Lane of Waltham, Mass., was immortalized in a Washington Post story about Beacon: He's the guy who bought his wife a diamond ring on Overstock.com, only to have her spot the purchase in a Facebook news feed, spoiling the surprise.

Guess he's still irritated.

If you're flying Delta Air Lines out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, you can now flash your cell phone to get onboard. On Tuesday, the airline rolled out a partnership with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to test out a "paperless check-in"--passengers download a boarding pass onto their cell phones and have it scanned by the TSA at the airport's security checkpoint as well as when they board the plane.

Fellow domestic carrier Continental is already testing a similar program.

The speedier check-in is limited to cell phone customers who can access the mobile Web on their phones, a release explained. And, at least for the time being, Delta's test only applies to domestic travelers flying out of LaGuardia.

"Passengers can now quickly check in for their flight while en route to the airport in a taxi or walking from the parking lot to the terminal," Steve Gorman, executive vice president of operations at Delta, said in the release. "The check-in process now can take place from anywhere, any time within 24 hours of flight departure."

They'll have to present ID, of course. Earlier this month, the TSA ruled that if you refuse to show ID, you can't get on the plane.

Small, "techie" enhancements have been appearing on the airline-news radar recently, as U.S. carriers look for inexpensive ways to make up for cutbacks elsewhere in response to high fuel prices--charging for checked baggage, eliminating perks. United Airlines is rolling out iPod hookups through a partnership with Apple that Delta and Continental will be joining, JetBlue's BetaBlue plane has expanded its in-flight e-mail, and Virgin America used gadget fetishes to pull itself into a "premium" niche.

And if some airlines have their way--heaven forbid--you might be able to keep using that cell phone right up into the air.

Las Vegas: Where pasty geeks stand out even more than they do otherwise.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

In the tech community, Las Vegas has somewhat of a bad rap. Sin City, after all, is home to so many large-scale industry trade shows (case in point: CES) that just mentioning the name is bound to induce a headache, and not in the I-got-plastered-and-lost-all-my-money sense.

The guys at Thrillist, the e-mail newsletter for 20- and 30-something dudes, may have changed that a bit. To celebrate their recent launch of a Vegas-centric newsletter (joining New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and soon Miami), as well as the fact that trendy airline JetBlue is one of their biggest sponsors, founders Ben Lerer and Adam Rich opted to fill up a party plane and let loose 150 New York digital folk into the land of casinos and showgirls. (Disclaimer: It wasn't a "press trip," per se, but I opted to pay for my ticket.)

Clearly, online ad recessions weren't anywhere on the radar--but in opting for heavy sponsorships rather than straight-up paying for everything, Thrillist was likely cutting some costs.

So what went down? Well, when you've got a crowd that includes representatives from Gawker, the Huffington Post, Coolhunting, the Onion, and a dozen dot-com start-ups, some scandal is bound to surface. Here's the G-rated version.

JUICIEST NEWS: Insiders tell us that Bob Pittman, the MTV co-founder and former AOL exec whose Pilot Group investment firm has a big stake in Thrillist, has a fun new project in the works. The media veteran is working on launching his own tequila label, thus putting him in the league of Jimmy Buffett. Guess that means Pilot Group's portfolio brands, which also include DailyCandy, Spongecell, and (to a lesser extent) Buzznet, won't need to hunt for liquor sponsors for their parties much longer.

Upon reaching the Thrillist pool party, Richard Blakeley immediately found some arm candy.

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Videoblogging Star magazine columnist and rumored reality-show-star-to-be Julia Allison didn't bring her ubiquitous dog, Lilly, along for the trip. (But Lilly didn't stray too far from New York media-land: the white Shih Tzu was in the care of Fimoculous blogger Rex Sorgatz.)

BEST STYLE: Gawker Media producer and new-media boy-about-town Richard Blakeley showed up for Friday night's parties in a white suit that was one part Tom Wolfe, one part Colonel Sanders, and one part Pillsbury Doughboy. He then jumped into the pool and seemed to be having a blast until management asked him not to swim with clothes on.

It was the second time this year that Blakeley had been unceremoniously dismissed from a Vegas venue. Remember, he's been banned for life from CES.

BEST SPONSORSHIP: Like any good dot-com party, there were plenty of sponsors. But the one people will probably be remembering is over-the-counter mainstay Alka-Seltzer, which provided guests with ample quantities of its new "Wake-Up Call" hangover remedy.

This post was updated at 11:51 AM PT in order to correct a misstatement that was made in the announcement. The winning artwork from the Etsy-NASA contest, not the artists, will make a trip into space. Read the correction post here.

NEW YORK--What does a marketplace for handmade crafts have to do with a NASA project in virtual world Second Life?

A lot, apparently, according to a panel at Thursday's PSFK Conference that paired Robert Kalin, founder of the Brooklyn-based handmade goods site Etsy, and Andrew Hoppin, co-founder of NASA Co-Labs at the NASA Ames Research Center. The topic of the panel, which was moderated by futurist consultant Greg Verdino of Crayon, was the collaborative working movement known as "co-working."

"This is no longer a phenomenon that is limited to the one-man shop," Verdino said. "What we're starting to see now is this notion of co-working transcending physical space and blending physical work spaces, digital and virtual."

Hoppin and Kalin announced as part of the panel that Etsy and NASA would actually be doing some co-working on their own. "Etsy and NASA are partnering on a program that we're calling Space Craft," Kalin explained. Space Craft will be a contest in which Etsy members create products inspired by NASA's logo; finalists' work will wind up in the NASA gift shop, and two piece of winning artwork will get to go into space. The audience seemed a bit taken aback, possibly due to the incorrect assumption that Kalin meant the artists would be the ones to go into space. "This is all sort of in the planning phase," Kalin added.

Sounds like more concrete information will be forthcoming.

Aside from the plan to put crafty hipsters in space, the panel mostly touched upon the two speakers' rationales for their support of collaborative working. Hoppin explained that the Ames Research Center, located in Silicon Valley, originally opened a virtual co-working space in Second Life because there was too much governmental red tape to open a physical one. In the Co-Labs work space, there are virtual lectures, 3D replications of the planets, and in-world projects that both NASA employees and outsiders can work on. "People can dress up as penguins," he said. "This is not really where you'd expect, as a NASA bureaucrat, to find NASA."

He added that the space agency is still working on opening a physical work-space in the Valley and is in talks with Yahoo.

Kalin, who says he "doesn't get" Second Life, was asked by Verdino about Etsy's "spirit of collaboration between buyer and seller." Etsy uses chat rooms, wikis, and other various social tools so that it's a bit more interactive than, say, eBay and its feedback ratings.

"There's something magical about the item that you get," Kalin explained. "It comes from this connection that you made online, but (then) you get the physical item."

AUSTIN, Texas--I just rolled off a JetBlue flight where half the passengers were typing on MacBooks and talking about last night's episode of Lost and the other half were wearing worn-out band T-shirts and combat boots. Incoming text messages from Twitter are making my cell phone buzz off the hook. I have this sudden craving for baby-back ribs and a giant margarita.

I guess it must be South by Southwest.

I'll be here through Tuesday night for South by Southwest Interactive, the digital-culture arm of the festival, and I'm pumped. Unlike my seasoned colleague Daniel Terdiman, I've never been to SXSWi. Heck, this is my first time in Texas. But amid my naive wonderment at the local culture ("The barbecue here actually tastes good!") I'm hoping to pull in some fun interviews, cool news, and wacky photos. Hey, it's an amorphous five-day geekfest loaded with open bars. Who knows what'll happen?

OMG! There's a cowhide ottoman in my hotel room!

(Credit: Caroline McCarthy/CNET News.com)

One thing's for sure: at Tuesday night's "Bigg Digg Shindigg," a massive party that the social news site is throwing on the final night of SXSWi, I bet a whole lot of people will be asking, "So who's the buyer?"

Additionally, I just got an interesting piece of bacn: a friend request to Dodgeball, the where-you-at text-messaging start-up that was bought by Google and largely forgotten as Twitter gained momentum. The friend who invited me said that he doesn't think Twitter's servers will survive the onslaught of SXSWi messaging and that he's using Dodgeball as a backup plan.

Or maybe Yahoo's FireEagle should've debuted a little sooner...

See more stories in CNET News.com's coverage of SXSWi (click here).

It's 35 degrees and windy in New York right now, but I have the good fortune to be packing up my bags and heading for Miami. No, it's not a vacation. I'm going to the Future of Web Apps conference, hosted by U.K.-based media and events firm Carsonified. I'll be there through Saturday.

Among the featured attractions at FOWA Miami are a wine tasting, an evening soiree at a South Beach nightclub, an afternoon "beach party," and a tug-of-war competition. Yeah, I'm pretty excited for that, even though I plan to politely decline to participate in tug-of-war.

But I'll also be hunting for buzz about hot social media topics like Google's OpenSocial and why it's not exactly speeding out of the gates, the possibilities for location-based networking, and whether Twitter will ever be anything more than a messaging tool for the figurative offspring of Silicon Valley.

Talk to you from the 305!

In a couple of hours, I'll be off to Chicago to cover a different kind of social media: the third annual Second Life Community Convention (SLCC), a gathering of over 800 enthusiasts of the virtual world. It's a phenomenon that saw a dramatic rise and subsequent backlash in the past year, touted by media and business first as a revolution in communications, marketing, and socialization and then as an enormous three-dimensional ghost town.

So what's going to happen at the first SLCC to take place in Second Life's "post-mainstream" age? We'll see. I'll be updating periodically throughout the weekend, including with photographs from Saturday night's highly anticipated "lace and leather" masquerade ball.

Click here to read CNET News.com's pre-coverage.

This post has been updated to include the Facebook app creator's statement on the issue.

Ouch, here's a zinger: contrary to reports, travel site TripAdvisor apparently did not purchase the Facebook Platform application Where I've Been for $3 million. The news was originally reported on Inside Facebook on Thursday night.

A statement from a TripAdvisor representative read, "This is untrue. Beyond that, we do not have any comment."

The company isn't saying any more, obviously. You could really dig into the nuances of the statement, implying it to mean that either the entire rumor of the purchase is untrue, or just the price, or even just some of the details. However, we're going to assume that we should take this at face value and consider the entire acquisition to be an incorrect rumor.

UPDATE (1:53 p.m. PDT): Craig Ulliott, creator of the Where I've Been app, has confirmed that TripAdvisor has not acquired his creation. In a statement, he explained the situation: "There have been some rumors in the market that we have sold our business. These rumors are not true. Our future development plans, combined with our robust community of users, current growth rates, and the attractiveness of the travel vertical, have led to a number of strategic discussions with potential partners/acquirers, but we have not agreed to any deals and we are committed to building Where I've Been into a sustainable and profitable standalone business."

But, Ulliott added, we shouldn't wholly discount the possibility of an acquisition: "We are, however, exploring all avenues to maximize the value and usefulness of our product for our user base and we expect to announce new product features/enhancements," he explained, "from both internal development and through strategic business partnerships, in the weeks and months ahead."

Urban travel blog Gridskipper has a great new list of geek hotspots in New York City: from bizarre curio shop Evolution, to comic culture megastore Forbidden Planet, to Barcade, which is exactly what you'd think it would be.

The list misses a few, like West Village gaming center Nyclan (coverage here) and the Manhattan outlet of Japan-inspired gallery and retail shop Giant Robot. But overall, this New Yorker thinks it's a decent and diverse selection that clearly indicates there's more for nerds to do around here than go for Water Taxi rides.