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A bug in Facebook’s data archive has inadvertently exposed personal details of about six million users.
The bug meant email and telephone numbers were accidentally shared with people that would not otherwise have had access to the information.
So far, there was no evidence the data exposed was being exploited for malicious ends, said Facebook.
It said it was “upset and embarrassed” by the bug, which was found by a programmer outside the company.
The data exposure came about because of the way that Facebook handled contact lists and address books uploaded to the social network, it said in a security advisory.
Typically, it said, it analyzed the names and contact details on those lists so it could make friend recommendations and put people in touch with those they knew.
A bug in Facebook’s data archive has inadvertently exposed personal details of about six million users
The bug meant some of the information Facebook generated during that checking process was stored alongside the uploaded contact lists and address books.
That meant, said Facebook, that when someone had downloaded their profile this extra data had travelled with it, letting people see contact details that had not been explicitly shared with them.
An investigation into the bug showed that contact details for about six million people were inadvertently shared in this way. Despite this, Facebook said the “practical impact” had been small because information was most likely to have been shared with people who already knew the affected individuals.
The bug had now been fixed, it added.
Facebook was alerted to the bug by a member of its “White Hat” program who checks the site’s code for glitches and other loopholes. A bounty for the bug has been paid to the programmer who found it.
Security analyst Graham Cluley criticized Facebook’s release of the information just before the weekend and said the disclosure had been more about “damage limitation” than making sure the information reached as wide an audience as possible.
Facebook revealed today that it received 9,000-10,000 requests for user data from US government entities in the second half of 2012.
The social-network said the requests, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts, covered issues from local crime to national security.
Microsoft meanwhile said it received 6,000 and 7,000 requests for data from between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts.
Leaks by former computer technician Edward Snowden suggest the US electronic surveillance programme is far larger than was known.
Internet companies – including Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft – were reported last week to have granted the National Security Agency (NSA) “direct access” to their servers under a data collection programme called PRISM.
The firms denied the accusations, saying they gave no such access but did comply with lawful requests.
Several also called on the government to grant them permission to release data about the number of classified orders they received.
In an effort to reassure its users, Facebook lawyer Ted Ullyot wrote on the company’s blog that following discussions with the relevant authorities it could for the first time report all US national security-related requests for data.
“As of today, the government will only authorize us to communicate about these numbers in aggregate, and as a range,” he said.
Facebook revealed it received 9,000-10,000 requests for user data from US government entities in the second half of 2012
For the six months ending 31 December 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received was between 9,000 and 10,000, relating to between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.
“These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat,” Ted Ullyot said.
“With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of 1% of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of US state, local, or federal US government request.”
Ted Ullyot did not indicate to what extent the company had fulfilled the requests, but said Facebook had “aggressively” protected its users’ data.
“We frequently reject such requests outright, or require the government to substantially scale down its requests, or simply give the government much less data than it has requested,” he said.
Later, Microsoft also published information about the volume of national security orders during the second half of 2012, stressing that they had an impact on only “a tiny fraction of Microsoft’s global customer base”.
While praising the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation for permitting the disclosures, Microsoft Vice-President John Frank called on them to “take further steps”.
“With more time, we hope they will take further steps. Transparency alone may not be enough to restore public confidence, but it’s a great place to start,” he wrote in a statement.
Earlier this month, Edward Snowden, a former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and former CIA technical assistant, leaked details of the PRISM programme.
Edward Snowden, 29, fled the US to Hong Kong shortly before the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers published his revelations.
His whereabouts are unknown, and he has vowed to fight extradition to the US should the authorities attempt to prosecute him.
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Facebook founding president Sean Parker married singer-songwriter Alexandra Lenas in a lavish ceremony in California.
Photographed in the story-book forest surroundings of Big Sur, California, the $10 million wedding took place in front of 300 friends and family members and the theme has been compared by many to the HBO show, Game of Thrones.
The Internet entrepreneur, who is estimated to be worth $2 billion, is now officially hitched to the mother of his young daughter after his wedding at the swanky Ventana Inn & Spa.
The ceremony and reception featured opulent decorations including a ruin, a waterfall and long feast style tables.
“Forget what you heard about Sean Parker’s wedding,” friend John Perry Barlow tweeted following the ceremony.
“It [was] elegant, tasteful, and magical.”
They “have just been enormously generous to their friends. We are all very grateful”, he wrote.
Alexandra Lenas, 24, wore a dress that appears similar to Daenerys Targaryen from the Game of Thrones.
Sean Parker, 33, is believed to have shelled out $10 million to turn a boutique hotel into what looks like a movie set, equipped with outfits for guests designed by the costume designer for the Lord of the Rings movies.
One source told the New York Post that guests “entered down a long trail and came to a big gate and entered this other world in a forest there … They made the forest come alive”.
The ceremony was officiated by Unitarian Universalist minister John A. Buehrens.
The extensive guest list included Sting and his wife Trudie, Allison Williams, Emma Watson, Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, Perry and Etty Farrell and Lucian Grainge.
Jacqueline Laurita, from the Real Housewives of New Jersey, also attended the event and shared photographs of the lavish hotel on Twitter.
“Words cannot even describe how beautiful the wedding I went to yesterday was,” she gushed.
“Nothing like I’ve ever seen. I felt like I was in a fairy [tale].”
Sean Parker married Alexandra Lenas in Game of Thrones wedding ceremony in Big Sur
The political world was represented by California Attorney General Kamela Harris, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
Alexandra Lenas’ gown was by Elie Saab, while Sean Parker, the couple’s infant daughter Winter Victoria and the guests were dressed by Academy Award-winning costume designer Ngila Dickson.
Designer Ken Fulk, caterer Paula LeDuc and designer Preston Bailey, who designed the flowers, all helped coordinate the massive affair. Mark Seliger was the photographer.
Guests enjoyed cake from Perfect Endings as well as music by Loreena McKennitt and The Good The Bad and The Ginger.
Sean Parker had previously denied the Game of Thrones theme on his Twitter account, but admitted they would be instructing guests on what to wear.
“Just because we don’t trust our guests to dress themselves properly doesn’t mean we want them to look like #GoT characters,” he wrote in April.
“Academy award winning costume designer Ngila Dickson is creating gorgeous, inspiring, and unique designs that are both modern and whimsical.”
Sean Parker hired a landscaping company to build fake ruins, waterfalls, man made ponds, bridges and a gated cottage in the surrounding woods at the hotel, sources told TMZ in April.
The venue included two terraces that are used for weddings, that offer “privacy and an uninterrupted 50-mile view of the Big Sur coastline to the south”, according to its website.
The Inn boasts its design is mean to “complement nature and encourage guests to experience the essence of romance”.
Residents in the California community have been less than thrilled with the attention Parker’s spectacle has attracted.
The California Coastal Commission reportedly was called in to investigate whether the inn had procured the proper permits for the wedding-related construction, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
“We’re pretty used to celebrities being in Big Sur. But for this one, they’ve basically built a movie set to have their wedding,” Stan Russell, head of the city’s chamber of commerce, told the paper.
Stan Russell said the construction will go away after the Saturday bash and expects the attention the town receives could actually help the wedding industry in the city.
“The wedding planners in Big Sur are planning ahead for 2014 already, because they’re booked. People want to come and see what all of the excitement’s about,” Stan Russell said.
Guests were expected to enter through a $600,000 gate, dance on a $350,000 floor and walk past more than $1 million worth of plants and flowers, the gossip website site.
The New York Post reported that the save-the-date cards for the June 1 wedding look like wizard scrolls.
“There is a chance the wedding could end up looking like an episode of Game of Thrones,” an insider told the Post.
Game of Thrones is a popular Medieval fantasy TV show on HBO that features knights and dragons and sorcery.
Sean Parker is worth an estimated $2 billion after becoming the founder of Napster and other tech start-ups and working with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg during the early days of the social network.
The internet guru is most famous for his portrayal in the movie Social Network, which details the role he played in the beginnings of Facebook. Justin Timberlake played him in the Oscar-winning movie.
Sean Parker proposed to Alexandra Lenas, a singer-songwriter, in February, after she gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Winter Victoria Parker.
The European launch of HTC First, aka Facebook smartphone, has been delayed following disappointing US sales and negative feedback.
The HTC handset runs Facebook’s enhanced Home software, designed to be more integrated into the smartphone than a normal app.
First’s delay follows a raft of high-profile employee departures from HTC.
In recent months, chief product officer Kouji Koudera, Asian chief executive Lennard Hoornik and the firm’s director of global communications Jason Gordon have all departed.
Five other senior figures have also left the company.
Signs of discontent were played out in public when Eric Lin, an ex-HTC product strategy manager, tweeted: “To all my friends still at @HTC – just quit. Leave now.
“It’s tough to do, but you’ll be so much happier, I swear.”
Eric Lin had left HTC in February to join Microsoft-owned Skype.
The European launch of HTC First, aka Facebook smartphone, has been delayed following disappointing US sales and negative feedback
Despite being one of the industry’s top players several years ago, the smartphone maker’s market share has fallen sharply and its income fell to the lowest level in eight years towards the end of 2012.
Mark Zuckerberg launched Home on the promise it would “change the relationship” people have with their phones.
The free-to-download software effectively replaces the phone’s home screen with a Facebook feed and chat options.
It was initially exclusively available on HTC’s First smartphone, before being rolled out to a selection of other Android-powered handsets.
HTC had hoped the Facebook deal would boost sales of the First device, but the handset has since been heavily discounted – and dropped by AT&T, the biggest US mobile network.
In a statement, Facebook said it had been listening to users’ “experiences” of the software.
“While many people love it, we’ve heard a lot of great feedback about how to make Home substantially better.
“As a result we’re focusing the next few months on adding customization features that address the feedback we received.
“While we focus on making Home better, we are going to limit supporting new devices and think it makes a lot of sense for EE and Orange to hold off deploying the HTC First in Europe.”
A startling number of teen girls have admitted to having a schoolgirl crush on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, proclaiming their love for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect on social media.
It’s a disturbing trend on sites like Twitter and Facebook, where girls have admitted to finding Dzhokhar Tsarnaev attractive, and herald him in the ranks of Justin Bieber and One Direction singer Harry Styles.
One Twitter user, a waitress who goes by the name Keepitblunted, has said she is looking to get a tattoo of a Dzhokhar Tsarnaev quote.
“If you have the knowledge and the inspiration all that’s left is to take action.”
The quote was tweeted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on April 8, a week before the Boston Marathon bombings.
She has since gone back on her promise, posting that she has decided to hold off “out of respect of my family’s wishes”.
But the young woman, named Alisha, told the New York Post that she’s not among the group of women who are interested in the case against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev because she’s in love with him.
She told the paper: “Somebody needs to stand up for him, and not the little high-school girls who just think he’s cute.”
The FreeJahar97 Twitter account was created on April 25 – 10 days after the double bombing.
The first tweet reads: “any other beliebers out there who want to see Jahar freed and believe he is innocent? feel like i’m all alone here.. #freejahar.”
Another says she is considering becoming a Muslim to better related to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
“I know I didn’t know Jahar and I shouldn’t be saying this but… I miss Jahar… Is that weird? Don’t think I’m weird. I just miss him.”
Facebook group Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent sprung up shortly after the bombings and has more than 8,000 followers
Tsarnaev5ever tweeted: “Jahar is gonna go crazy in that cell alone with just a book… I wanna send money to him… Anyone have the address?”
“Poor Jahar… He’s only 19. ONLY 19… No one deserves to be in a 10×10… No one…”
Shadowlilly1993 posted: “Yall can judge me as much as you want. I’m on his side.This kid needs people behind him. I hope to meet him one day he fascinates me @J_tsar.”
A teen who goes by the Twitter handle Wildziall, says: “I wonder what jahar is thinking about right now.”
In another, she said: “My little brother just said he would cover for me if I snuck out of the house to meet up with jahar I love him.”
Meanwhile, a Facebook group that sprung up shortly after the bombings, “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent”, has more than 8,000 followers.
The group, loaded with conspiracy theories and proclamations of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s innocence, is by invitation only.
Vocal fans of the “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is Innocent” Facebook group have claimed that neither Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan, was responsible for the Boston bombing.
Instead, they say, a government-funded group of mercenaries from a private company staged the event and framed the Chechen pair.
The company they accuse, Craft International, trains military and police teams through tactical and combat scenarios. Its founder, retired Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, wrote the best-selling book American Sniper and recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history.
Chris Kyle was killed in February at a Texas gun range, by a fellow veteran struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Frugal billionaire Mark Zuckerberg continues to enjoy his budget holiday in Hawaii with his wife Priscilla Chan, while it has been revealed he is even richer than previously thought.
Mark Zuckerberg, 28, gained $2.3 billion from selling 60 million stock options just before Facebook’s initial public offering last year.
Facebook’s CEO and his Harvard-educated doctor wife are also rumored to be on the lookout for real estate in Hawaii.
Despite his latest windfall, sport-shorts wearing Mark Zuckerberg remains focused on the simple things in life. Rather than indulging in lavish dinners and extravagant outings, he has been spotted eating burgers and surfing in recent days.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the first frugal billionaire, Warren Buffet is another who would prefer to keep his wealth in the bank rather than spend it on extravagant purchases. He famously still lives in the same modest home he bought in 1958 for $31,500.
Facebook’s CEO has another reason to keep his vacation cheap and cheerful. According to regulatory documents filed Friday, he has also been saddled with a massive $1.1 billion tax bill. Money he raised by selling 30.2 million Facebook shares for $38 apiece in the IPO.
Frugal billionaire Mark Zuckerberg continues to enjoy his budget holiday in Hawaii with his wife Priscilla Chan, while it has been revealed he is even richer than previously thought
Facebook’s stock hasn’t closed above $38 since the IPO was completed last May. The shares gained 71 cents Friday to close at $26.85.
The 29% decline from Facebook’s IPO price has cost Zuckerberg nearly $7 billion on paper, based on the 609.5 million shares of company stock that he owned as of March 31, according to the regulatory filing. His current stake is still worth $16.4 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004, has indicated he has no immediate plans to sell more stock.
The proxy statement filed to announce Facebook’s June 11 shareholder meeting is the first time that the magnitude of Mark Zuckerberg’s stock option gain had been quantified.
The proxy also revealed that Mark Zuckerberg’s pay package last year rose 16% because of increased personal usage of jets chartered by the company as part of his security program.
Mark Zuckerberg’s compensation last year totaled nearly $2 million, up from $1.7 million last year. Of those amounts, $1.2 million covered the costs of his personal air travel last year, up from $692,679 in 2011.
If not for the spike in travel costs, Mark Zuckerberg’s pay would have declined by 17%. His salary and bonus totaled $769,306 last year versus $928,833 in 2011.
But despite being worth $13.3billion, Mark Zuckerberg enjoys life’s simple pleasures. Earlier this week he and his wife were spotted chatting with friends at picnic tables while snacking on Kauai’s famous Bubba burgers and smoothies.
The couple, who are notoriously down-to-earth, sported casual wear and Mark wore his now-famous sandals, which are parodied by Jesse Eisenberg in the film about Facebook, The Social Network.
Facebook announced they would be borrowing a page from Twitter’s manual and introducing hashtags (#) onto its site.
According to The Week, no specific date has been announced for the introduction, but soon Facebook users who click on a word preceded by a hashtag will bring up all Facebook posts tagged with that hashtag.
Hashtags have become an important marker for Twitter. In the past week they were instrumental during the papal conclave and even signalling the Catholic Church’s newest leader #PopeFrancis.
But there’s also a monetary angle towards the hashtag. Films, television shows, and even recording artists often use promoted hashtags on Twitter’s main page.
The Washington Post reports that “Twitter is expected to make about half a billion dollars in advertising revenue this year, according to eMarketer. Facebook generated $4.3 billion last year from advertising”.
This is not the first time that Facebook has looked to Twitter to re-boot its image.
When Facebook launched its subscriber list it certainly seemed to be moving towards a Twitter-specific demographic.
Facebook announced they would be borrowing a page from Twitter’s manual and introducing hashtags onto its site
Similarly, acquiring Instagram last year also showed Facebook was interested in poaching some of Twitter’s camera-ready users who regularly post photos of epic dinners or cute cats.Especially with its mostly-panned redesign, this copycat move is just further proof for critics that Facebook has “jumped the shark”.
The edginess Facebook faced way back when The Social Network movie was still in theaters has seemed to erode in recent months.
Teenagers, in particular, seem vulnerable towards abandoning the social media platform because it’s simply too toxic or even dangerous.
Internet trolling, a relative small staple of Twitter, has become a major factor for teenage bullying on Facebook.
But the numbers for Facebook don’t lie. In October of 2012 the site passed its one billionth user, meaning one of every seven people has a Facebook page.
No timetable has been announced for hashtags on Facebook.
Facebook has decided to revamp its design, making its website look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps.
The refresh also introduces topic-specific alternatives to its news feed.
One consequence of the change is that adverts can take up more screen space, making them harder to ignore.
However, the project’s lead engineer denied ads were the redesign’s focus. He also played down suggestions that the move was intended to make people spend more time on the site.
Chris Struhar instead suggested his focus had been on stripping back the amount of information being shown on the news feed to make each post more “engaging”.
“One of the consistent themes we heard in feedback from people was that it felt cluttered and that there was lot happening on the page,” Chris Struhar said ahead of the official announcement.
“We wanted to clean up the page, declutter it, make it simpler, more modern and easier for people to use.
“I often compare this to a 1960s television with wood panelling, knobs around it and a tiny postage stamp-sized screen – and what we’re trying to do is take that same TV and translate it into a 40in HD experience.”
Facebook reported in January that 1.06 billion people were using its service at least once a month.
It also revealed that its profit for the last three months of 2012 was 79% down on the same period the previous year despite a rise in sales because of increased spending on research and development.
There are three key changes being made to Facebook:
- The website switches from a three-column format to two-columns letting the main news feed take up more space. This allows all posts – whether they are friends’ updates or adverts – to take up a bigger proportion of the web browser with more prominence given to images and video rather than text describing a link.
- A pop-out black bar is added to the left-hand side of the page. This contains app bookmarks, links to specific friends, the chat and calendar tools, and the live updates ticker.
- In addition to the standard news feed, users can select other alternative feeds. These include one which shows all the updates posted by friends rather than just the ones selected by Facebook’s algorithms; one dedicated to organizations and people the user “follows”; a page featuring only posted photos; and a music-themed feed containing updates from artists the user likes, concert announcements and details of songs their friends are listening to through services including Spotify and Rdio.
It is also noteworthy that the firm has now dropped its “facebook” logo which spelt out its full name, and replaced it with an “f” icon. This change had already been experienced by the selected group of users given early access to its Graph Search facility.
Facebook has decided to revamp its design, making its website look more like its Android and iOS mobile apps
Another tweak involves auto-generating maps to accompany posts about specific locations. This may encourage more members to use the mobile app’s GPS-powered check-in function which competes with Foursquare.
Investors and marketers will be keen to find out whether the alterations make users more likely to read and interact with paid content.
Facebook already knows that engagement with ads in its main news feed is greater than with those that appear on the right-hand side of its web browser. This column of adverts is absent from its mobile apps altogether.
Enlarging the news feed now allows a sponsored post to become by far the biggest element on the screen, taking up roughly a third of the page when viewed on a 13 in (33 cm) laptop display.
Another business-friendly change is that if a user “likes” an organization a horizontal banner photo is added to posts reporting the news in addition to the brand’s logo, making the update more eye-catching.
Chris Struhar acknowledged that sponsored posts from “liked” brands had become bigger, but added that it was not his intention to make users more likely to click them.
“This redesign doesn’t change anything about how people interact with ads on Facebook,” he said.
“We aren’t changing where adverts show up or what ads you see. We’re just trying to take all the content that you do see and make that bigger and more immersive and more engaging.”
Chris Struhar added that further amendments might be made once users had had a chance to provide feedback.
Facebook has admitted that teenagers are becoming bored with the social networking giant.
Facing competition from younger, more agile and “cooler” apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook fears its long-term business could be harmed.
And as Facebook approaches its tenth anniversary the firm published its annual 10-K report last month revealing that its younger users are increasingly turning away from the multi-billion dollar business.
Published last month, Facebook annual report states: “We believe that some of our users, particularly our younger users, are aware of and actively engaging with other products and services similar to, or as a substitute for, Facebook.
“For example, we believe that some of our users have reduced their engagement with Facebook in favor of increased engagement with other products and services such as Instagram.
“In the event that our users increasingly engage with other products and services, we may experience a decline in user engagement and our business could be harmed.”
The sobering admission that they need to sharpen their public image comes as Facebook Director of Product Blake Ross announced in scathing terms why he was leaving the social networking powerhouse.
“I’m leaving because a Forbes writer asked his son’s best friend Todd if Facebook was still cool and the friend said no, and plus none of HIS friends think so either even Leila who used to love it, and this journalism made me reconsider the long-term viability of the company.”
Facing competition from younger, more agile and “cooler” apps such as Snapchat and Instagram, Facebook fears its long-term business could be harmed
Maybe because of the seriousness of his jesting post, Blake Ross pulled the message from his Facebook page.
However, it did not divert from the fact that teenagers are very often a plausible, but non-scientific barometer for trends – especially what is cool and what is not.
Indeed, the founder and of new social networking site Branch, Josh Miller, asked his 15-year-old sister for her opinion on Facebook.
Her verdict was damning.
“She tries to visit Facebook as infrequently as possible,” Josh Miller wrote, because it’s addictive, and because it’s not as fun as Instagram.
“Facebook may have an irreversibly bad brand,” Josh Miller concluded.
Web-expert, Laura Portwood-Stacer was more concise in her opinion of how Facebook relates to today’s teenagers.
“I think it has less to do with kids consciously looking for <<the next big thing>> than Facebook just no longer being a space that serves them,” said Laura Portwood-Stacer.
“I think kids are less self-conscious about trying to be cool than marketers would like to think,” she added.
Teenagers are turning to sites like Tumblr and apps like Snapchat and Instagram as their preferred methods of communication.
“Tumblr is mainly my obsession as of now,” said 15-year-old Collin Wisniewski to The Verge.
“It just seems more intimate and it’s not really a place of bragging, but more of a place of sharing.”
Apps such as Snapchat give power to younger users who do not like the idea of their images existing forever and tagged on Facebook,
“I would say that this app really is one of my major communicating devices more than really a social network,” said Collin Wisniewski.
However, this does not mean that teens are leaving Facebook similar in manner to the demise of MySpace.
They are simply using the service less and other newer products more.
And, of course, monetarily, Facebook owns Instagram and is still at the forefront of mobile device apps.
According to a report released on Thursday, Facebook will not pay any tax for 2012 despite making $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from U.S. operations.
But Mark Zuckerberg’s company will also get a multimillion dollar tax refund of around $429 million according to Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ).
The refunds reportedly come from tax deductions on executive stock options and share awards.
Facebook released its first annual report as a public company on January 30 after floating in May 2012.
CTJ describe the fact that the company “did not pay even a dime in federal and state income taxes” as an “amazing admission”.
As reported by Businessweek, Facebook says it had a $559 million federal tax liability in 2012.
But their refunds on the tax deductibility of stock options reduced the companies federal and state income taxes by $1.03 billion for the year, including refunds of earlier years’ taxes of $451 million.
After a small portion is applied to state taxes, this benefit turns Facebook’s liability into a refund.
Yet according to CTJ, Facebook have further stock-option tax breaks that the company generated from its initial public offering of stock (IPO).
Facebook will not pay any tax for 2012 despite making $1.1 billion in pre-tax profits from US operations
Facebook is hoping to reduce future tax liability by carrying forward another $2.17 billion in additional tax-option tax breaks for use in the years ahead.
As CTJ point out, this means “Facebook’s current and future tax reductions from the stock options exercised in connection with its IPO will total $3.2 billion”.
Facebook spokeswoman Ashley Zandy declined to discuss the tax break with Businessweek and instead referred to a transcript of Facebook executives’ conference call with analysts.
In this call, Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman mentioned the accumulated tax benefits before noting that Facebook ended the fiscal year with nearly $10 billion in cash and investments.
David Ebersman claimed this gave the company ‘great flexibility and risk protection.’
Facebook delivered fourth-quarter results above Wall Street’s expectations on January 30 and sought to show that it has finally transformed into a ‘mobile company’ after rising to dominance as a Web-based social network.
But its stock dropped in after-hours trading as investors placed more significance on the company’s growing expenses rather than on its increasing user base and higher advertising revenue.
“Everything was slightly better than expected,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.
“I don’t see anything here that would make me want to sell the stock.”
Nonetheless, Facebook’s stock fell $1.11, or 3.6%, to $30.13 in after-hours trading following the earnings report.
Facebook Inc. grew its revenue and increased the percentage of it that comes from mobile advertising – a closely watched figure. But expenses also grew sharply.
The company also said 2013 will be a year of “significant investments” and hiring as it focuses on long-term growth rather than short-term profits.
Facebook earned $64 million, or 3 cents per share, in the October-December period. That’s down 79% from $302 million, or 14 cents per share, a year earlier when it was still a privately held company.
Revenue rose 40% to $1.59 billion from $1.13 billion, surpassing analysts’ expectations of $1.51 billion.
Advertising revenue grew 41% to $1.33 billion, increasing at a faster clip than in the third quarter, when it climbed 36% to $1.09 billion.
Facebook is facing legal action from Rembrandt Social Media over its use of the “Like” button and other features of the social network.
Facebook is being sued by a patent-holding company acting on behalf of a dead Dutch programmer called Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer.
Rembrandt Social Media said Facebook’s success was based, in part, on using two of Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer’s patents without permission.
Facebook said it had no comment to make on the lawsuit or its claims.
A lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in Virginia by Rembrandt Social Media.
“We believe Rembrandt’s patents represent an important foundation of social media as we know it, and we expect a judge and jury to reach the same conclusion based on the evidence,” said lawyer Tom Melsheimer from legal firm Fish and Richardson, which represents the patent holder.
Rembrandt now owns patents for technologies Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer used to build a fledgling social network, called Surfbook, before his death in 2004.
Facebook is facing legal action from Rembrandt Social Media over its use of the “Like” button and other features of the social network
Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer was granted the patents in 1998, five years before Facebook first appeared.
Surfbook was a social diary that let people share information with friends and family and approve some data using a “like” button, according to legal papers filed by Fish and Richardson.
The papers also say Facebook is aware of the patents as it has cited them in its own applications to patent some social networking technologies.
Also cited in the same legal claim was another social media company called Add This.
Facebook has reported a sharp drop in profits, partly due to increased spending on research and development.
Facebook made a profit of $64 million in the final three months of 2012, compared with $302 million a year earlier.
Revenue was up 40% at $1.6 billion, largely due to a big jump in advertising revenue, a quarter of which came from mobile platforms.
Shares in Facebook fell by almost 6% in after-hours trading in New York.
The shares launched on the Nasdaq stock exchange in May at $38, and had halved in value by September.
They have since recovered to stand at $31 at the close of trading on Wednesday. The drop in after-hours trading suggests the shares will fall back again when full trading resumes on Thursday.
“Mobile revenue was expected to be a little higher,” said analyst Aaron Kessler at Raymond James.
“Overall it’s a solid quarter but maybe [the company has suffered from] high expectations going into the quarter.”
Facebook has reported a sharp drop in profits, partly due to increased spending on research and development
Revenue from advertising was $1.3 billion, 41% up on a year earlier.
Mobile revenue, an important indicator of the company’s ability to capitalize on the growing move towards mobile platforms, accounted for 23% of overall revenue.
“In 2012, we connected over a billion people and became a mobile company,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive.
“We enter 2013 with good momentum and will continue to invest to achieve our mission and become a stronger, more valuable company.”
A pair of glasses dubbed a “privacy visor” has been developed to make the user invisible to hidden cameras using facial-recognition software.
The prototype spectacles have been designed by scientists at Tokyo’s National Institute of Informatics.
The glasses are equipped with a near-infrared light source, which confuses the software without affecting vision.
Law enforcers, shops and social networks are increasingly using facial-recognition software.
Prof. Isao Echizen said: “As a result of developments in facial recognition technology in Google images, Facebook et cetera and the popularization of portable terminals that append photos with photographic information [geotags]… essential measures for preventing the invasion of privacy caused by photographs taken in secret and unintentional capture in camera images is now required.”
The near-infrared light “appends noise to photographed images without affecting human visibility,” he said.
The glasses dubbed privacy visor has been developed to make the user invisible to hidden cameras using facial-recognition software
Prof. Isao Echizen said the glasses, which connect to a pocket power supply, would be reasonably priced, but there are some simpler alternatives.
Heavy make-up or a mask will also work, as will tilting your head at a 15-degree angle, which fools the software into thinking you do not have a face, according to an online guide produced by hacktivist group Anonymous.
In September, following a review by Ireland’s data protection commissioner, Facebook suspended its facial-recognition tool that suggested when users in Europe could be tagged in photographs.
In November, it emerged some shop mannequins were collecting data on shoppers using facial-recognition software.
The EyeSee mannequin logs the age, gender and race of passers-by through a camera hidden behind one eye.
Facebook has added a feature in its mobile phone app that allows free calling for US iPhone users.
Users can now make calls to each other via the Facebook Messenger app anywhere they have a Wi-Fi or a cellular-data connection.
The feature could be a boon for heavy talkers as they would avoid carrier call charges.
Facebook said it was working on adding the feature to its Messenger app for Android and BlackBerry users.
Facebook has added a feature in its mobile phone app that allows free calling for US iPhone users
Within the app, all a person needs to do is open a conversation with a partner, tap the “i” icon in the upper right hand corner and select “Free Call”.
The calls, however, can only be made to another user who has Messenger installed on their iPhone. Users can neither call a Facebook friend who is logged in through the website or call a landline.
The latest mobile-to-mobile development was independent of the free video-calling software Skype, which was already integrated into Facebook’s website, a spokesman said. The Messenger app is limited to voice calling.
The official said Facebook was expected to roll out the feature in its Messenger app for other operating systems and expand it overseas.
On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled a smart search engine – called Graph Search – that allows users to make “natural” searches of content shared by their friends.
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Facebook has announced a major addition to its social network – a smart search engine it has called graph search.
The feature allows users to make “natural” searches of content shared by their friends.
Search terms could include phrases such as “friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter”.
Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg insisted it was not a web search, and therefore not a direct challenge to Google.
However, it was integrating Microsoft’s Bing search engine for situations when graph search itself could not find answers.
Mark Zuckerberg said he “did not expect” people to start flocking to Facebook to do web search.
“That isn’t the intent,” he said.
“But in the event you can’t find what you’re looking for, it’s really nice to have this.”
Earlier speculation had suggested that the world’s biggest social network was about to make a long-anticipated foray into Google’s search territory.
“We’re not indexing the web,” explained Mark Zuckerberg at an event at Facebook’s headquarters in California.
“We’re indexing our map of the graph – the graph is really big and its constantly changing.”
Facebook has announced a major addition to its social network, a smart search engine it has called graph search
In Facebook’s terms, the social graph is the name given to the collective pool of information shared between friends that are connected via the site.
It includes things such as photos, status updates, location data as well as the things they have “liked”.
Until now, Facebook’s search had been highly criticized for being limited and ineffective.
The company’s revamped search was demonstrated to be significantly more powerful. In one demo, Facebook developer Tom Stocky showed a search for queries such as “friends of friends who are single in San Francisco”.
The same technology could be used for recruitment, he suggested, using graph search to find people who fit criteria for certain jobs – as well as mutual connections.
Such queries are a key function of LinkedIn, the current dominant network for establishing professional connections.
“We look at Facebook as a big social database,” said Mr Zuckerberg, adding that social search was Facebook’s “third pillar” and stood beside the news feed and timeline as the foundational elements of the social network.
Perhaps mindful of privacy concerns highlighted by recent misfires on policies for its other services such as Instagram, Facebook stressed that it had put limits on the search system.
“On graph search, you can only see content that people have shared with you,” developer Lars Rasmussen, who was previously the co-founder of Google Maps, told reporters.
Mark Little, principal analyst at research firm Ovum, said he was “underwhelmed” by the announcement.
“I think probably people were looking for something a little bit more strategic,” he said, adding that graph search might well be a bridge to a more comprehensive search offering in the future.
“On the plus side I think it’s going to help drive connections within the network between individuals and between companies and pages,” he said.
“If you are increasing connections between friends and pages you are effectively increasing the reach of advertisers.”
In his demonstration, Tom Stocky showed how graph search could help any attempt to go back over old content that a user may want removed. For instance, it could let someone use search queries – such as pictures taken at a certain location, such as a night club – and untag them en masse.
Mark Zuckerberg said that graph search would launch immediately as a beta test, and would roll out “very slowly”. The tool will be usable from the blue banner that sits at the top of every Facebook page.
“We’re going to put an encouragement on the home screen of everyone’s account so that everyone has the chance to look through these tools.
“We’re going to do this before graph search is fully rolled out.”
He added that external developers would eventually have access to the data in graph search – but access wasn’t available yet.
“There’s a very long list of things that we didn’t do for version one. We have years and years of work ahead of us.”
A new survey has revealed that the photo-sharing blogging platform Tumblr is more popular with 13-to-25-year-old than Facebook.
Garry Tan of Y Combinator found 59% of those polled responded that they were regular users of Tumblr, compared with 54% who regularly used Facebook.
“Marketers are definitely looking to other social networks beyond Facebook,” a spokesman for research firm eMarketer told the New York Post.
“Not because Facebook is ineffective but because the digital audience is more fragmented than ever before.”
According to the report, Tumblr cracked the 50 most-visited websites list last year, yet only 30% of marketers considered advertising there, according to Awareness Inc.
With only a 12-person staff, Tumblr is relatively tiny compared to Facebook’s colossal team of 3,200.
A new survey has revealed that the photo-sharing blogging platform Tumblr is more popular with 13-to-25-year-old than Facebook
Social network founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is celebrating his first Christmas with wife Priscilla Chan after the couple tied the knot on May 19, laughed and joked during private surfing lessons on the island of Maui.
Priscilla Chan looked relaxed in a sporty, red one-piece while her billionaire husband lugged his own surfboard and worked on his tan in a pair of board shorts.
Mark Zuckerberg, 28, took time out from his role as chairman and CEO of Facebook to relax with his 27-year-old wife on the Hawaiian island, a popular tourist spot for surfing and windsurfing.
The couple chatted easily with other beach-goers before taking to the waves, where Priscilla proved herself to be an accomplished surfer.
The Zuckerbergs married in May with a ceremony in the billionaire’s backyard in Palo Alto, California. It was a joint celebration to mark Priscilla Chan’s graduation from medical school.
They honeymooned in Italy where they were pictured taking in the beauty of Rome’s Sistine Chapel and tucking into pasta in low-key restaurants.
Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan celebrate their first Christmas as married couple in Hawaii
The couple have been dating since 2003 after meeting in line for the bathroom at a frat party at Harvard University.
The beach snaps are a rare glimpse of a notoriously private couple – a luxury which was also accidentally breached by a member of Mark Zuckerberg’s own family last week.
His sister Randi posted a picture of her family jokingly reacting to Facebook’s new Poke application, and someone tweeted the picture out to the public.
She later complained that her privacy was breached on Twitter. The incident comes as Facebook has long been accused of taking advantage of users’ privacy concerns.
In the photo, Randi’s younger siblings and parents are seen in what appears to be their family home in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
Instagram, Facebook’s photo-sharing website, has updated its privacy policy giving it the right to sell users’ photos to advertisers without notification.
Unless users delete their Instagram accounts by a deadline of January 16th, they cannot opt out.
The changes also mean Instagram can share information about its users with Facebook, its parent company, as well as other affiliates and advertisers.
The move riled social media users, with one likening it to a “suicide note”.
The new policies follow Facebook’s record $1 billion (758 million euro) acquisition of Instagram in April.
Facebook’s vice-president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson earlier this month had said: “Eventually we’ll figure out a way to monetize Instagram.”
A notice updating the privacy policy on the Instagram site said: “We may share your information as well as information from tools like cookies, log files, and device identifiers and location data with organizations that help us provide the service to you… (and) third-party advertising partners.”
“To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you,” it said in its terms of use.
But Instagram said that its aim was to make it easier to work with Facebook.
Instagram has updated its privacy policy giving it the right to sell users’ photos to advertisers without notification
“This means we can do things like fight spam more effectively, detect system and reliability problems more quickly, and build better features for everyone by understanding how Instagram is used,” it said in a statement.
However, the updated policy will not change how it handles photo ownership or who is able to see a user’s pictures, it added.
But the new policy has triggered a backlash among social media users, with some threatening to quit.
One user tweeted: “Good bye #instagram. Your new terms of service are totally stupid and nonsense. Good luck playing with the big boys.”
New York-based photographer Clayton Cubbit wrote on his account that the new policy was “Instagram’s suicide note”.
Analysts said that the new policies could deal a blow to Facebook’s reputation and alienate some users.
Richard Holway, chairman of TechMarketView, said: “Every time Facebook has altered their privacy policy it has led to a backlash and they’ve been forced to retreat. They tamper with people’s privacy at a cost. People are very upset.”
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, research director at 451 Research, added: “It’s a barefaced tactic that Facebook and Instagram have taken, and one that will likely meet with many challenges, legally and ethically.
“The fact is that Facebook has critical mass, and is quite confident that such moves may cause uproar, but not a flight of business.
“Larger firms like Facebook are essentially trailblazing before specific regulations can catch up with them, and as we have seen with Google in the past, regulations and laws have limited real impact on their business operations – so they tend to move forward regardless of opposition.”
Facebook and Zynga have amended an agreement that gave Farmville’s developer strong access to the social network’s one billion users.
Farmville is a game once mostly played on Facebook, which at its peak attracted 82 million players a month.
Zynga now has its own games platform, but players will no longer be able to share their progress on Facebook.
Zynga’s share price fell by 13% in after-hours trading following the news.
It is the latest blow for the company, which last month announced job cuts and studio closures.
The change, which will take place from March 31st, 2013, ends Zynga’s ability to promote its Zynga.com platform on Facebook.
The move also means it will no longer be required to display Facebook advertising on its own site.
Facebook and Zynga have amended an agreement that gave Farmville’s developer strong access to the social network’s one billion users
“There was plenty of speculation Zynga was getting referrals within the Facebook community that other gaming companies weren’t getting which helped drive web traffic to Zynga games,” Digital World Research chief executive PJ McNealy said.
Facebook said the move would bring its relationship with Zynga in line with other games studios.
“We have streamlined our terms with Zynga so that Zynga.com’s use of Facebook Platform is governed by the same policies as the rest of the ecosystem,” Facebook said in a statement.
“We will continue to work with Zynga, just as we do with developers of all sizes.”
Facebook has not announced plans to build its own games platform.
Recent figures suggest 80% of Zynga’s revenue comes from Facebook users.
In an email to staff in October 2012, Zynga founder Mark Pincus said the company would close its Boston studio and consider closing studios in the UK and Japan as part of an “overall cost reduction plan”.
Justin Bieber, the world’s richest self-made teenager, has now 47 million Facebook fans, 29 million Twitter followers and three billion YouTube hits.
As the world’s first social-media superstar, Justin Bieber, 18, built up a fan base of millions before he’d even signed a record deal.
His world record puts him ahead of Lady Gaga, Rihanna or Eminem.
“The genius of Justin Bieber is he used the power of social media like no other artist – and he doesn’t stop,” said Simon Cowell.
“Only a fool would underestimate him.
“I’ve met him a few times. He’s bright. The kid is more in charge than people think. I know this industry, I know what it takes, and he will be around for a very long time,” added Simon Cowell.
With a fortune estimated at $105 million – which is set to double in the next two years on the back of a world tour, a movie and the returns from numerous investments – Justin Bieber is part teenage heart-throb, part superstar businessman.
His latest album, Believe, topped the charts in the U.S. and throughout Europe, and his tour is sold out.
This amazing success has brought him a $6 million, 10,000sq ft house north of LA, a Disney-princess girlfriend, Selena Gomez, and a $750,000 Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van customized with three high-definition TVs and a recording studio. About the only thing lacking in his fairy-tale world is a private jet.
“No way,” he says emphatically.
“It’s a total waste of money. You buy the plane, then you have to pay for storage, and on top of that you have to think about the fuel, the cost of the fuel – that’s maybe $4,000.
“Even hiring a private plane is like 50 or 60K. Once you get into that it becomes a habit – a bad habit.
“I’ll get one when I need it – if I have to go somewhere instantly – but you don’t want to buy a plane; it’s definitely not worth it.”
What makes this exchange truly surreal isn’t the fact that Justin Bieber barely even shaves yet – but that he’s only out by $100 on the cost of a tank of jet fuel.
“I never stop working,” says Justin Bieber.
“In what I wanted to do in music I’ve never had any fear. But now I’m at the top there’s nowhere to go but down; for me it’s about staying standing at the top.
“I’m not a kid any more – I’m an adult, I’m making the decisions and I want to keep on growing, and I believe I can.”
Unlike, for example, Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus and Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber didn’t spring fully formed from a major TV show.
Instead, aged 12, he appeared from nowhere – or more precisely, from YouTube, where his mother, Pattie Mallette, posted videos of her son singing in a local competition and in their tiny basement apartment in the blue-collar town of Stratford, Canada.
Justin Bieber has now 47 million Facebook fans, 29 million Twitter followers and 3 billion YouTube hits
Justin Bieber’s backstory is straight out of a Hollywood script. Troubled teen (Pattie Mallette) gets pregnant by her on-and- off boyfriend (Jeremy Bieber).
At 18, Pattie Mallette gives birth, and – besotted by her baby – turns her back on drugs and alcohol and embraces Christianity.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Bieber, 19, languishes in jail for assault. Jeremy Bieber and Pattie Mallette eventually separate.
At the age of two, Justin Bieber starts playing the drums, and soon he’s astounding his mother’s friends with his natural talent.
A hyperactive child, he teaches himself to play the guitar, piano and trumpet too, and begins performing in his home town.
Then, when Justin Bieber was 13, talent manager Scooter Braun spots him on YouTube. Scooter Braun flies him and his mother to Atlanta, attracts interest from R&B star Usher and gets him a record deal with Usher’s mentor LA Reid.
At 16, Justin Bieber’s debut album goes double platinum. His dad reforms and settles down, and his mother tours the world with him.
“What happened was I found something I wanted to be good at,” says Justin Bieber now.
“I wasn’t good at school because I had no passion for it. If I hadn’t found music my life would have been bad.
“My family are all poor, so the cycle would have continued. My kids would have been poor, and their kids would have been too. I feel I broke the cycle, and when you get to break the cycle, you don’t go back.”
Justin Bieber was originally painted as a pretty puppet, with Scooter Braun, now 31 and worth $23 million, pulling the strings.
“That’s the greatest misconception of me,” he smiles.
“People think I’m a product, that they found this good-looking kid, cut his hair nice and put Auto-Tune on his voice, wrote him good songs, taught him how to dance and then said, <<Here is a pop star for you>>.
“I am the furthest thing from that. I’m a musician; I play instruments, I write songs. I’m a businessman; I want to create an empire. I want people to know I don’t just sing songs. I’m the guy who signed the girl who just had the biggest single all round the world [Carly Rae Jepsen with Call Me Maybe; he brought her to the attention of Scooter Braun, who gave him a 50% cut when he signed her].
“I’m going to do movies – I’m talking with Mark Wahlberg about my first big movie. I invest in start-ups and IT. I have a very smart manager, but I always wanted to learn from him.
“The education I’ve had you couldn’t get in any school. If I want to be good at something I will be. I’m good at this.”
With all his money and fame Justin Bieber can do anything, except walk down a street without being mobbed. You wonder how he gets his thrills.
“On stage,” he says.
“Playing a song acoustically.”
Paul Ceglia, a New York businessman, has been charged with trying to defraud Facebook by claiming he was owed a 50% share of the social media company, prosecutors say.
Paul Ceglia, 39, is accused of fabricating and destroying evidence in a lawsuit asking for half-ownership of the firm.
Arrested at his home in Wellsville, New York, Paul Ceglia was due in court on Friday afternoon.
Attorney Preet Bharara said the entrepreneur had been chasing a “quick payday based on a blatant forgery”.
In 2003, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, then a Harvard University student, agreed to do programming work for Paul Ceglia and his fax business, say prosecutors.
Paul Ceglia is accused of fabricating and destroying evidence in a lawsuit asking for half-ownership of Facebook
Paul Ceglia later filed his lawsuit claiming that he and Mark Zuckerberg had signed a two-page contract awarding him a 50% stake in Facebook.
But Mark Zuckerberg said he had not yet conceived the idea for the social network at the time.
Facebook’s lawyers said the contract that Paul Ceglia and Mark Zuckerberg signed in 2003 was to develop street-mapping software.
Paul Ceglia subsequently doctored the document to insert Facebook references, it is alleged.
Barack Obama made a new attempt on Friday to shore up the youth vote with a live interview on MTV.
President Barack Obama sat down at the White House with anchor Sway Calloway and delivered a careful pitch based around youth-friendly topics such as climate change, college tuition and gay marriage.
He also opened up about his personal life, revealing that he has banned his daughter from using Facebook for security reasons, and talking about his anguish at seeing his friends’ family members die in gun violence in Chicago.
The questions for the half-hour interview were sent in by young MTV viewers, and focused around issues which concern college students and the under-30s.
Barack Obama is likely to attract the support of a large majority of young people, but nonetheless faces a fierce battle to boost turnout among the group, who traditionally vote in relatively low numbers.
He was in his element during the MTV interview on Friday afternoon, with many of the questions centring on common Democratic talking points such as global warming and women’s equality.
The first question, predictably, was about youth unemployment, and prompted the President to defend his economic record, arguing: “We’ve made real progress since I came into office… but we’ve got to do a lot more.”
When asked how he would help entrepreneurs, Barack Obama claimed his administration was “making it easier for entrepreneurs to raise money through the internet” by seeking crowd-funding from a number of small investors.
Barack Obama made a new attempt on Friday to shore up the youth vote with a live interview on MTV
However, Barack Obama refused to contemplating forgiving the student debt of graduates who start their own business, saying it would be better to “make sure that folks don’t get loaded up on debt in the first place”.
Sway Calloway pointed out that the majority of young people now support same-sex marriage, and pressed the President to make a greater commitment to “ensure that all Americans have equal rights in the eyes of the federal government”.
However, Barack Obama – while describing gays as “outstanding people” – reiterated that “historically marriages have been defined at the state level”, and suggested he would not push for federal legislation to legalize gay marriage nationally.
But he insisted: “The evolution in this country will get us to a place where we will be treating everyone fairly,” and argued that future generations’ support of gay marriage would change the political landscape.
When the conversation turned to the “silent epidemic” of gun violence in America’s cities, the President spoke of his personal grief at the murders which have blighted his native Chicago.
“These shootings are taking place a few blocks away from my home, and I have friends whose family members have been killed,” he said.
Barack Obama also talked about climate change, an issue which did not come in the presidential debates, saying: “We’re not moving as fast as we need to, and this is a problem which future generations will have to be dealing with.”
The President addressed his hopes and fears for his daughters, Malia and Sasha, as he said: “They’re growing up pretty quick, and when they’re out of the house I want to make sure they have the same opportunities as anyone’s sons.”
He revealed that Malia found it difficult to balance the stresses of adolescence with life in the public eye, saying: “Because she’s well-known I’m very keen about her protecting her privacy.”
Barack Obama said that she was not allowed to use Facebook for security reasons, but joked that he was not worried about the prospect of her dating – “because she’s got Secret Service protection”.
A more cultural moment came towards the end of the interview, when Sway Calloway asked whether Barack Obama was concerned about the decline in political music.
The President reminisced about his youthful love of Bob Marley: “I can remember when i was in college listening – and not necessarily agreeing with everything, but thinking about how people outside our country were thinking about the struggle for jobs and dignity and freedom.”
Among modern bands, he praised the Roots, a hip-hop group who are “doing some really good stuff”.
MTV has invited Mitt Romney to participate in a similar event, and the network says it hopes to feature the Republican candidate at some point before Election Day.
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Facebook has been dealt another blow after Zynga, the gaming company responsible for much of its revenue, announced that it was slashing its outlook for the year.
Facebook shares had slipped by 2.5% to $21.41 by Friday afternoon after Zynga announced that its number of paying customers had fallen.
Analysts have once again reduced their expectations for Facebook over fears that the company is overly dependent on the struggling maker of FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
At one point Zynga’s shares fell by 20% to just $2.21 – a fraction of the $15-plus they were worth in March.
Facebook is strongly exposed to any deterioration in Zynga’s performance, as it derives around one seventh of its revenue from the company’s games.
In turn, Zynga is heavily dependent on Facebook – it gets most of its revenue from titles that are played on PCs using the site’s social gaming platform.
Its games FarmVille, FrontierVille, Zynga Poker, Mafia Wars and CityVille accounted for 83% of the total revenue last year.
In July, it reported a sharp fall in second-quarter revenue as it struggled to retain users on Facebook.
The percentage of paying users continues to decline as a greater variety of games becomes available for free on Facebook, Macquarie Equities Research analyst Michael Pachter said.
The company has also been hit by delays in its game pipeline as older titles fade and it has struggled to come up with new hits for mobile devices.
Zynga said on Thursday it was still struggling to stem user flight from Facebook games like CityVille and FarmVille.
“Modest user churn and engagement erosion likely accelerated during the spring and has continued to date,” Piper Jaffray & Co analyst Michael Olson said.
The company will continue to struggle because of newer titles overtaking older and more successful games and lower revenue generation rates for its mobile games, according to another analyst.
The company’s more recent hit games such as Words With Friends and Draw Something were developed by independent firms which were then purchased at huge cost, not created in-house.
As these games are mostly played on mobile devices, they generate less revenue for Zynga.
During the third quarter, Zynga was hit by a charge of up to $95 million related to its $182 million acquisition of OMGPOP, the creator of Draw Something.
Macquarie Equities Research cut its price target on Zynga stock to $2.50 from $3.50. Wedbush Securities slashed its price target to $4.00 from $7.00 and Evercore Partners cut its target to $1.70 from $2.00.
The San Francisco-based company, which went public with much fanfare in December, has since lost three quarters of its market value.
Though the company’s new web-based games began well, growth tailed off after hitting about 7 million daily active users.
Several of its top executives including Chief Operating Officer John Schappert and Chief Creative Officer Mike Verdu have quit the company since August.
Facebook “likes” are being added to webpages even if a user has not clicked a like button, or even visited the page in question, the company has admitted.
A US security researcher found that simply sending a web address to a friend using Facebook’s private messaging function would add two likes to that page.
Leaving a comment on a story within Facebook also adds to the tally.
The site said no private information had been exposed.
The revelations coincided with the news that the network has surpassed one billion monthly active monthly users.
“Many websites that use Facebook’s <<like>> or <<recommend>> buttons also carry a counter next to them,” the site explained.
“This counter reflects the number of times people have clicked those buttons and also the number of times people have shared that page’s link on Facebook.
“When the count is increased via page shares, no user information is exchanged.
“We did recently find a bug with our social plug-ins where at times the count for the Share or Like goes up by two, and we are working on fix to solve the issue now.”
The site explained that the figure represented how many times an item was shared – not how often users had clicked “like” on the page.
However, the number appears next to the word “like” and the site’s distinctive thumbs up icon.
The system means that users who may be sharing pages to highlight negative content – such as campaigners – are inadvertently making the page appear more popular.
In documentation relating to the function of the like button, Facebook details four criteria which cause the likes number to increase – only one of which involves clicking the like button.
Facebook stressed that the added likes were anonymous, and would not appear on the user’s timeline.
The site also said that its figure of 1.13 trillion likes – which was publicised as part of its announcement of having one billion active users – was not affected.
But researcher Ashkan Soltani, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argued that inflating the numbers in this way raises the prospect of “like fraud”.
He quoted an online commenter who pointed out that “if [you’re] visiting an online store and you see a lot of likes under the product then this might cloud your judgement”.
Facebook has now surpassed one billion people using it every month, the company has said.
The passing of the milestone was announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg on US television on Thursday.
The company said that those billion users were to date responsible for 1.13 trillion “likes”, 219 billion photos and 17 billion location check-ins.
The site, which was launched in 2004, is now looking towards emerging markets to build its user base further.
“If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you,” Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a status update.
“Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.”
Statistics released to coincide with the announcement revealed there were now 600 million users accessing the site via a mobile device – up 48 million from 552 million in June this year.
Since its early beginnings at Harvard University, Facebook users have befriended each other 140.3 billion times.
Sustained growth is seen as crucial if Facebook is to maintain its value – the company has seen its share price drop to about $22 from a starting price of $38.
Investors will expect the company to look at ways to make more from the users it already has as well as seeking to attract new users in areas of the world where it does not yet dominate.
“For Facebook the main challenge is not just to grow in terms of numbers, but more importantly to deepen and enrich engagements,” said Eden Zoller, principal analyst at tech research firm Ovum.
Although the service is by far the world’s biggest social network, there are key areas, such as China and Russia, where local competitors still remain the online networking tool of choice.
Last month, Mark Zuckerberg visited Moscow, where he made his first TV chat show appearance, as well as a highly publicized meeting with the Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev.
It was a public-relations exercise designed to unsettle VKontakte – a network that boasts in excess of 300 million members, compared with Facebook’s seven million, in the country.
In the same trip, Mark Zuckerberg made a “surprise” visit to one of the company’s arranged hack-a-thons to meet local developers.
Other trips include to China, where the company said it was busy “watching and learning” from other internet firms.
Google, which launched in China in 2005, faced fierce criticism when it agreed to allow censorship of search results. It later changed its stance, and now directs all of its traffic through its Hong Kong-based site.
Success for Facebook in China would mean unseating RenRen (more than 30 million users) and possibly the Twitter-like service Sina Weibo (more than 300 million users).
In Africa, Facebook has targeted the use of basic phones – known widely as “feature phones” – which are unable to display the full-featured site, but instead can use specially created variations of the network.
Specifically, a project called Facebook for Every Phone, which was launched following the company’s acquisition of feature-phone specialists Snaptu, is central to its growth strategy in the region.
“Facebook is doing very well in Africa,” said Erik Hersman, a Kenyan-based blogger.
“You even see people using it in the rural areas – often people will ask for a phone with Facebook on it, not caring/knowing about the internet at all.”
There are considerable monetization opportunities too. The continent has, at a pace far outstripping the west, adopted mobile payment systems in huge numbers – more than 15 million in Kenya alone.
In developed markets, one path to better engagement with users could be through new features that make use of Facebook’s vast quantities of personal data about each of its members.
In recent weeks, Facebook has been looking to monitor the real-world effects of advertising on the platform.
These efforts are key if the company is to convince businesses that investing in the platform is not a waste of money – recent admissions over “fake” users and have dented the site’s credibility.
It has enlisted the help of US market research firm Datalogix to try to produce evidence that seeing an advert on Facebook – without necessarily clicking on it – is enough of an engagement to get people buying products in shops.
However, this vast data bank is tricky to utilize, according to Ovum’s Eden Zoller.
“There’s no doubt that Facebook is sitting on a potential goldmine of customer data,” she said.
“But that goldmine can also be a minefield. We know that Facebook, despite its claims to the contrary, constantly pushes the boundaries of what’s seen as acceptable in regards to data privacy.”
This goldmine could swell further. In the UK, ministers are said to be considering using Facebook, among other services, to act as official identification for accessing public services online.
Such advancements are being noted by data regulators. In Europe in particular, Facebook has been faced with increased demands to tighten data privacy practices.
The company, which has based its European headquarters in Ireland, was last month told by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner, Billy Hawkes, that it must amend its Phototag feature – a tool powered by facial recognition software.
Following an extensive audit, the commission also sought extra assurances from Facebook over issues surrounding account deletion and targeted advertising.
As it continues to innovate and evolve, the company would need to get used to finding itself audited and investigated, said Eden Zoller.
“They’re so high-profile,” she said.
“They’re a bit of a poster boy, but they could be a whipping boy if they’re not careful.”
Facebook evolution
Facebook at one billion:
• Median user age: 22
• Top countries (alphabetical order): Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, United States
• Mobile users: 600 million
At 500 million (July 2010):
• Median user age: 23
• Top countries: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico, United States
• Users who joined the site at this point now have an average of 305 friends
At 100 million (August 2008):
• Median user age: 23
• Top countries: Chile, France, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States
• Users who joined the site at this point now have an average of 334 friends
At 50 million (October 2007):
• Median user age: 26
• Top countries: Australia, Canada, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States
• Users who joined the site at this point now have an average of 321 friends
At 25 million (January 2006):
• Median user age: 19
• Top countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom, United States
• Users who joined the site at this point now have an average of 598 friends
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