Facebook Roundup: Location, Eventbrite, Spam, Like Button, FriendShuffle, FaceMash and More

Facebook’s Location Patent - The company was awarded a location patent recently that appeared to give it sweeping intellectual property ownership over social networking features. And, after some confusion, it appears that the patent does not conflict with an earlier one that Google received. So, Facebook could decide to use the patent to sue other location services. But that doesn't appear to be the plan, given chief executive Mark Zuckerberg's observation that his company has so far not tried to enforce its other patents. Zuckerberg Appears on ‘The Simpsons’ - The episode aired last Sunday, and his tongue-in-cheek appearance highlighted his dropout status from Harvard. Eventbrite’s Biggest Referrer: Facebook - Eventbrite ticket vendor and startup just finished a $20 million round of Series D funding led primarily by DAG Ventures, putting total raised at $29.5 million. The company will generate $200 million in ticket sales this year -- and it says that Facebook is its largest source of traffic referrals. Canadian Spammer Won’t Pay Facebook - Canadian Facebook spammer Adam Guerbuez was ordered by courts there to pay Facebook more than $1 billion in fees due to the 4,366,386 spam messages he allegedly posted on users’ Walls in 2008. He denies spamming and didn’t contest the lawsuit because he couldn’t afford the legal fees, he says; however, he explains that the lawsuit helped generate publicity for his online marketing business. More at the link. Pre-Like Button, Awesome Button - Interesting history of the Like button, previously known as the Awesome button, here. Facebook engineers including Andrew Bosworth got together trying to figure out what symbols to use in July of 2007 and doesn’t launch until February 2009, after Friendfeed already had. [Image via TechCrunch] Adobe Updates Flash for Facebook - Adobe launched an update for its Flash platform this week, specifically the Adobe ActionScript3 SDK is meant to ease the developer’s experience with Flash. More information here. Bloomberg on Zuckerberg - Bloomberg's Game Changers series on Mark Zuckerberg is a little on the melodramatic side — replete with such music at the 25 minute documentary's intro — but it's still interesting to watch. Zuck’s Original FaceMash for Sale - If you recall, Facebook started out in Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dorm room as FaceMash.com. The site is now up for sale on Flippa.com with an opening bid of $8,000 and a buy now price of $35,000. Social Network Maps - XKCD published an interesting illustration of what online communities would look like if they were countries. In a previous version from 2007, MySpace was a much larger “country” than Facebook; obviously in the 2010 version Facebook takes a backseat only to spoken language, email and SMS. Facebook’s DCMA Failure - Techdirt reported this week that Facebook is not upholding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, at least as it pertains to a particular Facebook Page for the film “Let Me In.” Vietnam Govt Launches Facebook Alternative - We’ve previously written about how Vietnam’s Facebook traffic has suffered since the government started censoring the web site, and how people have been looking for ways around the block. Now, the government has launched its own social network, go.vn, which users access by submitting their full names and government-issued ID numbers. We're interested to see how it catches on. FriendShuffle Shares Facebook Shares - FriendShuffle is an interesting service for Facebook and Twitter users that allows users to “shuffle” through content shared by a users’ friends. Essentially, after you sign in with a Facebook or Twitter account, a small bar at the top of the browser appears allowing you to skip from a YouTube video to news article to blog, or whatever other content a friend has shared. ABC, Facebook Team Up for Elections - ABC News and Facebook are teaming up this election season. According to ABC, it kind of sounds like Facebook is going to help them conduct polls specialized to areas of “key” congressional districts. Track Social ID with Internet Society Tools - The Internet Society has launched a suite of identity management tools to help people using social networks track changes in the usage policies web sites they use. There’s Policy Monitor, that tracks web site usage policies, Policy Library, which consists of snapshots of policies, and Policy Audit Client, a Firefox plugin presenting privacy info to users.

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Facebook Roundup: Location, Eventbrite, Spam, Like Button, FriendShuffle, FaceMash and More

Sara Inés Calderón

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Sara Inés Calderón