I am not a huge fan of Offerpal, it likely has something to do with the fact that I, at one point in time, enjoyed playing Farmville. In order to earn “farm cash” you had to either fill out surveys or give the game money. The last time I tried to fill out the surveys (no, I never gave them my cell phone number or anything except for an email address I use for spam anyway) I waited and waited and never got the “farm cash” I was promised. Since that day, I haven’t played Farmville.

This practice has made a lot of people on the site angry, including editor at TechCrunch Michael Arrington, who has gone after the CEO of Offerpal to get some explanation about the company’s ethics.

Facebook posted in its blog about its ad policies and how it polices ads on the site.

The blog said, “Our policies are clear. If you’re an ad network and don’t comply with them, you are doing a disservice to your customers, and you should expect your business opportunities on Facebook to cease. The underlying issues here are bigger than ads. They’re about building an experience that users will want to come back to …no spam, no surprises.”

I completely agree with Facebook here, but I do believe that it should do something to keep spammy ad networks off the site (otherwise it will begin to look less like Facebook and start getting a reputation more along the lines of Myspace). Myspace is full of spammy ads that Facebook, so far, has steered clear of for the most part.

The ad networks used to get the “premiums” in the games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. are all pretty spammy and unless someone really knows what they’re doing when they “sign up” for an “offer” or fill out some kind of quiz, then they could end up being charged for the premium services on their cell phones or other ways.

While the social networking site MySpace has begun to see its numbers slip and users go on “extended vacations” from the site, Facebook is seeing a spike in users and is now looking to hire 50% more employees sometime in the near future.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that there is a surplus of engineers and that it’s a great environment for the company right now.

The website currently has 1,000 employees and plans on building its workforce, but at a much slower pace than other start-ups. When you compare Facebook to Google, Facebook has barely grown its workforce at all. Google has nearly doubled its staff every year for the three years following the year it went public.

This move could prove to be smart for the site because it is definitely a good way to keep costs down. The site wishes to reach a positive cash flow next year and having fewer employees is a good way to make that happen.

The problem that the site is having with advertisers is that a study showed that people who use social networking sites like Facebook are much less likely to click on ads or purchase anything from the ads on the sites. Currently, Facebook makes its money from advertising and little extras around the site like the “gifts” system where users pay for “gifts” to post on friends’ walls.

I’m sure if you’ve been paying attention to what I say when I talk about social networking sites, Facebook is very obviously my favorite. I rarely log into MySpace anymore and Twitter is something I only use if I’m bored and can’t play on Facebook on my phone. Twitter will likely not even be a blip on my radar once the Pre comes out with a Facebook application.

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It looks like the giant social networking site MySpace is gearing up for some serious layoffs. It is expecting to have to lay off as many as 500 of the 1,600 it currently has working at their headquarters.

The company, owned by News Corp, is trying to cut costs to help in the fight with arch rival Facebook.

MySpace currently had committed to a 12 year lease on a Playa Vista building near Los Angeles, CA. The lease would have cost the company roughly $350 million. Now, because of financial hardships faced by the company, it has backed out of the lease. The building was a 420,000 square foot office space in Play Vista, California.

The market share for MySpace has been declining steadily since it was bought by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2005. It has been losing visitors and advertisers to Facebook, and more recently, Twitter.

In my own opinion, as well as the opinion of many of my friends, is that MySpace is a second rate Facebook. Even though many of us have been using MySpace for longer, the overall sight design as well as some of the more unsavory clientele have made the site really come in second place to Facebook, but still well above the Xuqa. Now, even though Twitter isn’t my favorite social networking thing, I find myself on it more than I am on MySpace…perhaps its because it is one of the only social networking applications on my new phone.

So it appears that Tom will be losing nearly a third of his coworker friends on MySpace. I hope that those developers and programmers find work, but not at Facebook because I like Facebook the way it is, even if all the applications and quizzes are really annoying at times.

After being the COO of Facebook Owen Van Natta has accepted the job as chief executive of MySpace, Facebook’s bitter rival.

arlier this week, the Wall Street Journal that MySpace co-founder and CEO Chris DeWolfe would be leaving the company after News Corp (NYSE: NWS), MySpace’s parent company, approached Van Natta about filling vacant executive positions. The company is in talks with co-founder Tom Anderson, currently president, about him taking a different role.

Van Natta left Palo Alto-based Facebook in early 2008 to become CEO of a music startup called Project Playlist. That company has named John Sykes, a co-founder of MTV and a Project Playlist board member, as CEO.

Facebook is still higher ranked in Alexa than MySpace and from what I can tell, more popular among college students. Since 2004, Facebook has allowed non-college students and others to join the social networking website and it has led to some frustration and anger, but with privacy policies and settings, I actually prefer Facebook.

Source

I have to say, though, I don’t quite understand the appeal of Twitter. Around the internet people are saying that they use Twitter to “network” and it’s “like an instant messaging/Myspace.” But, with Myspace and Facebook both having update boxes now where you can keep “tabs” on your friends, Twitter seems obsolete.

So my question is, do you use it? If so, why?

Let’s take a look back at a couple of the “improvements” from the past:

- News Feed a.k.a. “Stalker Feed” : Upon logging into Facebook you can see all your “friends” recent activity on Facebook. Thankfully Facebook decided that it was in their best interests to let users choose their own privacy settings, so not EVERYTHING you did would show up on someone else’s “stalker feed.”

- Applications : Ok, maybe this one isn’t so bad…but some of the applications in the past have been able to sneak their way around their privacy settings (see: Top Friends).

So what have they done this time to anger people enough to start the “Petition Against the New Facebook” group with 991,000 members as of 1:26 pm on 9-11-08??

Well, they’ve moved all those cute little applications to tabbed format at the top of the profile… Over the past year or so I’ve been moving around my applications on my profile to make my profile look cute and have everyone see the bumper stickers my friends send me.

Moving the applications takes a lot of the “personality” out of the profiles…I looked at the new Facebook and really didn’t even know where to start as far as re-organizing everything.

On the first tab of a profile page…the mini feed (a stalker feed just for the profile selected) and that person’s wall are the same thing. It gets confusing between wall posts and status updates.

And my least favorite change of all: Friends are no longer split into networks… Once upon a time Facebook was only for college students with a valid .edu email address. Then they added high school students…then everyone. It is becoming less and less personal and more like Myspace, where people go by screen names… I really liked being able to find someone in my class by their name incase I needed to get an assignment or something.

R i p old Facebook. I’ll miss you.