Facebook Is Also Freedom by Erik Sass

As everyone and their mother piles on to Facebook for its transgressions against online privacy, it's worth remembering that the site -- along with other social media like Twitter, and the Internet in general -- is a huge force for good. Among other things, it's a tool for spreading information and organizing political dissent in other parts of the world. I kind of doubt that Mark Zuckerberg or the rest of Facebook's management is really aware or cares about this aspect of Facebook's popularity in countries ruled by repressive regimes; they frankly don't seem to share the kind of ideological ...Read the whole story

  • Zynga Teams With Yahoo On Social Games by Mark Walsh

    Highlighting efforts to ease its reliance on Facebook, social game company Zynga Wednesday announced a partnership with Yahoo to offer its games throughout the Web portal's network including the home page, Yahoo Games and Yahoo Mail. The deal comes on the heels of a new five-year agreement that Zynga struck last week with Facebook, where it operates hugely popular games like "FarmVille" and "Mafia Wars" that have aided the social network's growth. ...Read the whole story

How Facebook's New, New Privacy Settings Show How It Listened -- And Didn't by Catharine P. Taylor

As this will mark the sixth week in a row that I've posted about Facebook, I'll be entering a 12-step program later this afternoon to get me off the addictive habit of constantly looking at the world as if Facebook is the only thing that matters. But today, on the day that Facebook announced its latest round of privacy controls -- which has been the theme of all those columns, dating back to mid-April -- it's just too tempting. So here we go. ...More