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GQ names Facebook's 24-year-old Mark Zuckerberg "Boy Genius of the Year" in this month's issue. (Some guy named President-elect Barack Obama is on the cover.) In the article, writer Alex French examines his current dilemma: How will Facebook make money off all that private information we share with him every day?

Most of Mr. Zuckerberg's plans have blown up in his face (remember Beacon and the infamous engagement ring incident?). But since July, he's been simmering a new feature, Facebook Connect, which will allow Facebookers to share their information with other sites. But that would involve Facebook users giving up even more of their privacy and letting other websites make money off their web browsing.  read more »

Seems like Mark Zuckerberg is playing cupid on Facebook. AllFacebook.com (link via Silicon Alley Insider) found a screenshot of a personal-ad type ad on the Facebook interface. The ad is called a "Friend Profile Preview," with updates on their recent status updates below their name and picture.

Seems innocent enough but why would they replace prime retail space for a friends' status update? Probably because Facebook is already a kind of dating tool for young'uns and maybe they're banking on becoming a Match.com killer. As AllFacebook.com points out, the New York Times's personal ad rates of $48 per week, $72 for two weeks and $96 for four weeks.  read more »

>>Click here to see Barack Obama's White House on Facebook

Last week, just minutes after winning the presidential election, Barack Obama sent an e-mail—to me.

“I’m about to head to Grant Park to talk to everyone gathered there, but I wanted to write to you first. We just made history.” We did, didn’t we? “We have a lot of work to do to get our country back on track, and I’ll be in touch soon about what comes next.” Signed: “Barack.”

I’ve been on a first-name basis with Barack, our President-elect, since he announced his candidacy nearly two years ago. And in recent months, I’ve received a “personalized” e-mail, Twitter tweet, YouTube video or Facebook update from Mr.  read more »

Speaking of MySpace Music and Facebook applications, Seattle's iLike, the "social music" service with a popular Facebook application, has partnered with Brooklyn-based TuneCore, a music distribution start-up, to help musicians promote and sell their music. 

iLike's free Facebook application lets users put a little sidebar on their page to play clips of music, display upcoming concerts they are attending and play a music trivia quiz. TuneCore helps artists distribute their work through online music stores including Rhapsody, Amazon MP3, and iTunes. Bands and musicians pay a flat fee, with prices varying based on the number of stores they want to get into and how much they want to sell (a single or a whole album).  read more »

Mark Zuckerberg, the face of Facebook, wants to get in on the digital-music downloading action. Although Facebook already has a bunch of widgets and song-streaming services pumping jams into the site, the young Harvard grad is considering his own version of his arch rival's recently launched MySpace Music.

Sources told the New York Post that Mr. Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives have been taking meetings with major record companies to consider an outsourcing deal. Facebook declined to comment on the situation specifically, but a company spokesman said in a statement that "music sharing plays a part" in the site's mission and that it is "always talking with potential partners."

The New York Post reports:  read more »

"The Q is a solid train. And Ditmas Park is our amazing, affordable, tree-lined little secret (shh!). But please don't let south Brooklyn turn into Williamsburg! It's lovely as it is without hordes of Facebook-addicted, angsty, post-college types in skinny jeans! Keep it quiet and nerdy--much better that way." ["Brooklyn, The Borough: Can the Q Be the Next L?"]

Olympic gold medal-winner Michael Phelps has a few thoughts on Facebook, the social networking site beloved by teenagers and marketers everywhere. In an article by Karen Crouse from this weekend's New York Times (in the new "platform agnostic" era, it ran on August 9th on the Web and August 10th in the paper), Ms. Crouse writes:

As Phelps’s legend grows, so does his popularity. The last time he checked his Facebook page, he had more than 4,300 friends. And then there is President Bush. All of which does not impress Phelps much. All the hotheads and cold shoulders he endured as a child have inured him to celebrity’s charms.  read more »

Remember Scrabulous? The highly popular Facebook application and online adaptation of the classic Hasbro word game, Scrabble? The same one that, at its height of popularity this past winter, probably sucked up dozens, maybe even hundreds, of boredom hours while you were at work? Seems so December ’07, doesn’t it? So much so that we hadn’t even noticed that Scrabulous had disappeared from our Facebook profiles until happening upon the following news item a few hours ago.

If you recall, Hasbro had sued the creators of Scrabulous for copyright infringement, threatening to force it off of its online home at the social networking giant.  read more »

Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's answer to a question no one asked, files a Washington Diarist column this week in which he touches on The New Yorker's Barry Blitt-drawn Barack Obama cover as well as buyouts in the newspaper industry. He also has a thing or two to say about the youth. Mostly, he hates them.

On the subject of newspaper buyouts, specifically, those at The Washington Post, friendly old Mr. Wieseltier writes:

The losers in contemporary America conspicuously include the old, or the no longer young; and in a country in which the addiction to newness is even greater than the addiction to petroleum, this is as much a laxity of culture as a laxity of economics.  read more »

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Media Mob got an e-mail a few minutes ago from a publicist at Simon & Schuster informing us, in the subject line, that "Facebook is subject of new S&S acquisition." Holy cow, we thought! Mark Zuckerburg finally agreed to sell? To Simon & Schuster? They've had a pretty good year, sure, but what would a publishing house want with Facebook? Maybe someone up high thought they were really buying a book?

   read more »

The other weekend I went to a housewarming party that an editor I know was throwing in Prospect Heights. It was one of those parties where everyone there is someone you’ve seen at another media party but never hung out with one-on-one and the conversations tend to veer toward industry gossip (stuff like: “Well, I’m considering taking the editor-at-large position”), what I like to call byline stalking (“I loved your profile of Chelsea Clinton, but your blog post on your corner deli was hysterical”) and not-so-subtle undermining (“That Web site seems like a really good place for you right now”).

One woman, who is always wearing the types of dresses I wish I owned because they seem perfectly suited to media parties—simple, black, vaguely vintagey-looking, knee-length, very flattering—made a beeline for me.  read more »

Last week was my worst week ever. Okay, maybe not ever, but definitely my worst week in 2008.

The trouble started on a Tuesday night. Shortly before I entered a bar to meet a friend for drinks, I updated my Facebook status on my BlackBerry, with an opinion about the upcoming Clinton-Obama debate.

As soon as my friend and I parted ways, I immediately whipped out my BlackBerry to check Facebook again. (Yes, I’m one of those people.)  read more »

Move over Facebook, there’s a new social networking site in town! Only this one’s geared exclusively towards entertainment professionals. Yesterday, the industry trade pub Dailey Variety unveiled “The Biz” (variety.com/thebiz), which it’s billing as the first social networking Web site for the entertainment business.  read more »

My dad recently got on Facebook. My mom’s helping him build up his profile. She sent him a number of family photos. So far four have made it on to his site. One is of my college graduation. I’m wearing the cap and gown and appear to be gazing at something off in the distance, possibly a mountain peak. He’s even begun “friending” my friends. The situation is dire.

In other disturbing Facebook news, on Jan.  read more »

It seems that most urban sophisticates these days, from politicians and celebrities to coworkers, have a profile on Facebook, the social networking Web site. The C.I.A., I.R.S., Time Inc., even MySpace, Facebook’s ostensible competition, have job networks there. To the site’s enthusiasts—and there are many; the site has 60 million users so far, with 200 million projected by the end of the year—there is no reason not to partake.  read more »

Paris Hilton once said: “All you have to do in life is go out with your friends, party hard and look twice as good [as the woman next to you.]” But according to an article in today’s Times, it’s now far more complicated. A new social era has dawned, one in which first impressions are often made in a digital context.

Facebook, anyone?

For most members of the behemoth online networking community, high time for silly, drunken or even unattractive profile pictures ends sometime around college graduation. Hitting the mean streets of adulthood can be brutal, after all, and putting your best face forward can—for better or worse—prove rewarding both socially and professionally.  read more »