All Things Digital

Apparently, an Indian tech news site called TechGoss has its dander up about a visit Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here) has been making to that country.

And, for information related to news of why the social-networking czar is in India, TechGoss is offering 10,000 rupees–or $240.17—specifically, 5,000 for exclusive photos of him there and 5,000 for a detailed story on his stay in India.

Currently, Facebook is the No. 3 player in India, whose social-networking scene is dominated, incredibly, by Google’s Orkut.

Asked the post: “What is Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, doing in India these days? Rumor mills are working overtime mainly pointing to a business trip to launch Facebook India soon. Others speak of a working holiday. As in the past, the Facebook PR team is only available to speak to a few chosen journalists.”

Well, Facebook PR was not helpful to me either, but that does not stop BoomTown in its greedy and ceaseless quest for rupees!

According to sources, Zuckerberg is in India and, in fact, all over the world, on a trip that is mostly for pleasure and contemplation, but also mixing it with some business.

In fact, some at Facebook are jokingly calling Zuckerberg’s month-long jaunt abroad “Vision Quest,” as the 23-year-old travels completely solo from place to place.

So in India, it is not some major initiative yet and more a getting-to-know-you visit, although Facebook will surely need to compete more handily in the growing market there.

Namasté, Mark, and safe travels!

Earlier this week, BoomTown posted our speaker list for the sixth edition of D: All Things Digital, which will take place in a few weeks–May 27 to 29, to be exact–in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my partner Walt Mossberg and me.

D6 tech and media speakers include: Microsoft Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT); News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch; Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX); Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

Just recently, we added Jerry Yang, CEO and co-founder of Yahoo (YHOO), and now he is being joined onstage at the conference by Yahoo President Sue Decker (pictured here in a lovely Wall Street Journal dot-drawing).

The pairing should make for a lively session, given all the heat around Yahoo of late, largely related to the scuttled attempt by Microsoft to buy the company.

What would you like to know about that and anything else about Yahoo?

As it so happens, you can ask!

While the conference is sold out, you can submit questions that you would like answered to Yang and Decker or any of the speakers via text or video. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose.

Ask early and often here!

In addition, the whole conference will be online at AllThingsD during the conference, via live blogs and reports of breaking news (and there will be breaking news, as there always is), along with video highlights.

And videos of all the interviews will be posted soon after it is over.

While there have been not-so-nice insider books about Facebook, the first major deal to chronicle the rise of the social-networking phenom has been signed by Fortune magazine’s David Kirkpatrick (pictured here).

Titled “The Facebook Effect,” the tome will be (glacially) published in September of 2009 by Simon & Schuster, which noted in a statement that it “will chronicle the amazingly rapid rise of this company as well as the impact it is having on social life, politics, business and even international relations.”

Ah yes, peace in our time via The Wall!

Facebook and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have agreed to cooperate, said Kirkpatrick, who has written several pieces in Fortune on the much-hyped start-up that have been largely laudatory.

The book, said Kirkpatrick in a phone chitty-chat with BoomTown (while I froze at Little League practice in the-coldest-winter-I-ever-spent-was-a-summer-in-San Francisco) will also not necessarily be tough, but look at the ways Facebook has been the latest to profoundly impact the online industry.

“This is a company that is changing the way we use the Web, and I want to look at where it is going and what it could become,” said Kirkpatrick.

I like a positive attitude, although my book on Facebook–which I have dinged for a lot of stuff over the last year, from its kooky $15 billion valuation to its still-nascent ad business–would have been titled: “There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere.”

Oops! That was actually the title of my second book on AOL, the Facebook of Web 1.0, which chronicled the near-collapse of the company after its disastrous merger with Time Warner (TWX).

That, of course, came like winter follows fall after the first I did, “aol.com,” which told the story of the stunning rise of the online pioneer.

Actually, now that I think about it, it still might work for Facebook!

I kid, David, I kid! Good luck!

Silicon Valley luminary Marc Andreessen (pictured here) has been asked to join the board of Facebook, according to several sources with knowledge of the situation.

While the arrangement is not completed yet, sources said the longtime entrepreneur has verbally agreed to accept the post to become the fourth member of the board of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking site.

Other board members include Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg. Greylock Partners David Sze also has observer status on the board.

Since he co-founded browser pioneer Netscape in the 1990s and helped usher in the Internet age, Andreessen has been an active investor and has created several successful start-ups.

His most current effort has been Ning, also based in Palo Alto, which is a white-label social-networking company that recently raised another $60 million in funding.

If Andreessen joins Facebook’s board, the move is yet another sign that the much-hyped start-up, which has undergone some growing pains over the last year, as well as garnering a $15 billion valuation, is growing up by bringing some major high-profile tech figures into its ranks.

Last night, for example, BoomTown broke the news that Google PR head Elliot Schrage had accepted a similiar job at Facebook.

That comes after Facebook hired another top Google (GOOG) exec, Sheryl Sandberg, as its COO, in March.

A while back, BoomTown suggested that Web 1.0 golden boy Andreessen–pictured here on the iconic Time magazine cover in 1996–would be a good mentor for current golden boy Zuckerberg, in a piece I did about potential execs for Facebook.

As I wrote in February:

But why not go for the man who was Zuckerberg before Zuckerberg was cool. Yes, the shiniest of Golden Geeks himself, Marc Andreessen.

I could go on and on about the similarities I find between the two, if you compared today’s Zuckerberg with the Netscape founder in the mid-1990s.

From their arrogant innocence to their visionary qualities to their enfant-terrible charm, it is almost as if they were separated at birth.

But now Andreessen is all grown up and much, much matured from when I covered him. He has become all calm and sage and he even does a very decent blog.

Plus, he has also started and run a number of start-ups after Netscape, giving him deeper managerial experience over the last dozen years.

And, best of all, Andreessen knows the pressure of being the best-thing-since-sliced-bread in the tech sector, and its inevitable downside too.

Overall, a real mentor and partner for Zuckerberg, making a perfect pair of Golden Geeks.”

The Googlefication of Facebook continues, as Elliot Schrage, the search giant’s vice president of global communications and public affairs, takes the title of vice president of communications and public policy at the popular social-networking site.

Schrage confirmed his new job to BoomTown, right after he friended us on Facebook last night, using its new chat feature.

Way to go native quickly, Elliot!

The move to hire Schrage (pictured here) was announced to Facebook’s employees late this evening.

In a memo that BoomTown obtained (entire text below) to Facebook troops from India, where he is traveling, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said about the Schrage hire:

“This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.”

Valleywag said Schrage had interviewed for the job at Facebook in a post earlier today about the possibility of Schrage working there.

At Facebook, Schrage will report to Sheryl Sandberg, another top-level Google exec who was hired as COO by Facebook, which is seeking to beef up its management ranks.

Other Googlers who have recently moved to Facebook include: Ben Ling, who is Facebook’s director of platform product marketing and Ethan Beard, who is its business development director.

Schrage is a big name to defect to Facebook from Google (GOOG), a trend that is probably becoming irksome to its top execs.

But Google’s deep bench of execs are enticing to many companies, even as the burgeoning size of Google makes it harder to hold onto more entrepreneurial employees. In addition, Google can no longer offer as lucrative a stock package to its staff as start-ups can, even though most of those smaller companies are not likely to pay off.

With a $15 billion valuation, Facebook is a safer bet, but still has to prove its worth and remains a risky move for execs like Schrage.

Still, according to sources, he contacted Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly and did not go through Sandberg. When she left Google, as is typical for departing execs, Sandberg agreed not to solicit Google employees.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Schrage had extensive public-policy experience before heading to Google two years ago, where he was in charge of the “company’s public-facing communications, including media relations, policy strategy and stakeholder outreach, as well as internal communications.”

He will have his work cut out for him at Facebook, which has already faced some PR snafus and vexing public policy issues, including controversy around privacy and advertising practices.

Sources said Schrage was interested in Facebook, because it was a company poised for explosive growth, much like Google in its early days. In addition, unlike Google, which has grown large, Schrage would have more of an ability to make an impact in arenas he favors like public policy.

Here is the text of Zuckerberg’s memo to Facebook employees about the hiring of Schrage (with start date and new email address missing), which was released tonight at 8:55 p.m. PDT:

Hey Everyone–

I’m writing from India to share with you the good news that Elliot Schrage will be joining our management team as VP Communications and Public Policy. In this role, he will be responsible for developing the key messages we want people to understand about our products, our business and the growing global importance of social networking and what we do. The goal here is to help people understand how the internet can strengthen people’s relationships. Elliot will direct our efforts to work with users, media, governments and other entities around the world to ensure that Facebook’s policies are transparent, responsive, effective and are recognized as being those things.

Elliot is joining us from Google where he has been their VP Global Communications and Public Affairs since 2005. At Google, he broadened the company’s messaging from a focus on only product PR to include all aspects of corporate, financial, policy, philanthropic and internal communications. Before that, he served as a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a public policy think tank, as a professor at Columbia Business School and as SVP at Gap. Early on, he began his career as a Harvard-trained lawyer.

This is a really important role for us and one that we’ve been trying to find the right person for a while. Elliot’s role will be critical to helping us scale based on our culture that values transparency, openness and honest internal communications.

Elliot will be starting on __, although you may see him around the office before then. If you want to send him a note to congratulate him on joining, his email is __ and I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Mark

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (MSFT). News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch. Jeff Bewkes of Time Warner (TWX). Yahoo’s (YHOO) Jerry Yang.

All of them engaged in roiling Internet deal-making of late and all of them in just three weeks on the same stage–but not, thankfully, at the same time, or we’d need a professional negotiator–at the 6th D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif.

The annual gathering of tech and media luminaries was created and is run by my amazing partner Walt Mossberg and me (see us here at D5) and will take place May 27 to 29.

The conference, as we describe it on our Web site, is “unlike any other executive conference.” What we mean by that is that we try to determine the next direction of the digital revolution via unscripted and informal, but pointed, conversations about the impact of digital technology with industry leaders.

In other words, Walt and I needling at the major players of the digital sector, until they give up the good stuff.

The other digital and media leaders coming? That would be: Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook; Michael Dell of Dell Computer (DELL); IAC’s (IACI) Barry Diller; Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos; Howard Stringer of Sony (SNE); and TiVo’s (TIVO) Tom Rogers.

Also: Tom Glocer of Thomson Reuters (TRI); Melinda Gates of the Gates Foundation; FCC Chairman Kevin Martin; Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless (VZ); Activision’s (ATVI) Robert Kotick; and former Microsoft tech guru and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures.

To say our timing is impeccably planned would be undeserved–we had no idea so much news related to all these companies and their leaders would break out, from the tough economy to takeover battles to court face-offs to mergers to trying to create a whole new way of reading.

Also, there will be some–as yet under wraps–amazing demos onstage too.

While the analog conference has been sold out for many months, the action will be on the AllThingsD.com site throughout the conference with round-the-clock live blogging by Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski, as well as video highlights from stage.

In addition, we’ll be pointing all over the Web to important tech and media news that breaks at D6.

And we will also stream the entire conference in the weeks after the conference takes place, so ATD’s audience can experience the whole thing, even if they cannot all attend.

But anyone’s questions can be there, though–this year, you can submit questions to any of the speakers via text or video that you would like answered. Walt and I will pick the best ones and let loose. Ask early and often here!

Walt and I are very excited for D6, even after last year, when we brought together industry legends Bill Gates and Apple’s Steve Jobs, for an historic joint interview.

At the time, Walt and I joked that we would not be able to top that amazing event (the video of the entire interview is below).

That interview was nearly unbeatable, but we also think that with the top-level interviewees we have assembled for D6, that it is game on.

Until then, here’s the Gates/Jobs video from D5:

Last year, BoomTown caused a tempest-in-a-Web-teapot by asserting that Facebook apps were, for the most part, inane.

And, while many said the market would develop from the frivolous to more useful–making Facebook a true “utility,” as promised by Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg–that day is not today for the social-networking site or its third-part widget makers.

Instead, it’s still Pinocchio at Funland (and we know how that turned out!).

While this is great news for my 3- and 6-year-old boys, it still makes grumpy old me dubious.

Because, as I wrote in a post called “The Children’s Hour: Facebook Apps Are for Toddlers (There, We Said It)” that was published last October, I still assert that businesses based on Zombies and apps called Pop Ur Zit are questionable models:

But, so far, as popular as those apps have become, what Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL (TWX) back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison…

And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace (NWS) for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

Unfortunately, that’s still the case and today, we have a nice chart below from FlowingData to help our little case along from a visual point of view (click on the image to make it larger).

Case, unfortunately, not closed.

So I was in Washington, D.C., this past weekend for a lovely wedding, traveling back to a city where I started my career and worked for 15 years after college.

And I conducted a little experiment among the more than 100 folks gathered for the wedding, all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology.

They were also made up of a wide range of ages and genders, from kids to seniors.

And so I asked a large group of people–about 30–and here is the grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0

FriendFeed: 0

Widget: 1 (but she thought it was one of the units used in a business class study).

Facebook: Everyone I asked knew about it and about half had an account, although different people used it differently.

In other words, confirming for me what I wrote last week about the intense obsession with the hottest new services like Twitter and FriendFeed, in the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, and how no one else cares yet.

I wrote:

You don’t know?

Neither does most of the human race, in truth, which is just getting around to noticing Facebook and maybe, just maybe, figuring out how to properly use a SuperPoke (my advice: never ever!).”

While I really do like all these services, and use Twitter daily (and it is apparently getting more venture money), it is interesting to wonder when the delta is reached when early adopter interest meets mainstream attention.

Predictions?

And, as BoomTown wrote yesterday, so the war of attrition for Yahoo begins.

Not with a bang, but a whimper. And so much whine, I am considering serving up a nice plate of cheese to all players.

But while the first moves by Microsoft (MSFT), which is seeking to take over Yahoo (YHOO), seem a bit weak, it is likely the more significant bombs will start flying next week.

But not quite yet.

First, came a not-so-subtle insinuation from Microsoft Steve Ballmer that he could take his marbles and go home any time.

He noted yesterday in a speech in Milan (Milan? OK, we’ll go with it) that the software giant is “prepared to move forward alone without Yahoo.”

A show of hands of who actually believes this claim, please, a classic go-fish negotiating ploy? No one? We thought so.

Then, comes the artfully worded Wall Street Journal story today, in which it is revealed that some at Microsoft are skeptical of the deal.

Apparently, Microsofties are worried that the job of merging Yahoo into Microsoft will take precious attention away from, well, them!

Well, that’s been the biggest open secret at Microsoft. Almost anyone you talk to notes that the Yahoo deal is risky, but it would be done no matter what due to Ballmer’s determination to use Yahoo to better hammer at rival Google (GOOG).

“This is Ballmer’s war,” said one Microsoft employee to me recently, who also noted that it is still a good move for Microsoft, despite the slowness of the attack. “I doubt he will surrender.”

Well, BoomTown suggested Microsoft do so back in mid-February in a post, noting that Ballmer might do better to use the $41 billion to buy up every hot start-up in Silicon Valley–Digg, Meebo, Slide and even the hopelessly high-valued Facebook–and still have money left over to buy everyone a tank of gas.

The Journal story also listed previously reported names of possible directors for a proxy slate Microsoft must nominate to replace Yahoo’s current board.

They include, noted the story, “former Nextel Partners Inc. CEO John Chapple, former Grey Global Group Inc. CEO Edward Meyer, Jaynie Studenmund, the former chief operating officer of Overture Services Inc., which was later acquired by Yahoo, and former Adelphia Communications Corp. Chief Financial Officer Vanessa Wittman, according to people familiar with the matter.”

Not to be whiny about it or anything, but with no truly prominent Internet executive or figure among these director possibilities so far, BoomTown would have to say we are profoundly underwhelmed by the list.

Thus, we await more powerful forces.

And that might be sooner than later. Microsoft will announce its earnings this afternoon, which–if they are strong and lift the price of Microsoft stock and, therefore, the Yahoo offer–could be the first big gun to fire in the proxy fight.

According to several sources close to Yahoo, the company will outline in much more detail its open-platform strategy next week, in its efforts to keep its cred as a big supporter of openness and also show it has a clear path to reinvigorate itself despite current turmoil.

Yahoo (YHOO) has been accelerating its open activities of late, mostly related to its search and ad infrastructure.

But, in his appearance at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next Thursday morning at a keynote speech titled “Yahoo and Open Platforms,” sources said Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh (pictured here) will sketch out a more significant broadening out of its open platform plans, which would touch consumers more directly.

That could include opening up everything from communications tools like mail to content to all sorts of products Yahoo offers its users to third-party developers.

In addition, the company plans to make as much of those and its own offerings more distributed, sending it all back out to the Web.

This kind of conceptual shift is something many have felt Yahoo has needed to do in a bolder manner, as consumer interest in massive centralized portals like Yahoo has waned.

The move, in many ways, has shades of what Facebook did last year when it opened its platform up to third-party developers, but also includes a vision of a more widgetized and social Yahoo, and a Yahoo available everywhere.

While Yahoo will not specify a date when all this will roll out, sources said Yahoo had hoped to have much of it in place by the end of the year.

This increasingly massive job of opening up more and more of the Yahoo platform to third-party developers and make its own products, APIs, code and content more highly distributed is being led by Balogh.

Balogh came to Yahoo from VeriSign, just days before Microsoft (MSFT) leveled its unsolicited takeover bid at the company.

Working with Yahoo Co-Founder and tech guru David Filo, Balogh has been given high marks from many sources I talked to within the company for bringing a faster-paced style than under longtime Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem, who retired a year ago.

At the time, many felt Yahoo’s technology efforts had drifted under Nazem, whose internal nickname was “Zod,” as BoomTown reported back in June of 2007.

Setbacks in its Panama project to rehaul its online search-ad technology and a slowness in focusing on Web 2.0 distributed technologies have clearly contributed to Yahoo’s current predicament, in which its long-suffering stock declined enough to give Microsoft an opportunity to make its move on Yahoo.

Under that backdrop, Balogh is under intense pressure to deliver on one of CEO and Co-Founder Jerry Yang’s key focuses for Yahoo that he reiterated in a letter he sent on Feb. 14 to shareholders after Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s offer.

Underscoring the need to make Yahoo a “starting point” and a “must-buy” ad platform, Yang noted: “These key strategies will be enhanced by our adoption of new, more open technology platforms that will encourage the development of new applications and the involvement of third-party developers–and help enrich the user experience.”

While it does not get the credit it probably deserves, Yahoo has been moved squarely into the open-source space and, in fact, has made a series of announcements since the Microsoft bid from its implementation of Apache’s Hadoop in its search product to its support of the Google-led OpenSocial initiative to its recently announced AMP!, an ad-management software shipping this summer.

AMP!, said Yahoo, would allow “ad networks, through an open set of APIs, to innovate on top of the transparent marketplace.”

Yahoo Technology Evangelist Jeremy Zawodny might have signaled even more announcements in his well-read blog in mid-March, in fact, when he noted that Yahoo was a longtime proponent of open platforms and open-source technology.

Wrote Zawodny, who declined to speak to me yesterday about any further open initiatives, due to its quiet period around earnings next week, wrote on March 14:

“We’ve been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Sometimes it hasn’t been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds…You’ll be reading more and hearing more about openness at Yahoo from me and Yahoo’s much higher up the food chain in the coming months.

Anyone who knows me knows that I come from open source roots and am a big proponent of opening things up more and more. I’d have left Yahoo years ago if I didn’t see it happening.”

Added Zawodny with some mystery: “If you think the last few weeks are big, you haven’t seen anything yet! :-)”

Ah, more pointless eye candy from BoomTown’s good friends at Facebook!

Not satisfied to just entertain the masses with inane Vampires and SuperPokes, the social-networking site unleashed Lexicon on users this week.

It’s kind of like Google Zeitgeist except… well, it is exactly the same concept, all part of Facebook’s admiration of Google (GOOG) things, like, for example, as many of its employees as it can entice away.

As Facebook’s Roddy Lindsay described it: “We thought it would be cool to show trends on the public and semi-public forums across Facebook (also known as Walls). Today we’re announcing the launch of Facebook Lexicon, a tool where you can see the buzz surrounding different words and phrases on Facebook Walls.”

But, as much as I hate a lot of these juvenile time-wasters online, I do like the very simple Lexicon very much, especially in its ability to compare up to five keywords or two-word phrases at once.

Thus, BoomTown is periodically going to post word comparisons here, always using Britney Spears as the control word, since she has been a perennial champ on Zeitgeist for a very long time.

So, today, it is presidential candidates–Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain.

As you can see, among users of Facebook, Britney holds up surprisingly well, even though she is going through a quieter, less-manic-head-shaving period of late.

(Click to make the images bigger)

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Mark Zuckerberg? Who’s that? Now, at Facebook, it’s apparently the Season of Sandberg!

Ah, the appeal of a fresh face is just irresistible to the press–OK, including BoomTown, except we posted more than a month ago!–with two major pieces, in Fortune and The Wall Street Journal, rolling out this week alone, with everything you wanted to know about the new COO of the social-networking site, former Google (GOOG) exec Sheryl Sandberg (pictured here).

But if you don’t have time to read them, here’s a quick synopsis of both:

Fortune: “Meet Facebook’s New Number Two” by Jessi Hempel

Details: Just 14 days into new job; Leg-tucking white Eames chair (pictured here); as Google’s VP global online sales and ops, ran everything!; she and Zuckerberg met cute at holiday party; aced Larry Summers’s midterm and final at Harvard public economics course, much to his shock, since he implies she was kind of chatty in class with friends.

Also Harvard MBA; obligatory McKinsey stint; Treasury Department in Clinton administration; picked 300-person Google over investment banking; always 10 steps ahead; Google.org mover and shaker.

Facebook aims: A need for corporate structure pronto; also time for the bigger picture; no more one-off decisions; more international growth; hiring senior managers; oh, yes, also must invent a new ad model for social networks.

But no silver bullets!; kicks ass, talks tough, then hugs all around (we did not make this up!); take out trash from Mark’s all-night Pizza-My-Heart-and-Red-Bull party (OK, we made that one up!).

Money quote: “This feels like Google when I started.”

The Wall Street Journal: “New Face at Facebook Hopes to Map Out a Road to Growth” by Carol Hymowitz

Details: Two weeks into new job; Biz dev guy Dan Rose is already sick of her (”It feels like she’s been here six months already.”); flip-flops endangered?; is able to argue why she is right by arguing how she is wrong; dangles data before engineers like fish before seals; easygoing but intense (when will these opposing dichotomies end?); crashed Harvard computers, but it was worth it.

Taught aerobics and was a stretching fascist; more cute dinner chatter with Zuckerberg before hiring; grew Google team from four to 4,000; a feminist and hangs with Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda (see aerobics!) too!; Facebook pix of Argentine waterfall-leaning; went to high school in Miami; small kids, hubby; more 10 steps ahead and shoving people out of comfort zone.

Facebook aims: Employee performance reviews; processes for identifying and recruiting new employees; management-training programs; rally troops; stop the cash burn and up ad sales; close-knit culture must go, but you get hundreds of millions of new friends!

Also must figure out how to save Beacon’s bacon; earn trust of users, while frantically searching for a business model; wants frank feedback from staff and will publicly thank such person who gives it.

Money quote: “Facebook is a different space than Google, with tremendous potential to connect people, but it needs scale, it needs systems and processes to have impact, and I can do that.”

On its blog aimed at Facebook developers, the social-networking site said it would push back its massive Profile page redesign, which was supposed to roll out in early April.

It is now set for late spring, although the post specified no specific date.

Why?

Facebook said it was due to feedback the company had gotten from its legions of developers who rely on the Facebook universe for their oxygen.

"We're still iterating on the design, making sure we get it right. We'll still continue to roll out improvements to Platform as well," wrote Pete Bratach of Facebook. "And rest assured, we will give you a period of time so you can update your applications before the profile is released to our users."

Well, phew, as some big developers have been grumbling to me a lot of late about their many worries about the new look, which is sure to confound them, and more importantly, users no matter how good it is.

“They really have to roll this out perfectly,” said one big Facebook widget maker. “It really is the biggest thing since Beacon, and you know how that went.”

Indeed, the controversial ad program was not the smoothest moment for the social-networking site. But making big changes to what is the heart-and-soul of Facebook is a quantum level of difficulty higher.

It will require almost perfect execution technically speaking, huge educational efforts early and often for users and a total buy-in from third-party developers, whom Facebook made integral to its success when it made the very sharp move of opening its platform to them.

But don’t feel pressured Mark and Sheryl!

You can see some of the previews on this Facebook Previews page here and in the screenshot picture below (click on the image to make it larger).

And, as an added attraction for those developers, here is a video of the lovely Anna Nalik singing her hit, “Breathe,” in an even better “Grey’s Anatomy” video (I am a complete sucker for cheese):

Ah, nothing like crazy teenagers to ruin a social-networking site’s week!

Of course, a lot of the attention last week was aimed at MySpace, which had only a very peripheral role in the appalling story of a gang of teen harpies from Florida who viciously laid into another and videotaped it.

The unfortunate girl–whom the female wolf pack (to be fair, wolves are a lot more intelligent) was heard accusing incoherently in the video–had apparently posted something on MySpace–owned by News Corp. (NWS), which owns this site–that apparently ignited their rage. Thus, the genius leader of the half-dozen girls planned on posting a video of the beat-down to MySpace and also YouTube (GOOG).

The parents of the beaten girl, who was severely injured in the incident, urged the sites to prevent users from uploading the viral video, even though it was never uploaded by the teens and has been regularly taken off the services when it has been.

(I could not find the video on either service last night, except in snippets as part of news coverage. It is available on Salon here, and can also be embedded, which I decided not to do here.)

Still, the injured girl’s father was quoted in a local newspaper: “As far as I am concerned, MySpace is the anti-Christ for children.”

Actually, the gang of girls get that particular moniker in my estimation. In any case, justice will be meted out, I am sure, and it started with the judge’s order that the defendants not use any social network.

And while it got a lot less attention, don’t miss New York magazine’s riveting story of a Facebook scandal at New York’s tony Horace Mann private school.

In the piece, titled “Testing Horace Mann” by Gabriel Sherman, Facebook is used as a vehicle for disgruntled kids to create obnoxious groups attacking teachers they don’t like in verbally appalling ways and without any apparent recriminations.

Laid out in exquisite detail are how petty school politics, overindulged kids and parents who need their heads examined collided to create the digital equivalent of “Lord of the Flies.”

Here’s the money quote:

These Facebook pages, however, were something different. Kids have always ragged on an unpopular teacher or ridiculed an unfortunate classmate. But sites like Facebook and RateMyTeachers.com are changing the power dynamics of the community in an unpredictable way. It is as if students were standing outside the classroom window, taunting the teacher to her face. Should they be punished? There were, as yet, no rules or codes for how a school should address such issues.”

While it is pretty obvious that it is easy to blame the technology in both these cases, there are bigger societal issues at stake here that nothing MySpace or Facebook can fix with a simple tweak.

Yes, the board of Yahoo is meeting today to try to devise new and more dastardly ways of wringing more money out of Microsoft.

For viewers just tuning in, so far this week on “As the Tiny-Incestuous-Petty-Juvenile-Digital World Turns,” Yahoo (YHOO) has been plenty busy:

An AOL (TWX) mashup deal!

A Google (GOOG) search-ad partnership!

Even–cue the trumpets!!!–the late entrance of that man-about-Silicon-Valley from Web 1.0, Frank Quattrone, working for Google, which is helping Yahoo on AOL (and, fun, snake-eating-itself fact: as a banker, Quattrone worked for Yahoo when it was contemplating buying eBay).

This is so deliciously sweet, in terms of geek soap opera, that I fear I may get a major cavity soon.

But like any hungry viewer, I want more! What, what, what could be the next twist and turn?

Here are three of my more creative brainstorms:

1. Reunite the dream team in United States v. Microsoft to scare the living daylights out of Steve Ballmer.

It will be like an antitrust version of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” I am almost certain that Joel Klein, Janet Reno, David Boies and the ever-irascible Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson (the latter two pictured here) still are capable of giving Microsoft (MSFT) the willies.

2. If you want make former Yahoo merger partner and now Microsoft merger parter News Corp.’s (NWS) Rupert Murdoch squirm, there’s nothing like adding yet another wizened media mogul to the mix. My No. 1 choice would be some kind of hopelessly complex mashup with the properties of Sumner Redstone (pictured here), who controls both CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIA). I am thinking something that includes SpongeBob SquarePants and those irksome girls from “The Hills” (also pictured here) and, say, Katie Couric.

3. Of course, the most surefire way to get more money from Microsoft: Hire Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here). So far, the 23-year-old wunderkind and his team at Facebook (well played, Owen Van Natta, well played!) have been the only ones able to get Microsoft to fork over an ungodly amount of money for a chance to own a small part of a hope and a dream and not-a-very-impressive bottom line.

If Zuckerberg can get a $15 billion valuation by putting up only SuperPokes and news feeds as collateral, I would find what he is drinking and get me some for myself.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.