Fresh from his puppy dog-esque, “Oprah” interview, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made good use of the press the television talk show appearance engendered to hawk his wares, most especially new features the hot social networking-site has been coming out with of late.

Including some that look suspiciously like Twitter, the hot microblogging service that has hip-checked Facebook out as the new “in” thing in Silicon Valley and which declined Zuckerberg’s acquisition attempt last year.

But what tool did the ever-clever Zuckerberg also use yesterday to flack his products?

Twitter, of course!

Imitation is, of course, the sincerest form of flattery. But the posting by him (finkd) and also PR honchette Brandee Barker (facebookbrandee) does give new meaning to the word: coopetition.

Here are Zuckerberg’s and Barker’s tweets today, as well as part of the Oprah Winfrey interview–well, more a lovefest for the tie-wearing (please stop taking him shopping, Brandee!) and unusually loquacious Zuckerberg–below:

Let’s get this out of the way: BoomTown completely missed Lionel Richie perform, cooling our heels outside behind the rope line at the MySpace party in San Francisco last night.

Major bummer.

That aside, I did finally get in and did a video at the rocking event, which the SoCal-based social-networking site–owned by News Corp. (NWS), which owns this site too–threw at the lovely Old Mint building, after the day’s proceedings at the Web 2.0 Summit.

It featured that exclusive performance by Richie, and also song-spinning by DJ AM.

But mostly, it was the scene of a lot of wild partying, with a lot of swinging, and packed most of the night, even as the supposed gloom of the econalypse was settling over Silicon Valley.

So here it is, including MySpace PR head Dani Dudeck, refusing to sing for me, as well as a madly-dancing-but-no-commenting Brandee Barker of Facebook.

(In my Richie-less addled state, I mentioned Neil Diamond’s “Hello, Again,” rather than Richie’s “Say You, Say Me” in the video. Sorry!)

Also, don’t miss the strains of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’”–which has become the infamous song of the moment in the digital sector.

Here’s the video:

Burda runs an annual digital conference in Munich called DLD (Digital, Life, Design), which a lot of U.S. tech types have gone to, including me, even though the media giant is best known for its old-line magazines about fashion, cooking and crafts.

But Burda has also been dipping into the digital sector a lot, especially via the tireless tech networking of the company’s Steffi Czerny and Marcel Reichart, who have established a high profile for the company among Silicon Valley denizens.

That was in evidence at Burda’s luncheon yesterday, which was crowded with a panoply of techies and hosted by Czerny, Maria Burda, the wife of CEO and owner Hubert Burda, and well-known Israeli investor Yossi Vardi.

Czerny has been taking Maria Burda (pictured here, she is also a famous German television star, better known as Maria Furtwängler) around the Valley on a learning tour this week to meet with companies like Ning, Mozilla, Facebook, and with venture capitalists. They are also here to attend Google’s Zeitgeist partners’ event, which starts today.

Here’s a video of yesterday’s luncheon, where I was asking everyone about the troubled economic situation and more.

It includes chats with Mullenweg and Seesmic’s Loic Le Meur, BillShrink’s Peter Pham, Facebook’s Brandee Barker and Randi Zuckerberg, Wired’s Steven Levy, Vardi and Burda and Czerny:

Gas prices through the roof?

Mortgage crisis continues?

A looming recession?

You almost have to admire Web 2.0’s fight for their right to party.

Last night, it was quite a festive mood, as a mess o’ tech press and a bunch of digital movers and shakers showed up at OutCast Communications’ Seventh Annual CEO Dinner, held in the Grand Hall of San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building.

Big clients of OutCast include Facebook and Yahoo, as well as a lot of hyper-trendy start-ups.

Here is a lovely video I did, featuring OutCast’s T.J. Snyder and Margit Wennmachers, investor Ron “Sister Woman” Conway, Yahoo (YHOO) communications czar Brad Garlinghouse and PR’s Nicki Dugan, Facebook’s Brandee Barker, VC Stewart Alsop and the incomprehensibly iPhone-addled Robert Scoble:

The three-day conference focuses on digital innovation, science and culture. It is chaired by publisher Hubert Burda and serial Israeli investor Joseph Vardi and hosted by Stephanie Czerny and Marcel Reichart.

I was here to interview Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch. In our session this afternoon, we talked about digital tools to improve reporting on human-rights abuses, the situation in China for U.S. Web companies like Yahoo and Google, along with what techies can do to help in this important arena.

I also hung around the conference and schmoozed, Eurostyle!, with a lot of folks, including Mahalo’s Jason Calacanis, BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis and Vardi.

There is also some video from an interesting social-networking panel, featuring Matt Cohler of Facebook, Lars Hinrichs of Xing and Joanna Shields of Bebo.

Added bonus: I also got the no-comment-hand-over-camera move from Facebook’s Brandee Barker, but a promise of German beer!

Here’s the video:

Could Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark “Cindy Lou Who” Zuckerberg teach Yahoo Co-Founder and CEO Jerry “Grinch” Yang a thing or two about holiday cheer?

You can bet your roast beast he could.

BoomTown has been, we admit it, quite tough on both Zuckerberg and Facebook since we launched the site–about everything from its still unproven business prospects to its toddler widgets to its insane valuation to its legal harassment of a magazine to its stalkerish Beacon ad product.

But Zuckerberg and his team, including its tireless and doubtlessly tired PR head Brandee Barker, have consistently responded to BoomTown’s prodding and posts without rancor and not too much disgruntlement.

(Except when Zuckerberg once told me I was too mean to him, but we’ll let that one pass, because we kind of are on the age issue, at least.)

While we can’t commend Facebook’s reaction to the Beacon controversy (too slow and too reactive and too little), given the level of leakiness around it, the hot social-networking company has handled its external relations with a level of maturity that is laudable, especially with the massive pressure involved in being the Web company of the moment.

Proof of that below. And Zuckerberg only looks 15% uncomfortable to be standing next to me–looking drunk, though I don’t drink, and oddly shiny–at a holiday party recently (picture credit goes to Facebook VP Owen Van Natta’s lovely wife, Jennifer).

I had a great time debating issues with Zuckerberg at that party, and he seems game to continue that healthy back-and-forth in the future.

Contrast that to the ever-grinchy folks over at Yahoo, which I have also been pretty hard on, although I think I have also been fair given the state of turbulence at the Internet giant.

While I have consistently asked for interviews with most of its top execs, including Yang and President Sue Decker, only a very few–and I thank them for that, I really do–have been brave enough to talk openly about the many challenges that Yahoo faces.

Thank goodness, then, that Yahoo is the leakiest ship of all in the tech sector these days, providing BoomTown and others with a number of great scoops over the year.

Perhaps the 100-Day Sacred Cow VisionQuest Countdown was annoying, but it was Yang who set the stakes and then did not exactly deliver the goods.

Perhaps Yahoo cringes at reports of the many departures of execs–some leaving, others pushed.

Perhaps it does not like the speculation on its lack of bold moves or the prospects of a takeover or worries about its declining share of the search market.

And perhaps Yang was irked by all my brilliant videos, including shamelessly using my own children, to raise money for a good cause, all while haranguing him for one simple lunch! (In that case, though, that would mean he had somehow completely lost his sense of humor.)

But, as I have written time and again, Yahoo has amazing traffic, brand, engagement and products, and I look forward to seeing it reinvigorate itself–which is always a great story.

It would be nice then to be able to talk to Yang and others on the record about its epic struggle to right itself.

Thus, with a little help from Photoshopping fiend Adam Tow, here’s my wish for blog peace and good will in 2008.

(Or, more aptly–Fah who for-aze! Dah who dor-aze! Welcome Christmas! Come this way!):

As usual, BoomTown asked for the obligatory on-the-record interview with Zuckerberg (pictured above), but he still has not invited us over to get social at his social-networking HQ in Palo Alto, Calif. So while we’re waiting by the phone, we need to get busy.

Thus, we continue our thankless quest to decode all memos from Internet moguls (BoomTown speaks fluent Web 2.0 double talk).

(In October, we did this for Randy Falco’s memo about the AOL layoffs. And, back in late August, we also translated a memo from Yahoo President Sue Decker about its reorganization of management.)

So here’s my take on Mark’s take:

Mark wrote: Thoughts on Beacon

Translation: Facebook PR head Brandee Barker’s thoughts on Beacon, so Valleywag’s Owen Thomas will stop pestering her.

Mark wrote: About a month ago, we released a new feature called Beacon to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the Web. We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it. While I am disappointed with our mistakes, we appreciate all the feedback we have received from our users. I’d like to discuss what we have learned and how we have improved Beacon.

Translation: I thought I was the CEO…b#*t#*, as my business card used to read, but it turns out maybe not so much. I would surely like to zombie-bite those annoying reporters, the whiny privacy advocates and those cut-and-run advertisers, who obviously don’t understand my $15 billion worth of genius. I wonder if I could find a way to blame the Winklevosses, who have the audacity to sue me for stealing their original social networking idea at Harvard!

Mark wrote: When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the Web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.

Translation: When we first thought of Beacon, we thought it would make bank to backfill that kooky valuation, so Steve Ballmer would stop texting me “Where’s the beef, dude?” hourly. By lightweight, we meant we were actually thinking of a sneaky way of tricking users into becoming digital billboards without realizing it. By easy and controlled, we meant an easy way to control their brains into thinking this was a good thing.

Mark wrote: But we missed the right balance. At first we tried to make it very lightweight so people wouldn’t have to touch it for it to work. The problem with our initial approach of making it an opt-out system instead of opt-in was that if someone forgot to decline to share something, Beacon still went ahead and shared it with their friends. It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.

Translation: But we lost our balance sitting on the big pile of money we got from Microsoft and that richer-than-rich Asian billionaire. To repeat: Lightweight=sneaky. Since most of our users are too busy popping each others zits or sending digital teddy bears or being cartoonified, we were shocked that they were actually paying attention to our efforts to milk their interests in, say, mountain biking or spelunking, as if they were cows and we were Old MacDonald. E-I-E-I-Oops.

Mark wrote: Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.

Translation: Facebook has succeeded so far, in part because people are simultaneously natural stalkers and shameless exhibitionists. So we thought they’d jump at the chance to tell all their friends they had bought, say, a year’s supply of Viagra or downloaded songs from Air Supply or ordered several pairs of Spanx.

Mark wrote: This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.

Translation: Philosophy? All those Harvard philosophy majors now work for me in customer service. Opt-in, opt-out. If we say it fast over and over again, users will hopefully get really dazed and confused and just lay down and accept their ultimate fate as target practice for marketers. More to the point, I just said we will still receive information on all your purchases and I hope you did not notice that. Opt-in-opt-out-opt-in-opt-out-opt-in-opt-out. Are you getting sleepy yet?

Mark wrote: On behalf of everyone working at Facebook, I want to thank you for your feedback on Beacon over the past several weeks and hope that this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.

Translation: And we have made it extra special confusing to change your Beacon settings, because of all the whining from you teeny brains, which is really annoying to us big brains here at Facebook. To get back at you, we’re hard at work thinking up all sorts of new privacy violations you’ll never be able to understand!

Mark wrote: Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Translation: You may return to your regularly scheduled SuperPoking.

Mark wrote: Mark

Translation: Beacon fiasco aside, I’m still the CEO b#*#*, no matter how many times Swisher mocks my flip-flops.

But a judge in Massachusetts wisely denied an inane request by the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social-networking start-up to take down confidential court documents that 02138 magazine had made available for downloading on its Web site.

The documents were part of a hard-hitting piece called “Poking Facebook” by free-lancer Luke O’Brien, which 02138 recently published, about the origins of Facebook at Harvard University.

“This is a victory not only for 02138, but for the First Amendment as well. We felt we had an important responsibility to report the story and we hope that we were able to promote greater public understanding of the origins of a powerful and influential Web site,” said 02138 President and Founder Bom Kim in a statement. “The judge concluded that the article was an example of ‘core journalism’ and that the original documents on 02138mag.com increased transparency, offering readers unfiltered access to more information on which to evaluate the story.”

Facebook had no comment.

But how could its execs, really, given the appalling nature of their efforts to quash documents that should not have been, especially because they were already loose on the Web?

By way of background, as we reported here Friday, the legal brouhaha started not because, as Facebook maintained, confidential court documents were released, but because some of the those documents–including an application to Harvard University–contained Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend and the address of his parents’ house in New York.

02138, an independent magazine focused on Harvard alumni like Zuckerberg, put up a series of court documents in a downloadable format here it had obtained from a court in Massachusetts to add to its Facebook story.

The documents were related to another lawsuit being waged against Facebook and Zuckerberg by the founders of another social-networking service at Harvard called ConnectU about whether Zuckerberg–who was supposed to program ConnectU–illegally took ideas from it to create Facebook.

At first, though, editors had inadvertently not redacted that sensitive personal information about Zuckerberg from the documents it posted. It was a sloppy mistake, but they quickly removed those references.

Apparently, that was not good enough for Facebook’s Zuckerberg.

Said Facebook PR head Brandee Barker Friday after the emergency filing to stop 02138 (and who has to have the most thankless job on the Web these days): “We filed the motions to let the court know that its orders were being violated. One reason the court ordered certain documents’ protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud. We want to be clear on what these motions are about. These are not about an article the magazine has written, these are about documents that were protected by a court that have been misused.”

Ironically, the release of Zuckerberg’s personal information comes just as his company is under intense fire for new ad programs it recently introduced, especially one called Beacon, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed.

While it made some changes in Beacon last week, Facebook has not given users a global opt-out of the controversial marketing system in which the social network is seeking to link behavior and advertising more tightly for supposedly bigger payoffs.

Of course, after more bad publicity, rising user ire and inevitable advertiser pull-out from the program (Coca-Cola has already headed for the hills, according to reports), it’s a good bet that Facebook will be forced into an opt-out-for-all solution.

But, I am guessing given what was to be simple stubbornness on the part of Zuckerberg, another few rounds of devastating publicity for Facebook.

Let’s just say that this is not a good thing for a company that recently got a $15 billion valuation after $300 million of investments by Microsoft and last week, as first reported by BoomTown here, Asian billionaire Li Ka-shing.

There is little question in my mind–and it has to be going through the minds of all Facebook employees and investors–that all this should be considered a major fumble on the part of 20-something CEO Zuckerberg, whose judgment on how to handle both Beacon and in waging the pointless lawsuit against 02138 seems deeply flawed at best.

More on that key issue for Facebook here in BoomTown next week.

So exactly why did Facebook unleash such a massive legal fury on 02138 magazine yesterday over documents the publication posted online?

Because, said sources, those documents–including an application to Harvard University–contained Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Security number, the full name of his girlfriend and the address of his parent’s house in New York.

Now, apparently, the Beacon’s on the other foot.

The independent magazine, which is aimed at Harvard alumni, put up a series of court documents in a downloadable format here it obtained from a court in Massachusetts related to a hard-hitting story it recently published about the origins of Facebook at Harvard, and had inadvertently not redacted that sensitive personal information in all places at first.

It has since removed those references, but many online readers had already downloaded the PDF files.

“It was a regrettable error and we have fixed it,” said Richard Bradley, executive editor of the magazine.

Wrote the magazine’s spokesperson in a statement to BoomTown: “1) It was an oversight and as soon as 02138 was alerted they took it down. 2) The parents’ address is listed in the white pages and they are the only Zuckerbergs in Dobbs Ferry. 02138 nonetheless took it down as a courtesy. 3) This was not brought to 02138’s attention by Facebook.”

Harsh!

Facebook fired back just as hard, via an email from PR head Brandee Barker.

She wrote: “We filed the motions to let the court know that its orders were being violated. One reason the court ordered certain documents’ protection was to prevent exactly what has happened: misusing documents and taking documents out of context to sling mud. We want to be clear on what these motions are about. These are not about an article the magazine has written, these are about documents that were protected by a court that have been misused.

“Mark Zuckerberg and many others built Facebook through their own ingenuity and hard work, and they are focused on building it further. It is unfortunate but not surprising that others falsely claim credit for it after its enormous success.”

The documents Facebook is seeking to squash are confidential and related to another lawsuit being waged against Facebook and Zuckerberg by founders of another social-networking service at Harvard called ConnectU about whether Zuckerberg–who was supposed to program ConnectU–illegally took ideas from it to create Facebook.

The release of such sensitive information about Mark Zuckerberg (pictured here while a student at Harvard) on the Web is, of course, deeply ironic given that Facebook is embroiled in a controversy over advertising practices it has unveiled recently that some think are violations of Facebook users’ privacy.

Yesterday, Facebook announced changes to one of those ad practices–called Beacon, which can track your purchases on some external sites and send the information back to your Facebook profile’s news feed–to try to assuage those critics by giving users more control over the data. There is still, though, no global opt-out of the controversial marketing system in which the social network is seeking to link behavior and advertising more tightly.

At the same time, it also filed emergency legal motions to get 02138 to take down those documents, which also included Zuckerberg’s testimony in a court case over whether he stole the idea for Facebook, a personal online journal and also financial documents from 2005 for Facebook.

In an online blog post to readers, Bradley said: “We believe that we have a legal right to post them online and that you have a legal right to read them. Meantime, spread the word that a company which plans to collect and sell personal information about 50 million people doesn’t want one magazine to do the same about Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.”

02138 president and founder Bom Kim, who launched the magazine a year ago with Dan Loss and with the backing of Atlantic Media, said Facebook’s legal action against the article and documents illustrate some troubling issues for Facebook related to its young founder.

“I hope this points to the fact that Zuckerberg and those around him are concerned by the questions the documents raise about Zuckerberg’s behavior in the past and in the origins of Facebook,” he said in an interview today.

Indeed, as I pointed out in a post I did earlier this week about the article in 02138: “As the legal battle works its way through the system, mostly related to the question of whether Zuckerberg illegally stole the basic idea for Facebook, the one carry-away from the article is still astonishing–and also a little disturbing: Just how many enemies he has collected at such a young age.”

Magazine sources said Facebook lawyers seemed more concerned about the posting of the online journal written by Zuckerberg, which was–shall we say–a bit juvenile, with references to being drunk and making fun of other students, as well as the Facebook financial documents.

But sources close to Facebook said Zuckerberg was furious about the release of his more personal information, like the Social Security number.

Facebook also argued in its motions that the documents were sealed by the court. 02138’s Bradley said the free-lance reporter, Luke O’Brien, who wrote the article, got them legally from the office of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston.

Last night, the Public Relations Society of America’s Silicon Valley chapter held its annual “Media Influencer” dinner at the Computer History Museum, which featured a spate of tech journalists pitching a large room full of PR people about what’s hot in the sector.

Turning the tables this year–and apparently getting “honored” by the group–were: Victoria Barret of Forbes, CNBC’s Jim Goldman, Business Week’s Rob Hof, The Wall Street Journal’s Don Clark, Robert Scoble of Scobleizer and BoomTown. (USA Today’s Jon Swartz could not attend.)

Venture capitalist Ann Winblad moderated the event, which seemed akin to trying to herd cats.

Some of the topics included: Facebook (of course, and whose PR head Brandee Barker appears in the video below after a harrowing day handling Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes,” which is doing a piece on the social-networking site with an apparent focus on–also, of course–privacy); the impact of the possibly looming recession on tech; Apple’s iPhone (of course, of course); Google (triple of course); the resurgence of the enterprise space; and the fate of Yahoo.

Here is video of the event:

(I still am having problems with the Brightcove player, so I uploaded the video to YouTube.)

It was a fancy gold-leaf setting for the gathering of Silicon Valley and European digital media execs, investors and entrepreneurs, a kickoff to two days of discussion about the state of tech and media in this glam town on the Riviera.

Why am I here? (No, not a boondoggle!)

Actually, to learn more about the most interesting European players, as Walt Mossberg and I consider whether to take our successful D: All Things Digital conference to Dublin next fall.

On my way to the dinner, I ran smack into Facebook bigwig Owen Van Natta and PR head Brandee Barker in front of the conference hotel. They had just flown in, as Van Natta is being interviewed here.

Though they looked horrified to see me as their first greeter, the pair were too exhausted to flee screaming from BoomTown’s usual stalking–which has now gone international–and went off for some much-needed sleep after a busy few weeks of Microsoft-shaking-down and social-ads-launching.

Nonetheless, even without them, Facebook and social networking were Topic A at the dinner among the attendees.

Tomorrow: Barry Diller on why he sliced and diced his Net assets and more.

Until then, here’s some cogent thoughts from four attendees–ubiquitous Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, very sharp Richard Greenfield of Pali Capital, friendly Netvibes CEO Tariq Krim and charming FON founder Martin Varsavsky–in a video:

And surly, given that we always have a lot to say about Facebook. (OK, OK, one tidbit: Its execs and investors have been disagreeing over how big a new investment to take–the operations folks want more cash and the VCs less dilution.)

That does not mean I do not hope to break news of what Facebook finally manages to decide to do, both with regard to partners and its funding, but that I will bow out of parsing this particular set of deals in excessive detail.

But our ennui got us thinking to back in mid-August, when we did a post making our own Facebook of the top execs there using your basic corporate shots.

So now, before they become all rich and start flying private, we compiled from less corporate pictures we found right on Facebook and the Web–we were going for a more fun Facebook of the players here.

We used all the execs from the last one, but we also added one woman, PR maven Brandee Barker, as well as the three principal VCs.

Co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a picture presumably taken at Harvard. He looks so young and naive. Kind of like now.

Zuckerberg best buddy and tech genius Adam D’Angelo (VP and CTO) on a thrilling night at Foo Camp! What could be more fun than an overhead projector and a room full of geeky guys!

Who knew co-founder and VP of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz was such a fox? His future is so bright, he needs those rad shades!

What deft bit of performance art is wacky Owen Van Natta, VP of Operations and Chief Revenue Officer, performing here? A meditation on life as an underling of various and sundry Web moguls–all Silly String and sorrows?

We have no idea what Chamath Palihapitiya, VP of Product Marketing and Operations, is doing, but it looks cool, and he’s dressed natty as always.

Hey, who also knew that VP of Strategy and Operations Matt Cohler was in a 1990s techno-rock duo? (Oh, he’s the one without the shades.)

VP and CFO Gideon “Death Cat” Yu used to have to drink from public fountains, but soon he’ll have his own, spewing only the finest champagne!

It is hard to know where to begin with this picture of PR head Brandee Barker (is she headed for the Castro Street Fair?). But I say: Own it, sister!

There are exactly zero interesting pictures of doubtlessly interesting Founders Fund VC Peter Thiel online (and we looked hard). That’s him on the right, looking the most normal of this PayPal crew.

Again, it is hard to know exactly what Accel Partners VC Jim Breyer is up to here, but we think the hat might be a new and exciting look for him.

Greylock Partners VC David Sze is thinking really hard about how he can say Facebook is worth $15 billion and still keep a straight face and refrain from cackling in front of all the other VCs at Il Fornaio.

Well, not true, as the stuff I have is still baking in the journalistic oven.

But, be assured, I will keep busy ferreting out more info about what’s going on at the social-networking site, which is much in the news and on magazine covers of late.

This week, the internal corporate life of Facebook got some attention, after I reported that its COO Owen Van Natta’s title changed to chief revenue officer and vice president of operations.

(And I also did a primer on its manly–literally–executive team.)

My Facebook travails include haranguing its very patient PR head Brandee Barker until she hands over CEO and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg to BoomTown for one of our withering cross-examinations, which will surely include the incessant playing of my greatest hits compilation of Barry Manilow (as I have said before, I am a Fanilow!) until he gives it up.

And what do I want to know? Given that Mark is relatively new to this press thing, I am providing five of many many queries here, in no particular order, after the jump:

1. What exactly is the state of your relationship with Microsoft and why is Bill Gates a reported idol of yours? Would they make a good owner for Facebook, if you decided to sell?
2. How are you going to manage Facebook going forward? With Van Natta, who has had a lot of the company reporting to him, now in a different role, are you ready to have all those direct reports and really take on the job as CEO?
3. What are the biggest challenges facing Facebook? Privacy? Copyright? Scalability? Lack of truly significant ad sales? A possibility that the bright and shiny service won’t look quite as bright or as shiny in a year?
4. Is it true that Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns your much larger rival MySpace, has been nosing around your business, if not to buy then to what?



5. When will this widgetmania stop and is it just a cheap (and clever, Mark, very clever, just like Tom Sawyer and that fence whitewashing scheme) way of building a newfangled portal out of Facebook? Speaking of portals–we know now you dinged former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel when he arrived a while back with a bag of cash to buy Facebook–but what would you do if you were at that company right now? Because someday you might be.

Oh, I have a lot more, Mark, and the rest of you over there in Palo Alto (and I mean you, Chamath, Matt, Gideon and also VC guys Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel–but not so much Dustin and Adam, as discussing servers and site architecture, while important, makes me very sleepy). I’ll be waiting by the iPhone for your call.