Written on 20th February 2009
4 COMMENTS 
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Our occasional Wicked Wednesday series kicked off with a topical photo caption competition – and we are delighted to now showcase the winning caption!
The winning caption from John Carson
Just in case you need were wondering about the context of the stories that inspired this caption, here are some stories we published recently regarding Facebook.
You can see all of the entries in the comments section of our original story announcing the competition.
Congratulations to the winner, John Carson – we’ll send you a full-sized image shortly John.
Written on 18th February 2009
16 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
Our occasional Wicked Wednesday series kicks off with a topical photo caption competition!
Enter and win with The Next Web!
Just add your suggested caption for this photograph by adding a comment below. The best entry will be selected and added to this image of Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and will be headlined on Friday at The Next Web Blog, and the winner will received a full sized version of the image, with their caption added, to keep. You can choose where to post the image as long as you sign up to our Terms and Conditions.*
Good luck!
Just in case you need some inspiration, here are some stories we published recently regarding Facebook.
* Terms and Conditions. Enter before 12:00 Amsterdam time Friday 20th February 2009. If you win, you can do what you want with the image, just don’t change it. Use it to link to your stuff if you like. If your stuff is evil that’s not our fault and will blame you. We’ll use your name and where you are from in announcing that you won the competition. Our decision on a winner is final. Unless we see a funnier caption and change our minds. If Facebook’s lawyers get upset we’ll rapidly give them your IP address and email and insist it was all your idea. You can link to this story or retweet it if you like. We’d like an option on removing and selling your liver.
Written on 17th February 2009
33 COMMENTS
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
We posted earlier about the recent change in Facebook’s terms of service which clearly stated that Facebook were able to do with as they wish with any content you uploaded to the site. This caused a great deal of controversy and concern, so much so that Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg took the time to write an official post on the matter.
We have pasted the post in its entirety below.
A couple of weeks ago, we updated our terms of use to clarify a few points for our users. A number of people have raised questions about our changes, so I’d like to address those here. I’ll also take the opportunity to explain how we think about people’s information.
Our philosophy is that people own their information and control who they share it with. When a person shares information on Facebook, they first need to grant Facebook a license to use that information so that we can show it to the other people they’ve asked us to share it with. Without this license, we couldn’t help people share that information.
One of the questions about our new terms of use is whether Facebook can use this information forever. When a person shares something like a message with a friend, two copies of that information are created—one in the person’s sent messages box and the other in their friend’s inbox. Even if the person deactivates their account, their friend still has a copy of that message. We think this is the right way for Facebook to work, and it is consistent with how other services like email work. One of the reasons we updated our terms was to make this more clear.
In reality, we wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want. The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work. Our goal is to build great products and to communicate clearly to help people share more information in this trusted environment.
We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues, and our terms are one example of this. Our philosophy that people own their information and control who they share it with has remained constant. A lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective of the rights we need to provide this service to you. Over time we will continue to clarify our positions and make the terms simpler.
Still, the interesting thing about this change in our terms is that it highlights the importance of these issues and their complexity. People want full ownership and control of their information so they can turn off access to it at any time. At the same time, people also want to be able to bring the information others have shared with them—like email addresses, phone numbers, photos and so on—to other services and grant those services access to those people’s information. These two positions are at odds with each other. There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with.
We’re at an interesting point in the development of the open online world where these issues are being worked out. It’s difficult terrain to navigate and we’re going to make some missteps, but as the leading service for sharing information we take these issues and our responsibility to help resolve them very seriously. This is a big focus for us this year, and I’ll post some more thoughts on openness and these other issues soon.
Written on 18th March 2008
1 COMMENT
Ayelet Noff, Next Web WebTipr Israel
Nick O’Neill from The Unofficial Facebook Blog has recently interviewed Mark Zuckerberg (in a slightly different manner than Sarah Lacy). Here’s what Mark had to say:
1) He believes the reaction to his interview with Sarah Lacy was overblown.
2) Mark claims that the 5,000 friend limit on Facebook is more of a technical limitation than anything else and even though users have been complaining about this, it is not something they plan on changing any time soon. However Nick adds:
“I received a different response from one Facebook employee later that night who claimed that it would only be a few lines of code to change. I’m sure there is more to it than that but it definitely is not a high priority at Facebook currently.”
3) Mark claims that Facebook does not want to compete with other application developers. However, this still didn’t stop them from sending out a message to thousands (if not millions) of college students recently telling them to install the March Madness application. Over the last few years, CBS and Facebook had worked together in creating and promoting this application. The fact that Facebook is not allowing other developers the same promotional capability for their applications is angering many developers and justly so. When asked about this controversial issue, Mark mentioned that this year they had actually messaged less users than in previous years.
(more…)
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