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I spent most of this morning reading all the coverage on the inevitable Facebook IPO. Here are some good articles on the subject. I spent a lot of time reading this, because apparently there wasn’t any other tech related news going on.

The question that pops into my mind is: should I get in on this? The answer that immediately comes to mind is: I really don’t know enough about the stock market to make an informed decision. When Google went public it’s stock was under $100, it’s now trading at $585. In hindsight it seems so obvious. Facebook is bigger (revenue and profit) today than Google was when it went public and Facebook is growing at a ridiculous pace.

The problem is that Facebook’s growth is slowing. Growth (usually in profits) is one of the major drivers of stock prices. Analysts want to see growth and love to see companies beating growth expectations. Facebook is still growing, but just not as quickly as they once were. They are reaching a saturation point in a lot of countries. There are only so many potential users out there and when they have broken 60% in a market (like the U.S.) or 80% in a market (like Chile), each additional user is even harder to acquire. It’s called diminishing returns. Basic law of economics.

To continue growth Facebook is going to have to focus on less saturated markets, namely places like China where the penetration is effectively 0%. They are smart, they realize this. That’s why Mark Zuckerberg had that really public trip to China and why the company has been doing everything they can to get a blessing from the government there. What totalitarian government (which already employs widespread censorship on the internet) is going to allow their citizens to use a service that has been lauded as one of the reasons for the Arab Spring? I predict Facebook is going to, or has already started building tools to facilitate further censorship to appease the Chinese government. They have to do this to get at the nearly one billion potential users the country can offer in return.

This is the problem with publicly traded companies. Profits becomes the motivating factor for decisions. Facebook already has a terrible track record regarding privacy and censorship. I can’t support a company that is going to have to willingly undermine basic freedoms of users to make money. Not to mention support one that is already doing this to some extent.

So I won’t be investing for quasi-moral reasons, but will the stock go up? I think there will be a huge surge on day one because of the pent up demand and then the stock will cool off by the end of the following week and then see steady growth until the next end of quarter earnings report.

Obviously a lot of speculation here and at the end of the day I should probably issue some sort of legal disclaimer that I’m not an expert (as if that wasn’t obvious). What do you think? Anyone hitting f5 on the keyboard to buy some $FB stock?

This a brief overview of how to import Facebook friends into Google Plus. With Google Plus finally opening up to everyone it seemed like a good time to explain this to people. I did this a few weeks back, which is why everyone I’m Facebook friends got early invites (or at least should have).

1. Create a new e-mail account through Yahoo. The name doesn’t matter, you’ll only use it for about fifteen minutes. It is very important that this is an account that is new and has never been used before.

2. Within your new Yahoo Mail account import your Facebook contacts. Go to the “Contacts” Tab, then “Import Contacts” then click on “Facebook.” You’ll have to be logged in to Facebook or it will prompt you to do so. Go ahead and click through all the prompts until you have a bunch of contacts in your Yahoo account (where you previously had none because it was new).

3. Export your Yahoo Mail contacts into a .csv file. Go to the “Contacts” tab and go to the black “Actions” drop down and click on “Export All.” The option you want to select is “Yahoo! CSV.” Go through the prompts and save the .csv file to your desktop. This file is a format readable by Microsoft Excel that will list Name and Email address for all of your Yahoo contacts, which at this point are all of the email addresses your Facebook friends used to register for Facebook.

4. Import the .csv file from your desktop to Google Plus. Before going through with this you might want to go through and selectively edit. Keep in mind that these are the e-mail addresses people used to register with Facebook and they might not all be up to date. Once you have the list of people you want to add all at once, go to Circles > Find People > Upload Address Book.

I recently reached out to a fraternity brother on Facebook because I no longer had his cell phone number. Facebook pulled up our last correspondence – from 2007 – a message sent by me as Chapter President to him while he was pledging the chapter asking him to make sure and get an extra t-shirt made for a person we added late to the pledge class. Strange to see that almost four and a half years later.

It makes me think, how long of a digital trail are we unwittingly leaving? In some cases we are leaving one that will apparently last forever. Good to know, scary to think of the implications.

Facebook messenger is finally here, but it is no longer the app I want. I’ll explain.

Back in May I wrote a post about how there was a need for a standalone messaging app and obviously some people at Facebook agreed. Read the full details on the app launch via TechCrunch.

Last week they launched the app. The timing was curious. At the same time London was in full on riot mode and now MP’s have set a date for a formal inquiry into the methods rioters were using to coordinate. They have singled out Facebook, Twitter and RIM (makers of the Blackberry) for inquiry. Details can be found here. RIM’s Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service appears to be the main target. The thought among some (not all) MP’s is that the UK government should have access to messages to either identify perpetrators of crimes or outright censor the messages. Serious free speech and privacy implications aside, here is what worries me about Facebook messenger. Facebook already at least censors these messages in helping the MPAA and RIAA fight piracy (evidence here). What’s to stop them from extending this censorship in times of perceived crisis? Slippery slope to say the least.

Here is what I now want. A standalone messenger app that works on either mobile device or computer. It behaves like text messaging in that the messages are generally shorter. It would detect where I am at the moment and direct messages only to that location. For example if I’m logged in on the computer and using that to chat it wouldn’t blow up my phone at the same time. It would be encrypted. It wouldn’t log messages or at least it would delete any older than a few days. It wouldn’t be owned by some company ready to sell me out for a few pennies. All my friends using it. It would be great.

Does something like this exist? If not, someone should build it.

Why doesn’t this exist? (if it does, why don’t I know about it)

The only time I every use Facebook is on my phone. I wasn’t selective enough with accepting friend requests at first and now my feed is filled with people I only vaguely care about. The people I want to know about don’t even really use it at all, further aggravating the problem.

The only functionality I use on the iPhone is the messaging. It is almost like I have e-mail, texts and facebook. Three different ways to send messages for three different (but sometimes overlapping) audiences. Everything else in the Facebook app is worthless to me and on top of that the alerts for when I have new messages are never timely.

What I need and want is an app that just handles fb messages, is that too much to ask?

Facebook is making a major announcement this morning. By all indications it surrounds e-mail, or more specifically, they are finally revamping the horrible messaging system they have been using. The company recently acquired the fb.com domain name, leading some to think that they will move the 1400 employees to @fb.com e-mail clearing the way for regular users to register @facebook.com e-mail addresses. Yahoo employees use a similar @yahoo-inc.com method to alleviate confusion.

Despite any on going issues I might have about Facebook, this might be enough to pull me back in. While I don’t like the idea of a company with privacy concerns like Facebook having access to my e-mail, I do like the idea of claiming an important part of internet real estate. If I can have an all but dormant Facebook account and have @facebook.com e-mails forward to my gmail account, I might be sold.

The truth is that this could turn into very valuable internet real estate to get your hands on. Just like having your name.com registered or that perfect twitter handle, it could be the key to making sure you are the person turning up at the top of the search results when you’re googled. It could be the key to controlling your image on the internet, something that will only become more important over time.

With 500 million users, the addresses will go fast. I don’t want to be in a position months or years from now regretting that I didn’t nab a good @facebook.com address and be stuck with something less than desirable. Is this going to be the way people get in touch with me initially in the future? Luckily I don’t have a really common name like John Smith, but I do have to battle with people really into their zodiac sign.

Is this going to be enough to get me to return to Facebook? I’m not sure, I’ll have to wait and see what is actually announced.

In the weeks leading up to the release of David Fincher’s latest film, The Social Network, there has been a sudden surge in interest surrounding the origins of Facebook’s founding. I won’t rehash my issues with the service, instead I want to address the burning questions the film (and book) leave us with.

Should I go see it?
Yes, you should absolutely see it. As of this posting, I’ve already seen it twice.

How accurate is this story?
There is a ton of conflicting information out there. Aaron Sorkin who wrote the screen play claims he tried to get as close to the truth as possible. Without writing 1800+ words Inception style on the subject, I’ll say that I believe it to be as close to the truth as we can get. An article from Business Insider lays out the ten most glaring inaccuracies like the following:

The movie starts with a falsehood: that Mark Zuckerberg never rowed for a crew team. Actually he did, back at Exeter, the super elite boarding school he went to.

Some of the inaccuracies are a little bigger, but tonally the inclusion of these wouldn’t change much.

Who is the actress mentioned as a Harvard student?
Natalie Portman, apparently she had dinner with Aaron Sorkin and told him some stories about what it was like to be a student there at the time. The line of dialogue was probably a nod of thanks from Sorkin.

Did Facebook get involved?
The filmmakers approached the company and showed them early versions of the script, but the two company ultimately wanted creative changes made that director David Fincher was unwilling to make. Facebook also refused to allow the film to be advertised on the site.

Is Facebook really worth $25 billion dollars?
According to Forbes it is actually worth $33 Billion and Zuckerberg is the 35th richest person on the planet.

Who is right and who is wrong?
Finally, a serious question.

Aaron Sorkin’s incredible dialogue has Zuckerberg’s character at one point exclaim, “If you were the inventor of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook!” With this one line, Sorkin captures the heart of the issue. He didn’t come up with the idea of a social network, but he went out there and built one. Not only did he build one, he built the best one.

If I were to wake up today and say, “I have an idea to build this new revolutionary product that is the going to be the next big thing,” I don’t have ownership of that product unless I go out and build it. Having an idea and executing an idea are completely different things. Another brilliant Zuckerberg line states (does) “a guy who makes a really good chair owe money to anyone who ever made a chair?”

What about Eduardo Saverin having his stock diluted from 34% to .03%? Another line of dialogue sums up my feelings exactly. “You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?” Don’t forget Saverin settled for an estimated $1.1 billion.

He hasn’t made the best decisions, but I’m not sure you can really hold that against him, given the circumstances. History will come down on the side of the person who actually went out there and did it, which in this case is Zuckerberg. Through the good and the bad, he is an incredible, albeit single minded visionary who hasn’t let anything distract him from his dream.

This has been a really awful Summer for movies. Between Marmaduke and The Last Airbender someone might think Hollywood has totally given up on even trying to make something good. Check the teaser trailer below.

Most people would let out a huge groan if they were told Hollywood’s latest idea was to make a movie about Facebook. But with David Fincher directing (Se7en, Fight Club), Aaron Sorkin writing (A Few Good Men, West Wing), Jesse Eisenberg starring (Adventureland, Zombieland), Justin Timberlake co-starring (the funny guy from SNL) and Trent Reznor doing the music (Nine Inch Nails) this film is something to get very excited about.

The movie is based on the best selling book with the same title (The Social Network actually the book is called “Accidental Billionaires”), but is going to be known as “the facebook movie” to most people. What excites me even more than the possibility of something good to see in theaters is the knowledge that at least a few people are going to give my Why I Quit Facebook post another read.

What do you think? Does this sound like a recipe for a hit? Getting excited?

I’ve had a lot of people ask me why I quit Facebook last week. The short answer is that I can no longer be part of what Noam Chomsky calls the bewildered herd. More and more I couldn’t agree with what was going on, so I took a stand. I quit Facebook and I do not plan on going back. Read my reasons and decide for yourself if this is something you can continue to go along with. If you choose to just ignore this and go about your day, that’s fine, but remember what Chomsky would say about you.

Facebook has turned into a total privacy nightmare. What’s worse is that privacy has disappeared as Facebook’s market share has increased. Boing Boing shows a brief timeline of how this has happened. I’ve added the image below.

As Facebook’s power has grown, so has their disregard for privacy. Definitely a disturbing trend. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had to settle a huge lawsuit surrounding accusations of ripping off the idea from fellow Harvard students he ripped off. I won’t get into the details around the lawsuit, but there is information out there if you are curious.

Recently a college friend of Zuckerberg’s released instant messages to Business Insider. Below are some of the messages, keep in mind this was when he was a poor college student running a web site out of his dorm room. Now his net worth is estimated to be in the neighborhood of five billion dollars.

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Not the best track record so far, but how about some more specifics about these privacy “changes” as Facebook is calling them. A blogger named Matt McKeon came up with a great animation to show the growing availability of personal information. You can see the progression on his blog, below are images showing the difference between 2005 and 2010.

Facebook today isn’t what I signed up for back in 2005. I understand that you should take precautions putting information online assuming it will be private, but this is ridiculous. My problem is less with the erosion of privacy and more with Facebook’s approach. Instead of making all of this sharing and instant personalization (previous post on this alarming “feature”) features users can opt-in to, they have made it so there are choices buried within the options allowing you to opt-out. That is, if you actually know Facebook has changed the options. With each major update, they routinely attempt to reset user’s options to the defaults. No surprise here, but the defaults involve everything being public.

Just how confusing have these options become? The New York Times has a great interactive feature highlighting the complexity. Some of the interesting highlights include Facebook’s privacy policy being longer than the U.S. Constitution and the tidbit that even if you have made your account totally private, your friends can still share all of your information with others.

Facebook has had a ton of security exploits. Most recently, users were able to witness live chat between other members without their knowledge. Another security issue resulted in private messages being randomly send to different users. What would you say if your e-mail account did this one day? It’s also now in the top ten of most target sites for phishing according to Mashable.

What about Google and all the other companies we are sharing all of our information with? It’s easy. None of those groups are basing entire business plans around making all of your information public. None of those companies have a track record of screwing people over. None of those companies have had privacy violations anywhere close to the scope of those made by Facebook. Google is quickly emerging as the largest rival to Facebook. Google represents the open, transparent web, while Facebook wants a closed system they control.

Think about everything that has been said here so far about Facebook. Here is a quick story about Google for comparison. Google’s company motto is “do no evil.” The Chinese government hacked into gmail to find out information about known political dissidents. Google decided this was the final straw and stopped censoring search results in China even though the popular search engine is now blocked by the great firewall of China as a result. The Google founders decided standing up for what they believed in was more important than becoming a major player in a market worth billions. What would Zuckerberg have done in this situation? It’s ok to share information on the internet, it’s the future of the web, just be careful who you share it with.

The bottom line is that Facebook has gone too far and have done absolutely nothing which would make me believe they are suddenly going to do otherwise. You have a choice, by doing nothing you have made one.

Facebook just made some major announcements that not only change the course of the world’s most trafficked web site, but change the course of the internet itself. Unfortunately, these changes also raise serious privacy concerns. The vast majority of Facebook users will not notice, which is sad. This isn’t the first time Facebook has made major changes to their privacy policy, but these changes bigger implications than any changes made in the past.

Remember those Facebook Connect buttons? They are going to start disappearing. In place of those buttons will be innocent looking “like” buttons. Facebook wants you to “like” (recommend / share) an article, a photo or a product. “Liking” something will automatically post it to your feed. You cannot remove these items on your feed from Facebook, instead you must go back to the web site where you hit the like button and click it again to unlike the item. On top of that, these likes do not have privacy settings. They are viewable by every single Facebook user forever.

The other major change concerns applications. It used to be that applications had access to all of your personal data for only 24 hours. Now they have access to it forever. For all those MafiaWars and Farmville players out there, you better hope you are ok with companies having access to your personal data in exchange for playing their games. On top of that, your friends can share your information to applications. Below is a list of all the things friends can share about you.

Most of these changes are not that bad. What makes them really bad is the average user’s ignorance of their existence. Facebook gives you a small notice at the top of your page the next time you login. It’s pretty misleading.

It used to be that you could fairly safely assume you were surfing the internet anonymously. Now Facebook is turning into your digital fingerprint. You might not be aware of all the places you are leaving your fingerprints, but someone certainly is watching, monitoring and recording. Instant Personalization is only available on Yelp, Microsoft Doc.com and Pandora for the time being, but the feature is definitely going to expand to other places.

If you want to disable Instant Personalization, go to Privacy Settings > Applications and Websites and then uncheck the box at the bottom.

The most important thing you can do is take some serious time to look through all of your privacy settings and the information you’ve written in your profile. You can no longer assume only your friends will be looking at your profile.