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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 was followed by Twitter, which will be followed by Foursquare. Just remember when the only thing the mainstream media can talk about is foursquare. You heard it here first, it’s going to be huge.*

What does it do?
Foursquare is a mobile location based social networking application. What does that mean? It’s an application you run on a mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.), that allows you to alert your friends of your location. At this point, a lot of people are going to ask, “why would I want people to know where I am?” To those people I say this: think back to when you first heard about Twitter. You probably asked a similar question, but trust me this is actually a good idea. First of all on Foursquare you have considerably less “friends” than on Facebook or Twitter. The people you’re giving your location to are much closer friends. You also have the option to not broadcast your location when you check-in to a new location. Most people don’t use it to tell everyone they are grocery shopping or running errands. Instead it’s used to tell people about the social places you’re hanging out. Bars, restaurants, coffee shops and other places you would want friends to meet up with you.

What makes it so appealing?
There are several gaming aspects to Foursquare that make it incredibly addictive, but at it’s core is the location based awareness. Now that most smartphones are equipped with gps, the app can determine where you are in a city. There are a ton of useful functions for this. To name a few: finding specials nearby, locating friends nearby, exploring new places, and getting local recommendations.

The gaming aspects of Foursquare are what make it really addictive. First there is a weekly leader board. You earn points by checking in at locations. You can compete with everyone in the city, or just your friends for points and to see who can top the weekly leader board. Next are the badges. By doing different things you can unlock badges which are displayed on your profile. All of the badges are designed to keep you participating with the application. Finally, you can become mayor of a location if you are the person who has visited most in the past sixty days. Some businesses have even offered perks to mayors in an attempt increase business. Here is one example.

Why it will be a huge hit
Foursquare is going to be huge because of the convergance of location awareness, gaming element and integration with other social media sites. It’s not trying to compete against Twitter or Facebook, instead it uses those platforms to have it’s users promote what they are doing and get more people involved. To truly get an understanding of how fun and addictive Foursquare can be I recommend you try it out for yourself. To get the most out of it, find a bunch of friends to try it out with. While they are constantly expanding to new cities, you’re most likely out of luck if you live in a smaller metropolitan area.

*I started writing this before I’d tried out Gowalla, which might turn out to be even better, but for basically all the same reasons. Right now Foursquare is #1, but Gowalla is quickly gaining in popularity.

You stayed up late Friday night to make sure you reserved your vanity url, right? If you didn’t, you should probably get on that asap.

Facebook is rapidly becoming a web site I spend less and less time on, but this post isn’t about those reasons. It is about 20 Facebook Tips you might not know. Specifically #2 on the list. Did you know there was a firefox addon that automatically downloaded albums? Neither did I. This is going to save me a lot of time asking friends for copies of pictures from events where I neglected to bring my camera.

My fraternity brother Joseph Sutton has finally given in to Facebook. He held out for years, but some how he finally gave in. Congrats Joseph.

This in response to a tweet I made last week.

I’ve been tagged several times by the 25 Things post and I refused to participate. No matter how many times I get tagged I just can’t go along with it. Apparently I am not the only one who thought it had gotten out of control, Time magazine wrote an article about the phenomenon. Hopefully this is the last Facebook Edition Weekend Reading I will post for a long time.

• 25 Things I Didn’t Want to Know About You

• Linus Torvalds’ 25 Things

• Facebook Mystery: Who Created “25 Random Things About Me”?

• Facebook flashmob shuts down station

• 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

• Facebook Paid ConnectU Founders $65 Million Settlement

• Facebook’s Value: $3.7 Billion and Dropping

• Fears of impostors increase on Facebook

According to multiple sources, Facebook is moving ahead with plans to exploit private user data for advertisement targeting. Straight from to the Telegraph:

Facebook is planning to exploit the vast amount of personal information it holds on its 150m members by creating one of the world’s largest market research databases.

Rumors are going around that despite the web site being valued in the billions, cash reserves on running low and they are desperately trying to find ways to increase advertising revenue. It is believed that a deal has already been reached with careerbuilder.com. Don’t worry, there is a little hope:

All the company’s previous attempts to monetise the site have failed after members railed against the site’s invasion of their privacy. Mr Zuckerberg pulled Beacon, a service that notified users of their friends’ purchases on external sites such as Amazon, after members launched a campaign in December 2007.

Read the full story from The Telegraph.

Update: Facebook has started a PR blitz to confront the backlash from users. One source is saying Facebook is telling them they are no longer going forward with plans.