Facebook is testing a set of changes to its privacy settings that will make it easier for folks to control what they share and with whom. Essentially the Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network is betting that if its users have more control over privacy, they’ll share more. To be sure, the current privacy settings are made up of many unnecessary layers. As part of the test, Facebook will be asking a small group of users to “revisit and reaffirm” their privacy setting using a so-called “transition tool.” As Chris Kelly, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, explains in a blog post:

The test we’re launching today will include a small fraction of the total number of people on Facebook. This group will receive the new, simpler settings and one of six different versions of the Transition Tool. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be collecting direct feedback from the testing group and using it to make improvements to the tool. Our goal is to ensure that people understand the changes to our privacy settings and make choices that reflect their comfort level. After the testing and feedback phase is complete, we expect to offer final versions of the tool and the new settings to everyone on Facebook.

Continue »

Facebook said today that former Genentech executive vice president and CFO David Ebersman will join the social network site as its new CFO in September, succeeding Gordon Yiu, whose departure was announced at the end of March. Ebersman will direct Facebook’s strategy, planning and operations and report to founder Mark Zuckerberg, who was quoted as saying:

“We received a lot of interest in the CFO position and had the opportunity to meet with many impressive candidates. We quickly recognized that David was the right person for Facebook. He was Genentech’s CFO while revenue tripled, and his success in scaling the finance organization of a fast growing company will be important to Facebook.”

Ebersman spent 15 years at Genentech; he left in April, after the biotech giant was bought out by Roche. Though buzz continues to grow about an impending Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg has said the company has no plans to go public. The company recently took a $200 million investment that valued it at $10 billion.

Image courtesy of Inside Facebook

Om sat down this afternoon with Facebook Technical Operations VP Jonathan Heiliger to talk about the social network’s infrastructure and started out by asking how the company managed to withstand the heavy user traffic during its username product launch.

Heiliger said that Facebook had originally planned for people to claim their usernames in an auction-style format, and the project was code-named “Hammer.” In the end, the company decided that usernames would be claimed on a first-come-first-serve basis — but the launch’s code name remained. “We decided to keep the ‘Hammer’ code name because it was going to hammer our site,” Heiliger said.

As we all know, the launch went off without a hitch. Continue »

MySpace said today it’s cutting two-thirds of its non-U.S. workforce, bringing the total number of international employees to 150. The move comes a week after the social networking site said it would slash 30 percent of its U.S. workforce. MySpace said today that it will ”restructure its international operations and refocus personnel around a smaller number of territories.”

London, Berlin and Sydney have been designated as the international hubs; offices including those in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France and India are under review. MySpace China (which is locally owned, operated and managed) and MySpace’s joint venture in Japan will not be affected.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said in a statement:

“As we conducted our review of the company, it was clear that internationally, just as in the U.S., MySpace’s staffing had become too big and cumbersome to be sustainable in current market conditions.”

MySpace is struggling to regain its lead over rival Facebook; comScore released data last week that showed the number of unique U.S. visitors on Facebook eclipsed MySpace for the first time ever in May. Facebook has also been growing rapidly overseas.

If the growing number of games being played on it are any indication, then San Francisco-based micro-messaging service Twitter has the potential to become the next major casual gaming hub. The thought first came to me a few weeks ago, when I discovered Spymaster, a game that allows you to run your own spy ring. Every action in the game is tweeted to your followers. After an initial burst, the game activity has moderated somewhat, but in the meantime it got me thinking about Twitter-based games, of which there are many. Continue »

Ever since Netscape started storing cookies in its browsers, there has been a Jekyll-and-Hyde nature to the web. The Jekyll web promised a more personalized experience, with sites serving ads for products and services that you would actually be interested in — ads that are more like useful information and less like glaring interruptions. The Hyde web wanted sites to stalk you, recording little bits of data about your online life until they knew more than you’d be comfortable sharing even with some friends.

Internet media companies have long grappled with that contradiction inherent in targeted ads, and have had, at best, mixed success at resolving it. But it’s looking like they’ll need to solve it soon — or regulators will do it for them. Continue »

A lot of things make Twitter special. The 140-character restriction makes the writing more potent, because people are forced to get to the point instead of rambling on. Anyone can search for things that are happening “right now,” as opposed to waiting hours (if not days) for Google to update its links. And unlike Facebook, discussions are open to the public, which encourages greater participation.

But one feature has been grossly overlooked in terms of what helps Twitter stand out: the ability to publish headlines to the Internet using only text-enabled cell phones. How is that special, you ask? Continue »