Facebook slims down

Facebook is testing out a pared-down “Lite” version in an aggressive move to attract more content-sharing. It comes a day after the company launched a real-time search and bought FriendFeed, showing that the company is incredibly focused on moving into the real-time space. The service is in beta testing and invites were sent to specific users. (The photo comes from Twitter and was spotted TechCrunch.) (more…)

Facebook Acquires FriendFeed

Facebook has acquired FriendFeed, we’ve learned. We’re gathering details now.

At this point details on the acquisition are still very sparse, but it’s clearly a good match. Over the last year or so, Facebook has “borrowed” quite a few features that FriendFeed popularized, including the ‘Like’ feature and an emphasis on real-time news updates. (more…)

Facebook and Think Computer have settled a dispute over whether the former actually owns the term “facebook.” (more…)

Facebook stopped a phishing attack on Thursday, its second day in a row of dealing with a worm on the site that lures people to a fake Facebook page and prompts them to log in. (more…)

As we speculated this weekend, Facebook has opened up its activity stream through a new API for developers. Now any developer can create new applications incorporating the real-time stream. One of the first apps to take advantage of this new API is Seesmic Desktop, A Twitter client which is now adding your Facebook feed through this API (something Tweetdeck already did in the past through other more restrictive means). Facebook has also created its own desktop notification client to demonstrate what can be built with the API. (more…)

Facebook plans to announce at a developer event Monday that it will open up user-contributed information to third-party developers, according to a report Sunday in The Wall Street Journal. (more…)

Facebook has a thing for moms.

The last two times I’ve attended a Facebook event – both the unveiling of its redesign and its announcement of Connect on the iPhone – Facebook employees emphasized how excited they were about the fact that their mothers had recently joined the social network. The milestone is a symbolic one, indicating that Facebook is expanding beyond historically internet-savvy generations to include an older user-base, namely folks who use their computers primarily for basic tasks like Email and photography but have largely stayed out of the social-media craze. Yes, there are plenty of older tech-savvy computer users, but this is hardly the norm. (more…)

When Facebook signed up its 100 millionth member last August, its employees spread out in two parks in Palo Alto, Calif., for a huge barbecue. Sometime this week, this 5-year-old start-up, born in a dorm room at Harvard, expects to register its 200 millionth user. (more…)

It wouldn’t be at all surprising if Facebook’s response to the bad vibes elicited its latest redesign were straight out of the 1970 comic war movie “Kelly’s Heroes.” To wit, we give you just one of the refrains from Donald Sutherland’s tanker/proto-hippie character, Oddball: (more…)