100Feed: ACLU Files Lawsuit Against Cyber Bullies

By Richard Best

(LAKE COUNTY, Ind.) — The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against an Indiana middle school for expelling three students who allegedly threatened to kill other classmates on Facebook. The ACLU suit says the girls’ right to free speech was violated and the use of emoticons and “LOL” showed they were only joking.

The three students, all 14-year-old girls, were expelled from Griffith Middle School in Lake County, Ind. in early February following comments they’d made on Facebook about “whom [among their classmates] they would kill, and how they would accomplish this feat, if they had the opportunity,” according to the lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Indiana.

The controversy began after school on the afternoon of Jan. 24, when one of the girls posted a Facebook status update “concerning her disdain for cutting herself while shaving her legs,” according to the court documents. The update was only visible to that particular girl’s Facebook friends. Then the three girls began commenting on the status update from their personal home computers, allegedly joking about various topics in some 70 comments that were posted in the span of two hours, according to Gavin Rose, the ACLU of Indiana attorney representing the girls.

The conversation then turned to which of their classmates they’d like to kill, but Rose says that because the girls peppered their comments with smiley-face emoticons and Internet expressions like “LOL” indicating laughter, they should not have been taken seriously by the school.

“It was done so in an entirely jestful fashion, as exemplified by the fact that when you are serious about something, you don’t follow it up with ‘LOL,’” Rose told ABC News.

The lawsuit alleges that no one, including the girls, mentioned the Facebook conversation at school the next day, but that on the day after that, the mother of one of the girls’ classmates showed a printed transcript to school administrators. The girls were each called to the school administrator’s office and suspended for 10 days “with recommendation to expel.”

Following their suspension, the school held a formal expulsion hearing, where the three girls and their parents were present. An “expulsion examiner” reviewed the facts and ultimately recommended that the girls should be expelled, according to court documents. The girls will be allowed to return to the school district in the fall as ninth graders, but will miss the rest of their eighth grade school year.

Griffith Middle School principal Edward Skaggs told ABC News that the school would not comment on the case, and directed inquiries to the district’s legal representatives.

The school has 21 days to respond to the plaintiffs’ lawsuit.

According to Rose, one of the students named by the girls in their conversation submitted a letter to the expulsion examiner, saying that he didn’t think the girls should be kicked out of school, and that he’d understood what they’d meant.

“It was the type of conversation that every eighth grader has had with their friends,” said Rose, but with the growth of social media, “these personal conversations are suddenly available to school administrators.”

The school’s right to control speech that didn’t take place on school grounds depends on whether the girls’ conversation presented a “material and substantial disruption,” according to Ruthann Robbson, a constitutional law expert and professor at the City University of New York School of Law.

While the school has a reason to be concerned about death threats given the spate of suicides connected to online bullying, Robbson says the off-campus nature of the girls’ conversation makes it tough to determine whether they presented a substantial disruption at school, particularly given recent cases that have favored the protected speech of students, not a school’s right to curtail it.

100Feed: Teens on Facebook More Likely to Abuse Drugs and Alcohol

By Richard Best

A new survey suggest that teens in the United States who use social networking sites and watch “suggestive” TV shows are more likely to use drugs and alcohol than teens who have little to no exposure to this type of media.

With the survey making note of “social networking sites”, this will obviously imply that the use of Facebook was the main area of study since Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking site.

According to HealthDay.com, the survey included more than 1,000 youths from around the nation aged 12 to 17 and about half of their parents. On a typical day, about 70 percent of teens said they used social networking sites.

Social network users were five times more likely to report using tobacco (10 percent versus 2 percent), three times more likely to say they used alcohol (26 percent versus 9 percent) and twice as likely to admit using marijuana (13 percent versus 7 percent).

Facebook not the cause, just an association

The survey is quick to point out that the findings are not suggesting that Facebook is the cause of teen drinking and smoking, only that the use of alcohol and tobacco by teens on Facebook is elevated above teens who are not using the social networking site.

Other finds from the survey:

• Nearly one in five children reported being cyber-bullied, meaning someone had posted mean or embarrassing things about them on a social networking site. Teens who have been cyber-bullied are more than twice as likely to use tobacco, alcohol and marijuana.
• Teens whose parents don’t “agree completely” with each other on what to say to their teen about drug use are more than three times more likely to use marijuana than teens whose parents agree completely on what to say about drug use.
• Teens whose parents do not agree completely with each other on what to say to their teen about drinking alcohol are twice as likely to use alcohol than teens whose parents agree.

100Feed: Parents On Facebook To Blame For Stock Price Woes, Analyst Says

By Samantha R. Selman

It was another poor showing for Facebook last week as its stock price hit a new low Friday, dispiriting shareholders already frustrated by lower-than-anticpated profits. Billions in shareholder value was erased as the market value of Mark Zuckerberg’s flagship fell to nearly half of the $104 billion target set in May when the company went public, the Mercury Newsreports.
But as theories abound over what exactly ails the social networking behemoth, one analyst blames an unexpected group: parents.
“Kids are spending less time on Facebook, as their Parents are also now on the Facebook,” Trip Chowdry, managing director of equity research at Global Equities Research, LLC, wrote in an email to CNN. “It is a psychological reality, that after a certain age, kids are less inclined to hangout where their Parents are.”

In April, Facebook surpassed the 900 million active-user mark. But while the number of users that engaged the site at least once a month continued to grow in the first quarter of 2011, the growth rate is noticeably slowing down. However, Facebook isn’t the the only company struggling. Social games superstar Zynga, music streaming site Pandora and daily deal website Groupon are all currently trading below their public offering price. Collectively, investors have lost $39 billion since those companies — including Facebook — went public, CNBC reports.

So can Facebook redeem itself in the eyes of the America’s youth? Probably not, according to Chowdry. “FB may be cool again for the Younger people, if FB bans Parents from FB, but that is impossible,” he wrote in the email. Instead, Chowdry predicts users will find a new place to “hangout.” In February, the Associated Press reported that many teens, fed up with friend requests from parents, uncles and grandparents, have begun to rely more heavily on Twitter for their social networking needs.

“I love twitter, it’s the only thing I have to myself … cause my parents don’t have one,” Britteny Praznik, a 17-year-old who lives outside Milwaukee, was quoted as tweeting. Twitter accounts are more anonymous than Facebook profiles; they are easy to use, and the 140 character limit is similar in length to the average text message, the Associated Press notes. In addition, the more fluid set-up and ability to easily manage several accounts makes it easier to avoid people some would rather not interact with in their digital space.

100Feed: Facebook Is The New Email

By Samantha R. Selman

After five years on Facebook, Maxine Guttmann, 15, has lost interest in the site. She visits Facebook less frequently than ever — mostly to instant message with friends — and while she updates her Tumblr blog daily, it’s been “weeks” since she’s shared on Facebook.

“When I was little, Facebook was the coolest thing to do. And I as got older, it got stupider and I have more commitments,” said Guttmann, a rising junior in New York City. “On Tumblr, I feel like I can post all the stuff I’m interested in. On Facebook, not all my friends are interested in the same stuff I am. And a lot aren’t even my close friends anymore.”
Amid doubts following Facebook’s disappointing public offering, teens have been a bright spot for the social network. Co-founder Mark Zuckerberg might not have figured out how to maintain ad revenue momentum or adapt to cellphones, but with 93 percent of 12- to 17-year-old social media users on Facebook, it’s long been assumed this young army of digital natives would build a solid foundation for Facebook.

That foundation is looking shaky. For teens, Facebook has become the equivalent of Microsoft Outlook or AOL Instant Messenger, experts say: It has evolved from a hot hangout, to a practical and dull tool for chatting about homework or catching up with faraway friends. Bored, overwhelmed by huge friend groups and exhausted by the digital popularity contests Facebook fosters, many teens are taking refuge in social services such as Tumblr and Twitter.

Facebook is “the teenage version of email,” said Danah Boyd, an assistant researcher at New York University specializing in youth and social media. “What’s so interesting about Facebook is that it’s not interesting to [teens]. That’s a big challenge for Facebook — not because people won’t use it, but when they’re not passionate about it, you see a very different kind of user behavior than when someone is passionate about a service.”

Teens are less likely than their parents and grandparents to browse Facebook in a given month. Sixty-six percent of 12- to 17-year-olds visited Facebook in May this year, compared to 69 percent of web users between 55- and 64-years-old, and 71 percent of all Americans online, according to comScore, a digital analytics company. Other social media sites are chipping away at the time teens spend on the world’s largest social network. Though Facebook is still by far the most popular site among teens, 12- to 17-year-olds spent 77 percent of their social networking time on Zuckerberg’s site in May 2012, while the average user dedicates 85 percent of her online socializing to browsing Facebook, comScore data show.

Because marketers are eager to pitch to teens, who have disposable incomes and still-malleable shopping habits, younger users are a critical part of Facebook’s sales pitch to advertisers bankrolling Zuckerberg’s operation, experts say. 

“Any network that doesn’t figure out how to engage teens and keep them engaged is going to lose out in the next five to 10 years,” said Brian Solis, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, a research firm. “Facebook is enamored, or should be, with this group because it’s the key to Facebook’s future relevance. If they can find ways to keep teens engaged, they can keep brands engaged.”

Teens said they regularly use Facebook’s chat functionalities, yet save their best sharing for other sites. Creative status updates and personal musings are sent to Tumblr and Twitter, which allow users a degree of anonymity and the flexibility to connect with people who share their interests, rather than their location or homeroom.

Courtney Knowles, director of “Love is Louder”, a youth-focused campaign aimed at countering bullying and depression, observes that teens will share whitewashed versions of themselves on Facebook. It’s on Tumblr that the truth comes out, she said. After Facebook, Tumblr is the second most popular social networking site among teens, according to comScore. And the share of teens on Twitter doubled between 2009 and 2011 to 16 percent, a study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows. “The shift we’ve seen is, ‘I have a Facebook log-in and I see pictures of my friends, but Tumblr is where I spend all my time’,” said Boyd.
The sheer size of Facebook’s userbase, nearly 1 billion strong, has made it the high school cafeteria of social networks, while sites like Twitter and Tumblr have become the basement rec-room to which only a select few gain admission. Parents, notably, are excluded.

For Brandon Kaplowitz, 17, a rising senior from New Jersey, Facebook was once a “crucial way of connecting with people.” Now, he and his friends “are tiring of it.” “Facebook is supposed to be a database of who you know, but you don’t know most of those people,” said Kaplowitz. “I feel like the whole experience of Facebook has been diluted by the fact that you’re no longer connecting with friends because you have random posts from people you don’t know filling up your wall.”

Analysts blame parents for teens’ shift away from Facebook, but moms and dads, take heart: Teens’ friends are driving them crazy, too. Facebook has become an added source of drama in young people’s lives and some have shifted to more niche, anonymous social venues to escape the arguments, hurt feelings, and gossip that play out on Facebook. Passing notes in class has given way to wall posts that can be seen by thousands.

Facebook “was very annoying and I really didn’t like the social pressures of it,” said Meghan Waitzer, 17, a rising senior in Toronto who temporarily deactivated her Facebook account. “I hate the idea that when you go to school, you’re popular or not popular there, and then it continues when you get home with the ‘likes,’ comments and everything … You post a photo and just wait to see if people ‘like’ it. It’s very stressful. It shouldn’t be, but it is.”

Some teens are so desperate to be seen by their Facebook friends and rack up “likes” that they’ve developed a homegrown “mythology” for how to game Facebook’s ranking system to get the most attention, said Boyd. According to their logic, users hankering for more eyeballs will get better placement in Facebook’s News Feed if they post lots of photos, pepper status updates with brand names, and share at specific times during the day. Part of Twitter’s appeal is that the real-time feed includes all updates, from everybody, teens say.

And though stereotyped as a generation of over-sharers, teens are wary of what personal information is online and said Facebook’s privacy settings have made the site into a liability. They’ve sanitized what they share to ensure it’s savory for Facebook’s diverse crowd, and 70 percent have set up their profiles to hide information from their parents, a McAfee study found.
Yet many teens still find they constantly have to police their profiles for inappropriate comments or photos posted by their friends, which can be a headache to remove.

“What we see with teens establishing a presence on other social networks … is the desire to have the benefits of Facebook but avoid some of the risk,” said Alice Marwick, a social media researcher at Microsoft Researcher. “Because Facebook is set up to spread content through the network by default, it allows for different types of slippages.”

Much in the way adults cope with the hassle of email, teens are supplementing Facebook with more intimate forms of communication that cut out the junk. But they can’t quite quit the social network altogether. “I think if I deleted my Facebook page people would think I died,” said Waitzer.

100Feed: How the Tax Code Subsidizes Millionaires’ Mansions

by Samantha R. Selman
Photo by Jane Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg recently refinanced the $5.59 million mortgage on his house to a 30-year adjustable rate loan with an introductory rate of 1.05 percent.

Some of that is simply today’s low-rate environment. Some of it is Zuckerberg’s willingness to take on interest-rate risk by going with an adjustable-rate mortgage. The problem is that you can get loans on more generous terms if you’re rich and don’t really need the loan. That seems unfair, but it reflects the fact that the less you need to borrow money to afford a house, the less likely it is you’ll default on your loan. But of course that raises the question of why you would want the loan in the first place if you’re as rich as Zuckerberg.

Bloomberg writes that “wealthy individuals often choose to finance a home purchase rather than pay cash because of the overall low cost of mortgage debt and the additional access to liquidity,” which is true but I think only scratches the surface. Another important issue is that interest payments are tax deductible, which is a very big deal if you have a very high income and live in a high-tax state like California. That of course raises the question of why we do this as a matter of public policy. The deductibility of mortgage interest is often described as a “middle class” tax break, and it’s of course true that middle-class people use it. But richer people have more expensive houses and pay higher tax rates, so the scale of the benefit is much larger to rich people. What’s more, in supply-constrained environments like the Bay Area, subsidizing Zuckerberg’s home buying largely serves to push up the price of housing for everyone else.

100Feed Special Report: My First Days in Zuccotti Park by Jane Zuckerberg

On September 18, 2011 I arrived in New York City at approximately 4:00 P.M. The initial purpose of my trip was to visit my parents at their apartment near Zuccotti Park. As I walked up the narrow steps of the building, a large group of people caught my attention. I had seen them as I drove up to the building, but they didn’t seem as numerous at first glance. These people, who were wielding nothing but signs and were chanting, seemed harmless. They reminded me of something I had seen a few months earlier – namely the conservative “Tea Partiers”.

Whilst observing these “ninety-nine percenters” as they called themselves, a young woman, about my age and height, approached me. Her sign was a smallish piece of cardboard with a marijuana leaf printed with black marker and the words “Tax Hemp” scrawled across it with red marker. She smiled at me and set her sign down so she could speak to me without distraction.
“Are you with the protesters?” she asked, still bearing a friendly smile.
“No. I was just passing by. What are they protesting?”
“Pretty much everything. Some of them are teachers, some are homeless. They’ve just come here to make a difference.”
This girl’s name was Natalie.

At first they didn’t seem reasonable. As I have learned, I have been very fortunate to come from a wealthy family and had never been one to miss a meal. I was a pious Conservative and I watched Fox news religiously. In short, I was blind. I was unaware of all the problems we were facing in this country; and the problems that I knew of, I merely blamed on the president. What did I know? My father had home schooled me and taught me to be Conservative and Christian with all my heart. Glenn Beck? An American hero! Mitt Romney? A patriot! Sure, they’ve never been homeless. They’ve never lived in poverty; but then again, neither have I, and I’m a fairly good person. I have donated to the NCCS (National Children’s Cancer Society) and I frequently give blood. However, the poor live off government cheese and welfare. As a friend quoted one of her Republican aunts, “they have three children with three different baby daddies!” In short, I was bigoted and everything Natalie said went through one ear and out the other.

That night I had dinner with my parents. Both of them are in their late fifties and are retired. As we ate a Sunday chicken dinner, Bill O’Reilly buzzed on the living room television. However, the protestors outside were becoming increasingly louder. At one point it became impossible to hear the television. My dad angrily turned up the volume on the television as he muttered random obscenities. My mom looked out the windows at the growing crowd of protestors. As she closed the blinds, she too muttered random insults.

I went to bed that night thinking about my boyfriend in back in Los Angeles. I had appeared on two hit television shows that year, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead, and I had been going steady with one of the actors in the former. I thought about my home in L.A. Everything in my life was perfect. I had everything anyone could ever want: wealth, love, a nice home. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Little did I know that everything I believed would change almost instantaneously.

The next morning, I awoke to the sound of screaming. I got dressed and went outside to find policemen arresting several of the protestors. One of the men did not take to being arrested and so fought back. I watched as two policemen beat him viciously with clubs. Ambulances swarmed the street. Suddenly, I saw Natalie.

I approached her and found her sitting on the sidewalk, crying uncontrollably. I sat next to her as the policemen continued to arrest the protestors and the EMT’s carried two people out in body bags. This reminded me of something you would see in a war; this was exactly that – a war. Natalie attempted to tell me something, but she was so shaken that I could hardly understand her.
“They killed my boyfriend.” she cried.
“Who?”
“The cops beat him to death in his tent. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
I sat with Natalie as the police cleared the area. It should be noted that the very next day, the news reported that a homeless man was found dead in a tent near Zuccotti park. Natalie recognized this man immediately as her boyfriend, who was clearly not homeless.

I spent that day in Zuccotti park with Natalie. After the police left the park, the protestors picked up their signs and began chanting once again. Natalie had several friends who introduced themselves to me that day. One of the people was no older than seventeen; I will refer to him only as Chris. Chris was a bright looking young man with long blond hair and hazel eyes. He was about six inches taller than I. The other two were women, who I will refer to as Shauna and Priscilla. Shauna was a tall, stout woman in her late twenties. She had an Asian appearance as well as an accent. Apparently Shauna was an immigrant who had come to the states with her brother and had met her husband in New York; her husband was of Cuban descent and was named Miguel. Her brother’s name was Chang. Priscilla was about nineteen and had long red hair that she usually hid under a cap. We called her Red, merely because of her hair color, and she admitted immigrating here from Canada.

That night, I didn’t go to my parent’s condo. I stayed with Priscilla and Natalie, who provided me with my own bright green tent. Sleeping in the tent was something entirely new to me. I had never gone camping in my life and I had an aversion to sleeping on the ground; however, I did it for Natalie’s sake. On my first day back to New York, Natalie had been kind to me. Unless you have been to New York, you have no idea how rude the citizens can be. All of these other people were so compassionate and accepting, even to me, who completely despised their politics. Although I objected at first, Nat was worried for her own safety because of the nightly police raids. Being with her in her time of need was the least I could do.

The protestors awakened me the next morning before sunrise. Shauna had bought coffee for all the people in her “group”, including me. I watched as Chang downed his coffee whilst working on a new sign. It was slightly larger than the other ones I had seen. It was a white canvas with “I am an immigrant. I came to take your job but you don’t have one” written on it with black and red paint. He then looked at me and said “you come with us?”. “No” I said as I sipped my coffee from the warm cup. It had been a cold night, and the coffee warmed my body instantly. “Oh, come on, Zucky! It is fun!” Shauna said. She then leaned forward and whispered, “Plus there are many cute guys.” She giggled as she leaned up against Miguel, who looked at her with a smirk.
“I don’t fit in here. I’ll probably go back to parents’ place. It just wouldn’t work out.”
“Why not?” Miguel said. “It’s easy. You just hold a sign and sing.”
“I’m a Republican and it just wouldn’t work out.”

As everyone else in the group looked at me and each other with smirks. It was like they knew something that I didn’t. Chang convinced me to go with them just as the sun came through the trees in the park. It was settled – one day and then I could leave. “They just needed a little support”.

I marched through Time Square that day with nearly two thousand people, protestors and regular citizens close around me. We walked for six hours before resting. As we rested near the park, Priscilla appeared and waved at us. My calves were sore, my legs were burning and my throat was sore from dehydration. As she approached us, I could not stand up. She offered me and the rest of my group a bottle of water. Wait a second: my group? It was getting a little confusing. These people were so kind. They were almost like distant relatives.

We rested for about an hour before a newscaster from CNN appeared on scene. He approached Shauna with a microphone as he asked a question, “What is Occupy Wall Street and what is their goal?” Shauna hesitated before grabbing my arm. “You know, I think Jane would like to answer your question.” I was a little surprised. The first thought going through my mind was my parents, looking at the television and seeing me with this group of people. My dad would have a heart attack, as well as my mom. Then I thought about Natalie. Her boyfriend had been murdered by the policemen for no good reason. If I had not met Natalie and known how sweet and innocent she was, I would’ve been on the side of the policemen. I knew my mom and dad would be on the cops’ side. However, no one deserves to be murdered like that. Then something dawned on me: screw it. You only get one life, and I’m on Natalie’s side. I’m on the ninety-nine percenters’ side. So I spoke into the microphone.
“This country has a lot of problems. We know we can’t fix everything but, we’ve just come here to… make a difference.”

I felt like a traitor. This was Jane S. Zuckerberg protesting the very same people who had raised me. This was me protesting my own brother – the billionaire who founded one of the most widely used social networking sites in the world. This was me being bad. But, oh Lord, did it feel good!

After another hour or so of walking, we arrived at Zuccotti park around dinnertime and found Natalie sitting with Priscilla’s sister and boyfriend. Priscilla’s sister was a sweet fourteen year old girl named Tasha. News anchors for every station surrounded the park and interviewed the protestors. One thing I noticed was Fox news, in large numbers, cornering citizens and asking them about OWS. These were not protestors, but the people willingly answered as if they were “fighting for the cause”. For the first time in twenty years, I felt uncomfortable in my own skin. These people, these cops, these interviewers were playing dirty and trying to make the protestors look bad.

Time square looked so beautiful that night. I walked downtown and looked at all the protestors crowding the streets. The police were putting up more barricades to keep the protestors away from certain streets, but they did not work. Occupy Wall Street had taken over the city; in fact, I had no idea how far it had gone. Protests were springing up across the country, and in places such as Syria, Egypt and Libya. Times were changing, and I had changed along with it. I dreaded the moment I walked into my parents’ apartment. I imagined my dad, who had beaten me throughout my teenage years for lesser offenses than this. I imagined walking in and my dad telling me to get out of his house, or he would perhaps call the police. I tried to imagine them seeing me on television and throwing the TV out the window. All I knew was something bad was about to happen.

I walked through the door and dropped my bag on the floor, only to see my parents in the dining room eating their dinner. In fact, my mom even acted happy to see me. They did not even know where I had been and they were not about to suspect I had been in Zuccotti. They had apparently not seen the interview on CNN. Then, as my mom wrapped her arms around me and hugged me, I remembered something: my parents watch Fox news.

100Feed: Be Careful What You Like on Facebook

On Valentine’s Day, Nick Bergus came across a link to an odd product on Amazon.com: a 55-gallon barrel of … personal lubricant.
He found it irresistibly funny and, as one does in this age of instant sharing, he posted the link on Facebook, adding a comment: “For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.”

Within days, friends of Mr. Bergus started seeing his post among the ads on Facebook pages, with his name and smiling mug shot. Facebook — or rather, one of its algorithms — had seen his post as an endorsement and transformed it into an advertisement, paid for by Amazon.
In Facebook parlance, it was a sponsored story, a potentially lucrative tool that turns a Facebook user’s affinity for something into an ad delivered to his friends.

Amazon is one of many companies that pay Facebook to generate these automated ads when a user clicks to “like” their brands or references them in some other way. Facebook users agree to participate in the ads halfway through the site’s 4,000-word terms of service, which they consent to when they sign up.

With heightened pressure to step up profits and live up to the promise of its gigantic public offering, Facebook is increasingly banking on this approach to generate more ad revenue. The company said it does not break down how much revenue comes from such ads. Its early stock market performance — down 22 percent from its offering price — is likely to increase the urgency.
But this new twist on advertising has already proved to be tricky. Users do not always realize that the links and “likes” they post on Facebook can be deployed for marketing purposes. And Facebook has already agreed in principle to settle out of court a class-action lawsuit over the practice in California.

Not least, its algorithms lack a sense of humor, which can lead to surprises, as in the case of Mr. Bergus. “I was mildly annoyed, though not to the point of deleting my Facebook account or throwing a hissy fit,” said Mr. Bergus, 32, a multimedia producer in Iowa City, who wrote about the glitch on his blog. “I know the costs of using Facebook. It does not cost me money. It uses lots of my personal information.”

Wall Street is watching closely to see exactly how Facebook plans to use the information offered every day by its more than 900 million users. The company brought in $1 billion in revenue in the first quarter, the vast majority of it from advertising, but it has not disclosed what portion of that is from sponsored stories.

Facebook recently began to show sponsored stories in the site’s main news feed and in its mobile apps, where they appear a lot less like traditional ads, though they do bear a “Sponsored” label. It has told investors that consumers were 50 percent more likely to recall an ad if it came with a plug from a Facebook friend. And it has made clear to users that while they can change a privacy setting so their “likes” do not appear under ads in the most prominent advertising zone on Facebook pages, they cannot turn off other kinds of endorsements that show up elsewhere. “Because sponsored stories are just stories from the news feed, you cannot opt out of them,” Facebook explains in its help center.

A company spokesman said that users can choose not to click the “like” button next to something if they don’t want to be associated with it, and in general they can use the privacy settings to control who sees what they do.

Amit Shah, a marketing executive with 1-800-Flowers, said sponsored stories had been remarkably effective in drawing new eyes to the company’s Facebook page, especially on lucrative occasions like Mother’s Day. He said the company did not need to obtain permission from its fans to run such ads.

“The person has given their consent because they’re engaging with your brand page, and you’re boosting that engagement,” he said. “Our experience is that people love hearing stories of other customers.”

For marketers, sponsored stories save money. No creative work is involved. All they are doing is leveraging one user’s stated preference — whether for a lubricant or a political candidate — and spreading the word to that user’s friends. The most frequently used trigger for such ads in sponsored stories now is the vague, broad “like” button.

It is important to note that people “like” things for different reasons. Sometimes it’s to win prized, for example: “ ‘Like us’ on Facebook to enter to win a gift bag worth about $450,” read one recent promotion from the clothing chain Brooklyn Industries.

Mr. Bergus, a roller derby fan, “likes” a store called Sin City Skates, mainly to get updates on new products in his Facebook news feed. Peter Zaback, 32, a friend who originally alerted him to the ad in which Mr. Bergus appeared, “likes” President Obama’s page because he wants information from the campaign. Mr. Zaback said he did not know whether his endorsement had been used as a political ad.

Eric Goldman, an associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, took aim at Facebook for, as he put it in a blog post, putting words in its users’ mouths. Facebook, he wrote, interprets a “like” as a statement of a user’s attitude and a “green light” to create an ad.
“So Sponsored Stories creates a zero-sum game,” Mr. Goldman wrote. “I as a user probably don’t get any value from the public presentation of my implicit endorsement (if anything, it might hurt my position with my friends), but Facebook and its advertisers benefit from it.”
Sponsored stories resulted in what initially seemed like a potentially damaging class-action lawsuit in California, though last month the company announced its intention to settle out of court.

In filing the case, in United States District Court, lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that the company had been unfair and deceptive in deploying users’ names and pictures in advertising without consent. In its defense, Facebook took a press-freedom approach, saying it did not need consent because sponsored stories were actually “news,” because all Facebook users were public figures to their friends. Details of the tentative settlement were not disclosed.

Angel Fraley, a Seattle costume designer who was the lead plaintiff in the case, said that she recalled clicking the “like” button for an online French course offered by Rosetta Stone. At the time, she said, she was considering moving to Paris, and she hoped that a “like” on Facebook might get her a discount on the course. It did not. Instead, several months later, she showed up in an ad for Rosetta Stone on her friends’ Facebook pages.

Ms. Fraley, 39, still “likes” many things on Facebook. But she said she resented being used for advertising. “When I signed up, that was not part of the deal,” she said.

In Ames, Iowa, Mr. Zaback came across a plug from another friend the other day. Steven Good’s name and face popped up on his news feed, with the announcement that Mr. Good “likes” American Airlines.

Mr. Good, 30, was not surprised. It would be naïve, he said, to count on an entirely free deal from Facebook. As the social media manager for Phi Delta Theta, a Christian college fraternity, he was experimenting with sponsored stories himself, hoping to leverage “likes.”
If you use the site, Mr. Good argued, you should be prepared to be used. “It’s the nature of the beast that is Facebook,” he said.

The following is a post from his site at http://nbergus.com/2012/02/how-i-became-amazons-pitchman-for-a-55-gallon-drum-of-personal-lubricant-on-facebook/ :

“My career as a personal-lubricant pitchman started with a favorited tweet on Stellar that linked to Amazon where, for just $1,495, anyone could purchase a 55-gallon drum of Passion Natural water-based lubricant (and save 46 percent off list!).

“What are you going to do with all this lube?! Wrestling match? Biggest adult party ever?” the pitch for the 522-pound tub went. “If you are looking for a simply jaw-dropping amount of lube, Passion Natural Water-Based Lubricant is ready to get the fun started with this 55 gallon drum! With its superb formula you will have a natural feel that keeps you moist longer and also works great with all toy materials. Easily washes away with warm water and mild soap. You may never run out of lube again!”

While it isn’t eligible for free Amazon Prime shipping, freight is a reasonable $20.95. There were entertaining customer reviews, often the best part of the odd products for sale on Amazon, and, since it was Valentine’s Day, it was timely.
Amused, I posted it to Facebook with the line “A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.” And then I went on with my life.

A week later, a friend posts a screen capture and tells me that my post has been showing up next to his news feed as a sponsored story, meaning Amazon is paying Facebook to highlight my link to a giant tub of personal lubricant.

Other people start reporting that they’re seeing it, too. A fellow roller derby referee. A former employee of a magazine I still write for. My co-worker’s wife. They’re not seeing just once, but regularly. Said one friend: “It has shown up as one on mine every single time I log in.”
I’m partially amused that Amazon is paying for this, but I’m also sorta annoyed. Of course Facebook is happily selling me out to advertisers. That’s its business. That’s what you sign up for when make an account.

But in the context of a sponsored story, some of the context in which it was a joke is lost, and I’ve started to wonder how many people now see me as the pitchman for a 55-gallon drum of lube.”

100Feed: Samsung Launches New iPhone, Facebook Plans To Make Their Own

The global smartphone business has become a two-horse race between Apple and Samsung. Apple (AAPL), obviously, makes the beloved iPhone, but Samsung recently surpassed it to become the largest smartphone maker in the world.

This week, Samsung is launching its latest, greatest phone, the Galaxy S3, in Europe. This phone has a huge screen, much bigger than the iPhone’s, and many early reviewers love it. The S3 will presumably be an even stronger competitor to the iPhone, and it will put more pressure on Apple to release a blockbuster new product when the iPhone 5 arrives later this year.

Meanwhile, Facebook (FB) is poaching ex-Apple engineers to build a smartphone, Nick Bilton of the New York Times reports.

This is the third iteration of Facebook’s smartphone plans–from hardware to software and back to hardware again.

If Facebook is serious about jumping into making smartphones with both feet this time, Facebook investors should be very afraid. Why? Several reasons:

The move would clearly be defensive, not offensive. According to a Facebook employee quoted by Bilton, “Mark [Zuckerberg] is worried that if he doesn’t create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms.” Translation: Facebook is doing this because it thinks it has to, not because it wants to.

Hardware is an extraordinarily difficult, low-margin, commodity business. The only two companies that are doing well right now in hardware are Apple and Samsung. Both have been making and selling hardware for decades. Lots of other companies that have been making and selling hardware for decades are cratering, such as Research In Motion and Nokia. Palm already cratered.

The smartphone “platform” business is already dominated by Apple and Google (Android), and there are already a whole lot of also-rans. Amazon has entered the platform game. Samsung may “fork” Android and enter the platform game. Microsoft is desperate to make its new Windows mobile product matter. RIM still has a piece. And so on. If Facebook really wants to build a brand new mobile platform, it will be starting from miles behind the leaders.

Hardware distribution is critically important, and Facebook also faces vast, entrenched competition there. How is Facebook going to get shelf space at the carriers? By offering super-cheap phones? That won’t do wonders for its margins. Is Facebook going to build a network of stores? Is it going to try to circumvent carriers? Google already tried that. Didn’t work.

Although Facebook might want to be a mobile platform, there’s no obvious need for a Facebook phone. There are already a gazillion phones and Facebook is available on all of them as an app or via a browser. Why would anyone want a dedicated Facebook phone, especially if it didn’t run all the apps that run on Apple and Android phones?

A full-fledged hardware business would likely radically reduce Facebook’s profit margins. One of the advantages of Facebook’s current business is that it is extraordinarily profitable. The hardware business would likely make it a lot less profitable (per dollar of revenue).

Facebook knows absolutely nothing about making, selling, or supporting hardware. Really–nothing. Yes, Facebook could use its billions to buy RIM or Nokia, and then it would know something about hardware. But RIM and Nokia are deeply troubled companies that are already cratering. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to buy, integrate, and FIX RIM or Nokia? (Google’s about to give us a case study in how difficult it is with Motorola). That’s just a start.

Perhaps Facebook doesn’t really have any intention of building a full-fledged phone–perhaps it just wants to partner with someone like HTC or Samsung. But even then, all the same challenges apply.

Facebook already has an “operating system” for mobile–it’s called the social graph. So instead of building a phone, which seems like a desperate move, Facebook should partner with every operating system and carrier and hardware maker it can to try to embed this social platform within every mobile platform. And it should build great apps to float on top of these systems. (And if Apple keeps giving it the brush-off, it should probably start by cozying up to Samsung, which is the only company giving Apple a run for its money).

Yes, everyone wants to be Apple but there’s only one Apple right now. Facebook’s chance of becoming the next Apple seems even smaller than Apple’s chance to become Apple was.

The fact that Facebook is even thinking of going into the hardware business is a bad sign. If Facebook actually does go into the hardware business, it will be a really bad sign.

100Feed: Zuckerberg Marries Priscilla Chan

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg can now update his status to “married” on Saturday.

Zuckerberg and 27-year-old Priscilla Chan tied the knot at a small ceremony at his Palo Alto, Calif., home, capping a busy week for the couple, according to a guest authorized to speak for the couple. The person spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Zuckerberg took his company public in one of the most anticipated stock offerings in Wall Street history Friday. And Chan graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, on Monday, the same day Zuckerberg turned 28, the person said. The couple met at Harvard and have been together for more than nine years, the person said. Zuckerberg designed the ring featuring “a very simple ruby,” according to the person.

The ceremony took place in Zuckerberg’s backyard before fewer than 100 guests, including Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.
The guests all thought they were coming to celebrate Chan’s graduation but were told after they arrived that the event was in fact a wedding.
“Everybody was shocked,” the guest said.

Rather than his trademark hoodie, Zuckerberg wore a suit for the ceremony, while his bride wore a traditional wedding dress.

Food was served family-style and included dishes from the couple’s favorite Palo Alto sushi restaurant. The two had been planning the marriage for months but were waiting until Chan had graduated to hold the wedding, the guest said.

The timing wasn’t tied to the IPO, since the date the company planned to go public was a “moving target,” the guest said. Even after the IPO, Zuckerberg remains Facebook’s single largest shareholder, with 503.6 million shares. And he controls the company with 56 percent of its voting stock. The site, which was born in a dorm room eight years ago, has grown into a worldwide network of almost a billion people. Zuckerberg founded Facebook at Harvard in 2004. He was selected as Time’s Person of the Year in 2010, at age 26. Zuckerberg grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

100Feed: What Has Changed at Facebok?

Get ready for the Facebook feeding frenzy. On Thursday afternoon, the company priced its initial public offering at $38 a share, giving it a market value of $104 billion. The stock begins trading Friday on the Nasdaq.

The result for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook employees, and early investors is clear. The IPO will make many billionaires and countless others millionaires.

But what about the rest of us? How will Facebook as a publicly traded company affect everyday users who just want to know what’s going on with their friends and family? While any answer to these questions involves speculation, it’s a good bet that Facebook’s IPO will change Facebook.
Here are four ways users may experience this change firsthand:

1. More ads. Facebook makes most of its revenue through advertisements. As a public company, management will experience pressure from the press and investors to meet quarterly numbers. More than that, its hefty IPO valuation will demand phenomenal growth of both revenue and net income. While Facebook would do well to diversify its income streams, it’s a sure bet that part of its strategy will involve enhanced ad revenues.
Google offers a good history lesson. Anyone who has used the search giant is probably aware that Google inserts paid advertisements above the search results and to the right of the search results. What you may not have noticed is that the number of those ads has steadily increased over the years as Google looks for more growth. In fact, in the last year or so, Google has even started inserting ads promoting its own content in highly sought after verticals such as credit cards, banking, and mortgages.

Exactly how this ad growth may affect Facebook users is unclear. But we are likely to see more commercialization of our Facebook pages.
2. New mobile. Mobile users of Facebook account for nearly 50 percent of its user base. According to its S-1 filing with the SEC, Facebook had 488 mobile users in March. With the growth of the smartphone and tablet markets, more Internet users are going mobile than ever before. So why is that a problem for Facebook?

The problem comes in the form of revenue: Facebook doesn’t make any from mobile. Some have predicted that Facebook will introduce ads into its mobile platform. That’s certainly a possibility. What is certain is that Facebook will be looking to monetize its mobile platform in one way or another. If done right, it should enhance the user experience. If done wrong, it could mean just more annoying ads.

3. Less privacy. A lot has been written about Facebook’s IPO and user privacy. What we haven’t seen is much in the way of specifics. Exactly how or why would going public have any effect on privacy?

The answer is simple: ad revenue. Google gets the benefit of our searches to present us with relevant ads. If you are looking for “Nike Zoom Ja Fly” running shoes, Google can present paid ads for exactly that. But Google is a search engine; Facebook is not. Google has the benefit of knowing in real-time exactly what we are looking for.

Perhaps that’s why Google generates about seven times more revenue per user than does Facebook. Google generates about $9.52 per monthly user, while Facebook generates just $1.32. And that’s a big problem for Facebook.

One solution would be to improve its ad platform. To do that, it may turn to more user data. If done correctly, the result could be positive for users. Relevant ads that don’t overwhelm the content can be helpful. Taken too far, however, and the results could be disastrous.
4. Facebook-generated content. If the above potential changes at Facebook are speculation, this one can safely be categorized as wild speculation. But it seems that Facebook-generated content, in contrast to the user-generated content that dominates now, has tremendous potential if executed correctly.

Currently, Facebook has a wealth of data that is largely untapped. Putting aside privacy concerns for a moment, one wonders if Facebook could enter markets now dominated by the likes of Groupon, Craigslist, and Yelp in ways no other company could. Facebook would need to leverage the information already tucked away in more than 900 million Facebook pages. But if it could do so in a way that made our lives better without compromising privacy, the potential is virtually unlimited.

Imagine Facebook-created content about local events powered in part by user-generated content stripped of any data that would give rise to privacy concerns. In some cases, Facebook could choose to generate its own content; in other instances, it may choose to partner with existing technologies and brands. But either way, the income potential makes me wonder if this isn’t in Facebook’s future. Time will tell.