Showing posts with label Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg times big schools gift with unflattering movie release. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg times big schools gift with unflattering movie release. Show all posts

Facebook Will End on March 15th 2011

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No! This is a BIG joke!The original news are this

“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

“After March 15th the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business.”

That came from unknown source on the internet and we cannot trace where and who spilled it out.

Facebook just secured $500 million in new financing and is on pace for a public offering this year. While I can not confirm any true source for who may have started the rumor I was able to find the following quote on nenoney.blogspot.com.

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Mark Zuckerberg

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Net Worth: $6.9 billion
Source: Facebook
Age: 26

The Harvard dropout and Facebook CEO was the biggest percentage gainer on this year's Forbes 400 list and the unwitting star of box-office hit "The Social Network." Last month he agreed to donate $100 million to Newark's troubled schools.
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Facebook Groups lets you connect with smaller circles of pals

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The new Groups will be set to "closed" by default, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained during Wednesday’s briefing (which I caught via video feed). Creating a new group is a simple matter of adding a few friends, who in turn can add their own friends to your virtual Facebook community. Don’t worry: Anyone new who gets added to the group — including the name of whoever added the person — will be announced via an info panel, and you can always bail on a given group if you choose.

What can you do in a Facebook Group once you’ve created it? Well, there’s the obvious stuff, such as posting Group-specific updates or writing on the wall or sharing photos and video.

You can also do some more interesting things, such as creating and editing group documents (like, for example, shopping lists or the evening dinner menu), or you can engage in real-time group chat, a first for Facebook (which, until now, has only allowed one-on-one chat). You can also send an e-mail to the entire group using a custom e-mail address.

And what kinds of groups could you create? Based on Wednesday’s briefing, it sounds like Zuckerberg & Co. are hoping that groups will run the gamut from, say, friends and colleagues to everyone you know who’s into football, or perhaps just a small circle of your closest friends and family (who might me more interested in what’s in your lunch bag than everyone else on your friends list).

The new Facebook Groups will begin rolling out today, Zuckerberg said, and will replace the current public Groups functionality that you could previously restrict only to a Facebook network. But existing Groups will continue to exist, as well the (little-used, apparently) Friends Lists that you can create from the left-hand navigation bar. And yes, developers will eventually get a crack at Groups, although I’d imagine that a Group could block a Facebook Platform application in the same way an individual user can.

So what we’re essentially talking about here is the same kind of virtual workspace that you might find on an office intranet — or the failed Google Wave, for that matter. Instead of collaborating on projects, though, Facebook users will be using Groups to collaborate ... well, socially.

Zuckerberg said that Groups was revamped in order to address the "biggest problem in social networking": namely, trying to organize all your various friends on Facebook into specific social groups. The current Friends Lists feature on Facebook was intended to help users create such groups, but only about 5 percent of Facebookers have actually created a friend list, Zuckerberg said.

Another option was to use an algorithm that would automatically herd your friends into groups, but such a technical solution could easily make critical mistakes (like adding the plumber that you’ve been dealing with lately — Zuckerberg’s example — to your list of closest confidants) or work entirely too well (like prioritizing a, well, secret pal you’ve been messaging on the sly).

Allowing Facebook users to create their own Groups — with new members able to add their own friends — seemed like the most appropriate solution, Zuckerberg said.

Will users take to the new feature? Hard to say. I’m happy to see that the new Groups will be set to "closed" by default, but I wonder if allowing any member of a group to invite anyone else they want might cause problems. Then again, being able to create a small, private group of Facebook pals does have some appeal, especially when you want to share a bit of trivia that could be a little too trivial for your zillion other Facebook friends.
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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg times big schools gift with unflattering movie release

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Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg--who placed as the 35th richest person on the just-released Forbes 400 list-- is giving troubled schools in Newark, N.J., an enormous $100 million gift on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on Friday. As it happens, that's the same day an unflattering and much-buzzed-about movie premieres in which he's portrayed as a power-hungry and socially awkward genius.

"The Social Network" premieres Friday at the New York Film Festival, and is already being compared to "Citizen Kane" and "The Godfather," two iconic portraits of powerful men felled by their own ambition.

The 26-year-old hasn't engaged in much high-profile philanthropy so far -- unlike fellow tech billionaire and education reformer Bill Gates -- which makes his Oprah appearance and $100 million gift more notable. Zuckerberg will announce the donation alongside Newark Mayor Cory Booker and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, according to the New York Times' scoop. The money represents an eighth of the city's total education budget. Zuckerberg's net worth skyrocketed by 245 percent in the past year as Facebook's market valuation topped $23 billion.

Zuckerberg, described as a "wary and private" person in a recent New Yorker profile, has been forced to tear down some of the barriers between his life and the public. This new plunge into civic-minded activity seems designed in part to fend off bad publicity generated by the film and accusations that as a student, he hacked into private emails and stole the original idea for the site from fellow students. The movie is loosely based on an equally unflattering book by Ben Mezrich, who used a burned former Facebook investor (and former Harvard colleague of Zuckerberg) as his primary source.

According to the movie, Zuckerberg created the site to get admitted to exclusive parties and to meet girls. (Rebecca O'Brien has a more nuanced take on Zuckerberg's college years here.)

"I think a lot people will look at that stuff, you know, when I was 19, and say, 'Oh, well, he was like that. ... He must still be like that, right?" Zuckerberg told the New Yorker. He added that he does not plan to see the movie, though he was spotted by at least two people at a Seattle screening Wednesday.
Whatever the motive for the gift, the money will translate into big changes for Newark schools. Under the terms of Zuckerberg's donation, Christie will give the reform-minded mayor more control over schools. There's speculation he may hire hard-charging D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee to head up schools now that Rhee's prime supporter, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, has been voted out of office. Meanwhile, the nation's education reformers -- who emphasize teacher evaluations tied to student test scores and independent charter schools -- are sure to welcome another billionaire recruit to their cause.

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