If you’ve been cursing Facebook this morning, you’re not alone. We’re hearing from users on our Facebook page and on Twitter complain about site load time, 404 errors, issues with image uploading, CSS load-time issue and mobile performance errors.


We’re running into plenty of errors when trying to load the Facebook.com/mashable page and are also experiencing slowdown on the site itself.

We’ll continue to investigate the issue and provide any updates as we find them.

Right now, the most common issues that we’re seeing are:

No CSS on certain pages

Failure to Upload Photos

Lots and Lots of Random Errors

Status Update Errors on the iPhone and BlackBerry apps

Very slow performance

Crashing Firefox 3. Full story…

Microsoft and Facebook have signed an agreement to unite their strength: Bing became the sole engine of social network. In turn, Facebook gets the management of its advertising space, up to now entrusted to the firm of Redmond.


Bing could be the major advantage of Microsoft in the years to come. If the search engine firm has already found favor with Mozilla at the expense of Google, Bing is now tackling a new field: social networks.

Facebook and Microsoft have signed an agreement appointing Bing search engine exclusive social network. In exchange, Facebook recovers the management of its advertising space previously assigned to the software publisher. The two firms already showed some signs of rapprochement last year and this agreement should strengthen their relations.

By becoming the search engine what great social network Facebook ( which has 400 million users now ), Bing treats itself to a place of choice. The firm Steve Ballmer should manage advertising linked to search results, enabling it to increase visibility and profitability of its engine.

For Facebook, this contract is the first opportunity to take over management of its advertisements. Moreover, the social network will get benefited from new features ,Bing to improve its ergonomics. Interactions between Facebook and Microsoft tools (Live, Messenger …) are also provided.

On a more strategic view, the contract between Microsoft and Facebook is a tremendous snub to Google. Both search engine and advertising ( the firm in Mountain View) also tries to meddle in the world of social networking with Social Search, social search tool. The confrontation between the two camps may cause sparks.

So far Microsoft was often portrayed as the enemy to shoot because of its dominance.. Could we see the emergence of alliances between Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla to bring down the giant of the web?

By TAMARA LUSH

Florida’s judges and lawyers should no longer “friend” each other on Facebook, the popular social networking site, according to a ruling from the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee.

At least one South Florida judge warned her pals with a Facebook status update that they could be “unfriended,” and the ruling has prompted others to do the same. The committee ruled Nov. 17 that online “friendships” could create the impression that lawyers are in a special position to influence their judge friends.

The committee did conclude that a judge can post comments on another judge’s site and that during judicial elections, a judge’s campaign can have “fans” that include lawyers. And the ruling doesn’t single out Facebook.

“Although Facebook has been used as an example in this opinion, the holding of the opinion would apply to any social networking site which requires the member of the site to approve the listing of a ‘friend’ or contact on the member’s site,” the opinion said.

A few on the committee dissented, saying judges should be allowed to have Facebook friends because those relationships are more like “a contact or acquaintance.”

Although only the Florida Supreme Court can actually mandate what judges can do, most will likely follow the ruling out of an abundance of caution, said Craig Waters, spokesman for the Florida Supreme Court.

Judge Thomas McGrady, the chief of the sixth judicial circuit in Pinellas County, said he understands why the committee came to its conclusion: Judges need to appear impartial.

“We as judges can still be good judges and still have friends. Part of our job is to not let that friendship interfere in any way with our decisions,” he said. “But others in the public who see judges listing a lawyer as a friend on facebook, they may think that because they are your friend, they will be treated differently.”

McGrady, who is sending a copy of the ruling to the 69 judges in his circuit, said this potential conflict of interest is why he doesn’t have a Facebook page.

“If somebody’s my friend, I’ll call them on the phone,” he said, chuckling.

Facebook rolled out a revamped home page on Friday. The changes once again shake up the information that you see by default when you visit your home page on the social networking site. It demonstrates how Facebook continues to adapt and try to find the right balance of status updates and details to deliver to users.

The major changes basically boil down to this: the ‘Highlights’ are merged into the News Feed, and there are basically two home page views to choose from– the News Feed and the Live Feed. The News Feed uses Facebook magic to determine the posts and updates that seem like they would be most interesting to you, and adds back in items like notifications when friends are tagged in photos, or when friends follow fan pages or join new Facebook groups, add other friends, or RSVP to events.

By contrast, the Live Feed is literally the live feed of all status updates from your entire network of friends on Facebook. While you are viewing the News Feed, a bubble next to the Live Feed link keeps a running count of the number of new updates in the Live Feed. You can also customize what shows up in the Live Feed by clicking on Edit Options at the bottom of the Live Feed page. The removal of the Highlights section from the right panel also mean that the Events box will shift up where things like friends’ birthdays will be more visible.

Over the past few months Facebook has morphed through other evolutions in site design and content as well. Facebook added an option to share status updates publicly– similar to the way Twitter tweets are available to the general public. Facebook updates are still private by default though and require you to manually change the privacy settings to allow them to be shared. It also added Twitter style ‘@’ tags, and purchased FriendFeed, a popular niche social networking rival.

Social networking has been around for a while, but it is still embryonic, or at least in its infancy. While sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and others at one time seemed to provide fairly unique services, the lines continue to blur as social networking evolves. Facebook traffic has increased substantially while MySpace has plummeted, and Facebook is continuing to adapt to try and become the Google of social networking rather than turning into the next MySpace.

Facebook explained the reason for the changes on its blog. “Some of you may ask why we are changing the home page again. Like you, we know it can be disruptive when things are moved around, but we hope that these changes make Facebook a more valuable experience for you.”

I have no doubt that Facebook wants to provide a valuable experience, but I think there are ulterior motives in there as well. I am sure Facebook monitors the traffic and usage patterns of users very closely to figure out what works. These changes will foster more cross-traffic and more social interaction. Facebook thrives on the viral aspects of the social network and isn’t necessarily trying to be a news site.

Facebook also wants to capitalize on its potential of the status update feed with deals like the one with Microsoft unveiled last week at the Web 2.0 Summit. With over 300 million users, Facebook boasts more than 45 million status updates per day, a jackpot for real-time search indexing.

I have one piece of advice to offer Facebook for the next home page revamp (at the current rate of change on Facebook that could be as early as Thanksgiving): come up with a better term than News Feed. The Live Feed seems like it would be more appropriately called the News Feed, while the News Feed is more like the highlights or most interesting stuff. The News Feed and Live Feed names are ambiguous.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise IT experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com.

So how does Facebook handle the information you post on their Web site? We could read the terms of service or, even better, we could wait and see how the Orange County Superior Court rules on how the company should.

Five Facebook users filed on Monday a lawsuit that claims the Palo Alto company has violated several state laws aimed to protect Californians’ privacy.

The lawsuit accuses Facebook of misleading users into believing personal information posted on the Web site can only be accessed by persons authorized by the users.

Among the plaintiffs are a professional photographer and an actress who claim their copyrighted images were distributed without consent or compensation, and two minors who opened Facebook accounts and posted private information without their parents’ awareness.

A college student who joined Facebook in 2005, when it was strictly limited to universities, also accuses the company for changing its terms of use and broadening access to its service without properly notifying users.

PC World notes that Facebook has a history with privacy concerns:

This isn’t the first time Facebook has come under fire for its privacy policies. Earlier this year it changed its terms of use to essentially claim perpetual ownership of all content loaded on the site. In response to a user uproar, it later omitted that portion of its terms of use.

The Privacy Commission of Canada recently said that Facebook doesn’t comply with Canada’s privacy laws. That’s after Facebook let users vote on one of two new terms of service options.

TechCrunch didn’t make much of the lawsuit though:

Plaintiffs in the case appear to have engaged in run of the mill socializing on Facebook: sharing photos, writing status updates and similar things. They’re then complaining that privacy, copyright and other rights are violated as people look at the photos, read the updates, etc. It’s sort of like jumping into a pool and then complaining that you’re wet.

Facebook is likely to agree. The company has stated it believes the suit has no merit and will fight it.

Facebook will probably defend itself by arguing that the handling of users’ information is detailed in the terms of use every user agrees to when they join the service, and by pointing out that all members have the ability to adjust their privacy settings, said UCBerkeley law professor Jason M. Schultz.

But regardless of how Facebook handles users’ information and how it has changed its terms of service over the years, the episode makes me wonder how much the average user knows about what we agree to when we create a Facebook profile.

“To some level, people using Facebook have very little idea of what’s happening behind the scenes. It’s a very Wizard of Oz experience,” Schultz said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=45763#ixzz0OcgxbrQ1