Jennifer Porter is a little freaked out.The 17-year-old is hunkered over a sheaf of papers scattered across a spotty Tim Hortons table in Ajax, Ont., one hand flipping pages, the other twirling an oversized blue earring. She brushes an errant lock of sandy blonde hair away from her face, looks up and giggles nervously. “That’s kind of creepy,” she says.

Indeed.

What she’s looking at is quite the biography — everything from her cellphone number, home address and a map to her work (she’s a lifeguard). All of it has been furnished by the man sitting in front of her — a man she’s never met. full story

The leader of a youth movement that swept the world this past year by encouraging Web users to share bits of their lives with selected friends spoke on Wednesday of spreading his service across the Web, even while apologizing for past excesses.

Mark Zuckerberg, 24, told an audience of 1,000 industry executives, software makers, media — and his mother and father — at Facebook’s annual conference of how the company’s features will run on affiliated sites outside its own.

“Facebook Connect” will transform the social network from a private site where activity occurs entirely within a “walled garden” to a Web-wide phenomenon where software makers, with user permission, can tap member data for use on their sites.

“Facebook Connect is our version of Facebook for the rest of the Web,” Zuckerberg told the second annual F8 conference.

Facebook, begun in 2004 as a socializing site for students at Harvard University, has seen its growth zoom to 90 million members from 24 million a little over a year ago, overtaking rival MySpace to become the world’s largest social network.

It has lured 400,000 developers to build programs for it since opening up its site in May 2007. Now Facebook is letting designers build software on affiliated sites, for mobile phones or as services that tap desktop applications like Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail system. It said that in coming months it would let designers building software for Facebook simultaneously create versions for Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) iPhone.

“As time goes on, less of this movement is going to be about Facebook and the platform we have created and more about the applications other people have built,” Zuckerberg said. “This year, we are going to push for parity between applications on and off Facebook.”

Samantha Ronson has changed her Facebook status from ‘Single’ to ‘In A Relationship’ - with her profile picture now showing her and gal pal Lindsay Lohan together at Disneyland.

And the news coincides with new pictures of Lindsay and Samantha strolling around on the set of Lindsay’s movie Labor Pains yesterday - holding hands and beaming like, well, two very happy young women.

And while they’ve sort of been snapped sort of holding hands before, this time it seemed different because they absolutely knew that the eyes of the world - well, the part of the world that’s interested in celebrity tittle-tattle - were upon them. And their matching T-shirts and trousers.

Aww. But as you can see from these newly released snaps from Lindsay’s 22nd birthday party, the two don’t dress like each other all the time. Although they do like to dress in the colours of OSOYOU.com. Adda girls! In every sense…

COUNTER-TERRORISM agents have launched an investigation into a multi-national terror threat made against an Australian using internet social networking website Facebook.

The first investigation of its kind was prompted by a death threat emanating from the Middle East against a Jewish woman and her family from an alleged member of the Iranian-backed terror outfit Hezbollah.

The woman received the death threat from the self-proclaimed terrorist through the website after she declined the man’s online “friendship request”.

The Weekend Australian understands the man - who described himself as Ibrahim Dirani and a member of a Lebanon-based Facebook group - was banned by the network after police launched their investigation this week. The victim - who lives in Melbourne and is a member of an Israeli-based Facebook group - told police the alleged Lebanon-based Hezbollah operative promised to kill her and her family.

According to police documents, the man wrote: “I am Hezbollah and I am going to kill you and all of your family - promise you.”

The investigation comes as security agencies question their ability to address serious online threats made against Australian citizens by foreign culprits.

“The international nature of the website makes it very hard for agencies to … physically track down those involved,” a security source said.

“People on those websites often set up their pages under false details.”

Counter-terrorism expert Anthony Bergin yesterday warned Facebook users that terrorist networks might also be using the website to attract recruits, “inthe same way a pedophile might look at those sites to potentially groom would-be victims”.

Melbourne University’s information technology senior lecturer Shanton Chang said Facebook members often left themselves exposed to being targeted by terrorists and urged against indiscriminately inviting anyone to be an online friend. “The issue with having friends on Facebook, whether you know them or not, is once they’re your friend, they can access and have a look at anything about you listed on there,” Dr Chang said.

“And a lot of these people … they actually haven’t met in real life.

“And so it becomes easier, whether you’re a terrorist group, a marketing group, whether you’re spying on people, to actually look through people’s profile because there’s just a lack of understanding of who may be looking at your profile.”

Dr Chang’s comments follow reported warnings by the Canadian Defence Department in February that al-Qa’ida operatives were monitoring Facebook.

Dr Chang said Facebook and social networking sites’ users would over time become more savvy in identifying genuine members from troublemakers.

Seven years ago I somehow was selected for a fellowship to study at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, where I learned lots of cool stuff like accounting, the discount rate and the definition of moral hazard.

But the biggest takeaway for me was something I had barely noticed before I got there: the importance of a social network.

In other words, connections.

A fascinating business school case explained that the reason Revolutionary War hero Paul Revere became a household name was because his social connections helped make him famous.

Another guy named William Dawes who also rode through New England screaming “the British are coming” barely rates a footnote in history. Dawes didn’t work the crowd. Revere was a networker.

Which brings us to Christopher Gergen.