It’s our Social Network. Positive–connectability. Negative–vulnerability. Recently, Facebook was hacked, this time to make an economic statement.
Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Facebook has U.S. offices in Atlanta; Birmingham, Michigan; Chicago; Dallas; Detroit; New York; Venice Beach, Calif.; Washington, DC; Austin International offices: Dublin; Hamburg; London; Madrid; Milan; Paris; Selangor; Stockholm; Sydney; Tokyo; Toronto. (Whew!) Their initial half a million in seed money came from Peter Thiel (hedge fund manager, venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder/past CEO) in the summer of 2004. Round two funding was $12.7 million from Accel Partners, in April 2005, and their next funding stream was $27.5 million from Greylock Partners leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and Peter Thiel increasing their investment in the company.
It’s another Cinderella story. Founder Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, and Time Person of Year for 2010, founded the social network site in 2004. Mark’s responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook’s service, and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark attended Harvard University and studied computer science before moving the company to Palo Alto, California. Next, Chris Hughes is a another co-founder of Facebook. Chris first worked as the Facebook spokesperson from his dorm room with Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, and later moved to Palo Alto to work on the product team. Most recently, Chris served as the Director of Online Organizing for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. He holds a Bachelors Degree in History and Literature from Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude. Finally, Dustin Moskovitz is also co-founder of Facebook and was a key leader within the technical staff. He most recently worked on the company’s internal tools strategy and development. Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full-time at Facebook.
But, while these guys are really smart, on January 25, 2011, Zuckerberg’s Facebook page was hacked into. These words were posted on his page:
“Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it? What do you think? #hackercup2011″.
Before it was removed, 1,800 likes to the page were posted. How or why does this happen?
The pages were hacked by means of a zero-day vulnerability found in the new Facebook profiles, the hackers claim. They slipped in through a crack in the back door.
“The vulnerability allowed us to stop walls from loading and newsfeeds going totally blank,” said TriCk, a founding member of TeaM P0isoN. “We didn’t get access to people’s account—we exploited Facebook.”
The “investment” statement seems to be a reference to reports that Facebook has been valued at around $50bn following investments made by Goldman Sachs and a Russian venture capital firm. There have been rumours that the company is either preparing for a stock market flotation or that the shares purchased by Goldman Sachs would be sold on to rich investors who want to benefit from the company’s burgeoning success.
If you don’t know, Muhammad Yunus is the “Bank for the Poor” in Bangladesh. He is Grameen Bank, who has lifted many inpoverished citizens from the brink of nothing. His bank was started in 1983 to provide small loans to people to begin a life of self-sufficiency and to those who wanted to increase their business, but didn’t have the means to secure funds. The ’village bank’ was founded on principles of trust and solidarity. 97% of his loans are to women, and 97% of the loans are paid back. He was one of 14 children and the 2006 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Today he runs the Yunus Centre:
http://www.muhammadyunus.org/
Muhammad Yunus
Even with all Facebook’s success, it is still vulnerable. Go on a search and you’ll find dozens of “cheats” and “viruses” and “hacks” into it’s 500 million active user profiles, and personal information. If you have an account on Facebook, be sure to use your Privacy Settings. Here are some tips posted just a few days ago:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mashable/20110207/tc_mashable/facebook_privacy_10_settings_every_user_needs_to_know
But for 26 year-old Zuckerberg, who made a huge change to Facebook’s original privacy policy in December 2009, (with the support of his 2,000 employees), many of us are still not happy our “privacy” was made public. Last January, in a six-minute interview with TechCrunch founder, Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg said, “Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable.”
From Facebook’s own site: ”Facebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficiently with their friends, family and coworkers. The company develops technologies that facilitate the sharing of information through the social graph, the digital mapping of people’s real-world social connections. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.” Well, I’m personally not feeling so secure these days. I mean really, the CEO’s page got hacked into for goodness sake!
Other Facebook facts:
- 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- Average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Yes, there are alot of folks using this social network site, but many are careless and post photos and other personal info without thinking about it. Look at the case of the 23 year-old California man who used info posted on FB to hack into womens’ email accounts, steal nude photos of them, and blackmail some of them. He’s facing six years of jail time:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41082627/ns/technology_and_science-security/
I’ve had my account hacked into, and it took awhile to regain control. Since the latest attack on Zuckerberg’s page, Facebook has said it’s beefed up its security But, user beware, protect what little privacy you have, or don’t use it at all!!
Mark Zuckerberg
