Today's Most popular News

Source:Valleywag

“CUPERTINO - Apple announced today that it would no longer be accepting purchase requests for the iPhone. ‘We feel the iPhone is too good for regular humans,’ says the Apple spokesperson. ‘To protect our brand image, we have decided to stop selling our product altogether to maintain a level of exclusivity unattainable by any other product currently on the market.’ The spokesperson also announced they would continue advertising in order to maintain the feel of unattainability.” — Commenter paul34, on Apple’s new refusal to accept gift cards for iPhone purchases. [Engadget]

Source:Valleywag

Are Facebookers having a hard time keeping their pervy hands off user profiles? Over the weekend, we learned that Facebook employees take full stalkerish advantage of their ability to peruse member profiles. Now a tipster writes in claiming that a Facebook product manager actually looked up a user’s password, logged into her account, and changed her profile picture to a graphic image. Here’s the back story.

Our tipster tells us “the employee got the password and then met up with his friend who was mad at the girl because she turned down his offer to take her to his prom.”

Now, before you judge, remember that you, too, were once an angsty, hormone-riddled youngster like the kind employed in droves at Facebook. Of course, you didn’t have access to 50 million user profiles. Or $240 million in cash from Microsoft to flush down the toilet. Just tissues and a lot of illegally downloaded emo music.

Truth be told, I’m a little skeptical of our tipster’s tale on one count. Facebook employees are young, but do they still have friends going to proms?

But here’s the problem for Facebook. After learning that at least some Facebook employees do chart the social graph for their own pleasure, it will be hard for Facebook users to believe any of the company’s assurances. A good place to start restoring trust? A thorough revision of Facebook’s privacy policy, which, as best I can tell, only guarantees against third-party disclosures, not employee misuse.

And then there ought to be some very noisy firings of employees who break the rules. Facebook is hiring another 400 people through the end of next year. It won’t be hard to add a few extra to replace the rulebreakers.

Source:Valleywag

I’m not going to make one of those crying videos, but as Valleywag’s Very Special Correspondent (read: over the hill) I need to stomp a heel down. Why are we reporting that two people I’ve never heard of were reportedly touching each other in public? I had to look up who Mullenweg is. I think we use his software. Or we did, or we’re going to, or something. Anyway, he’s from Houston. That means he infuriates San Franciscans merely by existing, which makes him cool with me. The lady in question turns out to be the PR genius who emailed me the most ridiculous embargo demand ever. That backfired perfectly, so everybody won. Commenters say we shouldn’t print this rumor ’cause it’s cruel. Worse than that, it’s dull. Call me back when one of them runs Google and films a three-way on the Boeing. (Photo by True Ventures)

This entry was posted on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 11:42 am and is filed under TechCrunch, wordpress, i hate it here, heather harde, Automattic, Matt Mullenweg. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.