“FYI, Google is about to layoff all of their temp/contract recruiters to do some cost cutting,” whispers a tipster. We knew it had to happen sometime, but didn’t Google exec Marissa Mayer just say laying off surplus employees would indicate Google has become “too dry, too corporate, too much about making money. too dry, too corporate, too much about making money”? Oh, wait. That was her defense for keeping around the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button which costs the company $110 million a year, by some estimates. Mayer’s no efficiency expert, so let’s not rely on her opinions. Laying off recruiters, people who get paid for adding bodies willy=nilly, is a sensible first step to curing Google’s hiring bloat. Next, how about some executives?

Source:Valleywag

Mark Zuckerberg in his own words:

It’s hard to quantify that because this isn’t a short-term thing. If an event [like] this happens and our users get spammed then they trust the site less and they use it less, then that could affect us tremendously down the line, even if it doesn’t affect it right at this point.

No, that’s not the Facebook founder’s mea culpa on the much-derided Beacon advertising program. It’s Zuckerberg’s deposition account of rival network ConnectU’s attempts to harvest emails from Facebook profiles. But Zuckerberg’s claim that the impact of losing user trust is “immeasurable” is just as apropos today as it was three years ago.

Watch out, all you Second Life wannabe marketing types, CMP Technology, the big, bad technology trade publisher is on the scene. CMP is now a certified, card carrying Linden Lab content developer. This lets CMP stage virtual events — like its Life 2.0 nonconference — and build them for other brands. It’s like having a license to kill (brain cells, that is).

As John Jainschigg, CMP’s director of online technology, explains, CMP is preparing itself for the year 2011, at which point, some neophytes believe, 80 percent of the Internet will reside in the much-dreaded 3-D metaverse. Shocked that Life 2.0 could attract 1,000 attendees, companies are, according to Jainschigg, approaching CMP for custom builds of its faux-conference platform. Never mind the utter failures of brand marketers like Coca-Cola in Second Life; if you’ve ever been to a real-life tech tradeshow, you’ll know that the virtual version can only be an improvement.

Source:Valleywag
Sam Sethi, ex-TechCrunch UK blogger, had tried to keep things cordial with former boss Michael Arrington. The site he started, BlogNation, is the global equivalent of TechCrunch, but direct competition was avoided by not covering American startups. No longer. Sethi is taking the fight stateside with BlogNation USA. TechCrunch UK, meanwhile, remains defunct despite Arrington’s planned June 1st relaunch.

Source:Valleywag

FROM THE DESK OF MEGAN MCCARTHY — This weekend, the New York Times ran an article on how entrepreneurs really need to get their paperwork in order before hiring staff, using the Facebook-ConnectU lawsuit as an example. One person’s oral contract is another person’s “dorm room chit-chat,” as the judge in the case put it, and what have you. Or something along those lines. Whatever. I couldn’t really pay attention to the text. Did you see that picture? That was a bold move, Mr. Anonymous Times Photo Editor, illustrating the article with a gratuitous full-on crotch shot of one Mr. Tyler Winklevoss. One that I’d like to applaud, if I could stop staring at that image. Goodness.

I mean, seriously. The whole picture is framed to make Winklevoss’s shadowy loins — the same loins he claims birthed the very notion of a college social network — the focus of the image, from the composition to the fisheye lens. It’s directly in the center — the same exact spot Tyler claims ConnectU deserves in the pantheon of social networks! I’m sure there’s some wacko professor at Berkeley who will incorporate this picture into the curriculum and hold a joint symposium with her Gender Studies class and some Haas MBA students. As for me, all I can think is, “Yeah, I’d friend that.”

(Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images)

Facebook has suffered another software bug this weekend — one that displays the site’s source code on users’ screens. How ironic: Instead of violating its users’ privacy, as it did last time when a bug let people see other users’ personal data, Facebook has now violated its own. The Facebook Secrets blog has posted the code for the curious, as have others. Facebook lawyers have already started sending cease-and-desist letters asking that the code be taken down, and spokesperson Brandee Barker has requested that people not post it. Which raises the question: What’s in the code that Facebook doesn’t want you to see?

First off, I should say that I’m not a programmer, but I’ve seen a few pieces of source code in my day, and there’s little in here that raises my suspicions, or even my curiosity. From what I can tell, the source code for Facebook’s homepage is just a script written in PHP that makes a series of calls to other PHP scripts. (I’ve asked some programmer friends for more opinions, and welcome yours in the comments.)

There is, of course, the sheer embarrassment of the breach. Barker hastened to point out that the site hadn’t been “hacked” by an outsider. Of course. But that’s hardly reassuring. Who needs to bother to do the work of laboriously hacking into Facebook’s site when the company’s sloppy programmers do the work for them? Nik Cubrilovic points out ways Facebook could have avoided the source-code breach — pretty basic steps, apparently.

But Facebook’s immediate, forceful legal reaction suggests that there’s more to it than sheer embarrassment.

Here’s one possibility: What if the code is similar to ConnectU’s codebase — code that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly had access to when he worked on the rival college social network? Any resemblances, coincidental or not, in the code could add fuel to alegal fire; ConnectU’s founders are suing Zuckerberg for, they claim, ripping off their site. I have no way of knowing if there are, in fact, any similarities. But you can bet ConnectU’s lawyers will be scouring the leaked code before the next hearing in the case.

FROM THE DESK OF MEGAN MCCARTHY — A note to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the inhumanly hunky main plaintiffs in the ConnectU-Facebook lawsuit. Yes, we are aware that you are identical twins. Smolderingly hot identical twins. Yes, we are aware that, in your quest to be Olympic rowers — lean, athletic, sweaty Olympic rowers, we might add — you are used to wearing team uniforms, cut and colored to make you look like clones. This does not excuse the fact that you wore the exact same navy-blue pinstripe suits to your court hearing yesterday. And the same belts. And the same shoes. Good lord, have you no taste?

You’re 25. However smart and entrepreneurial (and smolderingly hot) you are, identical suits make you look like your mom picked out your outfits for this year’s Easter parade. And that’s a buzzkill for any girl who doesn’t write twincest fanfic on LiveJournal. Don’t give those girls hope for an endless round of “Twinklevoss” narratives. By all means, make the most of the fact that you both look like a dry John F. Kennedy Jr. and let that be your fashion guide. Wear Izod and Polo and other preppy clothing lll you like. But please make sure you never go out in public wearing the same suit again. (Photo by AP/Charles Krupa)

“Mo money, mo problems,” says a Facebook insider. The wisdom of the late Biggie Smalls explains, in a nutshell, why Facebook has found itself in court. A judge in Boston is considering at a hearing today whether to let a lawsuit filed by the founders of ConnectU — the Dickensian-named twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra — against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his company proceed. This lawsuit, of course, only exists because of Facebook’s supposed success, and the inflated valuations bandied about by board members tired of fending off buyout offers. I’ll be covering this story throughout the day, but if you need to catch up, here’s the full coverage.

• A brief history of Facebook’s legal woes

• Tyler Winklevoss rows against the Facebook tide
• Facebook’s wannabe founders
• Facebook’s lawsuit that won’t go away