There are a lot of metrics for website traffic, unique visitors, user numbers, and the likes. Measuring a website's “influence” is a harder proposition though, it's not exactly something you can count. Some people beg to differ though and ://URLFAN aims to do just this, measure a website's influence by counting the number of mentions it gets on blogs. It's not the most objective metric out there, but it's probably as good as it gets and it's an interesting perspective.

The ReadWriteWeb blog put together a list of the top sites on the service and their standings a year ago. At this moment, despite the growing number of people predicting its demise, Wikipedia sits at the top as the most influential site on the planet. It's not much of a surprise this one, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia holds huge amounts of content and information which comes in handy when you're trying to put something in perspective or provide more background information.

Wikipedia is followed by YouTube and then Flickr, which have switched places since last year. Their presence is entirely expected, one being the most popular video site on the planet and the other being the most popular photo sharing site among bloggers, even if it's not the biggest in its category. Things only get interesting on fourth place where Twitter now resides up five places from last year. With the huge surge in popularity and users the microblogging site has seen this year, the rise is actually rather unspectacular, but the service was obviously a lot more popular with bloggers in 2008 than it was with the rest of the Internet population.

The other hyped up social media service of the moment, Facebook has also shot up quite a few places entering the top 10 at the seventh place. With 325 million users and a warmer attitude towards making content public, the social networking mammoth will probably only get more influential and it should be interesting to see how it will compete with Twitter in 2010. There certainly other ways of measuring online influence but ://URLFAN's is interesting as it puts more weight on people's opinions rather than just cold numbers.

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Facebook is becoming more like Twitter everyday, but, with the micro-blogging platform's huge success, it's understandable. First, there was the redesigned News Feed, showing all the status updates from all your friends, not so much unlike Twitter. Then came the new “real-time” search features that are currently just in beta. And now, there is the “everyone” button, currently the first option when publishing an update, which will make it easier for you to make your status updates and other content public.

“Today, we're launching a beta version of an improved Publisher – the main place to add content such as photos, videos, and status updates on your home page and profile. The new Publisher has been streamlined a bit, and its most significant improvement is the new Publisher Privacy Control that gives you the opportunity to answer the question, 'Who do you want to tell?' as easily as you answer the question, 'What's on your mind?,'” the Facebook blog said.

The new feature is just in beta and only available to those who have already had their default privacy option set to “Everyone.” The default options for the “publisher” are now Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends and, if you want to specify certain friends or lists, there is the Custom option. At first, this may seem like a small, insignificant change, but, coupled with the other small, insignificant changes Facebook has been rolling out, a trend emerges. A trend that spells Twitter.

Facebook has been traditionally very walled off with much of the content not available to the public. Arguably, this strategy is what allowed it to overtake MySpace and become the largest social network in the world and the US. And, while Twitter may have grown at a huge rate for a couple of months, though it looks like the rate is slowing, with its 18 million users, it is still no threat to the social networking giant, which has more than 200 million registered users. Apparently, Facebook isn't taking any chances and is moving towards a more open approach.

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Despite the fact that Facebook has just recently introduced major layout changes to its service, the company may now find itself in a position of having to undo them, on account of the massive negative backlash it has gotten from its users. Approximately one million people said that the changes were not inspired, and that the old templates were far better than the new ones, so the site will now try to implement the old look all over again.

“Since we launched Facebook's home page design, we've received thousands of emails, Wall posts and comments from you along with direct feedback from all of our friends and family. (...) We're focusing on improvements immediately and over the next several weeks,” product director Christopher Cox told his readers in a blog post late on Tuesday.

The website has already pledged to reduce some of the clutter on its pages and to make the new interface more user-friendly and more similar to the previous one. The new changes introduced a more Twitter-like interface, which seems to have upset Facebook users.


“We've heard feedback that there is a lot of application content appearing in the stream. We will be giving you tools to control and reduce application content that your friends share into your stream,” Cox added in the blog entry.

Instead of refreshing the browser page in order to see new posts, users will receive “the ability to turn on auto updating in the near future so you no longer need to refresh the page.” The “Highlights” section of the website will also “update more frequently and will show you more content throughout the day to mirror more closely the content that the earlier news feed provided,” the announcement went on to say.

“Redesigns are generally hard to manage, in part because change is always hard and in part because we may miss improvements that any individual user may like to see. With the recent home page changes, we're trying to present the right balance between what's happening right now and what's interesting over a longer period of time,” Cox explained about Facebook's decision to change its interface.

The percentage of people that oppose the changes is fairly small, as less than one million of the website's 175 million users say that they are dissatisfied with them. Still, the number is, objectively speaking, massive, and the website did good to lend an ear to what people had to say.

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Lil' Kim has just been added to the constantly growing list of celebrities who have been targeted by hackers. Her lawyers have announced that a recent posting on the rapper's Facebook account, which denigrates singer and actress Naturi Naughton, is actually the work of a hacker.

The news that Lil' Kim has called Naturi Naughton, who portrays her in the recently released Notorious movie, “tasteless and talentless” has created quite a stir online. The movie tells the life and death of rap legend Christopher Wallace, better known as Notorious B.I.G., who had a intimate relationship with Kim before he went on and married Faith Evans.

“I feel like I was not portrayed how I should have been in this movie. I was in love with BIG and he was in love with me. I was never a JUMP-OFF, I know this and BIG knew this. I wasn’t even able to choose who I wanted to portray me in this movie,” Kim allegedly wrote on her Facebook page, expressing her disapproval of Naturi being chosen for this role.

“Watching her on-screen was so 'dreadful' as Simon Cowell would say. She is tasteless and talentless. Never once did she contact me for input or to get a feel of me for the character,” the post continued, concluding that “Naturi has got to be one of THE worst actresses I’ve ever seen, and I can’t believe they chose her. I really can’t!”

However, while it makes for good celebrity gossip, the defamatory posting proves nothing more than the work of an online prankster, who has obtained unauthorized access to the singer's Facebook account through yet-to-be disclosed means. “The statement posted up on Facebook was done by someone falsely portraying themselves to be Lil Kim and is completely untrue. They have been contacted to remove immediately or legal action will be taken,” Bernard H. Jackson III, Kim's attorney, commented, according to the Pop Media Examiner.

This incident comes after just a few days ago one of Kim's fellow rappers, Kanye West, practically begged hackers to stop harassing him. “Please I beg you, give me a break!!!! […] Who have I hurt so bad that they want to destroy me? Who have I ever spoke about so negatively?,” the rap star wrote on his blog, after unknown individuals hacked his e-mail and MySpace account and impersonated him online through fake Twitter and Skype accounts.

It seems like impersonating celebrities is becoming one of this year's new hacking trends. Earlier this month, fake and defamatory messages have been posted on the official Twitter pages of Britney Spears, Rick Sanchez, and even Barack Obama. They were the results of 33 high profile accounts being compromised after a, probably now unhappy, Twitter admin used “happiness” as her password.

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If you're a social network fan, then this is a good news for you. If you're an iPhone user, then you should know that Facebook 2.0 has been released and, more importantly, that it is now available for download at the iTunes App Store.

Let's see what this new version brings. First off, now you can get notifications directly on you iPhone, and you're also able to get friend requests, full news feeds, and news feed comments. Another thing that you can now do is to view your entire inbox and photo capabilities. Also, you can check up on how all your Finance major friends are doing from the road, just by using your trusted iPhone. Other features include people search, photo tagging, the full “Mini-Feed” combined with “The Wall,” and much more.

Now, using Facebook from your iPhone, keeping in touch with your friends, and even making new ones, becomes really easy. Users will also be able to share information and, thanks to Facebook Chat, to start a conversation with others. Aside from the option of seeing friends’ latest photos and status updates, now, users can also upload their mobile photos to Facebook at any time just by using the iPhone.

For those of you who are not familiar with Facebook, you should know that it is a popular social networking website, launched in 2004 and that enables users to join the network, connect and interact with other people. They can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles so that their friends constantly know how they are. It’s not just once that Facebook has been compared with Hi5, a similar website.

If you have an Apple iPhone and you are not a member of Facebook yet, this might be a good moment to create an account, since you’re guaranteed to have lots of fun using this service, which, to cap it all off, is also free of charge. If you’re already a Facebook user and have been, until now, rather frustrated with the downsides of the mobile version, then you’re welcome to check out the latest updates and benefit from them.

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It was only a few hours ago that we heard from Bill Gates, who, during a press conference in Tokyo, said that Microsoft was planning on building an independent strategy for future growth and did not have a hole burning in its pocket, now that the Yahoo deal is dead (for now). The fact remains, however, that Microsoft still needs to find a way to improve its search and advertising tactics if it wants to beat Google and Yahoo.

What Does Independent Mean to Bill Gates?

But perhaps Gates has a different understanding of the word “independent” when it comes to Microsoft. According to Kara Swisher, Microsoft has been seriously considering a complete buy-out of popular social networking site Facebook. Now, Microsoft already threw a $240 investment at Facebook, blessing it with a $15 billion valuation and making Zuckerberg one of the youngest to be on the short list for top billionaires.

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The title might come to you as some surprise, since the rumour mill focused on Yahoo’s possible acquisition of Facebook has been hard at work for over a year. However, the New York Post now claims that Google and Microsoft are battling to invest in Facebook (if you can’t buy it, invest in it), both looking for a 5-10 percent stake.

If the pre-money valuation really reaches $15 billion (New York Post claims it’s $10-$15 billion), it means that Google or Microsoft would have to dish out approximately $1.5 billion for a 10 percent stake in Facebook.

Remember when

Yahoo’s one billion offer for Facebook seemed like a lot of money? Well, it’s a whole new ball game right now.

According to New York Post, the deal will be made in the next one or two days, and Google seems to be winning (read: more willing to dish out an insane amount of cash). Other sources, claims the Post, say that Microsoft is willing to offer “any price” to keep Google from buying a piece of Facebook.
The game’s on; we’ll report on any further developments promptly.

[via New York Post]

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Everyone knows that newspapers are in a state of decline, in large part due to the rise of online media. So, you would think that perhaps you’d see prominent new media execs joining the ranks of old media companies to try and right the ship. But at Facebook, it’s the other way around, as Washington Post CEO Don Graham is joining the company’s board of directors.

The obvious conclusion to draw from this appointment is that Facebook has ambitions as a media company, and bringing on someone with extensive experience in that department – Graham has been CEO of the Post since 1991 – could be helpful. Graham joins other Facebook board members Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel - early investors in the company - as well as Netscape and Ning founder Marc Andreessen.

So, what knowledge might Graham bring to the table that could be helpful? The Post - which also publishes Newsweek - has held up surprisingly well versus some of its old media counterparts, in part because of its timely adoption of new media, and Graham likely has some perspective on how Facebook can help old media transition into the digital age.

With Facebook moving outside its own social network with products like Facebook Connect, having a media veteran like Graham on the team could certainly help them navigate the old media world and design solutions that they’ll adopt. So, while on the surface the appointment might seem odd, it actually makes a lot of sense given where Facebook appears to be headed.

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