How Facebook saved a child's life (and could save many more)

Facebook saves lives. Or more to the point, good Facebook friends save lives.
Slate writer and novelist Deborah Copaken Kogan credits her community on the social networking site for helping diagnose her son’s mystery illness in time. Kogan woke up on Mother’s Day to find her 4-year-old son Leo with a rash and a fever.

In the pediatrician’s office, she updated her Facebook status with a photo of her son’s reddened face and the comment: “Nothing says Happy Mother's Day quite like a Sunday morning at the pediatrician's." As his symptoms worsened—high fever, swollen face—she continued sharing photos and concerns to a growing community of friends and ‘friends’.

Rihanna Is The New Queen Of Facebook, Beating Out Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga may be the top earning woman in music, have more followers on Twitter than any other lady rock star and receive more media coverage than her female competitors, but she is no longer the queen of Facebook.
This week, Rihanna accumulated enough likes on Facebook to surpass Lady Gaga and claim the throne as the platform's top ranking female celebrity.
According to their Facebook stats, as of Saturday, Rihanna had 40,699,853 likes, and Lady Gaga had 40,611,908, giving the "Rude Boy" singer a lead of 88,000.
Shakira is the diva with the third most Facebook followers, according to Famecount.com, which credits the Latina singer with 37 million likes. Aside from being the top three female musicians on Facebook, they also have earned spots in Facebook's top 10 pages overall. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Shakira hold the No. 5, 6, and 8, positions, respectively.
There are three men on the Top Facebook Pages Worldwide list as well. Eminem ranks No. 3 with 43,367,713 likes. The late Michael Jackson sits at No. 7 with 38,069,882 likes, and "Baby" singer Justin Bieber holds the No. 10 position with 33,035,903 likes.

Facebook

You might think a long quiet walk through the woods with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is a treat only his closest friends and dearest family get to enjoy. Yet a chummy stroll with one of the richest men in the world is actually reserved for a few select potential Facebook employees.
Although the hiking path is often the same, along a wooded area of Palo Alto that skirts Stanford University, those invited change each time.
Several people who have been courted by Mr. Zuckerberg told the same story. The 27-year-old chief executive surprises them with the idea of a walk through the woods. A little startled by the invite, people often agree, and are then led across the Facebook parking lot where they eventually end up hiking along a trail that reaches a Silicon Valley lookout. This is where Mr. Zuckerberg delivers his pitch.

Harvard twins stuck with Facebook agreement

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court ruled Monday that former Harvard University schoolmates of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg can't undo their settlement over creation of the social networking site.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday that Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss were savvy enough to understand what they were agreeing to when they signed the agreement in 2008. The deal called for a $20 million cash payment and a partial ownership of Facebook. A third classmate, Divya Narendra, was part of the settlement with the twins but did not pursue the second lawsuit seeking to undo the agreement.

Monday's ruling upholds a lower court decision enforcing the settlement during the six years of litigation that grew so contentious that the dispute was dramatized in the Oscar-nominated film, "The Social Network."

The settlement is now worth more than $160 million because of Facebook's increased valuation.

The twins had alleged they were misled about Facebook's value when they agreed to settle their lawsuit that claimed Zuckerberg stole their idea to launch Facebook.

Biggest Facebook Security Threats

Forget those phishing emails that attempt to get your credit card or bank sign-in information. When crooks want to know how to get into your bank account, they post a message on Facebook. These messages appear so innocuous and so appropriate in the Facebook setting that you are likely to not only get conned, but pass on the scam.
Facebook is the new frontier for fraud, says Tom Clare, head of product marketing at Blue Coat, an Internet security company that does annual reports on web threats. In just this past year social networks have soared to 4th from 17th most treacherous web terrain -- behind porn and software-sharing sites, which you probably know to avoid.
What makes Facebook so treacherous? Us.
It starts with the fact that we are inundated with requests to set up passwords to get into our work computers, our online bank accounts, Facebook and every other web-based subscription. So what do we do? We use the same password.
"Crooks understand that most users use the same password for everything," says Clare. "If they can get your user credentials for your Facebook account, there's a good chance that they have the password for your bank account."