Facebook has surpassed the expected revenue for the year—reaching up to $2 Billion dollars for 2010. Mark Zuckerberg, regarded as times person of the year is truly making history in the social media age.

Everyone knows Facebook and definitely, no one would question its popularity. Posting pictures, everyday status, and communication with relatives as well as loved ones are the forefront usage of the social media network. But now, Facebook has engaged into the business and advertising giants.

Virtual gaming is one of Facebook’s profitable services. Zynga and their other partners are actually earning millions with their addictive social media games via virtual products. The private company doesn’t disclose their earnings on public but looking at the outer details provided by other entities gives us the idea of how Zuckerberg is a full time millionaire.

The data center lease is said to be $50 million annually which excludes about $1 million per megawatt per year of electricity. Additional data centers were built in Prineville Oregon amounting to $215 million, while $450 million for newer centers in Forest City, Rutherford County, Western Carolina.

Employees have gone from 300 in 2007 to 2,000 in 2009. Facebook employs the top-notched software engineers in the land and paying a base salary of $110, 050 for new software engineers.

Zuckerberg has 90 % approval rating from his employees which means a nice working environment and probably a number of employee benefits as well. Advertisements are the other source of profit for Facebook. An estimated 1.3 billion is generated by display ads.

No wonder Zuckerberg deserves the title as Times Person of The Year. The man didn’t only revolutionized the way we look at social media but introduced the mutual link between business processing, marketing and consumers anchored through the ever powerful social media domain—Facebook.

Lately, the Aquino government utilized social media networks for reaching out to the Filipino community. As an easy access, concerned citizens may now post comments and suggestions for the government issues. Social media will provide a place for mutual understanding between the government and the people with one cause –Unity.

Social media with its multi-faceted usage pour down to the peace and order keepers of the Philippine country –the Philippine National Police (PNP).

The PNP recently announced to the public through several news networks that crime fighting will now virtual with the use of Social media; Facebook and Twitter. The PNP maintains a fully operated 24 hour monitoring through the PNP Directorate for Information Technology and Management System.

The National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) Deputy Regional Director for Operations Chief Superintendent George Regis reaches out to the public for assistance in capturing most wanted criminals of the nation.

Recently, social media networks aided in capture of computer Mark Dizon which is responsible for the death of six Filipinos, an American, a Briton, and a Canadian in series of attacks last month. The relayed messages of Dizon from one friend to another made possible his capture when the PNP got hold of the message.

Ivan Padilla, a big time car theft boss was caught through disseminated personal photo and a modus-operandi report which gave the PNP an idea of their movements and the Facebook account of one member led to the capture of the rest of the culprits.

But PNP admits social media has limits. The statements and evidence coming from social media cannot be considered as hard evidence in Philippine court hearings. Others posted comments expressing that as desperate act by authorities and it will be hard to bypass privacy options. Some thought of the possibility of security breach due to hackers.

However, there are those who found such initiative to be relevant and necessary. Some lauded and even encouraged the PNP to dig further improvements regarding cyber fighting of crime.

Social news site are sites that gives internets users news about the latest event, gigs, and topic that interest almost everyone who is active in the internet world. Here are some of social news site: Digg one of the famous social news site cover almost every topic. Reddit, Mixx, Propeller, Fark, Newsvine, Plime, Kirsty, Searchles, Linkinn, Stumble Upon, Link Swarm, Sphinn, Dzone, PlugIM, HubSpot, and many more. With the help of this site, fresh users able to gain ideas and be updated in the blog world and internet news.

As we all know in cyberspace, Internet Explorer is the most famous browser, Mozilla Firefox is in second position putting Google, Apple and Opera to lower position. According to Norway’s Opera Software released its own browser called Opera 10. Opera 10 promise new design, new feature and much faster download.

Opera competes with Google and Apple for spot of third-largest internet browser. Opera focus on its feature for slow connections, tabs and image viewing. Opera 10 is known to be famous in countries like Ukraine and Russia and hope to be known in America and whole Europe soon. Having new browser to serve internet users will surely upgrades and improves its services for much convenient use of internet.

Hackers are one of the most common problems in the internet. They send unknown messages to emails giving them a chance to control personal computers, personal websites and even social media sites like Twitter or Facebook. Just the other week, twitter, which is one of the most famous social media sites on the web was attacked by hackers that affected its service for a while. Also, Facebook and LiveJournal have experienced some problems caused by a Russian hacker who used DDos program that affect website performance, thus slowing services and making the site shut down.

As the world is hit by recession; the sudden shift of marketing from traditional to on-line marketing is very noticeable. Marketers noted that on-line marketing using less costly tools like myspace and facebook will withstand the low business turn-out during recession. It is also giving them more positive results.

Though an investment in man power when using social media marketing is a must still the marketers see it as a big chance to spread a good message about their product on line. The sales potentials on line are getting higher that might fuel other companies to use social media marketing as well.

The experts predicted as surged of on-line marketing strategy and its use in marketing certain products over the internet.

It was after 4 days since I downloaded the Skype 4.0 for Windows. There is only one word to describe it- SUPERB. Last February 3, 2009 Skype made known to the internet world its latest version of skype.

It is superb for the following reasons:

It has now a much wider and bigger video plus a splendid picture and sound.
The sound is crystal clear and more reliable.

They call this as ‘Jungle Conversation’, you can switch and pick up conversation and organize the windows in just one main screen; but if you want to have separate windows for each conversation then you got a choice. Go to VIEW and choose DEFAULT for separate windows and COMPACT for one main window.

Try to click extra and you will find several games to play either waiting for your files or just mainly playing.

What I love most on this new skype is the sending of files it is easier and efficient for sending several of files. Unlike the previous version were in you got to resend the files again if you mistakenly click the cancel button. With the new skype version you as the receiver can go back to those sent files again and again if you want to because it is in the conversation window only.

Skype 4.0 main features are: free skype-to-skype calls; mobiles and call phones, send SMS; free instant messaging; voicemail; free video call; when you are offline, forward calls to your phones. Skype is available to 28 languages worldwide.

To download the New Skype 4.0 click the link.

• The spokesperson for the company said that “a very small percentage” has been affected.
• ‘Koobface’ spreads through sending notes to friends that have been infected.
• MySpace was affected in August by a version of ‘Koobface’

As El Mundo has said this morning, the 120 million Facebook users are being targeted by a virus by the name of “Koobface” that uses the message system on the social network to infect computers and thus collect confidential information such as credit card numbers.

This is the last attack made by information processing pirates who seek to take advantage of the users of the social networking sites. “Other viruses have tried to use Facebook to spread viruses in similar ways” said Barry Schnitt, spokesperson of Facebook, in an email.

‘Koobface’ is a worm that spreads through the diverse services of the Internet such as IRC (Internet Chat Relay) or emails such as MultiSPAM. It finds the presence of archives or cookies connected with the social networking sites. In this case it finds them and alters the configuration of the browser and connects them to other sites where “malwares” will be downloaded. Schnitt indicated that “a very small percentage of users” have been affected by this virus. “This is going to increase, in relation to other threats such as (the ones that come from) emails”, declared Craig Schmugar, an investigator from McAfee.

‘Koobface’ spreads through sending notes to friends of someone that has been infected. The messages that are entitled with material such as “you look great in this new film”, where they are directed to another site where they are asked to update a copy of Flash from Adobe Systems.

If they download the software, the users will have their computers infected, and then it will lead users to contaminated sites when they try to use search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live.com, explained McAfee.

Facebook requires that the receivers of the messages inside the network will be members of this and hide data of the users that do not have accounts, explained Chris Boyd, an investigator of FaceTime Security Labs. Due to this the users tend to be a lot less distrustful of the messages that they receive on the Internet.

“The people tend to lower their guard. They believe that they have to be connected to their account so they think that there is no way that the worms or other viruses can infect them”, said Boyd. ”

The social networking site MySpace, property of News Corp, was affected in August by a version of Koobface, and the site used safety technology to delete it” according to a spokesperson of the company.

The business of private capital Facebook, told its members to delete contaminated emails and public instructions on http://www.facebook.com/security so they can clean the infected computers.

The company throws a global competition with support from big performers.

As Cinco Días assured yesterday, they are not only U2, Rolling Stones, Avril Lavigne or Britney Spears. Now Youtube believes that they can take advantage of classical music. A movement that with time could develop into Mozart, Beethoven or Bach at the first scene. The online video company from Google announced yesterday that a musical project on the internet has been put into motion that has been named the Symphonic Orchestra of Youtube.

In the movement, the company has found support from big musicians. So that there are figures such as Tan Dun, creator of the soundtrack for the film Tiger and Dragon or for the overture of the Olympic games in Beijing; the pianist Lang Lang, one of the most appeared musicians on the internet or Michael Tilson Thomas, developer of colourful music on the internet are on the stage. The project that has been launched in 14 languages is based on an open competition on the internet around the world, explained Laurence Fontinoy, director of marketing of Google in Spain. In the first stage, from yesterday until the 28th January, the participants will have to send their videos to Youtube. There will be two. In the first they will have to interpret a piece from Tan Dun (they can download this from the internet) whilst in the second they will do their own piece of classical music which they will have to choose from. The videos should last between 4 and 5 minutes and they will be assigned a category in terms of the instrument.

After this stage a panel of expert judges of the Symphonic Orchestra of London, The Philharmonic of Berlin, the symphony of San Francisco and the Symphonic orchestra of New York will choose the 200 semi finalists and their videos will be shown in an open canal of the company called Symphonic Orchestra of Youtube. After, between the 14 and 22nd of February, the community of users of Youtube will choose the finalists and their names will be published on the mentioned canal on 2nd of March. “They will be between 60 and 100″ said the executives of the company. The winners will go to New York to participate in a meeting of apprenticeship with Dun and Tilson Thomas and they will participate in a concert in Carnegie Hall in the city of skyscrapers. The rest of the selected videos will be shown on Youtube will be made into a compilation video of the best work.

It is certain that the Internet has managed to run the project. Enrique Rueda, of Real Conservatorio de Madrid said that the musicians should be familiar with the use of the internet whilst Ramón Puchades of the National Orchestra of Spain said that to be able to record the interpretation, they have the possibility of having arrangements if necessary. Puchades also said that he would be surprised “if there was no Spanish musician” given its quality. In this sense, since the company of Google indicated that only the user name will be published on Google, no one know who he is nor the place of residence.

Also, the weight of the network will have been noticed in relation of Dun with the finalists. The famous musician will provide some guides that they can rehearse with for the final concert in their own places of residence before they go to New York.

It is certain that is has been put into motion. Those responsible at Youtube have not dared to say if there will be a second edition. Perhaps it all depends on the impact and the participation. In the first attempt, they include the support of the members and the commercial brands.

Classical music, a new objective

Classical music is believed to be the new objective of Youtube, whose presence in the network is not in a minority. Clara Rivera responsible for product marketing at Google said that following the point of “Libro Blanco” of digital content, only 1% of the music on the internet is classical, “One of the objectives is to find talent” she indicated.

Youtube counts on the support, only in Spain of organizations such as “Real Conservatorio Superior” of music in Madrid, the orchestra and national choir of Spain, the symphonic orchestra of Galicia or the Big Liceu Theatre of Barcelona. Between these international organisations appears the symphonic orchestra of London, Carnegie Hall of New York, musical auditorium of San Petersburg, the symphonic orchestra of Sydney or the BBC amongst others.

As El Confidencial assured today the Internet has once again shown its greatness to be globalised and free of regulations. But it also has bad points too. We have been able to verify this by checking the grief caused by the American teenager, 19 year old Abraham K. Biggs who was incapable of adapting to those around him and who was affected by bipolar, decided to end his life. Biggs was sad news because he did a live broadcast of his death where you were able to see the large quantity of poison being consumed online at Justin TV, a portal where videos can be broadcasted live without any type of previous modification.

The witnesses of the death of the teenager are assured that he laid down on his bed after being assured that he was taking antidepressants and other anxiety pills in industrial quantities with only a webcam to accompany him. Nobody believed that Biggs could do this because he was a teenager who joked around. Nevertheless the alarms were raised hours later when the spectators saw that Abraham wasn’t breathing. Immediately the police were warned who know where the body was, they could see the images of the police entering and the death of the teenager and for a few hours everyone could see.

His parents have not delayed in announcing the insensitivity on the portal on one hand, and on the other hand the apathy of the witnesses of the death who shouldn’t have seen the death on a live broadcast. As it is usually tragically regular in these cases, the teenager warned of his intentions a day before in a forum of bodybuilders and he included the link of the website where his death would be filmed.

Before the downpour of recent criticisms, the person responsible of Justin TV Michael Seibel confirmed that a policy exists about the content of published videos and that the users are warned about the use of inappropriate videos, a system that works well and is extended on the Internet but in this case missed the seriousness of it. Fundamentally no one took his suicide seriously.

Greatness and miseries of the network live together side by side. On the one hand there were the users of Justin TV who despite being late, warned the authorities of the suicide but on the other hand messages exist that are amazed by the insensitivity and lack of humanity by seeing the death of the poor boy and in which messages can be read such as “the video is very boring”. Rest in peace.