A couple of days ago, we wrote that Russian venture capital firm Digital Sky Technologies (DST) had invested around 180 million dollars in Zynga, the company behind popular Facebook games such as FarmVille and Mafia Wars.
The same group already invested $200 million in Facebook back in spring, which got them a 1.96 percent stake in the company, and now they’ve purchased another $200 million in common shares from Facebook’s (
) employees.
According to Russian newspaper Kommersant, DST bought the shares at $14.77 per share; altogether, this investment got them another 3 percent stake, which brings the total to around 5 percent.
Comparing this to the first time DST invested in Facebook, it sounds like a pretty good deal. Back at the time, many were speculating that Facebook’s 15 billion dollar valuation was nothing but hot air and that the social network was actually worth two or three billion dollars. In the meantime, the economic situation has gotten better, Facebook has amassed another 150 million users and it finally started earning money. DST is serious about Facebook, and if the optimistic revenue predictions for 2010 and beyond come true, the price they paid for their stake might turn out to be quite cheap.
Stop the digital presses: People use Facebook to cheat on their spouses and said cheating leads to d-i-v-o-r-c-e (in case there are kids in the room), or so says a rather reactionary piece in the Telegraph.
Disney’s getting a social media infusion at the highest level. Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, has just been nominated to join Walt Disney’s board of directors. Facebook’s second-in-command will join the board once she’s elected next year (a virtual certainty).
URL shorteners have been around for years, but they were mostly afterthoughts rather than legitimate businesses. That all changed with the rise of Twitter and short-form, 140-character blogging. With limited space for tweeting, the URL shortener business has boomed. Bit.ly has grown tremendously, companies like Coke have even made their own and even Digg has gotten in on the action.
While privacy watchdogs, security firms and users digest the implications of Facebook’s new privacy settings, at least one high-profile individual is embracing them: Facebook Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. 
While we understand that conflicts of interest are a serious matter in the judicial realm, a recent ban on friending between judges and lawyers on social networking sites does seem a bit extreme. The ruling, from the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee arm of the Florida Supreme Court, would prevent judges from adding lawyers who may appear before the judge as “friends” and vice versa on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, et al.
On December 4, 2008, Facebook Connect opened for business. It was the first major extension of the Facebook platform, allowing users to log into their favorite Web sites with their Facebook credentials and move their social graph anywhere on the Web.
Google really unleashed a torrent of news and updates today. While events such as the launch of Google Goggles are very interesting, the big news is clearly the launch of real-time search within Google. Now as events unfold, Google will capture the chatter about it in real-time from sources such as Twitter, Yahoo Answers, news media and Facebook.
Just over a month ago, Facebook rolled out a new homepage redesign. Now it looks like the social network isn’t completely satisfied with the results, as it’s now testing yet another homepage redesign.
One of the most anticipated films of the year is James Cameron’s “Avatar.” Last week, we wrote about the film’s interactive trailer (awesome) and now that the release date is just a few weeks away, Fox has really started to amp up the publicity campaign, including new social media outreach. 
YouTube’s huge lead in online video just got a little bit smaller due to surging growth from two up-and-comers in the video space: Hulu and Facebook. 
