Russian Investment Firm DST Now Owns 5% of Facebook

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.

Facebook Unveils Most-Mentioned Topics

• Last week, Twitter revealed its list of the most-discussed topics of 2009, based on Twitter’s trending topics. Now Facebook has come out with their own list, based on data from the millions of daily status updates of its users.

  While the world’s largest social network took a different approach than its upstart competitor (explanation below), it did match some of TwitterTwitter’s “most discussed” topics of 2009. However, it seems as if FacebookFacebook’s data analysis has revealed that people care a great deal about family (#5), Facebook apps (#1), Lady Gaga (#12), and, yes, even Twitter (#10).
  

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  First, How Facebook Performed the Analysis

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  Dubbed Facebook Memology, the company analyzed one- to four-word phrases within the Facebook status updates of 2009. They went even further, though, taking “bursts of activity” and other factors into account.

  Facebook’s explanation:

  “To generate the list, we started by looking at how many times each phrase with length from one-to-four words occurred in U.S. Facebook status updates, then we computed the rate at which each phrase occurred in 2009 compared to 2008. Using some data-mining methods detailed here, we analyzed important bursts in activity around words and series of words to find the key trends for the year. All personally identifiable information was removed from the status updates to conduct this analysis, and no one at Facebook read the individual status updates.”

  The result is rather different than Twitter’s list of top topics: It groups together key topics and doesn’t discount frequently used words such as “I” (the #15 Facebook memology trend of 2009).

  If you want more details on the technical side of the analysis, the Facebook Data team has posted a thorough explanation of its methodology.

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  The Top Facebook Topics of 2009

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  Facebook grouped specific keywords and phrases together to build their list of the most discussed topics on Facebook. Here’s the full list:

  
  

  Facebook provides a very detailed analysis of their top 15 Facebook status trends, but most are self-explanatory.

  The number one trend was Facebook apps, specifically the discussion of FarmVille in status updates. The game, which has taken Facebook by storm, has made not only FarmVille a popular phrase on the social network, but “Farm Town” and “Farm” as well.

  One of the more interesting trends is family, which came in at number five. Specifically, discussion about family, moms, dads, daughters, etc. jumped during 2009. With Facebook users getting older, this isn’t a big surprise. However, the fact that the mention of “kids” jumped by a factor of five this year is rather dramatic. It’s tough to know what this means, though.

  
  

  Facebook also acknowledged Twitter’s growth, as it is number 10 on this list. Specifically, Twitter and “RT” became popular trends on Facebook. Still, the company couldn’t help but make a minor dig at its rival by declaring that “mentions of the word Twitter decreased over the past few months.”

  What do you think of these top topics? Does any of the data surprise you? Let us know in the comments.

Facebook Is Destroying the Sanctity of Marriage

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.

The British paper seeks to cast FacebookFacebook as a enemy to the sanctity of marriage, citing evidence along the lines of:

“One law firm, which specialises in divorce, claimed almost one in five petitions they processed cited Facebook.”

Although the ratio of one in five is staggering, the fact that the reporter only mentions a single law firm is wholly unconvincing. I’m sorry, Telegraph, but one law firm does not a trend make.

The piece does make a strong case for how social media has broadened the definition of cheating (Does sex in Second Life count as sex?) and made it easier to reconnect with old flames, but it seems too early to point the finger at Facebook when it comes to couples calling it quits. In fact, the article states that the UK’s divorce rate has fallen in recent years.

Yes, Facebook and social media users have utilized online tools to screw over their spouses — the Telegraph mentions a woman whose husband notified her of their impending divorce by updating his relationship status on Facebook — but it seems rather simplistic to blame the onset of martial malcontent on a website.

Although Facebook may facilitate cheating — as well as public displays of affection (or loss of affection as the case may be) — the old argument comes into play when you start pointing fingers. Is it the medium or the message? Would these marriages have ended anyway, somewhere down the road, even if there were no incriminating chats on the laptop screen?

Facebook’s COO to Join Disney’s

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).

She’s certainly qualified. Before becoming Facebook’s COO in 2008, she was the VP of online sales and operations at Google (). Before that, she was chief of staff at the U.S. Treasury Department. Once elected to the board, she’ll become co-workers with another tech titan: Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.

Why did Disney choose her? Beyond the fact that she’s more than qualified, it’s a signal that Disney is looking to push its web and social media presence to new heights. Sheryl’s expertise in online advertising and management could prove invaluable as it increasingly looks to its web properties (e.g. Hulu ()) to bolster its revenue and expand its reach.

Facebook Now Has Its Own URL Shortener

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.

Bit.ly has not had any major threat to its market share, but that’s about to change. We’re learning that Facebook now has its own URL shortener. It’s unclear how long fb.me has been operation. What is clear, though, is that it’s appearing more and more in mobile links and within the TwitterTwitter stream.

Currently, Fb.me seems to be rolled out on a limited basis. As Inside Facebook points out, the Facebook URL Shortener is already in use on the mobile interface. Whenever links are shared within a mobile interface (i.e. an m.facebook.com link), it is now automatically shortened using fb.me.

It’s also active for FacebookFacebook usernames. For example, the short URLs fb.me/mashable and fb.me/benparr will take you to the MashableMashable fan page and my profile page respectively. This works for any username in the Facebook system.

Facebook CEO Takes One for the Team

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.

TrueSlant seems to have been first to notice that the usually very private Zuckerberg has opened up his profile so that anyone can see his wall, photos and events. While their report speculates that perhaps Zuckerberg doesn’t understand the new settings, it’s far more likely that he’s simply opened up to try and show everyone else that it’s okay to do so.

So what’s in Zuck’s profile? Not too much of interest that you wouldn’t expect from your typical twenty-something billionaire. The CEO’s wall reveals he actively uses the site’s commenting and “like” features. His photo album is far from scandalous, although Gawker has rounded up their “favorite” images. And he’s apparently a fan of Lady GaGa, The Oprah Winfrey Show and location-sharing service GowallaGowalla.

Opening up is certainly a smart, if not highly calculated, move by Zuckerberg, who would look hypocritical in saying that the site is no longer simply about friend connections while simultaneously keeping his profile limited to his friends. That said, it’s unlikely that the move will do much to convince those skeptical of FacebookFacebook’s intentions that opening up is really in your best interest.

How have you adjusted your privacy settings since the new rollout? Let us know in the comments.

Don’t Facebook Friend Lawyers

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.

The reasoning behind the ban is to prevent the appearance to the public that friended lawyers might wield some sort of undue influence over the judge. Because the judge’s friends list is most likely available to the public (even more true with Facebook’s recent privacy changes), the committee found that friending a lawyer would violate Canon 2B of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which states, “A judge shall not lend the prestige of judicial office to advance the private interests of the judge or others; nor shall a judge convey or permit others to convey the impression that they are in a special position to influence the judge.”

Digging down deeper into the proclamation, there’s an interesting loophole: Lawyers are still allowed to be a “fan” of judges on FacebookFacebook. The committee says that’s because the judge doesn’t have to explicitly approve the lawyer as a fan, nor do they have the power to reject them. It’s that act of direct approval that seems to bother the committee, which makes us wonder how these rules will apply to TwitterTwitter where lawyers can “follow” judges in the same manner without requiring approval. The proclamation focuses primarily on Facebook and doesn’t mention Twitter by name, but according to the logic of the argument it wouldn’t be too surprising if judges were expected to block lawyers who followed them.

We know that this ruling is in the interest of thwarting corruption, special interests and
backroom dealings in the courts, but honestly, is disallowing Facebook friending really going to have any impact? What do you think?