We already know that Facebook is huge, but now we have true visual feedback to how impressive the Facebook empire really stands. It is massive. And it is clear that all of Europe and the Eastern United States have too much time on their hands. But what is even more impressive is that the above picture isn’t actually wasn’t supposed to look like our world, but it does anyways. Paul Butler, a Facebook intern who should clearly earn a job at the company, took a data set of over ten million friendship connections and plotted those connections to city points on essentially a black digital image canvas, and…

If you haven’t heard, Facebook is a pretty prominent site. In this latest update to the World Map of Social Networks, Vincenzo Cosenza from Vincos.it displays what most who use social media likely already knew: Facebook is taking over the world. They are surpassing local and country-specific social networks to tie the world into one global web unlike anything since the invention of, well, The Web. Mixi and Hyves are the only other sites that are more popular than Facebook in multiple countries, while 8 other social networks still reign in their home countries. For now. At least Google’s Orkut…

You hear a lot of jokes at MySpace’s expense about how it’s not relevant anymore, and how only losers still attempt to create a social presence via MySpace (I am of course excluding bands, who are by all rights the only users at this point who should, in fact, continue to use MySpace as a promotional tool). These jokes are, for the most part, justified. MySpace is hardly relevant. Though, to its credit, the new MySpace redesign is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen, bar none. The logo alone is the stuff of a branding student’s portfolio: far too sexy and obscure to be applied. Yet it was. Brilliant. Anyway,…

Before seeing this graphic, I thought I was in the majority. Apparently, Facebook gaming is grabbing more than just the geeks in their mothers’ basement with no significant other in the real world. The growing phenomenon of social gaming has created 3 camps: those who do it and love it, those who hate it and want it killed with fire, and those who are able to ignore it or don’t even know it exists. This graphic shows that there are a lot more people than most would imagine playing Ravenwood Fair. LOLapps, the creators of the wildly popular game, has gone through much adversity on their road to success….

Bouygues Telecom, a French mobile phone company, has released a great way to preserve digital memories. Instead of slapping pictures into a photo album with a few captions, the company thought it would be cool if they put your Facebook into a real book, which they called the Flashback book. With a very simple interface in mind, you could view a person’s photo albums in one section, wall posts, and so on and so forth. This might appeal to you guys and girls out there who want to make a scrapbook or something of the sort, but don’t want to be stuck back in the nineties. The app was created by Bouygues Telecom’s…

While Tal Ater was working on his Green Any Site Facebook application, he stumbled across a javascript object called Video Chat. This object had properties that were referential to Skype’s video chat features, pointing to potential video integration between the two sites in the future. While the application wasn’t there every time Tal loaded the page, he thinks that Facebook could be “bucket testing” the feature. The object also tests for plugin functionality using the Skype SDK, which further points to a collaboration between the two popular online services. Tal has helpfully provided…

I could say it feels like only yesterday I was introducing you guys to Diaspora, but that would very much be a lie. Honestly, it feels more like it’s been 13 years. For those of you just joining us, Diaspora is the ‘privacy-aware’ social network that debuted in concept several months ago, amidst the zenith of Facebook’s privacy woes. And it seemed like perfect timing; with everyone getting their hate on for Facebook and its alleged disregard for user privacy, most people agreed it was time for a change. Diaspora seemed like mana from heaven, offering true privacy and the ability to exact complete…

Honestly, it should come as no surprise that Facebook isn’t exactly a snuggly blanket of impenetrable security when it comes to feeling safe on the internet. Perpetually beset with accusations of compromising users’ privacy, Facebook has spent much of its time in the last several months repairing its relationship with its users. But maybe privacy isn’t all we should be worried about. According to security firm BitDefender, approximately 20% of Facebook users’ news feeds are infected with malware. Delicious. BitDefender says it gathered the data via an app called Safego, installed by 14,000…

Now this is an odd bug, if I’ve ever heard of one. Apparently, thousands of female Facebook users have been attempting to log on, only to find their accounts deactivated. Spooky. And this has been going on for a few days, too. Said Facebook user Valerie L to Huffington Post of the bug: “It said my Gmail address was not associated with any Facebook account.” How… suspicious, considering the feud between Google and Facebook of late. “I just tried to get onto my Facebook account with my Gmail email address,” adds Marian B. “[It's] the only one I have used since I got on Facebook …and it said I could not.”…

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has sent out invitations to a media event on November 15th, where Mark & Friends will reveal ‘Project Titan’ – what is expected to be a web-based email client, allowing users to register @facebook.com email addresses. Apparently, TechCrunch says that Project Titan is internally referred to as the ‘Gmail killer’. And the plot thickens, and Facebook and Google continue to be grouchy at each other, and the world continues to turn. Honestly, would you want an @facebook email account? Is that more, or less cheap-sounding than Hotmail?…