Quoted: Some Facebook employees have said privately that the platform is dead. Many developers agree

One explanation of the Facebook exec departures.

Quoted: Here's one certainty in the hubbub that has resulted in the wake of the departure of high-profile exec Ben Ling from Facebook last week: COO Sheryl Sandberg is definitely not responsible for the melting of the polar ice caps. That's the joking question--Was global warming Sandberg's fault too?--that was asked at a staff meeting at the social networking start-up last Friday afternoon, after the news of Ling's departure, on the heels of some other previous employee exits, suddenly morphed into a series of increasingly vituperative posts on the Valleywag tech gossip site that all centered on what blogger Owen Thomas called Sandberg's "reign of terror" at Facebook. The truth of the situation, though, is actually a lot more interesting.

Reading for my fb friends:

Quoted: The “Secret Crush” worm seems to log into unsuspecting users’ accounts, send wall posts to their friends, and even some times, as was the case with my Aunt 5 months ago, change the user’s status as well. All posts seem to link back to a blogspot-hosted site that tries to get more information from the user to find out who their “secret crush” is.

Sounds like what I've seen going around on facebook.

Quoted: A spyware-infested third-party widget on Facebook is spreading like wildfire. Like some kind of e-STI, the 'Crush' application is spreading malicious spyware. The flirt widget makes use of an iframe hosted by Zango and sends you off to a site which asks you to download the 'Crush Calculator'. What you really get is spyware...

Quoted: At its annual developer conference in San Francisco, the closely held company also announced plans to begin verifying applications in order to allow some developers ...

Quoted: A backlash also arose against the proliferation of frivolous apps like "zombie bites," and "snowball fight." "We haven't done enough to reward good citizens and punish abusive apps." To help users sort out the 24,000 applications on Facebook, the new "Great Apps" program is intended to reward those deemed truly useful by giving them increased prominence on Facebook, earlier access to new features and more feedback.

A related verification process will "help users identify applications they can trust - applications that are secure, respectful and transparent, and have demonstrated commitment to compliance with Platform policies," according to the company. Verified apps will also earn increased visibility on the site.

One thing about Facebook that most people still seem to have wrong: that it’s a walled garden. Quite the contrary, the Platform allows for full data portability and has since its inception. The problem is that this knowledge is buried deep within the FB documentation, a place few developers have wandered.

Facebook is the one to bash these days. I'm skeptical that they'll loose their audience to GOOG's Friend Connect due to high switching costs. But they need to figure out how to monetize all this traffic soon though or else start looking for a YouTube style exit before buyers become convinced that social networks can't be monetized.

Quoted: Facebook generated only $145 million in revenue last year, according to eMarketer, much of it from an ad deal with Microsoft. MySpace, by contrast, had ...