The results are ranked by likes and by the amount of likes generated by the user’s friends. This piggybacks on their recently patented social search technology, which allows Facebook to generate search results based on a number of socially-propelled factors such as the number of likes or, similarly to now-rival Google, the number of clicks.

The feature appears in the drop-down search results one receives when typing a term into the search box at the top of pages on the Facebook site. The results on the actual search page do not yet appear to include the experimentation.

Interestingly, the development furthers theories that Facebook is looking to revolutionize searching the web in addition to improving its own inherent search feature. This is a warning shot to Google, who are acquiring technologies and scrambling to develop a competitive social network to counter Facebook.

Run to Target Sunday and update your Facebook status to “rich beyond my wildest dreams.” Target will start selling Facebook credit cards in  denominations of $15, $25, and $50 to spend on Facebook goods and games.

Eric Savitz at Barron’s observed…

“the perfect gift for the person who has everything in the real world, but still needs things in the imaginary world,”

Peter Kafka of All Things Digital says Zuckerberg, the founding face for Facebook should love the new revenue. Facebook gets a 30% profit from the sale of the cards.

Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider said…

“The news shows just how hard Facebook is working to avoid the situation Google finds itself in now.  Google makes more than 95% of its money off of one revenue stream: search,”

Facebook doesn’t want to turn into “another one-trick pony.”

Frank Reed writes at Marketing Pilgrim.

“This is a great get for Target because Facebook will advertise the heck out of this one (with a lot of Target’s cash presumably).”

Not to mention the intangible cool factor that Target gets from aligning themselves so closely with the most popular social network in the known universe.

Illustration by cambodia4kidsorg

Portland, OR man is no longer dancing to pay his bills, according to Huffington Post.

Aswad (no last name) started the Will Dance for Rent project as a way to make money to keep going and to bring attention to people who are unemployed and jobless in the US. He started this project in July. He said the effort wasn’t a waste because he was able to pay rent for one month. According to his site, he raised $990.

The 46-year-old has cancelled his Twitter account and will be canceling his Facebook account as well. He’s researching homeless shelters and a place he can sleep. He said he won’t be able to afford to rent a room by the end of September.

I thought this project would save me from the streets, now I don’t think so. I’m out of time.

He’s also looking for a home for his 13-year-old cat, Ms. Juju.

According to the Oregon Employment Department, 25,506 people were unemployed in Washington County in May, and many have been without work for more than a year.

Here’s the video that started it all.

A young woman allegedly committed a big no-no on Facebook, a blunder that got her kicked off a jury in a suburban Detroit trial. So what was her mistake? Apparently, it’s the same screw up that gets everyone in trouble on social media: posting false information and/or too much information.

In this case, the juror, Hadley Jons, 20, has been accused of posting that the defendant was “guilty” before any official verdict was rendered and reportedly before the prosecution had even finished presenting its case.

Here’s what Jons allegedly put up on Facebook:

“gonna be fun to tell the defendant they’re guilty”

The alleged post was like a windfall of gold nuggets for defense lawyer Saleema Sheikh who shared it with Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski. Druzinski quickly removed Jons from the jury and replaced her with an alternate, the AP reports.

Jons, who is from Warren, north of Detroit, could face a charge of contempt in the Macomb County circuit court, according to the AP. She’s scheduled to return to the court Thursday.

Photo by Mike Epp via Wikimedia Commons. A summons for jury duty in a United States district court.

Paul Allen, the billionaire cofounder of Microsoft, is suing Facebook, Google, Apple and at least eight other companies, claiming they’re using technology from patents he owns. The technology was allegedly developed at Allen’s Silicon Valley laboratory, Interval Research Corp., The Wall Street Journal reports.

Allen financed the lab, which was based in Palo Alto, Calif., with $100 million. Allen didn’t tell The Wall Street Journal exactly how he believes his patents are being violated, but his spokesman, David Postman, said Allen “thinks this is important, not just to him, but to the researchers at Interval who created this technology.”

In addition to Google and Apple, Allen is suing AOL Inc., eBay Inc., Netflix Inc., Office Depot Inc., OfficeMax Inc., Staples Inc., Yahoo  Inc. and Google’s YouTube subsidiary, The Wall Street Journal reports. The companies were sent letters from Allen’s lawyers claiming they held “patents of interest.” The suit was filed by Allen’s Interval Licensing LLC.

Allen, 57, is reportedly worth about $13.5 billion. He’s the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., his private asset management company, and is chairman of Charter Communications. He cofounded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975.

Photo by http://flickr.com/photos/msprague/ via Wikimedia Commons. Paul Allen.

A college student at Faulkner University posted on his Facebook wall that he might try to outdo the Virgina Tech shootings of 2007. This lead to a campus lock down, his arrest, and now his enlistment in the Army.

Alabama. To answer the question rolling around in your head.

The Montgomery Advertiser says that Zachary Lambert, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charge of harassing communications.  So the judge sentenced him to join the Army and do community service.

In announcing her sentence, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Tracy McCooey told Lambert:

“You are going into the military. That is not a choice.”

Lambert seemingly is OK with this forced conscription into the military because he talked with the recruiter who said he probably would be able to enlist. He would have to serve his probation first.

The judge, who says she is a ”military brat,” indicated she could change the sentence if Lambert really makes  ”good faith effort” to becoming a fighting man.

Photo Beverly & Pack

UPDATE: the newspaper got it wrong, the judge didn’t sentence him to join, she just indicated that making an attempt to join was part of his probation.

In the past ten days, three teens have been murdered in Puerto Asis, a southwestern Colombian town. All three teens appeared on a Facebook “kill list,” that consisted of 66 other names.

According to Mashable, Colombian police are investigating the Facebook “kill list,” but they are not sure who posted it, or why the names were chosen.

Two of the murders occurred on August 15th, two days before the Facebook “kill list” was posted. When the list did go up, it warned the other people on the list that they had three days to leave the city of Puerto Asis. The list was thought to be a joke by authorities, but on August 20th, another person was killed, and another person was wounded during an attack.

Police are offering a reward of 5 million pesos ($2,750) for any information about the origins of the “kill list.”

According to the New York Daily News, there are two major gangs that are active in the area; the Los Rastrojos as well as the militant group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Photo: Bnet

MySpace, bought out by News Corp. in 2005 for $580 million, is the social networking website that got left in the dust by Facebook. FAN is an online advertising network created in 2007 to give News Corp. the means to provide advertisers with an easier process to purchase targeted ads across several websites.

News Corp. plans to re-launch MySpace, The Wall Street Journal reports without revealing any details. (Note: The Wall Street Journal’s publisher Dow Jones & Co. is also owned by News Corp.)

News Corp.’s combining FAN with MySpace in an effort to give MySpace more appeal in negotiations with possible partnerships with Google, Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo, Inc. FAN reaches 150 million Web users, which is over twice the number of people using MySpace.

Ojinnaka, 26, 6-foot-5, 299 pounds, comes to the Patriots from the Atlanta Falcons. He was traded for an undisclosed draft pick. Ojinnaka’s passed his physical. The Patriots announced the trade on Monday, reportedly waiving cornerback Terrence Johnson to make room for Ojinnaka.

Last season, Ojinnaka played in nine games with the Falcons, and started the final five games at right guard in place of an injured Harvey Dahl. The Falcons selected Ojinnaka in the fifth round (139th overall) of the 2006 NFL Draft.

Photo by Paul Keleher of flickr, via Wikimedia Commons. New England Patriots game.

Specifically the status update from a Speedway company included an announcement of someone’s passing and the medical status of injured and recovering persons, although with the names withheld it’s difficult to determine what the cause of death and injury was. Regardless, the company representative rushed the sad news and then launched immediately into a sales pitch for a upcoming special event. The result? Infuriated followers slammed the company for its tasteless display of zero class, and the whole thing became a blemish of the Speedway’s online reputation.

You can see the original status in question here.

This begs the questions: how could this have been handled differently, and what are you doing that might be abusing your social networking accounts, and potentially damaging your brand? Here’s a checklist of ways you might be harming your online profile, and your brand.

- Obviously, never, ever display such a lack of class as to follow up news of someone’s passing with an upbeat special offer for an event at your establishment within the same paragraph. Sad news requires time to digest and a waiting period out of pure respect. Give it a day or two, and then advertise your event. Or, if you prefer, omit the news of the passing (or other tragedy) altogether and stick solely to advertising. But the twain should never, ever meet.

- Do not mix business and pleasure to a distracting degree. It’s OK to once in a while lapse into personal info, particularly if it’s pertinent to your business, when updating your status or tweeting. It is not OK to continually “cross streams” between business and pleasure and post anything you wouldn’t talk about to your customers on a day to day basis. This is especially true when it comes to highly private details such as a mysterious rash you picked up, or your dog’s diarrhea, or the in’s and out’s of your wife’s child birthing process. Please, if it’s not something you’d tell complete strangers you hope to turn into clients, do not say it. It will only put people off.

- Don’t post a zillion ads. Your status messages and tweets should be substantial, not entirely promotional. It’s perfectly fine to advertise and share news; Twitter especially is the go-to place where people look for news these days. But if every tweet you post is a reply to someone offering them a discount or pointing out a product you sell, your account ends up having very little use to your followers. And you will lose them.

- Don’t ignore what people are saying about your company and your industry. Perform regular searches on Twitter to determine who’s talking about things related to your brand, and take time to reply to them personally with tips, ideas, minor promotion, and general conversation.

- Watch what your competitors are doing and make sure you’re keeping up, but don’t go overboard trying to emulate them. Retain your individuality and be true to your brand. If you’re a copycat, it’ll be noticed, and not appreciated.

- Always post with class and professionalism. It’s fine to be tongue-in-cheek once in a while, but if your statuses and tweets launch into the social networking equivalent of an Andrew Dice Clay routine, you have definitely gone too far. Watch your language; keep it PG. There’s no reason to be overly snarky, controversial, crude, or childish unless it’s a gimmick that you’ve found works for advertising your brand. And that’s a rare thing, indeed.