Facebook

Facebook will be offering gift cards preloaded with Credits at retail stores across the United States. The first to offer the cards will be the Target supermarket chain.

The Facebook gift cards will be sold in the values of $15, $25 and $50 at all of Target's 1750 retail stores and at Target.com. The gift cards on display at Target were created by GMG Entertainment which also produces Apple's iTunes cards.

Targeting to cease employees leak to Facebook, Google has started offering money to keep its best workers. 

It’s well known that over the recent months, Facebook has been working hard to recruit talent from Google. Thus, Android Product Manager Erick Tseng left Google for Facebook.

Microsoft announced on Wednesday, code for Windows Phone 7 has been released to manufacturing. The company thus meant original equipment manufacturers who made Microsoft's tight cut as phone suppliers can start installing version 1.0 of Microsoft's smartphone operating system on devices.

Windows Phone 7 has undergone tests on nearly 10,000 devices per day and subjected to nearly 10 million hours of tests.

According to a survey, released recently by Compete, a Kantar Media company, 83% of consumers shop online at least every week. The quarterly Online Shopper Intelligence Study polled 3,119 online purchasers between May and July 2010.

Study also found these consistent trends:

• Consumers are seeking out retailers on Facebook and Twitter in growing numbers, 31 percent report checking out Facebook fan pages or Twitter feeds of retailers, almost twice as many people as in Q3 2009.

A spokesman for Google reported that Google had acquired a social networking start-up Angstro which sorts news and information across social networks like Facebook. Angstro has developed applications to find photos on Facebook, combine Caller ID with LinkedIn profiles and other tools for Twitter.

"The struggle for open, interoperable social networks is still only just beginning," Angstro co-founder Rohit Khare said in a blog post last week.

Google did not disclose the terms of the agreement.

Germany is currently contemplating a law that would ban employers from using social networking sites like Facebook for hiring job candidates. 

As it became known, Facebook is now suing a professional community for teachers that operates a social networking site for teachers, Teachbook. The website for teachers is accused of unfair usage of the word “book” in its name that creates a strong competition for Facebook.  Sounds weird, doesn’t it?

The beginning of the suit reads:

The Just Say Now campaign was prohibited to show the image of a pot leaf on Facebook pages which made the group very discontent. Facebook is censoring the Just Say Now campaign from using the pot leaf in its advertising, with the site's decision to block the leaf coming earlier this month without explanation, the group said Tuesday. Facebook first approved the ads Aug. 7, then backtracked on the decision Aug. 16, Just Say Now said.

WePay launched two Facebook applications to allow the members to collect money for events and groups.

With the first app dubbed Sell Tickets users can sell tickets for any Facebook event and creat an event directly from the app itself.

WePay’s second application the Collect Money allows members to collect money from members of any Facebook Group. All payments that take place are redirected to WePay’s site, ensuring security for credit card and bank account payments.

Last week we reported that North Korean government established an account with Facebook. However, the social networking giant deleted the account on Friday on the grounds it had violated the website’s terms of use.

As we said last week the account was set by Uriminzokkiri, a Web site that provides Korean-language news and propaganda from North Korea's central news agency. The group appeared on Thursday and carried links to articles on the Uriminzokkiri Web site and videos on the site's YouTube channel. But on Friday Facebook blocked the account.

A TechCrunch blog reported about a new webpage blockzuck.com which shows that a Facebook member can block anyone on the social network except the CEO of the company Mark Zuckerberg. If anyone tries to do it he/she will get a message saying “General Block failed error: Block failed.”

Facebook unveiled its latest location-based service Facebook Places. The new product features much of the functionality provided by existing services such as Foursquare and Yelp.

"This is going to be a really fun and interesting summer," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the start of the evening. "We've got a lot of new products coming out."

Facebook Places is designed to do three main things:

A new type of clickjacking was recently noticed and removed on Facebook. The new “Share” attack relied on luring unwitting users into opening a "Facebook fan page" for the “Top 10 Funny T-Shirt Fails ROFL” and other potentially eye-catching content. Once selected these bogus pages load malicious script from an external domain that means the user will unwittingly share the dodgy page on their profile, promoting the scam to a mark's friends and contacts on Facebook.

Crooks have introduced a new phishing scam on Facebook. Now the members are offered to participate in a survey that poses as a curmudgeonly response to the social network's 'Like' button. The technique used in the scam is similar to previous lures like including "Justin Bieber trying to flirt" and (unrelated, you mucky minded lot)) "the biggest and scariest snake" (aka 'Anaconda coughs up a hippo') scam.

Social networking giant Facebook has acquired the search company Chai Labs for over $10 million as reported by All Things Digital. The purpose of the transaction remains unlear.
It is known that Chai Labs specializes in making platforms that allow for “structured content extraction” and semantic search. In other words, it makes search better. Customers include NBC Local, Associated Content, and the Travel Ad Network.