It looks like Burger King has been reading into the prediction that cutting down on Facebook friends is going to be trendy in 2009. The fast food chain has developed Whopper Sacrifice, a Facebook application that rewards you for doing just that — delete 10 of your friends on Facebook and score a coupon for the company’s signature burger. That’s much easier than the embarrassing tasks (naked handstand, anyone?) suggested by the application page. As Homer Simpson would say, “Mmm…burger.”

Here’s the twist: When you normally remove someone as a friend on Facebook, they have no idea that you’ve done so until they try to view your profile and can no longer access it (depending on your privacy settings). Given how loosely “friend” is defined on Facebook and the propensity of users to collect hundreds if not thousands of friends (they can’t all be your BFFs), the individual may never realize that you unfriended them. It’s not an action that Facebook itself publishes to the news feed or profile walls.

Burger King’s application, on the other hand, gleefully broadcasts the action on your activity feed, alerting your remaining friends of your cheaply-bought betrayal (the Whopper has been promoted for 99 cents before). The application also states that each of your victims will be notified. My vegetarian and vegan friends would not be pleased to read “Tam Vo has sacrificed Anthony Ha for a free Whopper” on my wall — a double diss because Anthony only eats veggie burgers. Awkward.

The campaign, created by savvy advertising agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky (its controversial “Whopper Virgin” commercial, which exposed people in remote areas of the world to commercial fast food, didn’t fare so well), capitalizes on the obsession and confusion over social networking sites, their etiquette and the accompanying drama, drama that often seeps offline. I know some people who take unfriending extremely personally, so try to sacrifice friends who never use the site.

Before you get the idea that axing 1000 friends equals 100 free Whoppers, the promotion is good for only one coupon per Facebook user. Whopper Sacrifice’s got a strong start so far, especially for a branded application (those apps usually get initial buzz but don’t sustain user interest for long) — as of this writing, 20,750 friends have been sacrificed for the love of red meat and a recession-proof (but not artery-proof) meal. Some Canadian Facebook users, however, are angry that the promotion extends only to the U.S. Their cholesterol levels and waistlines should be thankful.

[photo via Burger King]

Here’s the latest action:

One Laptop Per Child cuts 50 percent of staff — The group says it is refocusing its efforts and that the remaining 32 team members are facing salary cuts.

Investment group eyes Yahoo takeover — Silicon Valley executives and investment bankers are putting together a takeover deal that would be largely financed by debt from Microsoft, according to TechCrunch.

Google’s Eric Schmidt wishes he could save newspapers — But he says there’s no clear solution yet, and it doesn’t make sense for Google to buy the papers up.

Yelp user sued over negative review — At issue is Christopher Norberg’s critique suggesting that a chiropractor with whom he’d had a billing dispute  was dishonest.

Wal-Mart, Netflix sued for monopoly — The logic behind the suit seems a little shaky since you can’t have an online video monopoly when major competitors exist.

The outlook for video startups in 2009 — A lot of companies will struggle, but the silver lining is that more and more people are watching online video, says NewTeeVee’s Liz Gannes.

Online TV network Revision3 hires TV producer Ryan Vance — Vance, who has worked at cable network G4 and the Sci Fi Network, is now Revision3’s vice president of programming and production.

Facebook and Power.com have almost resolved their issues — The details of the settlement are still being worked out. Facebook sued social network connector Power.com in December for improperly accessing Facebook data.

Macworld selects best of show — The list includes some obvious choices, like the new version of iPhoto, but also some cool hardware and software that I hadn’t heard about.

Three former Broadbus execs try to launch venture firm — Broadbus was a television on-demand company bought by Motorola in 2006 for $189 million. Now three guys who worked there together are raising funds for a new early stage venture capital firm called Genovation Capital.

Facebook has grown to 150 million users this month, more than half of whom use the site every day, according to company chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Other social networks, like MySpace, Friendster, hi5, Bebo and Orkut, have also become popular around the world over the last decade, and they all boast tens of millions of users. But none are as large or growing as fast as Facebook

Take a look at the comScore chart, above, and the tables below. Facebook hit 200 million unique visitors two months ago, according to the most recent available data from comScore, after growing a blistering 116 percent from a year earlier.

MySpace reached only 121 unique visitors in November and grew a slow 16 percent over the previous year. Hi5 did pretty well, coming in at 58 million uniques with a 89 percent growth rate. Orkut also did pretty well, too, coming in at 46 million with 86 percent annual growth. Things were quieter for Friendster and Bebo: 31 million with a 10 percent growth rate and 24 million with a 20 percent growth rate, respectively.

Important note: the discrepancy with Facebook’s internally-reported numbers is due to comScore’s measurement techniques, as well as differences in how it defines visitor. It’s not clear how different comScore’s numbers are from other social networks’ internal numbers, but comScore is generally accurate, so for comparison purposes the trends among the sites is clear.

Why is Facebook growing?

The site has differentiated itself as a place where you share real information with real friends in a secure setting — in spite of launching years after some of its rivals. It started on college campuses in early 2004, and only let you connect with people you knew on campus. It opened up over the years to new “networks” — high schools, companies, and eventually cities and countries — but it always retained this concept of privacy. While rivals like MySpace made your user profile public, Facebook even today only lets other see excerpts of your profile unless they’re friends with you or in the same network as you. The result is that Facebook has near-universally convinced its users to provide real information about themselves; on MySpace, for example, people often create and use fictional profiles.

Facebook built on its real-world foundation through other features it has rolled out over the years, like its news feed showing a running stream of what your friends are doing on the site, and status updates that let you tell your friends what you’re up to. The company introduced a redesign this fall that, among other things, focused the interface even more on these features. In 2007, it let outside developers build applications that live inside of Facebook. Applications on the platform can use friend relationships and communication features like news feeds to promote themselves. More than 95 percent of users have added at least one application — presumably, these apps have helped users come back to the site more often, stay on it for longer, and give them another reason to invite their friends. The platform has not been without controversy, as we’ve covered extensively, but it continues to draw thousands of developers.

Facebook has also introduced a tool for users to translate its site into 35 languages so far, with 60 more in development. More than 70 percent of of users are now outside of the U.S. — although its U.S. traffic is rising, too, as you can see below.

What are the other companies to do?

They’ve launched their own versions of news feeds and their own developer platforms. Some, like hi5, also have their own user-driven translation services. But they’ve all evolved differently. They don’t seem to have the same vision for getting users to add their real identities, and then help them to share information more easily. Instead, many — like MySpace — are more focused on entertainment. MySpace Music launched last year, for example, and lets users create and stream playlists of music on the site.

Sure, none of these social networks are billion-dollar businesses right now. One can only assume that they’ll eventually make a lot of money on advertising through getting the daily attention of millions. With revenue the big remaining question, what these sites can’t afford in the meantime is ceding traffic to Facebook.

British singer/songwriter Lily Allen has revived a feud with U.S. pop star Katy Perry (of “I Kissed a Girl” song fame), threatening to post Perry’s phone number on Facebook should Perry make any more disparaging comments about her. Isn’t that the sort of drama that MySpace is usually associated with, not Facebook? It looks like celebrity tastes in social networking sites are changing, if not exactly growing up.

Perry, who remarked that she was a “skinnier version of Lily Allen,” was criticized by Allen for having “crass” lyrics and not writing her own songs.

“I have Katy Perry’s number, someone did me a favour. I’m just waiting for her to open her mouth one more time then it hits Facebook,” Allen wrote on her Facebook profile, according to The Sun.

Allen also joined two anti-Katy Perry Facebook groups, including Katy Perry? Who the hell does she think she is? where she, under the profile name Lily Rose Allen, declared her approval on the group’s wall. Celebrities have lately taken to including their middle names to distinguish their profiles from the scads of imposters on Facebook, unless you’re Lindsay Lohan and don’t understand Facebook’s policy on using your real name.

It’d be easy for Katy Perry to change her phone number, a lot easier than dealing with a hacked phone, as Paris Hilton found out in 2005. What’s interesting is the recent migration of celebrities from MySpace to Facebook, along with what feels like the rest of the world, with 600,000 to 700,000 new users joining Facebook each day. Longtime MySpace users that I know openly admit on their Facebook statuses and in their profiles that they’re new to the Facebook and don’t quite know how to use it yet, but the shift is significant.

Lily Allen, whose popularity was ignited by fans discovering the demos on her MySpace music page in 2005, has blogged over the past three years on MySpace. Allen’s raw, uncensored posts resonated with readers used to airbrushed pop stars, as she wrote in May of 2007 that she was “fat, ugly, and sh***er than [Amy] Winehouse,” drawing thousands of supportive comments as well as vicious ones. She also chronicled her experiences of being interrogated at U.S. customs for assaulting a photographer and drug use. Her fan base has swelled to over 453,000 friends, making her one of the top 10 most popular musicians on MySpace in 2008.

So why would a celebrity so ingrained with the MySpace audience take her grievances to Facebook? Maybe it’s because of the site’s emphasis on sharing real information — users will believe a phone number posted on Facebook more readily than they do on MySpace, especially since MySpace isn’t exactly known for being a source of accurate information. Allen’s Facebook Fan Page is a study in minimalism compared to her cluttered MySpace music profile, with fans posting their reaction to the fight on the wall. Or maybe it’s because Allen’s reportedly dating art mogul Jay Joplin, who at age 45 is part of Facebook’s fastest growing user demographic? Does Facebook come off as more grown-up than MySpace, despite being younger?

I went so far as to try and befriend Allen (or at least the most convincing imposter) on Facebook, asking her why she chose Facebook as the drama venue of choice and not MySpace. I’ll certainly update you if she replies. Maybe Allen can give us insight into why she’s jumped the MySpace ship for Facebook.

On that note, I leave you with Katy Perry’s performance of the hit single “Hot N Cold” at YouTube Live, which is an apt metaphor for her relationship with Allen. They fight, they make up, they fight again (but they don’t kiss).

[photo via Katy Perry]

When Power.com, a service that lets you access all your social networks through a single site, launched last year, VentureBeat editor Matt Marshall wondered whether it was violating the networks’ terms of service. At the time, Power.com chief executive Steve Vachani insisted it wasn’t, but it looks like Facebook disagrees: The social networking company just sued Power.com for violation anti-spam laws, for violation of the computer fraud and abuse act, and for infringing Facebook’s copyrights and trademark, among other charges.

You can read the complaint  below, via The New York Times, but the crux of Facebook’s suit is the fact that Power.com asks users for their Facebook login info (which is how users access their Facebook accounts through the Power.com site). That violates of Facebook’s terms of service, allows Power.com unauthorized access to Facebook’s servers, and creates security and privacy risks, the social network says. Facebook also alleges that Power.com sent out intentionally misleading promotional emails from “facebookmail.com” addresses, which were signed from “The Facebook Team.”

Power.com’s side of the story isn’t clear yet. Vachani told the Times that he’s “in discussions with Facebook to get their feedback on the best ways to work with them,” which is nice and vague.

Facebook says it first asked Power.com to stop accessing its site on Dec. 1. Vachini promised to use the Facebook Connect platform, which gives third-party websites limited access to Facebook, and to delete all Facebook login data from the Power.com site. Since then, Vachani repeatedly delayed the implementation, and most recently said the company made a “business decision” to continue collecting and using Facebook logins until Connect is implemented, according to the complaint.

Facebook is asking for an injunction to stop Power.com from accessing its site, and for unspecified financial damages.

It seems sketchy for sites to collect all your login information (as opposed to using various feeds and application programming interfaces, which is what FriendFeed and other sites do), but it’s not unprecedented. I’ve shared my bank login with financial aggregator Mint.com, for example. I also had similar concerns about PageOnce, a site that wants to store every single one of your passwords. PageOnce integrates with a wide range of social networking sites — but not Facebook.

Facebook Power Complaint - Free Legal Forms

On December 24, social networking site Facebook saw its most traffic ever within the United States, according to new data from Hitwise. That tops Facebook’s previous record, which was set in July.

Facebook set a similar record on Christmas Day in the United Kingdom, and MySpace had unusually high traffic too. In Hitwise’s blog post reporting the numbers, analyst Heather Hopkins offers three possible explanations — crummy weather, boredom, and the urge to send holiday greetings to your friends. The last explanation was probably the main cause, she says, since Christmas Day last year also set a traffic record. The weather probably contributed too, since the cities with the most Facebook traffic (New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.) were all hit by snowstorms.

Hopkins’ explanation makes sense, but I’ll note that my Facebook profile has a real dearth of “Merry Christmas”-type messages, and I didn’t leave any messages of my own; I guess I’m a regular Scrooge. I’m curious about whether micro-blogging site Twitter saw a similar surge on New Year’s Eve, and early on New Year’s Day, when it seemed like everyone was leaving “Happy New Year!” messages. I’m tempted to ask, “Why the heck were people Tweeting when they should have been partying?” but that raises the question, “Why the heck was I checking Twitter at the same time?”

Update: Twitter co-founder Biz Stone tells us that the service saw about 1.5 times more tweets per second on New Year’s Eve than it normally does. He noted that while this was well above normal usage, it was not record-breaking-ly so.

We integrated Facebook Connect earlier this week, so now you can sign in and leave a comment on any of our articles using your Facebook username and password. The idea is that Connect will make it easier for you to show off your identity on our site, while letting your friends on Facebook know what you’re up to here.

Once you sign in, you’ll see your Facebook profile picture and your Facebook username appear with any comment you decide to leave. A one-line message about your comment on VentureBeat will also be sent back to Facebook — your friends will see this in their news feeds and in your personal feed on your Facebook profile page. This will hopefully get them to visit us as well. The Connect integration is through Disqus, the blog plugin service we’ve been using since earlier this year.

Connect is in its early stages, but we expect it to become more important for us. The data on Connect adoption is relatively scant as the service only launched publicly less than a month ago. But more than 100,000 people have signed up, according to estimates by the blog AllFacebook. That’s not much considering Facebook’s 140 million monthly active users, but the details are more promising, at least for a site like ours. Video and content sites are leading in Connect usage. For example, the Gawker Media network, including category leaders like media-gossip site Gawker and gadget site Gizmodo, saw a 45 percent uptick in user registrations and a 16 percent increase in number of comments suring the first week after launching Connect.

So far, we’re seeing a nice smattering of readers using Connect. We’ve also seen some commenters complaining about bugs. If you experience a bug, please let us know by emailing me: eric (at) venturebeat (dot) com. At some point, we may integrate Connect’s rival services, Google Friend Connect and MySpaceID. Stay tuned — and happy new year.

Brightkite, the social network that broadcasts user locations, has announced that it’s now officially integrated with Facebook Connect. Once authorized, the Brightkite application automatically updates your Facebook status and/or news feed with your location, photos, notes and anything else posted to Brightkite. One of the most recent updates to the service is that you can specify whether the action goes to your Facebook status or news feed.

Enabling Facebook Connect makes Brightkite more competitive in its battle with other location-based services like Loopt, which has featured similar features with its mobile application for awhile. While you can use the service from any phone, Brightkite’s iPhone app, which came out in October, makes it more convenient and aesthetically-pleasing to use. A few commenters on Brightkite’s company blog mentioned feeling overwhelmed by how many site identities and statuses they had to now maintain. Cross-posting abilities like this will make it easier (hopefully) not to overdose on social networking.

What’s surprising is that Brightkite doesn’t yet allow you to discover friends on Facebook who already use Brightkite, although you can do so with your friends on Twitter and contacts on Gmail and Yahoo mail. That ability will probably be rolling out soon, as Brightkite promised more updates in coming weeks.

I feel a bit voyeuristic when reading the public activity posted to Brightkite, especially since users can check into actual physical places like Wal-Mart or a hotel (helpful tips for private investigators hired by suspicious spouses in the future, perhaps). But it’s hard not to laugh when the same kid from Los Angeles keeps posting to Brightkite in the hopes that local area ladies will want to hook up in time for the new year — things just haven’t been the same since Facebook removed “random play” from its “Looking for” relationship criteria.

Here’s the latest action:

Cisco offers digital stereo — The shift to digital entertainment is a big change from the company’s roots in routers and Internet pipes.

The Internet does another round of arguing about Twitter — Loic Le Meur, founder of video site Seesmic, sparked a discussion about the micro-blogging site Twitter by suggesting that the service should allow users to search by something he calls “authority.” Frankly, I got bored with the debate pretty quickly, but hey presto, there’s now a third-party application called Twitority that fulfills Le Meur’s wishes.

EEStor files (possibly) important battery patent — The battery company’s patent lends credence to the its claims that EEStor technology will revolutionize transportation.

Fired VP of Fry’s Electronics is accused of extracting $65M in kickbacks — It looks like Ausef Umar Siddiqui (pictured left) was a big spender in Vegas. The latest development of the story, which has been unfolding over the past few days, is that Fry’s itself has now sued him.

Beta test version of Windows 7 leaks online — That’s probably several weeks ahead of Microsoft’s planned release.

Nintendo to offer streaming video to the Wii in Japan — The competing (and less successful) Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles already offer similar services.

Florida, the next hotbed of venture capital? — That’s what the state government wants, but it will take more than a $29.5 million fund to make that happen.

Hedge fund Tiger Global Management reduces stake in leading Russian web portal Mail.ru — The hedge fund sold 27 percent of the company to shareholders Digital Sky Technologies and Naspers.

Music labels might partner with Hulu to take on YouTube — Rumors of a single site for music videos from Universal, EMI, Warner, and Sony BMG were reported by Silicon Alley Insider last week, and confirmed by the Financial Times.

AMD lays off 600 people, incurs cost of $70 million — The chip maker is making about 100 more layoffs than expected.

Facebook scrapping plans for payment system? — The social networking site initially promised that a method for direct payments would be part of its application platform, but there are signs that the project is on-hold indefinitely.

Internet access on rural school buses makes long rides more productive — But will this lull parents into accepting longer rides?

U.S. agrees to stake in GMAC — The Treasury Department plans to inject $5 billion into the automobile financing company. The deal should help GMAC turn itself into a bank holding company.

Last Saturday, the group Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! got over 11,000 people to participate in an online protest of Facebook’s decision to remove user-uploaded breastfeeding photos. Dubbed the first ever Mothers International Lactation Campaign (M.I.L.C., get it?), protesters posted a profile photo of themselves breastfeeding, along with supporting status messages. Offline, about 30 M.I.L.C members staged a “nurse-in” outside of Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters.

So much for the saying “Save the drama for your mama.”

The Facebook group is a public plea to convince the social network to allow breastfeeding photos on the site. The more than 80,000-member group was created in June of last year after moms (and dads) scuffled with the company over whether or not some deleted photos violated its terms of use.

Facebook’s Content Code of Conduct, which was last revised in May of 2007, states that users cannot post inappropriate content that is “obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit.” A spokesman for the company says that as long as nipple or areola aren’t visible, nursing photos are fine, The Washington Post reports. The spokesman added that the majority of nursing photos are left alone, and the ones that are yanked from the site are mainly due to user complaints.

I can attest that there are a lot of photos on Facebook that land in the gray area of violating the site’s terms of use policy, with the equivalent of band-aids pasted over nipples and drunk girls who arguably have more of their boobs unintentionally or intentionally exposed than many of these mothers do. While I didn’t write the Facebook policy on obscenity, I’m not sure how the now-deleted photo (above) of the Facebook group’s founder Kelli Roman nursing her baby is considered racier and more sexually explicit than the photo for the Facebook group I love Kim Kardashian’s BOOBS. Roman did get an e-mail warning, apparently, before Facebook cut the cord and disabled her account on Christmas Eve.

The terms of the site also state that users must agree not to upload content “that would otherwise create liability or violate any local, state, national or international law” but that’s impossible to police given how many underage drinking photos flood the site (especially around finals week on college campuses). I guess it’s easier to verify fully exposed breasts than illegal keg stands, even if those fully exposed breasts are legal — 40 states have laws that allow women to breastfeed in any public or private location, 25 of which exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws. But the laws don’t say anything about the Internet. If it’s legal in public, shouldn’t it be legal on Facebook? Or are these photos too traumatizing for 13-year-olds?