Facebook Announces Tech Heavy Set of 2011 Fellows – Facebook announced who was selected to become Ph.D. fellows this year. The Facebook Fellowship Program included people with backgrounds in psychology and economics last year; this year the five winners who receive tuition and fees for the 2011-2012 academic year, $5,000 for travel, $2,500 for a computer and a $30,000 stipend all study technical disciplines.

Specifically, Adrienne Porter Felt and Kurt Thomas of the University of California at Berkeley both study computer security, Yinan Li of the Universitiy of Wisconsin at Madison studies databases, Wei Liu of Columbia University studies machine learning, and Marke Olszewski of MIT studies compiler technology.

Facebook to Grow to 9,400 Employees by 2017 – According to public documents in Menlo Park, California Facebook plans to grow its workforce at its new Menlo Park headquarters from 1,400 to 9,400 people by 2017.

Facebook Deals All About Credits – AllFacebook reports that Facebook sources are saying that the company is not initially taking a cut of the revenue from its new Deals program. Instead it reportedly seeks to expand the reach of Credits, the in-Facebook currency.

Facebook to Host f8 in 2011 – Facebook has confirmed that the company will host an f8 conference sometime this year.

Facebook Valued at $70B on Secondary Market - Reuters reports that a group  of investors are trying to sell $1 billion of Facebook stock on secondary markets for amounts that would put the company’s total value at $70 billion; these investors previously tried to sell the shares for a value of $90 billion, but couldn’t move the stock.

Details of Russian Facebook Ownership – Gigaom reported this week that Russian investor Yuri Milner holds a 2.33% stake in Facebook, 1.41% stake in Zynga and a 4.63% stake in Groupon, among other investments and holdings.

Facebook Institutes “Hackamonths” - Facebook Engineering’s Dave Ferugson posted a note to the Facebook Engineering Page this week in which he detailed Facebook’s new “Hackamonth” program for engineers. Essentially the program will allow engineers to temporarily leave their current team to work on a different project; the goal is to have about 10% of the company’s engineerings participating each month. The Hackamonth program could become a recruiting talking point that lures engineers who are tired of working on the same project for years on end at other tech companies.

Details on Facebook’s Messages Server – The Facebook Engineering Team published a note this week that details the internal functioning of the Messages application server.

Facebook Advertises on Gmail – Facebook is running ads on Google, according to this screenshot. [Image via jing]

Friendster Deletes User Info on May 31 – A message sent to registered Friendster users announced that users should export their data because the social network is going to delete all of it on May 31. The company, from which Facebook purchased patents in Auguest 2010, notes that it will delete blogs, photos, comments, groups, etc., but keep accounts active and become an entertainment site, reported TechCrunch.

Blog Suggests New Feature for Facebook – A new blog, Yo Zuck! Implement This, takes suggestions for Facebook and creates mock-ups of their implementation. Youssef Sarhan is in Dublin and runs the blog, and has suggested a translate function, notification change and other interesting features. [Image via Yo Zuck]

MakeMeReach Raises €3M – The French Facebook-approved ad network and Facebook app developer MakeMeReach raised €3 million to fund international outreach for its services. Currently the company employs 25 and will use its funding to double staffing to move into Italian, Spanish and German markets, TechCrunch reports.

The Platform Update published today on the Facebook Developers Blog announced that developers can now pull the list of permissions a user has granted their application using the Graph API. It also outlined a new commitment on Facebook’s part to improve its Graph API, FQL, FBML, and SDK reference documentation.

By calling “https://graph.facebook.com/me/permissions?access_token=…” in conjunction with a user object, developers can see the complete list of permissions a user has currently granted one of their apps. This can be useful for determining what kind of new functionality could be added without asking for new permissions. It can also be used to check if a user has retracted any permissions at a later date through the applications privacy dashboard.

Previously, this functionality was encompassed in the the REST API’s users.hasAppPermission call. However, Facebook is deprecating the REST API, and is transitioning its functionality to the Graph API.

Developers Blog Platform Updates will now include data about reference documentation improvements so developers can track Facebook’s progress in bringing them up to date and fleshing them out with examples. As this project is completed it should help reduce developer reliance on forums and other informal documentation and make the Developers site a more comprehensive resource. Facebook also moved the dev site onto the same hosts as Facebook.com, significantly lowering latency as shown below.

Despite Facebook’s Operation: Developer Love and Roach Motel days, this week’s Developer Forum activity data shows that of 448 new topics, only 3 were answered by a Facebook employee. This means that few questions are being met with official answers, making it harder for smaller developers to progress development on their apps.

This Week’s Inside Facebook Highlights for Developers

Facebook Releases Updates to Groups, New “Send” Button Social Plugin for Private Sharing From Off-Site

How Your Website Can Use the Facebook Send Button

Facebook Insights API Now Shows if Page Post Likes and Comments Come From Mobile

Identified is a new professional network that builds candidate profiles using relevant Facebook biographical data but doesn’t give recruiters access to sensitive social data. Recruiters can search all candidates by a variety of requirements such as GPA or school attended.

It’s yet another contender in a wave of startups that are trying to create a viable competitor to LinkedIn off the Facebook platform. By combining easy profile creation with passive recruiting functionality for employers, Identified could have a shot. Its service is especially attractive to users who don’t want to recreate their existing social network in a professional context.

Identified launched in October and quickly added 20,000 candidate profiles thanks to partnerships with the career centers of 25 top universities. The site now has 374 companies with recruiting profiles including Google, Accenture, Disney, and at one point Facebook, though its profile is now absent. Identified has secured $5.5 million in funding from angels including Google’s Eric Schmidt and Bill Draper of Sutter Hill Ventures. It plans to apply some of the funds towards a major user acquisition push this year.

The site is aiming to diverge from the job board model popular with other social recruiting sites and apps like Work For Us, and Pursuit, which recently shuttered after its founders were hired by Facebook. It’s more similar to BranchOut, but with a focus on forging connection with companies rather than between users.

When job seekers create their free account, Identified pre-populates their profile with their Facebook data such as their employment and education history, and profile photo, but none of the social data such as tagged photos or status updates that job seekers might not want recruiters to see. LinkedIn job descriptions and specialities can be imported, and a resume can be uploaded.

Users can then browse companies, including a set of “Recommended Companies” at which users have first- or second-degree contacts. They can click “Apply” buttons to notify companies they’re interested in being contacted about jobs there, but users don’t submit full-fledged job applications unless a company directs them to an offsite job listing. They can also browse discussion topics such as “What’s the corporate culture like at Genentech?”, message other Identified users who are their Facebook friends to ask for referrals, or browse a feed of company updates that clients can publish to announce openings and other recruiting news.

Identified account executive Lucas Loeffler tells us companies aren’t forced to contact candidates through the site’s internal messaging feature, and can choose to download resumes and reach out via the contact info listed in user profiles because Identified “just wants to facilitate hires” in whatever way provides value to its clients.

Recruiters can refine searches for candidates by job title, employment history, education, minmum GPA, location, proximity, whether they’ve used the Identified “Apply” feature, know an employee, were referred by an employee, and more. The company earns revenue when recruiters purchase a Hiring Solutions “Pro” Subscription for $500 per month to be able to contact an unlimited number of users. Identified plans to raise this price in the future, though there are cheaper plans available.

Identified’s VP of Sales Erik Kostelnik tells us that the company is banking that the definition of a Facebook friend will continue to expand. Eventually, it will encompass more and more professional contacts, thanks to more robust privacy controls that let users hide sensitive content from these contacts. He says “Why create a LinkedIn profile if I can enter my work and education history on Facebook?” This makes sense especially considering Facebook’s larger total size and the higher average number of friends on the site — which is also compounded at the second degree level.

Soon Identified will be launching a ranking system that assesses users by their work and education history as well as the rankings of their friends, scores companies by the quality of their employees. This will allow the site to suggest users companies that are the right fit for them, so those who’ve worked at top companies and have friends that have too are shown the most prestigious employers, while those without higher education will see employers with less-skilled positions.

These improvements could make Identified an alternative or complement to LinkedIn for those who want to be matched with employers and passively receive offers rather than spend their time sending invites to build a redundant network.

There were music apps, iPad apps, video apps, apps about your friends, Page admin apps and — interestingly — a Turkish election app on our weekly roundup of emerging Facebook apps by monthly active user. This week the apps grew from between 156,600 and 658,800 MAU.

The list of top 20 emerging apps was compiled based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook and covers apps that grew the most in the past week, ending at between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	BOSS維加斯	811,981	+658,758	+430%
2.	Müzik Dinle	363,001	+348,838	+2,463%
3.	MyPad for iPad	961,911	+341,993	+55%
4.	VideoPort	720,666	+339,107	+89%
5.	Social Statistics	559,013	+291,644	+109%
6.	kiss – bacio – bisou – beso – kus	430,799	+278,213	+182%
7.	Compatibility With My Friends	690,187	+262,992	+62%
8.	UNO Boost™	832,123	+256,966	+45%
9.	FBML Tab Maker	862,614	+250,468	+41%
10.	มหัศจรรย์การเดินทาง	607,218	+242,900	+67%
11.	Süper Video !	280,284	+234,187	+508%
12.	Chase Community Giving	246,279	+209,904	+577%
13.	Miner Speed	988,884	+193,107	+24%
14.	SEÇİM OFİSİ	201,208	+182,082	+952%
15.	Puzzle Saga	639,063	+179,968	+39%
16.	Happy Aquarium Community	393,885	+169,667	+76%
17.	แฮปปี้เกาะ	499,334	+167,004	+50%
18.	Profiline Bakanları Gör	182,692	+165,959	+992%
19.	N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance: ELITE	160,254	+156,676	+4,379%
20.	UFC Undisputed Fight Nation Game	599,206	+156,549	+35%

Topping the list this week was the Turkish Müzik Dinle, or Lyrics, that allows users to listen to music, see rankings and download files. The app promises to allow users to give musical gifts to their friends (presumably by sharing), create your own music, and practice playing it; the app grew by 348,800 MAU.

Two video apps were on the list, VideoPort with 399,100 MAU; the app allows users to watch videos (then posts a story), Like them and share them to the feed. Then there was Süper Video !, which grew by 234,200 MAU, which displays videos to be viewed, shared, and Liked.

Another pair of video apps dissect a user’s Facebook friends. Social Statistics grew by 291,600 MAU mostly in the United States and shows a user’s posting frequency, sway with friends, and a Wall post summary for the past month. Compatibility With My Friends grew by 263,000 MAU and calculates the compatibility of you and your friends based on Likes and comments with a percentage, then publishes a feed story with the results, a photo of the results and a link to the app.

Kiss – bacio – bisou – beso – kus is an app that grew by 278,200 MAU and allows users to share “kisses” with their friends. There are three levels of viral channels with this app: you send an invite to your friends (the “kiss”), then a pop-up asks for your email and password so you can send the app to other friends, then a feed story is published about the app.

The Chase Community Giving app grew by 209,900 MAU; the app is to allow users to vote on charities to receive funding. Voting is open, you must Like the Page in order to vote (spreading the app through the news feed) and the app publishes a feed story with your vote. SEÇİM OFİSİ, or Election Office, is a Turkish app that allows users to “vote” for a candidate or party, publish a feed story, and then keeps you updated on pre-election activities in that country. The app grew by 182,100 MAU.

Finally the Facebook app for iPad, MyPad for iPad, grew by about 342,000 MAU and the FMBL Tab Maker grew by 250,500 MAU. The app allows Page admins to make a tab with their own FBML code.

Account hacked? Facebook appears to have extended its partnership with McAfee to offer users a free 6-month trial of anti-virus software as part of Facebook’s “Roadblock” account restoration tool. Facebook announced a one-year partnership with McAfee in January 2010, but now the Roadblock tool — complete with McAfee branding — is being promoted in links from the official Facebook Security Page and the Help Center.

Helping users rid their profile and computer malware like Koobface and Yahos keeps security threats from spreading on Facebook and increases overall trust in the site.

The Koobface worm, which used stolen accounts to spread itself through Facebook Messages, became a major security issue in 2008. In addition to infecting their profile, the worm installed malicious code on a user’s computer that could help it spread later, so Facebook worked with Microsoft to develop a joint solution.

Though the two prominent worms have been mostly eradicated from Facebook, those who suspect they may be infected can visit Roadblock, and Facebook asks users to recommend the tool to friends who may have been hacked.

Fred Wolens of Facebook’s Public Policy team tells us “Roadblock was built in conjunction with McAfee and protects users from various malware strains that target Facebook, including Yahos and Koobface.” While he declined to comment on details of the Facebook-McAfee partnership, had it not been extended it would have expired in January 2011.

After verifying their account with an email code or security question, learning about how Koobface spreads, and changing their password, users a provided a link to McAfee. There they can start a free trial of the anti-virus software for PC, a $20 value.

The extension of the partnership benefits McAfee, as users need to enter their contact information to start the trial, seeding future sales of the anti-virus software. Facebook gains by reducing the chances that worms like Koobface will resurface. The interconnected nature of the the site makes it vulnerable, so Facebook must combine pre-emptive and reactive threat reduction strategies to improve the public’s perception of the service’s security.

The May 2011 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Comprehensive Guide to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook is now available.

The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of marketers, social application developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs to navigate and get the most out of the increasingly sophisticated marketing opportunities on Facebook.

The web edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible is comprised of detailed resource pages, comprehensive how-to guides, and case studies analyzing today’s most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook.

In addition, Inside Network is pleased to announce that through May 31st all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms).

Now that Facebook is nearing the 700 million monthly active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience through marketing on Facebook.

The May 2011 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• Our guide to the Facebook Send button that details Facebook’s latest addition to its social plugins.
• Facebook applications versus offsite integrations and what works best for marketing your business or brand.
• Our detailed style and strategy guide to Facebook’s Like button that helps you identify the right design for your off-Facebook content site.
• An overview of Graph API metatags and how they enable you to maximize the value of your implemented Like buttons.
• Facebook Applications, Social Plugins, Connect and Instant Personalization — details on how to use the wide variety of options available for engaging Facebook users
• Updates to Facebook Questions, and how recent changes to this user-facing feature will affect your approach to brand marketing through this ‘no-cost’ channel.
• Strategies to help you navigate Facebook’s recent major Page redesign, whether you’re representing a major brand, small business, or public figure.
• Facebook’s expanding options for advertisers, and how any advertiser can get more from new features like Sponsored Stories, self-specified landing tabs, and more.
• The latest featured Facebook’s campaigns that show you how other brands are testing Facebook’s evolving marketing opportunities.
• New frontiers in brand and performance marketing on Facebook, including opportunities within social games.
• Facebook Places and Deals, the company’s evolving location-based feature that presents new marketing opportunities for businesses both on and offline.
• Facebook Groups, a new way for users to connect and collaborate with others who share their interests and affiliations, and new ideas for marketing with Groups on Facebook.
• Facebook’s latest advertising guidelines updates and what they mean for advertisers throughout the ecosystem.
• Audience growth and engagement, including best practices for holding on to fans, keeping marketing channels open, and re-engaging your audience on Facebook.
• Plus, comprehensive walk-throughs of Facebook’s tools for advertisers, web content publishers, and Page administrators.

Learn more about the May 2011 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com.

Table of Contents excerpted from the full May 2011 Edition

Building Your Brand through Facebook Pages

• Page Destination Tab Ad Campaign Strategies
• Facebook Pages and Public Profiles
• The Profile Page – A Walk-Through

Designing Your Facebook Page

• Facebook Page Redesign 2011: Marketing Stategies and Best Practices
• The Wall Tab for Making Pages Dynamic and Viral
• How to Choose a Landing ‘Tab’ for your Facebook Page
• Adding Custom Modules to Your Page

Communicating Through Your Facebook Page

• The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
• Demographic Targeting for Status Updates
• Updating Facebook Page Status Via Text
• Receive Page Status Updates Via Text
• How to Avoid Having Your Page, Open Graph Object, or Application Unliked, Removed, Muted, or Blacklisted

More Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

• How Brands Can Advertise within Social Games
• The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
• Increase Engagement and Insight through Status Tagging
• How to Grow Your Page’s Audience through Page Invitations
• SMS Subscription Service for Pages
• Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages for Viral Advertising

Advanced Strategies for Facebook Pages

• The Best Facebook Page Strategies and the Pages That Use Them
• Strategy: How to Promote Your Page in 6 Steps
• Marketing Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Invest in Pages Before Groups
• 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
• 8 Best Practices for Retailers on Facebook
• Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages

The Facebook Open Graph for Marketers and Content Publishers

• The Like Button Style Guide: How to Pick the Design That’s Right for Your Website
• How to Choose Open Graph Tags That Maximize the Value of Your Like Buttons
• Facebook Connect Integration Best Practices from the Platform Showcase
• Implementation Options: Like Button
• Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Discusses the Open Graph

More Ways to Market on Facebook: Questions, Places, and Deals

• How Pages Can Use the Relaunched Facebook Questions Product
• How to Create a Deal with Facebook Deals
• The Places We’ll Go: How marketers can use Facebook’s new location features
• Facebook Questions – A Walk-Through
• How Marketers Can Get The Most Out Of Facebook Questions
• Groups and SEO – a Quick Overview

Advertising on Facebook

• Page Destination Tab Ad Campaign Strategies
• Sponsored Stories Ads: Walk-Through and Marketing Campaign Strategies
• Facebook Ads: Read Before You Get Started
• Facebook Ads – A Walk-Through
• The Facebook Ads Manager
• Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Page Ads
• Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Event Ads

Ads Targeting on Facebook

• 10 Powerful Targeting Methods Facebook Ads Every Performance Advertiser Should Know
• Friends of Connections Targeting
• Facebook Ads: Language Targeting
• 4 Connection Targeting Tests Every Advertiser Should Run
• From Keyword Targeting to People Targeting: Understanding Performance Advertising with Facebook’s Tim Kendall
• Time Scheduling

Tools and How-Tos for Marketers

• Facebook “Insights” Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
• Using Third Party Tools to Manage Your Facebook Page
• How Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users
• How to Export Your Facebook Page Updates to Twitter

Policies, Privacy, and Guidelines to Watch

• Promotional/Sweepstakes Policies for Facebook Pages
• The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
• Facebook’s Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook

Join the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com

After Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said last fall that he wanted to the launch the site in China — where it is currently blocked — reports have increasingly indicated that some sort of localized version of the site is coming soon. And today, AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes has uncovered a number of new details that highlight just how close a launch might be.

Facebook itself has only been providing vague comments on its plans. Yet because entering the country will involve cooperating with the government to censor its citizens, the company is already beginning to face public criticism from supporters of free speech. It will need to do a better job of explaining what its values are around free speech if it hopes to escape a major public relations fiasco over the decision, and it is already fallen behind on that front.

Meanwhile, it’s not even clear if the Chinese government is on board with what Facebook is planning.

In spite of these issues, Facebook is trying to move quickly to finalize a local partner, most likely Chinese search leader Baidu. Governmental censorship has become increasingly heavy-handed in China in recent years, especially as social services like Facebook have helped inspire citizens to rise up against governments in other parts of the world.

But the more pressing matter to Facebook is that domestic social networking rivals are solidifying their market positions. From the article:

Sources close to Facebook said that RenRen’s U.S. fundraising, in particular, is a significant motivator for Facebook to launch its China offering sooner rather than later.

“I would not discount the need for Facebook not to sit by and watch a significant competitor gain that much advantage,” said one person close to the situation.

RenRen has recently filed to go public in the US at a $4 billion valuation. Founded in late 2005 as a direct clone of Facebook, it successfully followed a similar strategy of expansion among students, and like Facebook has convinced users to provide real-life information about themselves rather than made-up avatars. If and when Facebook enters China, the company will have to figure out how to take on RenRen on its home turf.

Which is likely why Facebook is trying to figure out how to connect its China site (whatever that looks like) to its other up to 700 million monthly active users around the world. It is working on an interface, according to sources cited by the report, that will show non-China users a warning when they interact with users in the country, indicating that what they do “may also be visible to the Chinese government.”

Facebook already has a strong foothold in countries with close language and cultural ties to China. There are approximately 3.65 million Facebook users in Hong Kong, nearly 9 million in Taiwan, and millions more in Southeast Asia, according to our Inside Facebook Gold traffic tracking service (note that there have been odd fluctuations in these numbers over the last several months, as we’ve previously covered). Beyond the rest of its user base, these users could help Facebook establish itself in China even with entrenched domestic competitors.

Entering China the wrong way might not just be a problem for Facebook’s image outside the country, either. Chinese users seeking greater internet freedoms may be disappointed in potential Facebook compromises. And there’s the matter of how it will even manage operations if it works out a deal with a partner and gets the okay from the government. From the last line of the report: “Finally, Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook is considering sending a small group of its employees to help manage operations, but sources close to the company said this issue is still being debated due to safety considerations related to China’s oppressive government.”

Facebook users can now edit a comment they’ve left on a news feed story or wall post by clicking the ‘x’ button within the first few seconds after posting the comment. Instead of deleting the comment as before, the ‘x’ button re-opens the comment input field and lets users edit the previously entered text.

This new feature should help users who’ve posted a long comment, but then immediately notice a typo or want to change the comment without having to delete it and re-type the whole thing.

Our initial tests show the time window in which edits are permitted to be about 12 seconds. After that, the only option is to delete the comment. Also, the Known Issues on Facebook Page that made the announcement mentioned that “if another person comments before you click the delete button, this edit option is no longer available.” The option is only available for comments, not initial wall or news feed posts.

A post’s author and other commenters will only receive a single Facebook notification for a comment that has been edited and reposted multiple times. However, if they have email notifications enabled, they’ll receive a copy of each version of the comment. This means that users still need to be careful about anything they post as a comment, as the edit option doesn’t ensure people won’t see the original.

Facebook comment editing is reminiscent of Gmail’s option “undo” feature that lets users retract an email within a few seconds of sending it. Facebook recently moved to a real-time commenting system in February, though comment edits don’t appear in real-time to other users. They’ll have to reload the page to see the updated version of a comment.

The purpose the feature is likely to encourage users to comment with more confidence, and to decrease the number of comment deletions. Long, thoughtful comments drive additional engagement, so it’s in Facebook’s interest to prevent situations where users delete comments rather than re-type them in order to fix a typo or insert a content change.

Recently, Facebook has removed several Pages of well-known organizations in response to copyright infringement claims that have turned out to be bogus. Facebook is experiencing the same problem with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act as other user generated content sites such as YouTube and Google’s blogging platform Blogger — namely that if it doesn’t work to ”expeditiously to remove, or disable access to, the material that is claimed to be infringing upon” copyright, it can lose its safe harbor status offered by the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act and can itself become financially liable for the copyright infringement.

However, Facebook’s content removal strategy may be more aggressive than other sites, exposing a loophole for abuse by malicious users, so it might need to grow the team responsible analyzing complaints.

The most recent and prominent case of an innocent Facebook Page being removed is that of tech blog Ars Technica. It seems that a malicious third-party has complained that the Page was infringing on their copyright. As Facebook hosts too much content to be able to investigate claims individually while still remaining eligible for safe harbor from liability, it had to respond to the claims by immediately disabling the Ars Technica Page.

Facebook’s copyright infringement complaint process is flawed because any email address can be used to submit a complaint, and these email addresses don’t have to be verified. This enables address spoofing that allows a random person to appear to represent a copyright holder. However, Facebook’s form follows the standard also used by Google; it requires a telephone number, mailing address, and details on what content infringes on copyright; and Facebook includes a statement on the form indicating that false claims can be considered perjury.

Facebook may be slow to reply to appeals of bogus infringement claims, but this is in part a consequence of it hosting nearly 700 million users but only having about 2000 total employees, not purposeful negligence.

The company told told Ars Technica that“We take seriously both the interests of people who post content and those of rights holders. Abuse of DMCA and other intellectual property notice procedures is a challenge for every major Internet service but we work to ensure that we don’t take content down as a result of fraudulent notices.”

Though Facebook may be at fault, the issue of users losing access to their online presences, and the negative impact on the public impression of web services that remove content that doesn’t violate copyright, stems from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. We believe the law must adapt to address these issues by creating a grace period for investigation of claims before hosts become liable for content they haven’t removed.

Copyright law wasn’t designed for the massive volume of content and users handled by today’s most popular websites. As long as the law continues to hold content hosts liable if they hesitate to remove content that’s been complained about, innocent users will have their accounts suspended and content removed, and web services will endure their reputation damaged. But until then, Facebook may need to reconsider its strategy and devote more resources to complaint resolution.