Roman Andreev of Russia was crowned the 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup World Champion, in the recently concluded Facebook Hacker Cup at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

More than 8,000 hopefuls from 150 countries entered the competition that started on January 20, 2012 . Three months and three online rounds later, 25 finalists went head-to-head in a three-hour batter for supremacy at Menlo Park campus, which turned out to be an all-male show.

Andreev walked home with $5,000, as well as his name inscribed on a 50-pound trophy.

The participants get challenged with three problems to solve in 3 hours, and whoever finished first win. However, the winners were able to complete only one problem correctly.

The winners of the 2012 Facebook Hacker Cup are:

• 1st Place: Roman Andreev from Russia ( 1 hr 4 min)
• 2nd Place: Tomek Czajka from the US ( 1 hr 5 min)
• 3rd Place: Tiancheng Lou from China ( 1 hr 44 min)

Facebook has made some changes to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities for the first time in nearly a year.

Users and others who interact with Facebook have until March 22 to have their say. The notice is also available on the official Facebook site governance page.

Today, we’re letting you know of some changes we propose for the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, an important document that describes our relationship with users and others who interact with Facebook. Many of the changes are administrative (for instance, replacing references to our “Privacy Policy” with “Data Use Policy”) and other make our practices and policies more clear.

Some changes listed by Facebook are as follows:

• Sharing Your Content and Information: We’ve updated this language to be clearer and consistent with what has long been reflected in our Data Use Policy and our practices – that when you, or friends you have authorized to see your information, use an App, you are sharing your info with that App, which is what you consented to when you installed the App.
• Safety: In this section, we have changed the language from “hateful” content to “hate speech” because we think the term “hate speech” better captures our policy on prohibited content, which hasn’t changed. This is also consistent with our new “Community Standards”.
• Special Provisions Applicable to Social Plugins: This section previously applied to Share Links, but those provisions also apply to the use of all Social Plugins. Therefore we have replaced references to Share Links with Social Plugins.
• Special Provisions Applicable to Software: We want to ensure our products, which may include downloadable products, are current. We have added this section to give you notice that we may provide upgrades and updates to your downloaded products as they become available. Additionally, we have included language that prohibits users from trying to extract protected source code from our products unless we have granted the user express permission.

Here is the link to the updated Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (PDF).

By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to their statement, so it’s best to know where you are diving into. Moreover, you also have the chance to voice your concerns if you’d have any.

As part of last year’s settlement with the FTC, Facebook is giving all who interact with it for approvals. The document was last updated by Facebook in April 2011.

Global news shared on social media sites spreads like wild fire. But social networking sites haven’t yet created the sort of news revolution that many believe.

Pew Research Center surveyed more than 3,000 participants in the US, and found that “recommendations from friends are not a major factor yet in steering news consumption.”

It described Facebook and Twitter as being “pathways to news” but added that their role has been somewhat over-hyped.

Major findings of the survey include:

• Only 9 percent of traffic to news sites comes from Facebook, Twitter, and smaller social sites, but social media are becoming an increasing important driver of news. The percentage of traffic increased 57 percent since 2009.
• Despite Twitter’s reputation for breaking news, Americans appears to follow news recommendations form Facebook more than from Twitter.
• However, Twitter appears to be a more highly valued news source that Facebook.

It also noted that Twitter and Facebook were perceived differently by their respective users.

“Facebook news users get more news from friends and family and see it as a news they might well have gotten someplace else if Facebook did not exist,” it said.

“For Twitter users, though, the news links come from a more even mix of family and friends and news organisations. Most of these users also feel that without Twitter, they would have missed this kind of news.“

Facebook has acquired the team behind San Francisco-based file-transfer startup, Caffeinated Mind (CMI).

The three-person team will be moving to Facebook, where they will be work on developing better tools for sharing information internally.

“We can’t think of a better place to continue this journey than Facebook, where we’ll be developing internal tools to improve the inner workings of the company and product, applying our technical and product expertise to their rapidly growing service,” CMI wrote on their website.

Over the next two weeks, Caffeinated Mind will bring down the curtains on its products – Sendoid, an in-browser file transfer service; and Expresso, a tool aimed to tackle big data transfer problems for enterprises.

The team assures its users that it will fully purge all transfer history logs on its servers and that it will not retain personal data from its users.

Additional details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Facebook is creating a dedicated gaming division in Europe to manage its relationships with overseas developers.

The social networking giant has similar gaming division in the US. “In the US, we have a team of engineers, product managers and partnerships folks who only do gaming, from Zynga down to two-person shops,” Christian Hernandez told the Guardian UK. “Now we’re creating that same unit in Europe too.”

The decision is a result of the recent success of social companies like Wooga, King.com, Surpercell and Nordeus, who have all managed to grab the attention of audiences on the social network, and built huge fan based through referrals.

The new division will be primarily focussing on mobile gaming, establishing a consistent presence on user’s smartphones.

As part of investment, Facebook will be bringing its engineers to Stockholm, London, and Tel Aviv to host educational events that will be focussed on teaching local developers about building successful apps for Facebook’s mobile platform.

Users can now discover games through Facebook’s mobile apps and websites, while developers can make money from in-game transactions using a combination of Facebook Credits and native in-app purchases.

Facebook dominated the display advertising in 2011 and looked set to do so for some time. But, a new forecast says Google might stop Facebook from doing that.

According to a forecast released by eMarketer, Google will pass Facebook in display-ad revenues by as early as next year. Google is expected to maintain the No. 2 position in US display ad market this year with revenue of $2.54 billion.

Come next year, Google is expected to overtake Facebook with a revenue of $3.68 billion compare to Facebook’s $3.29 billion.

Facebook’s global revenues are expected to grow 64 percent to $6.1 billion this year, up from $3.7 billion in 2011.

Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL fills the rest of the Top 5 spots in order, with their ranking expected to remain the same till 2014.

In the past year, Facebook has updated and renovated users profile a couple of time, and for many, it’s now hard to find what was something easy to find in older profiles. So, here is a short tutorial on how to deactivate or delete your Facebook account (once again).

To deactivate your Facebook account, follow the steps below:

1. Click on the account menu located at the top right of your profile.
2. Choose Account Settings from the drop-down menu.
3. Choose Security from the left-hand menu.
4. Click on “Deactivate your account” option.

Your profile (now timeline) and all information associated with it will disappear from Facebook immediately, and people will not be able to search for you or view any of your information. You can reactivate your account anytime by logging in with your email and password, and following the steps above.

To permanently delete your Facebook account:

If you wish to delete your Facebook account permanently, you will have to submit a request to delete your account.

Please note that that there is no recovery option like in deactivated accounts when you decide to permanently delete your account. All you can do is download a copy of your Facebook data before you leave behind your Facebook life.

Have you ever wondered how Facebook, with more than 800 million users and billions of updates everyday manage to keep the porn, gore, and hate out of your news feed? An article on Gawker Inside Facebook’s Outsourced Anti-Porn and Gore Brigade, Where ‘Camel Toes’ are More Offensive Than ‘Crushed Heads’ sheds some light on Facebook’s content moderation. Definitely not how I expected.

Facebook subcontracts its screening to an online outsourcing company name oDesk, that employed rougly 50 people in countries such as Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico, India, and Morocco. These moderators checks every piece of flagged content for around $1 an hour, which could go upto $4 with commissions.

Gawker interviewed a number of moderators (both past and current), including a man who only managed to last three weeks.

“Pedophelia, Necrophelia, Beheadings, Suicides, etc … I left [because] I value my mentl sanity,” Gwaker quoted him.

More descriptions of the job by former moderators included:

“Think like that there is a sewer channel, and all the mess/dirt/waste/shit of the world flow towards you, and you have to clean it.

“You had KKK cropping up everywhere.”

“They did mention that the job was not for the light of heart before hiring me,” he added. “I think it’s ultimately my fault for underestimating JUST how disturbing it’d be.”

A 21-year-old Moroccan shared a 17-page manual with Gawker that include a one-page cheat sheet which you can see below.

The U.S. Department of Transportation asked automakers to redesign distracting electronic systems and prevent drivers from accessing social networks like Facebook and Twitter while a car is moving.

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, in non-binding guidelines issued today, called for disabling manual texting, internet browsing, 10-digit phone dialing and the ability to enter addresses into a built-in navigation system for drivers unless a car is parked.

When a car is moving, messages and other infotainment tasks should require no more than two-second glances.

The guidelines are part of the U.S. government’s broader effort against distracted driving. According to the National Highway Transportation and Safety Agency, distracted driving cost the life of 3,092 people in 2010.

The guidelines does not apply to electronic warning systems such as lane-departure or collision alerts. The department seek comments before making them final.

Mobile service provider Orange announced that it is bringing Facebook via Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) to Africa, allowing all Orange customers to access the service regardless of the phone they use.

Even users with older or very basic handsets without an internet connection or data plan will be able to use Facebook via the text-based service.

Users only need to type a specific code into their phone to open Facebook via USSD session and enter a PIN code to access the service securely.

If a customer is using Facebook via USSD for the first time, they will have to register by providing their Facebook login, Facebook password and by creating a PIN code.

Once connected, users’ will be able to search for friends, invite friends, accept or deny friend requests, update status, and comment/like/unlike their friends’ statuses. Pricing options include: per session (10 to 20 minutes), daily, weekly, and monthly.

USSD is a technology used by all GSM mobile devices to send information across a 2G network, and is already used widely in Africa. And since there is no barrier in terms of handset requirements, Orange expects that over one million customers will use the service in the first year.

Orange launched this service for Mobinil customers in Egypt at the end of 2011, and over 350,00 customers connected to Facebook via USSD in the first month. The service launches in Orange Côte d’Ivoire this month.