If Zynga is going to succeed, FarmVille has to lose its super uncool factor. And "play" must become a completely mainstream behavior that's as acceptable as buying $30 t-shirts at Urban Outfitters.

"We see [play as] a popular large-scale behavior, but we'd like to see play reach a level of search, shop and share, and we think the monetization opportunity will follow that," said Zynga CEO Mark Pincus. If Zynga is to succeed, it will be because the users make play as much a part of their daily routine as checking Facebook.

And daily average users (DAU) are not really on the rise.

Zynga had 54 million DAUs, which is up 13% from a year prior. But that number did not change in the third quarter; it was down from 59% in the second quarter and 62% in the first quarter.

Zynga launched 12 games in 2011, including four web-based games and eight mobile. In its S-1, Facebook revealed that Zynga games accounted for 12% of its revenues.

Its first hidden objects game Hidden Chronicles is currently at number two on Facebook. Dream Heights, one of its newer games, is expected to perform at rates comparable to a Web game.

Zynga is also working on diversifying its monetization strategies, introducing coins and "power-ups" to games like Scramble With Friends. CityVille was a top performer in Q4, and continues to do well on Facebook. Zynga Poker is also has one of the world's largest online poker games, and one of the top six games on Facebook. Zynga's mobile space is growing fast as well, with 15 million users.

Zynga also recently announced a real-world component to all those virtual goods. Last week, AllThingsD reported that Zynga signed a deal with Hasbro to develop toys and games based on popular Facebook games and characters. Finally, a link from the virtual world to the real world.

But everything on the Web depends on you, the user.

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says that "play" is the new TV. The reason TV got so popular? "It was free and accessible to everyone...and play is following a similar trend, only faster." Is it?

A new study by Facebook data scientists shows that Facebook users can spread emotions to their friends through messages, posts and status updates. It suggests that emotional contagion happens quite frequently on the world's biggest social network. Facebook's Chief Data Scientist Adam Kramer presented these findings at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology on January 27, 2012.

"It's time to rethink how emotional contagion works, since vocal cues and mimicry aren't needed," said Kramer.

He discovered that if a user's status update had more positive than negative words, updates from the user's friends averaged 7 percent more positive words and 1 percent fewer negative words. The inverse results were similar for negative words posted in a status update. The results were the same regardless of when during the week they were posted.

Did friends view a users' updates from three days before? Or did they just randomly see stuff in the news feed? Kramer said that there was no way to know. But one thing is for sure.

"Facebook users' emotions leaks into the emotional worlds of their friends," Kramer said.

Here's that cute baby dolphin for your weekend viewing pleasure.

Image courtesy Shutterstock.

ZDNet reports that a Facebook design flaw has accidentally convinced some readers that Zuckerberg is endorsing Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The awkward "Liking" took place earlier this week. Zuck "liked" a story by Salon.com's Farhad Manjoo, who posted the following status along with a link to mittromney.com: "Try, just looking at the Romney logo without seeing the word MONEY." When that image shows up on users' news feeds, however, it appears as if Zuck "liked" the Mitt Romney link rather than Manjoo's comment, coupled with a link to the Romney website. Whatever happened to the "Like" button making things simple?

Seeing this out of context in the main news feed might lead some to believe otherwise. It looks like Zuck is endorsing Romney. Here's the screengrab of the news feed view that ZDNet posted:

This sort of screw-up is just a byproduct of Facebook's annoying oversharing features that clutter up users' news feed.

Do Facebook users really need to know what their friends "like" in as prominent a spot as the main news feed? The same goes for the news ticker, which brings a micro-view to what every single one of a user's Facebook friends likes and comments on.

Just think: If Facebook tweaked both the news feed and the news ticker to show users content that has real value, rather than the mundane activities of other Facebook users, "like" ambiguities might happen a lot less.

But back to the whole Manjoo/Zuckerberg/Romney "like" thing.

On Manjoo's side, the status update could have been clearer and more poignant if he just wrote that joke as a status update, and included an image of Romney's name-as-logo. (Switch two letters around and Romney spells "money"!)

Still, the Zuckerberg "like" would have come up the same in the main news feed. It just would have looked like Zuck "liked" an image of Romney's logo, which could also be misconstrued.

So to completely avoid any Facebook false endorsement snafus like this one, Manjoo should have posted this as a Twitter-like, witty one-liner status update. Of course, that would have been too simple, even by Facebook standards.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

"This is just senseless," said Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece told Reuters. "We've had murders, but nothing like this."

Jenelle Potter, 30, is one of those types who you just don't mess with. She is a Facebook fanatic who stays home with her parents and is constantly on Facebook.

"Once you've crossed her, you've crossed her father too," Reece said.

Billy Clay Payne Jr. and Billie Jean Hayworth were the victims of this Facebook-induced crime, which occurred last month. The murderers spared Hayworth's eight-month-old baby, whom Hayworth was holding when she was killed. According to the Associated Press, Billy Payne Sr., who also lived with the couple, left the house at 5:30am for work, hours before the murderers occurred.

No charges have been filed against Jenelle Potter, the sheriff said.

Facebook "Caused" Domestic Violence in Texas

In October of last year, CNET reported that domestic violence erupted after a woman allegedly failed to "Like" her husband's Facebook update.

Benito Apolinar of Pecos, Texas, stopped by his wife Dolores Apolinar's house to drop off his two children. After 15 years of marriage, the two had recently decided to separate. Dolores would not let Benito into her home because she was on house arrest and did not want to get in trouble. Plus, Benito was drunk. They exchanged a few words, and then Benito came into the house anyway, pulled Dolores' hair and punched her in the cheek.

Benito's version of this story is quite different, and has everything to do with a Facebook status update.

According to Benito, the two had been staying together at the house for a week, and he was upset that Dolores did not click "Like" on a Facebook status update about the anniversary of his mother's death. In his version, Dolores hit herself in the face, and then smacked him in the eyebrow area with her phone.

Benito Apolinar was arrested on battery charges.

Image courtesy Shutterstock.

But there was an official announcement that dropped just days before the IPO: Games would start appearing in the main news feed.

Only one month before, Facebook began including games in the mobile news feed. If you're already feeling annoyed, remind yourself that this is nothing new. Remember when sponsored stories began appearing in the news feed?

In Zynga's IPO filing, it noted overreliance on Facebook. But it's not a one-way street here. Facebook & Zynga are intertwined, and at times it's nearly impossible to tell them apart.

In the risks section of Facebook's S-1, it explained that Zynga is responsible for about 12% of Facebook's revenue, and is also important in terms of direct advertising revenue and payments. Zynga is also the largest provider of Facebook games, accounting for 80% of Facebook Credits revenue.

Adding Zynga games to the Facebook news feed isn't the only change that Facebook announced on Monday, January 30. Games will also appear as a Timeline unit so that you will be able to see your own and other peoples' gaming achievements. There is now an app request on the main site, too. If you want to view game activity as its own news feed, you can do that to - just select the friend activity news feed under Apps and Games. Games.com's Joe Osborne notes that this news feed is similar to the Google+ Games Stream, as the two continue competing for gamers' eyeballs, time and money.

Facebook relies on Zynga apps for revenue. The Facebook news feed is one of the most heavily trafficked and viewed aspects of the entire social network. If Facebook wants to keep Zynga happy, why wouldn't it include games in the main news feed? Besides, games are already popping up in the mobile news feed. It was only a matter of time before games began appearing on the main site news feed.

But sometimes, it all just gets too overwhelming to deal with. You have 1500 Facebook friends from all walks of life - why? Those social ties expired long ago. So what's the point of holding onto that one last digital thread?

Last week Jenni Prokopy, a Chicago-based health care expert, freelance writer and founder of ChronicBabe.com, posted a status update that directly addressed this issue. With about 800 friends, Prokopy realized that her Facebook profile had become totally cluttered. "I started my Facebook a few years ago when there were no business pages," Prokopy says. "People knew who I was online from ChronicBabe.com, so they started to friend me on Facebook. And I was just trying to build my online community so I said yes - and everyone was like yeah, build your online community! And so I did."

"I was going through tons of posts from people I didn't know, and I don't want to say that I didn't care about them but I didn't care to know the details of their lives," she says. "But the thing that got me a couple of weeks ago is that I missed two important party invitations." They had gotten lost in the flood of meaningless Facebook marketing 'events' that were actually just invitations to 'participate' in various non-important mass events."

Then there was that whole missing photos from family members thing.

"My sister would post photos of my niece, and I would miss those," says Prokopy. "It felt like my Facebook news feed was Grand Central Station."

A few days later, Prokopy spent 4-5 hours unfriending close to 800 people, decreasing her Facebook community to a mere 280 people. And since then, she's been able to catch status updates from family members that matter to her. "I found out that my brother-in-law and niece, who live in New Orleans, were in a car accident recently. They were dealing with the details so didn't call people individually - they just posted to Facebook. But I spoke with my sister the next day and got all the details."

Russ Starke, VP of Experience Design at digital design agency ThinkBrownstone, had a similar experience with his Facebook profile.

"It was starting to become more of a promotional tool," Starke says. "I wasn't really checking what other people were doing, and I was only occasionally posting photos of kids. After seeing what Jenni was doing, I decided to try it, too."

What really pushed him over the edge was the fact that metadata is tagged to an iPhone picture that a user uploads to Facebook. It's easy to figure out where the user was when they posted the photo. "How is this going to affect my wife and I, and our daughter?" Starke asked himself. He also wanted to post about business trips, but then realized that there were people on his Facebook profile that he didn't trust enough to do that. And then there were those expired ties.

"There are people on Facebook that, when I look at our friendship history, I see that I've been Facebook friends with them for four years but haven't interacted with them in that entire time. It doesn't mean I don't have fond memories of them, but I don't need to be friends with them on Facebook."

When it comes to Facebook friends, Starke now requires a higher level of intimacy. If he wouldn't allow you in his house, he is not going to be your friend on Facebook. It's just that simple.

Instead of going through the painful one-by-one friend deletion process, Starke decided to shut down his account and start over in a month or so. For now, he's enjoying the freedom that not being on Facebook is giving him.

Should You Be Reading Stories Posted by People You Don't Know?

The Facebook news feed algorithm uses EdgeRank to detect which types of stories the user clicks the most, and surfaces those "highlighted" stories moreso than stories that users are less likely to clickthrough. Is it psychologically damaging to view posts from people who you have little to no connection to?

"While data has not shown that it's unhealthy to perennially view posts from too many friends with whom people lack authentic connectivity, it has been demonstrated that those who do, may do so because they already have lower self-esteem," says Dr. Ashwini Nadkarni, the author of the study "Why Do People Use Facebook?"

She also found that sometimes having more than 250 friends isn't very healthy.

"It has been shown that those users with larger numbers of friends may actually be triggering negative impressions. A study conducted about 3 years ago showed that both profile owners with lower number of friends (about 102 friends) but also greater numbers of friends (about 300 friends) both created impressions of lower levels of social attractiveness."

In other words, having more or less friends than the average Facebook user may affect how other users view you, and how you feel about yourself. Too many Facebook friends might indicate that you're participating in a certain Facebook culture of adolescence hat focuses more on popularity (hello, junior high!) and less on authentic, trusting friendships.

But really, Facebook is about the information that you choose to share. "We need to be curating not only the information we take in but also the information we put out," says Prokopy.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.com.

How many Facebook friends do you have? Are you planning to cut back or add more? Tell us in the comments.

OK, I don't follow football. And I especially don't know anything about the Super Bowl. After the Super Bowl, I was wondering why Nicki Minaj and MIA (aside from her Cee Lo flick-off) didn't play a bigger role in Madonna's halftime show. I was also pretty relieved that Madonna made it through that entire performance without slipping, though she did come scarily close. I was truly impressed by some of the throws (Eli Manning!) and was also curious about the stories behind the football players' tattoos.

What I do know about the Super Bowl is that the Giants won (go New York!), and I got to hang out with some very awesome friends and my friend's dog, who I want to steal. I also have a few witty one-liners thanks to my more football-savvy Facebook friends because I, like most other social TV watchers, checked Facebook and Twitter during the game.

The first thing to consider: Consumers often use their second screens as a space for commentary, not necessarily as a replacement for the first screen. Some consumers may prefer to watch TV while chatting with friends on their iPads. They may or may not be talking about the show. Other times consumers will just text with friends during the show, essentially ignoring much of it.

A co-viewing app, however, recognizes that the consumer is actually watching the show. This is where audio fingerprinting comes into play. If a consumer is using a co-viewing app, audio fingerprinting can be used to deliver relevant content to the second-screen device. In other words, open a co-viewing app and you'll definitely receive content that is related to the show you're watching.

Miso is one such social TV check-in app that uses audio fingerprinting. It quickly figures out what show the viewer is watching, and then delivers content based on that. The hope, as always, is that you will share what you're learning through the app onto your social media accounts. There are quite a few similar apps that use audio fingerprinting, such as IntoNow, which syncs related news headlines, tweets and stats, and Shazam, which gives consumers the opportunity to receive customized offers and information.

Popular entertainment check-in apps like GetGlue ask the consumer what they're watching, but do not use audio fingerprinting.

But what if you are watching the Super Bowl not for the athleticism and the actual event, but for the critique of the event itself? Or maybe you're watching for the, um, football players? These might be some of the thoughts that crossed your mind during the Super Bowl.

Have marketers discovered an social TV app that delivers witty criticism from friends and family members?

Oh wait, yes, they have! It's called the Facebook news feed.

At the halftime show, another Facebook friend of mine asked the question we were all wondering but too modest to ask: "Why is Cee Lo dressed like Aretha Franklin?"

I showed the status update to a few friends at the party, and we burst out laughing.

Facebook states that breast-feeding pictures are okie dokie, just as long as there's no "exposed breast" that doesn't feature the child actively nursing. In other words, if there's no suckling, there's no posting. Today breast-feeding activists are using Facebook to coordinate "nurse-ins" outside of of the company's headquarters worldwide, including its homebase Menlo Park headquarters.

When it comes to flagging photos, Facebook asks users to flag photos as inappropriate. Then Facebook employees go through and remove those that violate the State of Rights and Responsibilities. Even though it's pretty clear that breastfeeding photos are fine, often times they will still be flagged and removed from the site.

Vancouver-based breast-feeding activist Emma Kwasnica is leading the protests. She joined Facebook in 2007; since that time, she has had a total 30 breast-feeding photos removed. Facebook has shut down her account on four separate occasions. One time she was even kicked off Facebook for 30 days. This is unfair treatment, especially since breast-feeding is an activity that users may want to share with one another. Breast-feeding is a routine part of a young mother's day-to-day life, so why wouldn't she include herself doing that activity in a Facebook photo? If anything, Facebook should advocate the sharing of these photos - they could help foster entire online communities of young mothers, a demographic that is in Facebook's best interest to retain. Breast-feeding photos are a natural part of a user's "online scrapbook," which is the entire point of the new Timeline.

"It is obvious to me now that Facebook really has lost control of their network, especially when their written policy clearly states they support the sharing of breastfeeding images, yet they say they cannot control the actions of their employees who keep removing breastfeeding images and who block accounts of the users who post them - usually "in error," Kwasnica told the Huffington Post. "This is exasperating to me."

Facebook needs to stop being total boobs. Or should they stop being total boobs? Either way, it's definitely time for Facebook to get with the breasts.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

"Mark has an evangelical approach to advertising," Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising agency told Reuters. "He sees Facebook as a vehicle to open up communication, not to monetize." Facebook's attitude toward advertising is finally changing. Users have started to notice, too. Today Facebook took that first step, claiming that sponsored stories for mobile will be coming "within weeks."

As soon as early March 2012, Facebook will soon start dropping "featured stories" into users' mobile news feeds. Currently Facebook has 425 million mobile users. HTML5 app buttons have started popping up on Facebook's mobile site. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed with Reuters that Facebook will not work with an agency to create paid ads on the mobile platform.

Facebook started integrating sponsored stories into the news ticker and the news feed. It was only a matter of time before Facebook decided to move forward with ads in the mobile space.

When it comes to Facebook ads that are built around a user's data, questions about privacy laws come up. In fact, in its S-1 filing, Facebook noted the "evolving nature" of privacy and data protection laws as two major risk factors - not to mention the fact that Facebook doesn't have a mobile advertising platform. At least, not yet.

How will Facebook's mobile ad strategy evolve? Take the poll on ReadWriteMobile.

Last week's overvalued IPO, and the fact that Zuck owns more than a quarter of the world's largest social network and refuses to share the cash has put many users over the edge. But months before the IPO rumor even surfaced, there were plenty of folks who had already left Facebook for Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. They are happy to tell you why they left, and they encourage you to do the same. They have joined together on other social networks - Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ - to discuss why they left Facebook, or why they're thinking about leaving Facebook. On their website, http://www.im-not-on-facebook.com/, they sell mugs and t-shirts (women's available in four colors! Crew neck available in five colors and white!) for as little as $10.99 a piece. These rebels have banded together in a Facebook-centric culture focused on oversharing the mundane details of life.

The site sounds pretty serious in its mission, but it actually started as a joke back in October 2010.

"The site was a birthday gift for my wife because she could not stand Facebook," says graphic designer Tim Woods, who is based in northern Virginia. "She kibitzed with my mother about it, who also hates Facebook. And I thought - there's a t-shirt in this." They decided to go for it after they noticed a couple arguing on Facebook. Initially, Woods sent out t-shirts from Cafe Press to family and friends. They quickly discovered that the anti-Facebook sentiment was part of a global phenomenon.

"We sell products in Poland, Italy, all over Europe, Canada, U.S., Mexico. There's also a big anti-Facebook sentiment in Syria and the Islamic community," Woods says. "We're surprised that even though we have a small customer base, we're pretty diverse."

Despite the strong sentiment, Woods doesn't really want to beat up on Facebook. That's not the goal. Instead, the statements (like the headline of this story), are meant to stir up conversation with others. Think of it as an ice breaker.

One story that @notonfacebook recently retweeted isn't as light-hearted about the whole anti-Facebook sentiment, though."How I Deleted My Facebook Account and Walked Away from 555 Friends by blogger Cindy La Ferle is honest, important and worth a read if you give a crap about real-world friendships.

"Either way, I've always believed that real friendship is reciprocal, not promotional," writes La Ferle. "And certainly more than virtual. Real friends do more than punch the 'like' key on your status updates. Real friends call you directly on the phone, send cards, help you move furniture, meet you for breakfast, babysit your cats, or otherwise make three-dimensional efforts to be there for you."

But the real reason she quit Facebook isn't because she didn't at some level enjoy the "promotional" nature of Facebook friendships. The problems ran deeper than that.

"Of course, you need lots of extra time for real friendship like that," she writes. "My 'networking' on Facebook was devouring some of that time, and I was starting to feel guilty about it...in short, Facebook was becoming a tool to promote myself, with a few family photos thrown in for good measure...I've always tried to avoid one-sided relationships, but good lord, there I was, conducting one of my own."

Not long ago, I made a new friend on Facebook. A few weeks later, we ended up at dinner with a group of other people. I was looking forward to chatting with him in real life - he was so interesting on Facebook, so I figured we'd have lots to talk about offline. But that's not really what happened. We talked tech stuff and got our geek on. Then my Facebook friend mentioned something about the self-referential nature of Facebook. The conversation stopped. Then he grabbed his iPhone and stepped outside for a cigarette.

I turned to a woman sitting next to me, who I am not Facebook friends with, and proceeded to chat with her for at least an hour. After dinner she gave me a ride to my bike, which I had left down the street. I didn't think we'd have so much in common. And I did not go home and friend her on Facebook later. In fact, I am happy not reading her status updates.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Facebook's IPO filing, released this week, is fascinating for many reasons: We've already covered several angles.

Perhaps the most exciting, though, is the wealth of data about the company that is finally public - from its user statistics to its growth around the world to its finances. I've highlighted and visualized some of the most interesting data in this series of charts.

Facebook's IPO filing includes quarterly stats of its Monthly Active Users and Daily Active Users, both worldwide and broken down by region. (Also, how about some appreciation for Facebook to sticking with "active" users in its stats, not just total, all-time sign-ups?)

Worldwide, you can see that 57% of the people who use Facebook within a given month also use Facebook on an average day, up from 47% in early 2009.

This varies, of course, by region, which gives an idea of how "sticky" Facebook is in different parts of the world. In the U.S. and Canada, it's 70%. In Asia, where Facebook isn't as established - but is growing fast - it's only about 50%.

Facebook is increasingly a global story. Its user base is now almost equally concentrated in the four regions it breaks out. That's a pretty big change from 2009, when it was primarily focused in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2011, about 30% of Facebook's new users came from Asia, and about 40% in the "rest of world" category. Only about 10% of its new users came from the U.S. and Canada.

Facebook's IPO filing also brings us new access to its finances. Here, we can see one reason why Facebook's revenue growth (88% in 2011) is outpacing its user growth (39% in 2011) - because Facebook is bringing in more revenue per user than it did in the past.

How did that happen? Significant growth in both Facebook's ad business (85% of its revenue) and its payments business (part of the 15% of "other" revenue).

Facebook's future success, of course, relies on both its ability to attract new users and its ability to generate more revenue per user.

A new study from Pew Internet discovered this and an array of other interesting facts about peoples' Facebook friendships. The researchers found that most peoples' friend lists were not very interconnected. In a friend list with a density of 1, everyone knows everyone. On Facebook the density is quite low at .12 with a maximum density of .42, which means that your chances of knowing a friend of a friend on Facebook fall between 12% and 42%. In its its S-1 filing on Wednesday, Facebook toted 100 billion friendships. What it probably meant to say was 100 billion connections, many of which are dormant.

"We suspect that Facebook networks are of lower density because of their ability to allow ties that might otherwise have gone dormant to remain persistent over time," the study says. Those ties that should have gone dormant are the people who you've Facebook friended from grade school, middle school, high school and other pubescent times in life. These are the people whose friend requests you naïvely and curiously accepted. This is where the Facebook "drama" potentially begins. "Facebook is a giant emotional locker," writes Andy Kessler on the Wall Street Journal.

"We expect that new Facebook users typically start with a core group of close, interconnected friends," the study says."But over time their friend list becomes larger and less intertwined, particularly as they discover (and are discovered by) more distant friends from different parts and different times in their lives."

The study also reports a curious finding: People are more likely to be friends with people who have more friends than they do. They are less likely to become friends with people who have less friends than them. Hence, the popular kid syndrome: Everyone wants to be friends with the popular kid, and few willingly try to buddy up with the loner who sits alone at lunch.

Tagging friends in Facebook photos is the only activity that the study says is associated with having more close ties. These people tend to be friends who the user interacts with both online and offline. This does not account for those awkward photo taggings that happen on the fly, without a user's permission. Lifehacker's Jason Chen argues that no, you shouldn't tag someone in a photo without their permission. For if someone is truly your friend on- and offline, they'll show some rexpect by first asking if you'd like to be tagged in the photo they're about to upload. When it comes to more innocuous taggings, such as a status update or photo, permission isn't completely necessary, but it's still quite welcome.

The study reinforces findings from past research, which suggest that heavy Facebook users are more trusting than others.

Images via Nikki Lynette's Facebook page and Shutterstock.

The world over is reacting to the fact that Facebook has now put a dollar value on 845 million users' personal data. Zuckerberg had something to say about it, too. About three hours after the IPO dropped, he posted a revealing photo to his Facebook page.

There's a common, understood practice in the Facebook culture. If a user gets feedback on a status update, they take a few minutes to go through and "like" some of the comments that their friends left. It shows recognition and approval of the comment, producing a feeling of momentary happiness in the user. It's even better than a smiley-face approval.

Zuck didn't "like" any of the comments that anyone posted. Notably, KuoChuan Chang, a user in Taipei, Taiwan, went through and liked quite a few of the comments that other Facebookers left Mark. Chang even shared the "Stay Focused & Keep Shipping" photo to his own page. For added emphasis, he decided to "like" it, too.

"Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society," Zuckerberg writes in his IPO letter. "Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness."

Zuckerberg is the man (er, boy) behind the technological side of Facebook. But when it comes to making "friends," he does not participate in the culture of Facebook that he helped create.

Beast photo via Zuckerberg's Facebook profile.

If you've read this far, you've probably already downloaded the app for your iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows phone, and are contemplating not reading the rest of this because you're too busy salivating over your next meal. Get ready for the complete food-pornification of Facebook, curated by you.

FoodSpotting is calling itself a "Pandora-like interface for discovering and rating dishes around you." Except the difference here is that Pandora would never spam your Facebook Timeline like FoodSpotting has the ability to do.

Eating is Social. Period.

Despite all our whining about food porn on the Web, there's something charming about FoodSpotting. As a user, I do want to know what my smart, interesting FoodSpotting friends are eating, why they're eating that, and if I should eat it, too. Eating is one of those inherently social activities. And the FoodSpotting app isn't creepy like many of the other 60-or-so Facebook social apps. The social aspect of food might overshadow the negative impact food porn photos could have on the social Web, and specifically Facebook. But do you really want your Facebook kingdom to look like this?

Photos courtesy of AmateurFoodPorn and Shutterstock.

That is because the residents of a certain complex in Menlo Park, California have been forced to stop running their mouths following Facebook's S-1 filing for an initial public offering yesterday. The Securities and Exchange Commission requires a "quiet period" for any company preparing to go public. It is a bit of karmic justice for the ruckus caused when a company files its S-1. Facebook will be allowed to communicate some information, but nothing that could possibly influence investors. For a company that values the free flow of information, you might think that would be a problem. For Facebook? Probably not.

"Non-reporting issuers are, at any time, permitted to continue to publish factual business information that is regularly released and intended for use by persons other than in their capacity as investors or potential investors," the SEC explainer page on the quiet period states.

In plainer English, that means that investors do not get any information regarding the financial performance and critical infrastructure of a company. Communications with non-investor entities is permitted.

What does that mean for Facebook? Business as usual, more or less. Mark Zuckerberg's company has never been one to flaunt its financial progress. Facebook put off its IPO for as long as possible in "the hacker way." It wants to create products to make the platform better for more people. Being beholden to investors has never been comfortable for Zuckerberg. In an interview with 60 Minutes in 2008, Zuckerberg laid out his notion of what it means to go public.

"Really what we are focused on is not that exit strategy, it is on how do we build just the best thing possible," Zuckerberg said. "As a private company we have that advantage of not having to report to the outside world all of our financials. This is something that I think burdens a lot of public companies, having to go through and publicly state exactly where they are spending their money and where they are making money forces them to focus on things that will make the company look good, as opposed to the things that are actually important to building, long term, a great product and a great company."

Facebook finally released those financial numbers yesterday though likely not because the company wanted to but rather because the SEC would eventually force it to do so. When that happens, a company can stay private with its financials exposed or move forwards with an IPO to build capital that will help it with liquid assets that can help it grow.

Yet, Zuckerberg's reluctance to go public should make Facebook's quiet period, well, quiet.

Two large technology companies laid the groundwork in 2011 for Facebook's announcement and registration with the SEC. Each is a stark difference from the other. LinkedIn filed its S-1 papers in June 2011. It showed solid, if unspectacular numbers. LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman held his tongue during the quiet period as Wall Street and the tech world dissected the S-1. When LinkedIn rung the bell and started trading publicly, its shares popped to levels that not many expected. It has stayed within that range since.

On the other hand, there is Groupon. Its S-1 was probably one of the more controversial business documents to be released in 2011 more or less because of the way it calculated revenue and company culture. Unlike LinkedIn, Groupon's CEO Andrew Mason could not help but chafe at the critics that tore up his company while he was forced to take it and be quiet. A "leaked" memo to the Groupon staff from Mason surfaced several months before the company started trading, a memo that later would be investigated by the SEC for breaking the quiet period rules.

What the quiet period means to the Facebook ecosystem is that business will continue as normal. Developers will get the information they need, users will be told about platform problems and updates. Facebook will likely not announce any major new products during the quiet period but expect a barrage of new verticals and innovations once the company finally does start trading, likely in June or July.

The inverse aspect of the quiet period for a company is that everybody not forced by the SEC to be quiet will be exceptionally loud. Take a look a Techmeme's top stories for today. The top 11 stories are Facebook IPO related.

After the luster from the S-1 blows off, the news coming out of Facebook will slow to a trickle. After the madness of the last 24 hours, everyone will be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

Including Facebook.