Kashgari was apprehended at the Kuala Lumpur airport Wednesday by the Malaysian authorities, at the request of Saudi Arabia, with whom Malaysia has no extradition treaty. Sunday morning, Saudi officials took custody of him at the airport and flew him back to Saudi Arabia in a private plane, according to a source close to the situation.

Kashgari's tweets were identified as blasphemous by members of the country's Wahhabist clerical establishment, including the "weeping cleric," Nasser Al-Omar. Their supporters piled on, racking up 30,000 tweets of their own in the next 24 hours, most calling for his prosecution and execution.

Malaysian newspaper, The Star, reported that a High Court judge "granted an interim order to lawyers representing (Kashgari), to bar his deportation by Malaysian authorities." It is uncertain whether the order was granted before or after Kashgari had left Malaysia. If after, it may have been a way to both assuage Saudi demands and public sentiment.

However Monday morning, Kashgari's lawyers "have filed a habeas corpus application against the Home Minister, Inspector-General of Police and two others to get a declaration that his arrest and deportation were unlawful."

Kashgari's crimes have been defined by Wahhabi religious courts as "apostasy," or rejection of Islam, which, in Saudi Arabia's religiously conservative courts, is punishable by death.

Both defenders of Kashgari and Saudi watchers believe the event was stage-managed by the Wahhabi establishment as a way to regain political ground lost when the head of the Saudi religious police was replaced by a moderate.

Malaysian Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein denied there was any court order delaying Kashgari's deportation. He also called the notion that the Saudi writer would be executed "ridiculous," the minister told a group of reporters on Saturday.

"This is a credible country that they are talking about, and allegations that 'blood is in my hand' and such for sending him back - were baseless," Hussein said.

Given that Saudi religious law is clear about the punishment for apostasy - it is death - and given the country's proven and persistent willingness to execute religious offenders, the fear seems far from ridiculous.

Justifying the return of the 23-year-old to Saudi hands, Hussein said, "The ministry will never let Malaysia to be perceived as a haven for terrorists, criminals and wanted person, who want to seek hiding."

Given his return to his home country, one of Kashgari's friends told us, "expect a very slow update since Saudi is an expert in media blackouts."

Kuala Lumpur and Riyadh photos courtesy of 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.

On Saturday, the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, Kashgari tweeted three times, expressing his religious beliefs about the founder of Islam. Within hours, he was inundated with violent threats. Despite a full renunciation, a warrant was issued by Kingdom authorities for his arrest and the Kingdom's religious Fatwa Council condemned him as an apostate and an infidel, crimes which are punishable by death.

According to one of Kashgari's friends, who wishes to remain anonymous, these are the three tweets which were the basis for the Saudi arrest warrant.

• On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you've always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you.
• On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more.
• On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.

Kashgari's Twitter account, @Hmzmz, has been shut down.

Kashgari's friend points out that these actions have come after a number of reversals for religious conservatives in the Wahhabi-influenced state. These include a law allowing women to work as salespeople in public lingerie stores, the replacement of the head of the religious police with a moderate, who ordered restrictions on how the religious police operate. It also happened within the context of the unrest of the Arab Spring.

Hashtags of Shame

Kashgari's harassment is not out of the blue, nor, apparently, based on these tweets alone. He has been the target of religious twitter users for months. "Public shaming through hashtags is now a common Saudi pressure tactic, especially against public officials and government scandals," said his friend.

A hardcore Saudi cleric used YouTube to post his condemnation of the young man. The cleric, Nasser al-Omar, known as the "weeping cleric" for his tendency to burst into tears at the blasphemy done to the Prophet, called for Kashgari to be hauled before a Sharia court, according to long-time Saudi blogger, Ahmad al-Omran (Saudi Jeans).

"These people [like Kashgari] should be put to trial in Sharia courts. It is known that cursing God and his Prophet is apostasy. And the fact that he has repented with cold words will not probably save him in the court."

Al-Omram's translation

The punishment for apostasy is death.

Saudi Arabia's information minister, has commanded that no one publish any of Kashgari's writings. Prior to this incident, he was a columnist with al-Bilad, a newspaper based in the eastern city of Jeddah.

"I have instructed all newspapers and magazines in the Kingdom not to allow him to write any thing and we will take legal measures against him."

Kashgari was trying to make a connecting flight to New Zealand when he was apprehended and arrested yesterday in Malaysia at the Kuala Lumpur airport. It has been reported that Malaysia, an officially Islamic state, will forcibly repatriate Kashgar to Saudi Arabia.

Building photos courtesy of Shutterstock

The app update section returns for the its fifth month and we found that fewer of our existing apps issued updates for new features or bug fixes than in months past. We also have a new treat in the Apps of the Month: a limited Staff Picks section where some of ReadWriteWeb's writers picked the apps they found most interesting during the month.

The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.

Vimeo (Free - iOS, Android)

As a video platform, Vimeo has always played second fiddle to YouTube. Yet, Vimeo does attract a more professional grade of videographer and often the contents of Vimeo are much more polished than the much uploaded to YouTube from millions of would-be Internet stars. Vimeo finally has a new app for iOS and Android and it is everything you would expect from the platform in terms of quality video and performance. Users can view videos, manage their accounts and upload all from one app. The Android version of Vimeo requires 2.3 Gingerbread or above.

Producteev (Free - iOS, Android)

Talk about cross-platform. Producteev is a task manager available for Macs and Windows PCs, iOS and Android, IM and email. It is basically everywhere. As a task manager, one of its best features is the ability to work offline so you can access your tasks and projects from everywhere. Imagine being an intern working on Capitol Hill in D.C. and stuck on the Metro Orange Line between Roslyn and Foggy Bottom (if you have never worked in D.C., that is where the train goes under the river and there is absolutely no cell reception) then the ability to access your tasks offline on your phone is tantamount. You can also invite other users into the projects within the app with its workspace feature. Business is going mobile.

Lanyrd (Free - m.Lanyrd.com)

We eventually envision that the cross-platform Apps of the Month section will be dominated by HTML5 mobile Web-based apps as opposed to those that happen to be released for both iOS and Android within the same month. So, we introduce our first HTML5-based Web app ever in this column with Lanyrd, the social conference directory. It made a big splash when we wrote about it for ReadWriteMobile on the last day of January and the community at Hacker News had a fairly robust discussion about how it was made and what its benefits are. The greatest benefit of Lanyrd's mobile Web app is that it utilizes HTML5 offline caching so you can get around any conference even when the Wi-Fi or cellular connection has gone kaput. While Lanyrd is a fairly simple and the UI leaves a bit to be desired, this is a great first step towards open standards and cross-platform deployment through the mobile browser.

Plex ($4.99 -- iOS, Android)

Plex for iOS actually came out for iOS in December but the Android version was released in January so we will give it a cross-platform designation. It is a media platform that runs across Windows, Mac and Linux. Install the Plex Server on your computer then download the app and all of your media (music, video, pictures) will be converted to mobile form through your myPlex app. Plex serves over 200 channels including Vimeo, YouTube, Revision3 and others. When attaching it to a Mac it can run content from iTunes, Aperture and iPhoto. Truly a simple and powerful media streaming app.

Zynga Poker (Free - iOS, Android)

It is what it is, as they say. Poker from social gaming company Zynga. This poker game is a little cooler on the geek factor though since it was written in HTML5 and then wrapped for the native platforms (a hybrid app). If you have ever played Zynga's poker app on Facebook, this will be no different except it has now gone mobile. Connect with friends, get some free chips and get your Texas Hold 'em' on.

Staff Picks

So, when I mentioned a "limited" Staff Picks section, I was being literal. Trying to get the busy ReadWriteWeb staff to put together one measly selection for Apps of the Month is like trying to pull the back hairs off an angry baboon. I promised I would shame the staff for not getting in their Apps of the Month selections by the deadline and I will continue doing so in this column until more than five staffers actually send me selections. They have a variety of excuses from "I didn't like the app I chose" to "I learn about new apps when you write about them." Bah! For a staff that writes about new applications and gets thousands of pitches a month on a variety of topics, you would think that picking one measly app would be easy enough to figure out.

Well, here are the staff selections we did get.

Jon Mitchell - Writer

The Ying to my Yang here at RWW, Jon had his App of the Month lined up weeks ago. Kudos, Mr. Mitchell.

Day One (Journal/Diary) ($1.99 - iOS)

Day One is my new journal. It supports tweeting and whatnot, but it's the best app for keeping things to myself that I've ever used. You can set daily reminders to write in it, or you can just dash off entries whenever it suits you. If you want to keep it secret, you can lock it with a passcode. Day One supports MultiMarkdown formatting, so you can make text bold, italic, and add links, too. Day One has been around for a while, but version 1.5, which launched this month, adds iCloud syncing. Now your journal is seamlessly synced between your iDevices, as well as the Mac app if you swing that way. It also supports Dropbox, if you'd prefer to sync there.

Robyn Tippins - Community Manager

Our intrepid community manager is a big gamer. You would not think of it coming from a mother with a thick Southern accent but if we ever open a RWGaming channel, Robyn would be our go-to resource.

Shogun: Rise of the Renegade (First mission is free on iOS, $1.99 to unlock the full game and the other missions.)

I'm a big fan of the games where you dodge unbelievably complex patterns of bullets and bombs, like Geometry Wars, so when I saw the screen grabs from this game I knew I'd probably enjoy it. In Shogun: Rise of the Renegade, you are fighting a warlord, the winner of World War IV. The premise is silly, but you don't play these games for a story. The graphics are retro-90s, the soundtrack is annoying but appropriate for the game type, the price is great, and other than the minor annoyance in weapon changing, it's a cool game. If you enjoy Japanese arcade games filled with lasers and 'bullet hell' situations, you'll enjoy this fun little game. Best part? It fits right into the iCade!

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier - Channels Writer

Joe came in with an app at the very last minute after I threatened a public shaming on the staff editorial call. I was ready to give him a pass since he has been traveling in Europe last week, but Zonker came through.

Wunderkit (Free - iPhone)

Wunderkit is a sort of social to-do manager. It's suitable for setting up a "Getting Things Done" type workflow for personal use, or you can invite friends and co-workers to join and share workspaces. It's a low-impact collaboration tool that might catch on, if a team is iPhone-equipped and heavily into social tools. For maximum features, like gettimg involved with other people's projects, you need to sign up for a $5 a month account. But that's far cheaper than a lot of other collaboration tools. Having just checked it out recently (it was released on January 31), I can't vouch for its effectiveness just yet, but it looks promising.

And back to our regularly scheduled program.

iPhone & iPad

Chasing Salander: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ($0.99, iPhone)

I break my own rules (that Apps of the Month need to be published in the month being written about) every so often for apps that came the month before that rock. Chasing Salander certainly fits into that category. It is an enhanced e-book of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo where you chase renegade Lisbeth Salander through 14 locations with a short reading and pictures. With over 100 new facts not found in the books or movies this is a great app for any fans of the Salander triology.

Yamaha NoteStar Sheet Music (Free - iPad)

Play the piano? Want to rock with your favorite band but do not have the sheet music to do it? NoteStar is a hands-free sheet music where you can play along with the band or have the keyboard section isolated to study it on your own. You can preview and purchase new music from within the app and Yamaha's screen flow feature provides automatic page turning in time with the music. The performance can be slowed or sped up depending on your learning limits. If I knew absolutely anything about playing the piano, this would seem like a great place to learn new songs.

iTunes U 2.0 (Free, iPad/iPhone)

Apple called for a mysterious press conference in the middle of January in New York City. It was actually a cruel thing to do to the poor Apple Fan Boys of the world because they all got excited that a new iPad was coming down the pipeline. No such luck. What Apple did announce was its new textbook initiative that makes courses available online through the iPhone or iPad from universities across the world. As a general concept this is cool stuff, but there has been controversy over Apple iBooks End User License Agreement and if it is even legal to proceed in the fashion that Apple has. Our Marshall Kirkpatrick called iTunes U 2.0, "not perfect, just awesome."

SoulCalibur ($11.99 - iPhone/iPad)

I used to play the classic SoulCalibur game on the ill-fated DreamCast at my neighbors house in my early adult years. Outside of some golf pro and business apps, graphic intensive games are the most expensive on the iOS platform. Normally I will add the expensive games in Apps of the Month because they good examples of the capabilities of smartphones and tablets but not download the actual apps. I decided to bite the bullet and spend the $11.99 on SoulCalibur because it was the greatest fighting game ever.

Numberlys ($5.99 - iPhone/iPad)

One of the greatest things about the mobile revolution is that the nature of storytelling is fundamentally changing. It is dynamic, interactive and visually appealing like never before. Numberlys might be the greatest example yet. It is a game, a mystery, a story, a learning adventure. it is a depiction of the origins of the alphabet told through numbers. Our Jon Mitchell reviewed the app; " It's an interactive tale with a massive visual scope appropriate for people of all sizes. Its stark, soaring black-and-white aesthetic draws on Fritz Lang's Metropolis to tell the story of five characters' quest to create the alphabet in a world run by numbers."

Congressional Records App (Free - iPad)

This is an impressive app from the Library of Congress. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. This is the daily edition of The Congressional Record on your iPad using data from Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office. Browse by date (going back to 1995), share via email, read as a PDF and identify the latest bills put forth on the House and Senate floors. Great for politicos trying to catch up on activity, student researchers, interns, lawyers, pundits and lobbyists.

Android

Wikipedia (Free)

You would think that one of the largest Web services in the world would have already released an Android app. Wikipedia finally came to Android in January. It is fairly self-explanatory. Search, save for later reading, share with the Android share function. All the good encyclopedia knowledge that you need in the comfort of your pocket.

ViBe (Free)

ViBe is caller ID with vibration patterns. Choose a contact, set a vibration pattern for that person and know from the feel of the movement in your pocket who is calling you without looking at your phone. This is so weird that I think it might be one of the coolest things ever. If your phone is on silent at work, in a meeting, at a conference, while on a date, know who is contacting you based on the pattern. I am trying to figure out how the studio, Base2Apps, dreamed this up but it has become one of the more useful apps in my Android collection. One of the notable uses is for blind or deaf people that cannot see or hear their phones ring. "We're passionate about deaf advocacy," the Android Market page states.

Jotly (Free)

Rate everything. Like, really, everything. Go social, local and mobile (ack, dare I say it? mocial.) Jotly is actually a parody app of the often absurd world of apps and startups and their obsession with memes, rankings and just. being. social. It is not directly supposed to be a parody of Kevin Rose's Oink, but it kind of is anyway. It came to Android in January and just the Android Market page (linked above) is hilarious. "Move around freely. Jotly will automatically go where your phone does." Or better, "Find the best and worst things at any place. Like ducks? Jotly will show you big and little ducks." You know all those wonderfully sarcastic people you find on the InterWebs? They are kicking it on Jotly.

Dragon Go! (Free)

Dragon Go! from Nuance is new to Android in January. It came out for iOS in November. It is a voice-activated search app that gives Siri a run for its money and puts would-be Android contenders like Iris to shame. The tagline is " Just Say it, Get it and Go!" Search for local shopping, movie tickets and more. Connected to 200+ channels on the Web like ESPN, YouTube, Ask.com and more, it is a good search app from the developers at Nuance.

Decide (Free)

Last night a startup friend and I debated the merits of local shopping with an entrepreneur looking for seed funding for a mobile, social commerce app. It is a really tough space to get into. A good reason for that is apps like Decide. Decide is an app that helps you figure out if you want to buy the newest consumer electronics gadget on the market. At the store doing research on some fancy new tablet? Ask the Decide app if it is worth it or not and the app will give you a "Buy Now" or "Wait" instruction. Scan the barcode or a QR code and Decide will look up the gadget, give you price information and tell you if it is worth spending money on.

Embark (Free -- NYC, San Francisco and D.C.)

Embark is a series of public transportation apps that help you navigate a new city. Cannot figure out how to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn? (I never can, unless I am going to DUMBO.) Or maybe you performed the impossible and got lost on BART in San Francisco? What about conditions on the Orange Line in D.C? Embark provides train schedules, route planning and interactive maps for travelers who have lost their way.

Screenshot: Embark D.C. Metro

Notable Updates

It is always important to remember to go into your device and update apps on a regular basis. Updates provide new functionality, performance and security upgrades and make sure that the bugs from the last version have been taken care of.

Notable iOS Updates:

• Rage HD, Pandora Radio, Order & Chaos Online, Fishing Joy HD, HeyStaks, XFinity TV, Angry Birds Rio, IMDb, Powder Monkeys, Infinity Blade, Instagram, Zite, Netflix, Opera Mini, ShowYou, Path, Project Slice, Fanhattan for iPad, Kibits, Evernote, Square, Groupon HD, NBC Player, Epicurious, Urban Crime, Google Books, Hulu Plus, Rdio, Flixster, SoulCalibur, CNN for iPad, The Wall Street Journal, iBooks, Hipmunk, Slacker Radio.

Notable Android Updates:

• AirSync by DoubleTwist, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, Barcode Scanner, ESPN ScoreCenter, Evernote, Facebook, Fandango, Firefox, Foursquare, Google Goggles, Google Maps, Google Music, LevelUp, LinkedIn, Lookout Security, Match.com, Norton Mobile Utilities, Flixster, News360, OpenTable, Opera Mobile, PewPew, Rdio, SketchBook Mobile, The Weather Channel, WordPress, Words With Friends, E*Trade Mobile, Google Voice, NPR News, Path.

In total, Amazon Prime will have over 15,000 videos available for streaming, including some very popular television shows. Amazon launched its video streaming service about a year ago with 5,000 videos. With today's announcement, that number is now tripled.

Wired's Tim Carmody argued recently that Amazon is particularly well-positioned to emerge as a such a competitor, not only to Netflix but to cable television as well.

Amazon Prime still has some growing to do, and for now the service is tied to Amazon's free shipping service of the same name. GigaOm's Ryan Lawler argues that unbundling the two and launching a stand-alone streaming service could make the service an even stronger contender for Netflix's throne as king of this space.

It's worth keeping in mind that Amazon Prime Instant Video only launched in February of last year. Netflix has been around since 1997 and launched its Watch Instantly streaming feature in 2007. Amazon is rising fast, and its clear that digital content is a growing priority for the company, especially now that its also sells its own media tablet.

Unless, of course, you're a presidential candidate and his campaign staff. We asked expert Web designers to evaluate the major presidential candidates' campaign Web sites. The candidates got okay, but not great, marks. And in a year when social media and mobile technology could play a role in the election, okay may not be good enough.

What follows is a look at how each candidate's Web site did on overall site design, content and presentation, and mobile functionality.

Overall Site Quality

Barack Obama

The incumbent's site uses some modern Web design technology, including HTML5, proper CDN asset storage, microformats and semantically named elements. The site is "very well put together" with "lots of newfangled tricks like Modernizer and Jquery," according Udell.

"Obama's polished, mobile friendly site is no surprise," Udell said. "He's had the 
longest to prepare. He also was a big proponent of opensource software in
his last campaign."

Mitt Romney

Romney's site is heavy on video content and makes links to social media engagement prominent. The site uses some antiquated techniques to track location, but overall it works well.

"Romney's social media badging is pervasive and obvious. No mistaking 
it for anything else here," Udell said. It would be nice to see the share icons use a 
light window rather than a full browser redirect, but it's acceptable and
 easy enough to use."

Newt Gingrich

The former House Speaker's site doesn't use HTML5 and has fewer calls to action and chances for visitors to share social content as Romeny's site. Gingrich, like every other GOP candidate, has a site that is not optimized for mobile. The site is accessible on a smartphone, but requires lots of scrolling and zooming to navigate.

While Udell said the lack of social media icons made it cleaner than some of the other sites, overall the site's "aesthetic is the least
 contemporary."

Rick Santorum

Tuesday's big caucus winner uses generic Facebook and Twitter widgets on his site, which draw away from a visually well-designed site. The site has an "interesting, mature color theme. It's red, white and bue, but very 
deep and not typical," Udell said.

But the pros stop there. In addition to not having a site enhanced for mobile viewers, Santorum uses some rather primitive Web design techniques.

"Using tables for layouts?" Udell said. "Really? It's 2012!"

Ron Paul

Paul is the only candidate to not use Drupal, instead opting for WordPress in his site design. And unlike the other candidates, Paul's site is text heavy, opting to stay on message with lots of text as opposed to video and photo content.

Content and Presentation

Barack Obama: Obama's campaign staff makes use of a lot of inforgraphics to make key policy arguments - a wise move, according to Nathan Hunt, founder of Dressler, a digital strategy and design firm in
 New York City.

The site "also uses infographic-like design to maintain a consistent 
design theme throughout," Hunt said. "This is the design equivalent of being disciplined 
and staying 'on-message'."

Mitt Romney: Hunt gives points to Romney's design team for having a clear sense of how to effectively use the Web. Romeny is photogenic, and the site puts that quality to good use. Hunt was most impressed with the "Caucus For Mitt Tool" which gives supporters specific and immediate directions on how they can help the candidate.

Newt Gingrich: The content presentation is confusing. The type is too big (perhaps it was chosen with elderly visitors in mind, Hunt said), and a righthand navigation bar draws the eye away from the content.

"Rather than establish a clear hierarchy of
 communication, this site attempts to yell everything at once," Hunt said.

Rick Santorum: Hunt's analysis of the site was pointed.

"This looks like something that someone's nephew designed," he said. "In truth, it is
 probably a template website that someone downloaded and adapted for the 
campaign."

Ron Paul: Paul's site has lots of text, but it also could have used a good editor and a style guide. All CAPS and italics are used with no rhyme or reason, and there are awkward combinations of serif and sans serif fonts.

"A lot of decisions
 seem to have been made just to 'look cool'," Hunt said. "While it does look cool, digital
 is about functionality, not just appearance."

Mobile

Barack Obama: The President's Web designers did a good job of making a site that works well on iPhones, but Aaron Maxwell, founder of Mobile Web Up, found some errors when he tried to access the site on Blackberry Torch, Android and Windows Phone 7.

"The Obama designers chose to use a responsive web design to create a single
 set of pages adaptable to different screen widths," Maxwell said. "It looks like 
they focused on really polishing the mobile view for iOS, but allowed
errors to slip in on other mobile platforms."

Mitt Romney: The former Massachusetts governor is the only Republican candidate who has a Web site optimized for viewing on mobile devices. But Maxwell found problems similar to those he found when viewing Romney's site outside of iOS. Like Obama's site, Romney's had certificate errors when viewed in Blackberry Torch and was unviewable in Windows Phone 7. "This 
is a flaw in their device detection - though a minor one, given how small
 WP7's market share is at the moment," Maxwell said.

Gingrich, Santorum and Paul do not have sites optimized for viewing on mobile devices.

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.

"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.

Today, popular BitTorrent index BTjunkie shut itself down to preempt legal action of the type experienced by the Pirate Bay, Megaupload and others. The seven-year-old site may not have been squashed directly by authorities, but it is nonetheless good news for the RIAA, MPPA and other opponents of online piracy.

Separately, the Swedish Supreme Court recently upheld the sentences of three Pirate Bay cofounders who were convicted of copyright infringement in 2009.

Battling Piracy in a Post SOPA-World

Apparently by pure coincidence, the Megaupload shutdown came one day after large-scale online protests against SOPA and PIPA, the proposed anti-piracy legislation. The timing of the crackdown raised a few eyebrows, as well as questions about why SOPA would have been necessary in the first place.

SOPA and PIPA may be shelved for the time being, but the war between the content industry and the parts of the Internet that they perceive to encourage copyright infringement is far from over. The next battle may be legislative, or it may rely on civil or criminal law. In some cases, the aftershocks of previous strikes will be enough to shake other perceived enemies from their positions, as happened in the cases of BTjunkie and FileSonic.

The counterstrikes in these battles have come in occasionally dramatic flavors such as the DDoS attacks from Anonymous that followed the Megaupload shutdown. More subtle - and far more powerful - is the mass migration of users from one service to another as authorities engage in what appears to be one giant game of Internet whack-a-mole.

There have been recent successes, but the very nature and structure of the Internet raises questions about the longterm effectiveness of this approach. As we saw with SOPA, any attempt to tinker with that structure will be met with fierce resistance.

Photo by Mike Baird.

All three authors make good points, and they are points worth considering for anyone invested in a digital life. But they also brought to mind Reason magazine's June 2004 cover story - a remarkably poignant preview of the world we now live in. It was also a reminder that a lot of us are okay with the amount of information we choose to share online, and many of us even benefit from giving marketers, friends and co-workers a more complete picture of who we are.

"Living in a database nation raises innumerable privacy concerns. But it also makes life easier and more prosperous," he said. "We may have kissed privacy goodbye -- and good riddance, too."

Some of the points raised in the Reason article seem dated nearly eight years later. But the basic premise from the Libertarian journal of political and economic thought remains essentially the same, whether we're talking about data collected by supermarket loyalty programs in 2004 or Facebook in 2012: "It's easy to complain about a subjective loss of privacy. It's more difficult to appreciate how information swapping accelerates economic activity. Like many other aspects of modern society, benefits are dispersed, amounting to a penny saved here or a dollar discounted there. But those sums add up quickly," Declan McCullagh wrote in the 2004 cover story.

When Is The Last Time You Actually Read A Privacy Policy?

Businesses gathering information on customers and potential customers, as well as employees and potential employees, is nothing new. Mediterranean merchants relied on a social network in the 11th century to track dishonest merchants selling their goods in foreign ports, and, more recently, in 1766, Adam Smith "stressed the importance of a positive reputation, which necessarily means that others have access to information about your past actions and therefore feel they can predict your future behavior."

What we fear now is not the fact that companies collect the data, but that they collect so much more of it with much greater ease. And we're also rightfully concerned about who has access to all that data. Most of us have made peace with the idea of SafeWay knowing we prefer chocolate chip over pistachio ice cream, and appreciate the coupons we get for our favorite flavor. But what happens when that data is sold to our health insurer, who ups our premium after deciding we're at risk for hypertension because of our ice cream consumption?

This is why it becomes important to read those privacy agreements most of us ignore. Frequent check-ins at your favorite pizza place on a restaurant review site may earn you a badge and a number one rating on the site, but is that virtual prize worth it if the site turns that data over to your health insurer? It doesn't matter if you only go to the pizza place because you like their garden salad (with low-fat dressing on the side), and your insurer won't necessarily know you run 20 miles a week unless you're also checking in at the gym on a regular basis.

Striking A Balance Between Privacy And Innovation

None of the Times' writers outright suggest legislation as a remedy for diminshing privacy, although Somini Sengupta's look at privacy laws in Europe comes close to advocating such a position, noting that every European country, as well as Canada, Australia and many Latin American countries have laws governing the use of online data. At the very least, there's an anti-business and, by extension, anti-innovation, tone in his news analysis.

"Europe has come to the conclusion that none of the companies can be trusted," Simon Davies, the director of the London-based nonprofit Privacy International, told Sengupta. "The European Commission is responding to public demand. There is a growing mood of despondency about the privacy issue."

Sengupta's article does not, however, mention that in the United States the civil court system has dealt with egregious privacy law violations not addressed by existing legislation. Likewise, Andrews's op-ed notes that 93% of us, according to polls, think that Internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information, without noting that those polls never present the privacy question against the backdrop of more privacy may very well mean higher costs and less innovation.

As a Libertarian journal, Reason predictably took the stance that protecting privacy is largely a matter of personal responsibility. But it's a message that bears repeating now. It's a safe bet that the people most concerned with privacy - the domestic abuse victims and the Syrian dissidents mentioned by privacy advocate Rebecca MacKinnon mentions in Sengupta's article - have taken steps to protect their personal information. And if they haven't, whose fault is it?

"If you have a democratic society, the point is not to say whatever is good for the majority is all we need," MacKinnon said.

But turning her argument around, does that mean whatever is needed for the minority is good for the rest of us?

Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.

On Jan 4, the "Shit Girls Say" meme was radically transformed. New York-based graphic designer & video blogger Franchesca Ramsey a.k.a. Chescaleigh unleashed "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls", and it blew up the Internet. In the video, Ramsey plays her blonde-haired white friend who she portrays as curiously confused, and innocently ignorant. "Why isn't there a white entertainment television? The Jews were slaves too, and you don't hear us complaining all the time," Chescaleigh-as-white-girl asks the camera. Her white friend is completely unaware of fundamental cultural and racial differences between her and her black friend. It's these awkward moments that fuel the humor in this viral video.

When Franchesca appeared on Anderson Cooper a few days after the video blew up, Cooper asked *the question* that mainstream media was dying to know: Is the video racist?

"I don't think that talking about ignorance is racist," Franchesca tells Cooper. "And like I said, I'm not labeling anyone racist because that would infer that the statements were saying someone was better than another race - and that's not what any of the statements are doing." Shortly after her Anderson Cooper appearance, Franchesca produced a sequel, "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls Part 2."

Soon, more "Shit X Says to Y" versions of the meme began to appear. "Shit White Girls Say to Brown (Desi/Indian) Girls" features an Indian woman portraying her white girlfriend, who asks questions like "Do you want to go to 7-11? Oh oops, is that racist?" It is cutting, and points to some of the underlying racism that Indian-Americans experience regularly.

In "Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls," actor/comedian Cindy Fang dresses in drag, playing a white dude and points out some of the obnoxious, arrogant statements that some white guys say to Asian women. "Sorry, I have a hard time telling Asians apart," she says, with a tone that conveys how the white guy she is portraying doesn't feel like trying to educate himself. He is blissful in his ignorance. And then, a blatantly, unapologetically racist statement: "Why do they call it Bangkok? They should call it Bang Pussy!!!"

Of course, it's just comedy - and the talented Fang masterfully exaggerates these statements to hammer home the crass, yet serious jokes. "Shit White Guys Say to Asian Girls" takes swipes at sex and race relations. It's almost as upsetting as "Shit Asian Girls Say," another version of the original "Shit Girls Say" meme.

In Latoya Peterson's blog post "Exploring the Problematic and Subversive Shit People Say [Meme-ology]" on Racialicious, she notes that it isn't until "Shit Black Gays Say" (and part 2) and "Shit Southern Gay Guys Say" that the viewer starts to see the performer's subjective interpretation of themselves.

"It's notable that these videos are the principals representing themselves (as opposed to someone else's interpretation of them), perhaps since these groups are still so invisible in the public eye that no one else but them could speak to their experience," writes Peterson.

How "Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls" Shifted the Conversation

"There's a way in which the meme format allows for more granular renditions of identity than you often see in mass culture," says Professor Russo.

Chescaleigh's video shifted the focus from the narrator as subject to the narrator as a vehicle for social critique. Now X is saying something to Y. Other iterations of the meme show X speaking for themselves, or portraying the stereotypical subject in drag. "Shit White Girls Say...to Arab Girls" follows the same format as Chescaleigh's video - a white girl gets to hear how she sounds to her Arab friends.

"Do you know the guy at the liquor store? I mean, I assume you guys all know each other," says the Arab girl portraying her white friend in "Shit White Girls Say...to Arab Girls". "I've never met one of you before! I mean, I've seen Arabs on TV...on the news. Was 9/11 your fault?"

"Friendly Prejuidice"

Writing for The Guardian, Thea Lim points out that the statements in all of these videos imply a sort of "friendly prejudice":

What's friendly prejudice? The most common defence of racism is: "But I didn't intend to be racist." This response relies on the idea that if we didn't intend to offend someone, then their feelings can't possibly be hurt. The Shit X Says to Y videos are delightfully validating because they show that those with the genuinely lovely intentions of being your friend and seeking commonality with you can still be rude and hurtful.

A commenter on the NPR story that questioned if Franchesca's video was "racist" tried the good ol' "role reversal" trick (that always fails), which attempts to deny the existence of white privilege. "If the roles were reversed...Jesse [Jackson] & [Al] Sharpton, would be involved, lawsuits filed, perhaps riots...". Says Lim:

The reason why relationships between white and non-white people, or straight people and gay people are fraught, is because of our history - long gone, recent or ongoing. Racist, homophobic or simply thoughtless comments are insulting not just in and of themselves, but because they are a bilious reminder of the times when straight, white people have dehumanised and denied other groups their human rights. Of course, non-white and gay people can say nasty or even prejudicial things to white and straight people, but those things don't deliver the sting that comes from decades of being on the wrong end of an unequal relationship.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I have watched my friends react to these videos with anger and sadness. I have seen other friends shout "That's me! That totally happened to me." Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. The most important aspect of these videos, however, is that people are actually reacting to them, and sharing them with their friends. They're easy conversation starters, a segue into sharing painful experiences past and present.

We all have culturally biased perspectives and cultural baggage. No one comes to the table without their past experiences. The "Shit X Says to Y" iteration of the "Shit People Say" meme forces everyone to acknowledge this. At least humor helps everyone move through the initial strange moments that could lead into meaningful conversations about this meme.

But are we ready for this?

In her post on Racialicous, Peterson points out that, still, "Shit Girls Say" and "Shit Black Girls Say" received a lot more views than their "Shit X Says to Y" social commentary videos. "Maybe that's because, as a culture, we are accustomed to laughing at stereotypes," writes Peterson, "but we aren't prepared to unpack how we perpetuate them."

After a few weeks of Internet madness, the noise died down. Conversations about this meme started to feel stale. The Internet went back to its usual, easy, Twitter-rific type humor. I started seeing these videos on my Facebook news feed: "Shit New Yorkers Say" and "Shit Chicagoans Say." But it's only a matter of time before things start up again.

Image via Chescaleigh's Facebook page.

With the rise of social TV and the first-ever 2,800-square-foot social media command center, fans who have trekked down to Indianapolis and people at Super Bowl parties across the country can now opt to have a super-connected experience.

This marks the first time that the NFL has partnered with a Super Bowl host city. Like a Midwestern truck stop that has a restaurant, convenience store, bathrooms, random coin-operated claw games (that you can't ever win) and gas, the Super Bowl social media command center seeks to be all things to all football fans. Receive mobile updates about navigating the city. The Super Bowl Social Media Command center will answer your Twitter (@superbowl2012) and Facebook questions. Follow the blog here. It's the customer service center of your Friday Night Lights dreams.

The Super Bowl is a Social TV Event

Various social TV apps are already available for Facebook. Entertainment social network GetGlue gives users an opportunity to check-in to sports events. ConnecTV is another free social platform that serves as a "second screen," which means users can talk to friends while watching the Super Bowl. Users can sync shows, and then watch them with their friends while chatting in real-time.

The Super Bowl seems to be making up for the lack of social media at the London 2012 Olympics. In fact, not one of the Olympic volunteers can make a comment about the games without permission, according to Sysomos. At Super Bowl 2012, expect the exact opposite.

The irony of hearing Bruce utter those words at the beginning of the call is that, no, they were not the only people listening in. Somehow, members of Anonymous managed to tap into the call, record it and then post it online for all to hear. The subject of the conversation? Tracking and arresting online activists and hackers, such as those who secretly associate with Anonymous.

It appears that whoever gained unauthorized access to the call was able to do so because they were privy to an email invitation containing the call-in details. Whether somebody forwarded it to the infiltrator or, more likely, they directly intercepted it themselves, that message was all they needed to join the call and quietly listen to the FBI and UK law enforcement discuss sensitive matters.

Nothing too groundbreaking is revealed in the call, but the mere existence of such a breach suggests that more sensitive information could be exposed, if it hasn't already been.

Not only this is embarrassing for law enforcement, but it ought to send a wake-up call to any other organizations that conduct business via conference call. With many services, all a competitor or other third party would need to get access to the call is a copy of the original email invite.

In the wake of the historic failure in the House of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was co-authored by Rep. Smith and sponsored by Rep. Wasserman-Schultz, a newly empowered, and enlarged, wave of protesters aims to stop any bill that would leverage popular sentiment to force ISPs to retain customer data for use by government.

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section... Access to a record or information required to be retained under this subsection may not be compelled by any person or other entity that is not a governmental entity.

Missing from this bill is any type of mechanism for law enforcement agencies to seek a court order. Instead, H.R. 1981 uses very broad language to open up the ISP's database of subscriber information to "a governmental entity." Such language refrains even from restricting access to law enforcement entities.

In a statement to the press at the time the bill was introduced last July, Rep. Smith characterized the omission of a court order provision in the bill as a feature, going so far as to suggest that, in the course of conducting investigations against suspected child pornographers, courts tend to merely get in the way.

"H.R. 1981 enables law enforcement officials to successfully locate and prosecute those who want to hurt our children," Smith stated. "Often, the only way to identify a pedophile who operates a Web site or exchanges child pornography images with other pedophiles is by an Internet Protocol address. Law enforcement officials must obtain a subpoena and then request from the Internet Service Provider the name and address of the user of the IP address. Unfortunately, Internet Service Providers regularly purge these records, making it difficult if not impossible for investigators to apprehend child pornographers on the Internet. H.R. 1981 directs ISPs to retain Internet Protocol addresses to assist federal law enforcement officials with child pornography and other Internet investigations."

Although the bill itself does not mention the possibility of extending the database to "other Internet investigations" by "a government entity," the American Civil Liberties Union pounced on the proposed legislation immediately. It also suggested that the creation of the database itself may give ISPs a green light to do something it says they've been wanting to do anyway: track and profile Web users' habits.

As the Union's Christopher Calabrese wrote, "The ACLU has long been concerned about companies that follow us around the Web and track our viewing habits for the purposes of advertising. They use this tracking to build personal profiles about us that can be widely shared. Forcing companies to retain data for long periods would bolster this practice. It would also make it much easier for the government to track everything we do online. No company would be able to promise not to record your visit - that would be barred by law. Respect for your anonymity online would be a thing of the past."

But one other potential defect of the bill as written - which, amid the less technical issues, may have been missed - has to do with IP addresses themselves. There's considerable legal precedent supporting the principle that an IP address cannot be used to identify a person. It may be used to identify a computer used by a person. Or it could identify a phone, or more often these days, a proxy that the very class of subjects the bill would target might use to anonymize their online sessions. Conceivably, a defendant could argue, with plenty of evidence to back him up, that an IP address is not enough to link an Internet session with a person.

At any rate, this afternoon the advocacy group Demand Progress reports that an online petition for opponents of H.R. 1981 has garnered over 70,000 signatures thus far. The petition cites a statement from Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D - Mich.), which reads, "The bill is mislabeled. This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It's creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes."

In its S-1 filing today, Facebook outlined a litany of risks for the company going forward. Monetizing the mobile user base in a system dominated by its competitors will be a major challenge going forward. Diversifying its portfolio away from its reliance on advertising will be a big task, one that Google has never quite figured out. We take a deep dive into Facebook's risk factors below.

Jump to:

What Are the Risks?

Facebook's risks are fundamentally tied to the fact that nearly 85% of the company's revenue is related to advertising. When most of your assets are tied to one cash vertical, any fluctuations can lead to dramatic swings in performance. Facebook also has concerns with competition, global expansion, infrastructure and retaining top talent. Here is the summary breakdown from the prospectus, with the exception of some specific stock risks.

We enlisted Antone Johnson, founder of the Bottom Line Law Group to help with the analysis of Facebook's risk factors. Johnson is a respected Silicon Valley lawyer who has spent 15 years representing technology and media companies. He was vice president of legal affairs at eHarmony as well as assistant general counsel to Intermix Media, which included serving as director of business and legal affairs at Myspace, culminating in the company's $650 million sale to Fox.

Johnson on Facebook's reliance on advertising:

"Main story here is the drop from 98% to 85% of revenue being generated by advertising. Obviously a good risk mitigation approach to diversify with revenue from virtual goods, etc. Again, mobile jumps out as an important theme; given they admittedly don't make ad revenue from mobile users, this could be a significant headwind for FB in coming years as smartphones become near-universal and people become accustomed to using them as their primary means of accessing social media.

"The rest of this risk factor is par for the course."

Mobile

According to the S-1, around half of Facebook's users access the website through mobile devices. Facebook has a robust mobile presence and it iterates its native apps constantly. As an advertising-based business, Facebook has a distinct problem here.

It does not serve ads in its mobile apps.

Facebook has 425 million monthly active users on its mobile platform as of December 2011. Mobile is rapidly becoming a replacement for personal computers and that threatens Facebook's advertising model. The key for Facebook will be to turn mobile users into mobile dollars.

"They are forthcoming about the challenges," Johnson said. "No revenue currently generated from mobile advertising; unclear how much mobile use could be monetized; failure to solve this puzzle combined with a dramatic shift toward mobile usage could be a serious problem for FB; and per the next risk factor, they don't control the iOS and Android platforms. Frankly, if there were one thing that persuaded me not to invest in FB (given the growth assumptions built into current valuation), this would be it."

As we have written before, Facebook iterates constantly. Its philosophy in mobile is to "move fast, break things and fix things fast," the company's managing engineer for mobile, Dave Fetterman, said at Facebook's f8 developer conference last September.

"Being able to write it once today and ship it tomorrow? That is something that Facebook is really good at and that we love doing and that is at the center of being able to move fast," Fetterman said.

Now that Facebook is a public company, will it be able to keep that mentality? When things break, that directly affects a company's stock price.

Reliance on Mobile Platforms

Facebook also has the problem that it does not control the mobile platforms that carry its app. That means part of Facebook's prosperity is tied to the stability of Apple's iOS, Android, BlackBerry etc.

Many of the major technology companies are dependent on the others. The Big Five (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon) have something of an incestuous relationship. Each is a pillar that supports a much larger structure. When one of those pillars is weakened, another may become stronger but the overall ecosystem may suffer. This is exemplified in Facebook's mobile predicament.

"The best way to view this might be as the 'Google Risk Factor,' and I think recent Android sales/market share figures must have FB running scared. Apple has never been a significant player in social and seems unlikely to be anytime soon," Johnson said.

Elaborating, Johnson compares the Google/Facebook relationship to the trouble caused when Microsoft built Internet Explorer into Windows in the late 1990s and how that affected the biggest player at the time, Netscape.

"'Any changes in such systems that degrade our products' functionality or give preferential treatment to competitive products' presumably means Android being optimized for G+ in every iteration going forward, giving it unfair advantages vs FB mobile. (Shades of Microsoft building IE into Windows years ago?) It would probably raise some serious antitrust concerns, but the wheels of antitrust enforcement turn so slowly that it might not matter much in the end (as was the case with Microsoft and Netscape)."

Competition

Right next to reliance on advertising, one of the biggest risk factors is the fact that Facebook faces a vibrant social ecosystem that wants to chip away at the company's user base. Google+ and Twitter are both mentioned in the S-1 while other entities worldwide, such as Orkut, could hinder Facebook growth.

The way Facebook defines itself in the S-1 is directly correlated to how it describes the competition. More or less, that means the denizens at Google at this stage.

"Competition is always a highly ranked risk factor, in this case the broad range of what FB considers competitive is striking," Johnson said. "This is also the second 'Google Risk Factor' with references made to G+, Orkut, 'Google Search plus Your World,' Android, and war chests for acquisitions (presumably Google and Microsoft's). International competition plays a greater role than I would have expected, but it make sense given how much of FB's growth in recent years has been driven by international."

User Growth, Retention and Revenue

Facebook's first bullet point in its risks section is the ability to retain users and get them to spend more time on the site. While Facebook is the dominant social platform on the Web, its position as the top dog is not guaranteed in the long run. Look at what happened to Myspace.

Johnson's analysis:

"'We anticipate that our active user growth rate will decline over time' reflects the 'law of large numbers' - i.e., don't expect metrics to grow at these rates forever. This is a common-sense observation. What will be interesting is how FB responds. 'To the extent our active user growth rate slows, our business performance will become increasingly dependent on our ability to increase levels of user engagement in current and new markets.' That suggests FB is rightly focused on increasing site engagement per user over time rather than merely squeezing more revenue out of each user through aggressive monetization tactics. This language sends the right message that FB is focused on the product/user experience long-term and is willing to trade off short-term monetization against that principle.

"The striking contrast here is MySpace. I didn't see this myself because I left in August 2006, but many MySpace execs who stuck around longer argue the UX was degraded and ultimately ruined post-News Corp. acquisition because the mandate to hit revenue targets undermined the product itself. This risk factor might as well go on to name MS explicitly the way it continues, 'A number of other social networking companies that achieved early popularity have since seen their active user bases or levels of engagement decline, in some cases precipitously.'"

Zynga and the Zynga Ecosystem

When Zynga filed for its IPO, we noted that the company was overly-reliant on Facebook for all of its revenue. We also wondered why Facebook does not just buy Zynga. That would eliminate this entire risk category. Well, the inverse is also true. Right now, Zynga drives about 12% of Facebook's revenue. Zynga is important to Facebook in two aspects: direct advertising revenue and payments. Much of Facebook's Credits program is tied to games and Zynga is the largest provider of games to Facebook. Overall, Zynga contributes 80% to Facebook Credits revenue.

Zynga is not exactly a company conquering the world right now. Its own stock has been more or less flat since it went public, its management has been criticized heavily and, outside of a few major hits like Mafia Wars and Words With Friends, many of its titles are lackluster. It is also in Zynga's best interest to diversify its portfolio and rely less on Facebook. That will include its own mobile strategies, websites and social platforms like Google+.

Zynga is also indicative of the third-party ecosystem that Facebook relies upon. The growth of the Facebook application ecosystem ties in with the company's ability to grow the platform and monetize each user either through ads or payments.

"Much of this just sounds like variations on the theme of trading off user experience vs. monetization - in this case through viral promotion of social gaming," Johnson said. "The wording, 'We are continuously seeking to balance the distribution objectives of our Platform developers with our desire to provide an optimal user experience, and we may not be successful in achieving a balance that continues to attract and retain Platform developers' suggests that users will always win (probably wise) at the expense of developers. Reliance on Zynga apps for Payments revenue is also a theme."

The Zuckerberg Effect

To its credit, Facebook recognizes that its mercurial CEO is one of its biggest assets and could be one of its biggest detriments. Zuckerberg owns the single biggest majority of Facebook's post-IPO stock and hence has a great degree of control over what the company does. With that comes a fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders. We will see how well he handles that responsibility.

"As a stockholder, even a controlling stockholder, Mr. Zuckerberg is entitled to vote his shares, and shares over which he has voting control as a result of voting agreements, in his own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally," the report states.

"This may be the first time in history a sole founder has had this degree of enduring voting power over a company going public at such a size and valuation -- not just for the foreseeable future, but beyond the grave," Johnson said. "I'm frankly shocked to see language that would allow all of Zuckerberg's extraordinary governance rights to be transferred to his designated successor in the event of his death. That's admittedly a remote occurrence given his young age, but as an investor or Board member, I would vehemently object to that provision. It's one thing to have complete trust in Mark to run the company, quite another to entrust his appointed successor with that kind of domination as a matter of corporate governance. It has the feel more of a family dynasty business than of a modern publicly traded tech company."

The S-1 also mentions Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg specifically several times. Many of Facebook's original founders have left the company to start their own enterprises. Zuckerberg is the important pin, but Sandberg is important glue to hold the company together on a day-to-day basis. One of the biggest jobs for Sandberg will be to monitor Zuckerberg and remind him of his responsibility to the stockholders. Neither individual is going to relish that position but as Facebook grows up and goes public, it is a necessary for the C-suite to police itself.