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By now, we are all familiar with Mark Zuckerberg's success story. The explosive international growth of Facebook to over 200 million users continues to land the young founder and CEO in top news stories worldwide. Recently, Time Magazine named Zuckerberg one of the world's most influential people of 2008, and Fast Company named Facebook number 15 in its list of the world's 50 most innovative companies of 2009. At just 23 years of age, Zuckerberg even briefly made Forbes' 400 richest Americans list, temporarily giving him the title of World's Youngest Billionaire.

However we have heard very few stories about Zuckerberg and the inspiration behind Facebook during the period prior to February 4th, 2004, the day he launched Facebook from his Harvard dorm room. In this post we tell that story.

It is no secret that Facebook has Twitter envy. The number one social networking site is not content to win over rival MySpace. It is not satisfied being far ahead of Google on the social web. Facebook now has Twitter firmly in its crosshairs.

True, Twitter traffic has gone through the roof. True, Twitter is the new killer app, the new cool kid on the block. And yes, even Oprah now loves Twitter. But does this mean Facebook should be worried? Well, maybe yes, but likely no, because Twitter and Facebook are two very different services.

Can you believe that using social networking sites at work can increase your workplace productivity? A new study just published by Australian scientists found that taking time to visit websites of personal interest, including news sites and YouTube, provided workers a mental break that ultimately increased their ability to concentrate and was correlated with a 9% increase in total productivity.

Reporters are shocked by the findings. We're in shock that this is where the state of academic study is concerning social technology use vs. workplace filtering technology when it comes to productivity. A 9% increase in productivity? Try using these social technologies for on topic work and you'll see productivity increases that make 9% look like nothing.

Nielsen Online, an analytics firm that tracks time spent online at various websites, has issued a report finding that throughout 2008 social networking sites and blogs saw more time spent by users than personal email. While not shocking, the finding does mark an important point in the history of the web.

Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.

Excitement about the government's use of Web 2.0 technology has swept Washington, DC. One of President Obama's first acts in office was to issue a directive calling for a more transparent, collaborative, and participatory government. Websites like USA.gov have launched new Web 2.0 features, such as RSS news services. And the President got to keep his precious BlackBerry.

Facebook made one of the most important announcements in the young company's history today. It has proposed a set of foundational documents, including the first official statement of Facebook Principles. The proposal is made to Facebook's users, who will now have 30 days to read, comment and perhaps vote on the documents.

Looking just below the surface of this big news, though, there are a number of things going on that make absolutely no sense to us. Facebook's management appears to have lost its grip on reality. The population of Facebook dwarfs that of scores of countries in the physical world; these foundational documents are of immense importance and raise big red flags.

We've written a lot about how Barack Obama's Internet strategy was a significant reason for his success last year - first in the Democratic nomination, then the Presidential election. We've analyzed how the Obama campaign made masterful use of social media and we've commented on Obama's use of the Internet as President - not to mention the rise of the goverati. Tonight we came across an extensive presentation about Obama's overall Internet strategy. We think it's well worth a read, so we've embedded it below.

Almost every description of P2P in the context of business infrastructure starts something like this: "P2P is notorious for..." This comes from many years of people associating P2P with illegal downloading, to the point that the terms are now almost synonymous. Such an association is inherently unfair, however, because no one equates TCP/IP and crime, despite the fact that TCP/IP is the protocol of choice for many cyber-criminals.

Rather than resorting to out-dated and inaccurate definitions, let's start from scratch and consider the following: what is P2P, really? What is it good for? How can we use it to save and earn money?