Like most things on the Internet, there’s a good side and a dark side to where the media business is headed.

The good side is very good: thousands of layers of mostly needless middlemen and processes are being eliminated as journalists get a direct channel to their readers. And, because it’s a two way medium, readers get that channel right back. And in the cases where the subject of an article has been wronged, the Web gives them powerful megaphones to fight back. In short, the more everyone has a voice, the more reporters are challenged to make sure they are right, because they will be called out.

Look at what happened with the plagiarism scandal around Chris Anderson’s new book. Anderson says it was a mistake around a change in how they were going to use citations, and I take him at his word. But it’s safe to say any author who’d considered borrowing heavily from Wikipedia won’t now. We like to think that we act virtuously because of personal or professional pride, but nothing enforces those ethics like the real possibility of getting caught and hugely embarrassed.

But the bad side is also very bad. The elimination of those layers – typically fact checkers, editors, lawyers and just time to make sure a work is fully baked—also allows mistakes, lazy reporting, a dependence on rumors, and hot-headed, unfair treatment to subjects. Worse: The metrics around the Web make it crystal clear which kinds of stories drive the most traffic. That leads to salacious reporting for the sake of clicks and comments.

It’s easy to point the finger at blogs, especially by certain members of old media losing money quarter-after-quarter. (Cough, cough.) But this is not just a technology change as most corners of media are fighting for survival, it’s become a cultural change. And this week, I’ve been struck by two non-blog examples that reflect the tension.

Right about now most people reading this probably have guessed the example of salacious reporting and unfair treatment I’m driving at is Ben Mezrich’s new book on Facebook. I’ll say upfront I haven’t read it. Galleys have been very closely guarded. Once I do read it, if everything everyone who has read it has told me is wrong, I’ll apologize for what I’m about to say. But, on a professional level, I find the ethics behind this project disgusting.

Yesterday, we wrote about what Facebook was planning for the next major release of its iPhone app, version 3.0. The big update will contain 15 new features, probably none bigger than the addition of event management to the app, finally. But there was one thing Facebook developer Joe Hewitt didn’t mention yesterday, and it’s a big one: Video uploads from the iPhone 3GS.

Hewitt just started working on the feature yesterday, thinking it would be something that would come in the next release, after this one. But he was surprised at how quickly he was able to get it up and running and so he tweeted out today, “3GS video uploading for the Facebook iPhone app is a go — didn’t plan to include it in the 3.0 update, but it was really easy to code.”

comScore has aggregated some data based on its World Metrix audience measurement service and put together a study on social networking worldwide. Surprisingly, it appears that the Russians are more engaged with social networking than the rest of the planet (or the biggest slackers at the office, depends on how you look at it). The study found visitors in Russia to spend 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month on average, at the same time - once again - confirming Vkontakte.ru’s leadership in terms of popularity with 14+ million monthly visitors.

To put that level of ‘engagement’ in perspective: the average world-wide is 3.7 hours and 525 pages per visitor. Among the 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Brazil ranked closest to Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The United States is ranked number 9, with 4.2 hours and 477 pages per visitor per month.

Twitter has long had an official Facebook application that allows users to update their Facebook status with tweets. It’s quite useful for those of us who don’t want to have to spend all day updating multiple services with the same messages. The app has over 250,000 monthly active users. But if you’re not already one of them, I have bad news: You’re not allowed to use it.

For the past several days, anyone who has tried to install the app has been greeted with the following message:

Error while loading page from session test

There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of session test are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged - if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

It may sound kind of silly, but when I talk to people outside of the tech world about Bing, the first thing brought up is usually how they like the pictures. And now Microsoft has created a contest on Facebook to let one user get their own picture featured on Bing.

The Bing Summer Travel Photo Contest is asking Facebook users to submit their best summer vacation photos. The community will then vote on them, and the winner will get its day in the sun, so to speak, on Monday, August 3 — appearing to the millions who visit Bing on that day.

Naturally, there are some rules for these photos as Microsoft probably doesn’t want kickass keg party pictures on the Bing homepage. Obviously, no alcohol, smoking, guns, violence or nudity will be allowed. But Microsoft also doesn’t want any pictures with recognizable people or any third party trademarked images, so they don’t get sued.

It’s been a big day for Facebook, with news earlier this morning that the social network will soon be totally revamping its privacy settings and making it easier to share with the entire web. Now developer Joe Hewitt, who is responsible for Facebook’s massively popular iPhone application, has posted a note to the site describing some of the new features we can expect from the latest iteration of the app, which he says is “98% done”. Hewitt doesn’t give an exact release date, but we can likely expect it very soon.

Facebook’s privacy conference call just ended, and it’s clear some major changes are going to be coming to the social network soon. Some of these, like a totally revamped privacy control page, are both long overdue and very welcome. But others, like the Transition Tool, seem ripe for disaster.

Facebook clearly wants its users to become more comfortable sharing their content across the web, because that’s what needs to happen if the site is going to take Twitter head-on with real-time search capabilities. Unfortunately that’s far easier said than done for the social network, which has for years trumpeted its granular privacy settings as one of its greatest assets. Now, those settings are turning into problematic obstacles.

Yoono, an extension built to enhance both the Firefox and IE browser experience that comes in pretty handy when you go on the Internet mainly to interact socially with your peers and friends, has just released version 6.1 of its add-on, and revamped the interface along with adding a couple of useful features.

I’ve been trying it out for a couple of hours now, and I have to say I’d already miss it if it were gone from my Firefox browser (which, admittedly, I use less and less thanks to Google Chrome). Yoono is essentially a browser sidebar that aggregates and centralizes your online profiles, including from IM tools like Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk and AIM but also a wide variety of social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, FriendFeed and more.

The latest version of the extension, next to expanding support for Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace as well as the ability to easily share pages, images, or videos from your browser across all networks at once, boasts another useful new feature: real-time search.

They may be mysterious and perhaps even a bit shady, but secondary equity markets, which allow employees to sell off their shares to other buyers, are quickly heating up. Because of the rarity of IPOs and acquisitions in the startup world these days, early employees and founders are becoming increasingly anxious to convert some of their shares into cash (one need look no further than reports of employees selling Facebook stock at relatively low prices for proof).

Unfortunately, because these markets are trading shares of private companies, buyers and sellers are often left in the dark as to the worth of their stock. SharesPost, a private equity market that’s currently operating in public beta, is looking to help: the site has launched a publication platform for analyst reports meant to complement its equity market. And it’s offering a free two month membership to TechCrunch readers, which you can sign up for here.

As a teaser for what’s available on the platform, the site has shared two valuation reports on some of the world’s biggest social networks: Facebook and LinkedIn. You’ll want to check out the full reports here and here to read the full analysis and methodology (you may have to register).

Facebook has just named former Genentech Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman as its new CFO. The news comes three months after Facebook ousted Gideon Yu from the position, citing at the time its desire to find someone with “public company experience” (which was bizarre given the fact that Yu had public company experience).

At the time of Yu’s departure there was speculation that he had been unable to secure investments at the company’s lofty $15 billion valuation established by the Microsoft deal, and that the company was considering an early IPO. Since then, things have changed: Facebook just raised a $200 million investment from Russian firm DST at a $10 billion valuation, which means it has plenty of money to keep its server farms churning and keeping pace with the site’s staggering growth.

A couple of days ago we wrote about Facebook’s new Live Stream Box funtionality. Ustream was the first to offer a live video solution for users with Facebook Pages. But the sign up for the free option is limited, and the white-label version carries a one-time fee of $15,000. Enter Stickam. It’s offering live video via its StreamAPI service to anyone. And there’s no set up fee and no monthly fee. But it will still cost you.

The StreamAPI solution is pay-as-you-go, with live video costing you 45 cents a gigabyte. That includes support for HD video, customizable solutions (with no Flash knowledge required) and analytics. It’s a similar approach that Stickam takes with its regular StreamAPI product.

One of the hottest areas of search right now is real time search, which attempts to find results based on what is happening right now. Twitter’s search engine fast becoming one of the key ways to navigate the service and discover what people are thinking about any subject at any given moment. Facebook is testing out ways to let you search your personal stream. Google is waking up to the challenge as well (Larry Page is particularly concerned with keeping up).

Every week, it seems, a new startup launches tackling real time search from a different angle. (Collecta, One Riot, Scoopler, Topsy, Almost.at, Tweetmeme, CrowdEye, Omgili, to name a few).. They are trying to apply real time search to all the different streams of information flowing over the Internet right now: Twitter, Facebook feeds, Digg submissions, blog comments, RSS feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube uploads, shared links on bit.ly and elsewhere. The list keeps getting longer every day.

There is something about human nature which makes us want to prioritize information by how recent it is, and that is the fundamental appeal of real time search. The difference between real time search and regular search didn’t really crystallize for me until I had a conversation with Edo Segal, who sold his real time search company Relegence to AOL a few years ago and holds three patents on the subject. “Real time taps into consciousness,” says Segal, “search taps into memory. That is why it so potent. You experience the world in real time.”

Our posts earlier this week about the alarming amount of click fraud at Facebook left more than a few unanswered questions. The problem is real and was confirmed by Facebook. But what wasn’t clear is exactly how or why it was happening. Now, after we’ve interviewed a number of advertisers and fraudsters, we know exactly how and why they are doing it.

First the why. Click fraud is serious business on the big search engine advertising networks because the bad guys can make serious money. Sign up for an Adsense account and put those ads on parked domain names or wherever. Then all you have to do is start clicking those ads like crazy, using bots or cheap labor. The search engines fight this via obvious and not so obvious means, and an arms race begins. To win you need access to a lot of good IP addresses and not get too greedy. And like inflation and the government, a little click fraud is tolerated by Google and others. It keeps the dollars flowing.

When Facebook’s Vanity URL landrush kicked off nearly two weeks ago, over 500,000 people registered their new names in a matter of 15 minutes. Over the following weekend, nearly 6 million users staked their claims. The most desirable names, like ‘Jason’ or ‘Mike’, were snapped up in a matter of seconds (if they weren’t already registered by a Facebook employee before the landrush even began). Needless to say, a lot of people were left in the dust, forced to settle for something other than the vanity URL they’d been dreaming of for weeks.

Well, if you’re a member of the unlucky masses, here’s your chance to get the name you’ve always wanted. Sort of.

Developer Alex Gonzalez of Branch Interactive has put together an application that will allow you to to generate a Facebook application in your name, giving you the URL apps.facebook.com/NAME. So instead of Facebook.com/jasonkincaid, I would be apps.Facebook.com/jasonkincaid. Sure, it has the four extra letters designating it as a Facebook application, but it’s hardly an eyesore.

Today, Facebook is launching a new “Live Stream Box” feature which allows for Facebook Pages to offer their own live video and chat area. And Ustream will be the first to take advantage of it with Ustream on Facebook, a new service to provide live video support to select Facebook users.

This functionality is an extension of what Ustream and Facebook did with some Jonas Brothers concerts last month — events which drew huge numbers. How huge? This huge, according to Ustream:

• 1.5 million unique posts were made via Facebook Live Feed
• 23K average posts per minute
• More than 100K users joined the webcast after seeing their friend’s comment on Facebook
• 974K total unique viewers watched the one hour webcast
• Ustream reports the Jonas Brothers webcast on Facebook surpassed the largest live video event they have hosted for any music artist

So clearly, there’s a big demand for certain live events via Facebook, and Ustream is jumping on it, as Facebook’s preferred partner.

Phase 4 has launched. Last week we told you about Facebook’s new “everyone button” that lets users who have chosen to keep their profiles at least partially private send the occasional status message or other content out to the public. That feature, which goes hand-in-hand with the recent search engine for public status messages, launched today to a small number of users.

Don’t be fooled by what appears to be a minor change in the user interface. This is another indication of Facebook’s extreme desire to get users to make as much of their data public as possible. Just like Twitter.

This new version of Publisher lets users add content such as photos, videos, and status updates on your home page and profile. Each piece of content can be shared with everyone, friends and networks, friends of friends and friends. Users can also customize the settings further.

You can now control who you want to inform of your Facebook friends when you add any kind of content to the site. This is actually a much welcomes feature—I think its helpful to be able to control who sees different types of content that you publish to the site. On the other hand, Facebook also lets you publish to “everyone,” which lets you make updates visible to anyone (including Google).

Here’s how it works: After writing a status, uploading a photo or creating other content from the Publisher, use the lock icon in the lower-right corner of the Publisher to access the drop-down menu. From there, you can then choose to make the post visible to everyone, friends and certain networks, friends of friends, and a custom list.

It’s ‘official’; big shot CEOs are social media slackers. The hot news comes straight from ÜBERCEO, who says it conducted research on the topic for the past few weeks and has found that there’s little chance you’ll ever get to exchange pokes and tweets with Fortune 100 CEOs for the time being. Here’s the ‘miserable level of engagement’ ÜBERCEO has uncovered:

(after the jump)

The influential Article 29 Working Party, an independent European advisory body on data protection and privacy to the EC, has argued that social networks like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace need more regulation to ensure that personal data of their respective users is not put at risk. Even though the majority of sites that the report mentions are based in the United States, the group states their large presence in Europe means that they should be subject to European Union privacy and data protection legislation.

This isn’t exactly news, since the FT wrote about the report last week when it was still unpublished. It is now, and I’ve embedded it below.

This morning, when MySpace announced the decimation of its international staff (300 out of 450 non-US staff will be let go), CEO Owen Van Natta pinpointed the global offices he considers dispensable. He released a statement saying that while the London, Berlin and Sydney offices will be preserved, MySpace will look to “restructure” the offices in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, and Spain and plans to close four offices all together.

Considering Facebook’s massive growth both internationally and now in the U.S., we thought it would be instructive to compare the number of unique visitors to Facebook and MySpace in each of the countries which MySpace has identified for layoffs and restructuring. All together, the countries account for only about 15 percent of MySpace’s global unique visitors (see chart at right). But more tellingly, in practically every single country where layoffs are coming, Facebook has already won.

With well over 200 million registered users, Facebook is undeniably a giant on the web, and one that is sitting on an enormous amount of raw data about individuals and demographically selected groups at that. While private profiles are not even always as private as we’d like to assume - something we’ve learned yesterday and multiple times in the past as well - there’s a lot of data that you can extract from what’s openly available to the public.

For example: what are the most common names used on the social network?