Facebook

The Social Network took home four Golden Globes Awards, for best dramatic motion picture, screenplay, director and soundtrack. These wins signal that the movie has a strong chance of taking the top honor at the Oscars next month.

Although two of the nominations didn’t result in wins, The Social Network received more nominations than any other movie this year from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Golden Globe Awards.

While Facebook publicists maintain that the movie isn’t a factually correct account of the company, the public has come to regard it as such. So the multiple Globe wins, including best dramatic picture, seems to benefit the real-life social network.- AFB

On the afternoon of Nov. 16, 2010, Mark Zuckerberg was leading a meeting in the Aquarium, one of Facebook’s conference rooms, so named because it’s in the middle of a huge work space and has glass walls on three sides so everybody can see in. Conference rooms are a big deal at Facebook because they’re the only places anybody has any privacy at all, even the bare minimum of privacy the Aquarium gets you. Otherwise the space is open plan: no cubicles, no offices, no walls, just a rolling tundra of office furniture. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, who used to be Lawrence Summers’ chief of staff at the Treasury Department, doesn’t have an office. Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO and co-founder and presiding visionary, doesn’t have an office.

The team was going over the launch of Facebook’s revamped Messages service, which had happened the day before and gone off without a hitch or rather without more than the usual number of hitches. Zuckerberg kept the meeting on track, pushing briskly through his points — no notes or whiteboard, just talking with his hands — but the tone was relaxed. Much has been made of Zuckerberg’s legendarily awkward social manner, but in a room like this, he’s the Silicon Valley equivalent of George Plimpton. He bantered with Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, a director of engineering who ran the project. (Boz was Zuckerberg’s instructor in a course on artificial intelligence when they were at Harvard. He says his future boss didn’t do very well. Though, in fairness, Zuckerberg did invent Facebook that semester.) Apart from a journalist sitting in the corner, no one in the room looked over 30, and apart from the journalist’s public relations escort, it was boys only. (more…)

Three teens who were on a 69-name hit list posted on Facebook have been killed in the past 10 days in a southwestern Colombian town, officials say.

Police say they do not know who posted the list or why the names are on it.

“It is still not clear,” Colombian national police spokesman Wilson Baquero told CNN. “This is part of the investigation.”

But officials note that a criminal gang known as Los Rastrojos and a Marxist guerrilla group called the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia operate in the area.

The hit list on Facebook, which was posted August 17, gave the people named three days to leave the town of Puerto Asis or be executed, said Volmar Perez Ortiz, a federal official whose title is defender of the public.

Police at first thought the posting was a joke, Perez said in a statement issued Saturday. But the publication of a second list with 31 additional names led authorities to convene a special security meeting Friday, Perez said.

The posting of the lists and the meetings occurred after the first two killings, which took place August 15, Perez said.

On that day, officials say, 16-year-old student Diego Ferney Jaramillo and 17-year-old CD retailer Eibart Alejandro Ruiz Munoz were shot and killed while riding a motorcycle on the road between Puerto Asis and the town of Puerto Caicedo.

Both their names were later found on the first published hit list.

Also on the list was Norbey Alexander Vargas, 19, who was killed August 20, Perez said. Another young man, 16-year-old student Juan Pablo Zambrano Anacona, was wounded in the same incident when he gave chase to the assassins, Perez said.

Colombian media said Monday the number of those threatened has grown and panic has overtaken Puerto Asis, with some parents sending their children out of town because their names are on the Facebook notice.

The names of 31 women were posted on the other list, said Radio RCN, semana.com and other news outlets.

Residents have been overcome with “panic and anxiety,” several news outlets quoted Putumayo state official Andres Gerardo Verdugo as saying.

Several of those residents posted their concerns on Twitter, an online messaging site.

“Panic in Puerto Asis, Putumayo, because of threats against young people,” wrote a user who goes by JuanSepulvedah. “Our youth must be protected.”

Someone who posted under the name JulianEco brought up the Facebook connection.