It's probably not true to say that everybody hates Facebook. But there are many millions (of the hundreds of millions that use the site) that claim to hate Facebook's cavalier approach to privacy and founder Mark Zuckerberg's equally vague approach to the future of our privacy. There are even groups dedicated to encouraging users to leave Facebook (some on Facebook itself, ironically).

Facebook's re-written PHP to transform the dynamic language for fast performance on web-scale server farms without adding additional hardware. The site's engineers have announced HipHop, which turns the popular and dynamic PHP code into highly optimized but static C++ and then compiles it using the GNU C++ compiler, g++.

"...Like locked cell phones and copy-protected music, Facebook is on the wrong side of the open-network debate. Facebook is a sealed bubble. Facebook users are locked into Facebook, just as iTunes locks music fans to Apple's iPod..."

Last night we performed an update on Filmaster.com bring one big new feature and many minor bug fixes. The big new one is obviously Facebook Connect integration. In order to make this integration happen we used the Facebook API for Facebook Connect (mostly JavaScript with FbSQL queries).

PHP team had been brought to Facebook's main campus. That team were forced to sign NDA's, and taken to a very quiet, secluded meeting room where some cool new Facebook-backed open source project was described.

Facebook's latest moves to control the heart of the Web are worrying many people. Luckily, Mozilla has just announced a new Firefox project to manage identity that may be just what we need: a free software alternative to Facebook's plans. Will the next big battle between open and closed be fought between Firefox and Facebook?

The popular social networking site Facebook just announced a Chinese version, but similar Chinese-based Web sites such as Xiaonei and Hainei have been struggling there. However, since April, UCenter Home, an open source social network service based on PHP and MySQL, is pushing open social networking in China.

Facebook has open sourced a new MySQL utility that lets the social networking colossus update its database indexes and juice query times without staging the changes on test servers. With the tool -- known as Online Schema Change for MySQL, or OSC -- it can update indexes on live servers.

Microsoft has integrated Facebook and Windows Live Messenger into Outlook, bringing the newsfeeds of millions of Facebook users into inboxes across the world.