STATUS CHANGE Time.com Washington editor Ana Marie Cox leaked that she was leaving her post, to become a "contractor" for the magazine, by updating her Facebook status. "It’s a change in status, not a change in affiliation," says a Time spokesperson, but Facebook doesn't know the difference. [Calderone]

Facebook will introduce new privacy controls today, allowing its 67 million users decide which groups of friends get to see last night's photos of you doing keg stands: Your parents, your boss, or your college buddies. [Reuters]

Here's a video clip of a SXSW interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, hosted by Business Week tech columnist Sarah Lacy … that's been panned by every geek with a Tumblr account.

Audience members, it appears, did not appreciate Lacy's interjections with her own anecdotes, her inability to form a question, and her general fawning over her interview subject.

After the interview, which drew outbursts from the audience, Lacy explained what the hell went down. Hint: She blames attendees for causing such a commotion that SXSW will never get high-profile guests again!

CONTINUED »

Bill Gates has been knocked off the top of Forbes' billionaires list after a 13-year run. In his place? Warren Buffett. (Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim Helú is No. 2.) For what it's worth, Mark Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, the social network that Gates recently removed his profile from, is No. 785.

Have you heard? Social media isn't a fad! In a study sponsored by Nielsen-killing-hopeful TNS, more than 50 percent of "senior marketing executives agree that the use of social media for corporate, brand and product marketing" is here to stay because it's tres important. "Poking" friends is productive! Which is all well and good, but before you begin dumping a few million dollars (or several hundred, in the case of Microsoft and Facebook), just 18 percent of those surveyed thought social media would increase brand loyalty. So heads up to Sprint, where some 638,000 customers are defecting: Don't bother with Facebook ads. [MP]

Facebook isn't exactly making money hand over first. Sure, they've got $240 million from Microsoft (creating a $15 billion valuation), but even the search giant can't figure out how to monetize its tens of millions of active members. Ad campaigns on the site notoriously perform poorly, so it's a bit shocking that Facebook would find itself forced to turn away ad dollars that it so desperately courts. But that's what they've done with a campaign from Universal's upcoming movie Untraceable.

Like MySpace, Facebook allows advertisers to create profiles to promote their goods. But the Untraceable campaign turned out to be as gruesome as it was innovative, proving too much for Facebook's standards and practices department.

Perhaps that's because the movie – about a serial killer who creates an untraceable site where he live broadcasts his murders – skewed a little too close to the Facebook ad, which unveiled more of the film's torture scenes as more people visited the profile?

CONTINUED »

• The children of Nicaragua celebrate the victory of the children Boston missed out on.

• Just another reminder of our media bubble: The number one emailed article on the New York Times is still about golf.

• Both being black females, Vivica A. Fox and Raven Symone are easily confused.

• Apparently there is such a thing as too much Facebook.

• More lesbian hands, this time with less jokes about why lesbian hands are wrinkly.

• The class acts at CJR are also tired of Forbes lists.

Less and less, blogs just make fun of small errors in mainstream media. But so often, mistakes like basing an entire trend on the phrase “more and more” makes it impossible to avoid.

So when we read, three times, that “more and more” journalists are using Facebook in the American Journalism Review, we had to embrace our inner Nelson and say, “Ha, ha.”

Anyway, more and more journalists are using Facebook, in part because Facebook rules and in part because it’s a really great way to find sources. In our experience, Facebook is the fastest way to get in touch with journalists whose email addresses aren’t public.

But frankly, this is old news. In college, we used Facebook to find sources for our school paper as soon as the site started.

The more interesting story is that more and more Facebook is a giant clusterfuck. Every journalist in New York is “friends” with one another. And that’s a problem if you have a scoop on say, NBC, and your profile reveals you have only one friend who works there.

We’re not recommending throwing away the baby with the bathwater, but for those who do want to give up the Web 2.0 sensation for the privacy violations, apparently quitting Facebook is easier now. Or you could just use a modicum of restraint on who you befriend on the site.

When two friends, often of the same gender, list themselves as "married," "in a relationship," or "it's complicated" with each other, while maintaining their sexual orientation as "straight," because it's some big inside joke exactly two people care about, and those two people happen to be "complicated" with each other.

FACEBOOK NEWS, SORT OF Did you know that it's nearly impossible to completely cancel your Facebook account? You should, since this information has been around since at least September. But the Times "breaks" that actually getting all your Facebook records deleted is next to impossible. Facebook is like heroin: Once it's in your system, it's there forever. And like heroin, why would anyone ever want to give up Facebook? It's the best thing that ever happened to the internet. Yes, better than democratization of information. [NYT]

Today maybe the only time in your entire life where possibly, maybe your vote matters. It's Super Tuesday, and it only takes ten to fifteen minutes to roll up to your local elementary school and get your democracy on. Don't believe us? Check what all our super cool Facebook friends have to say about democracy via their Facebook statuses:

voted for Barack Obama today.

is supporting Barack Obama.

is going to have trouble speaking to you ever again if you don't VOTE today.

is voting. Twice. Maybe.

voted!

Its SUPER TUESDAY…go Vote. Change the World. Free your Mind.

says vote for Hillary! She really stands for the issues we all care about.

Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama Barack Obama Obama Obama Obama Barack Obama Obama Obama Obama Barack Obama Obama Obama Obama Obama and also Obama.

Facebook users may not be responsible enough to choose their own verb, but they are responsible enough to vote. Even if you're a MySpace perv, your opinion counts. Get out and vote!

We're not entirely sure what targeting mechanisms Facebook has in place that yielded this ad while we stalked our journalusts, but knowing the social network's ads wildly under-perform compared to other sites, something suggests their sales team is finally reaching out to the right clients.

• Mitt Romney isn't a tool. Would a tool reference the hottest dance song of 2000?

• Heath Ledger's palm reader talks to Life & Style: "He also had a dark, artistic line running from his head line to his heart line." We could have made up something better than that.

CONTINUED »

• Devo from Saturday Night Live. No, not "Whip It."

• The Directors Guild, not the Writers Guild, reaches an agreement with the alliance the producers. Does this mean we'll find out what happens on Desperate Housewives?

• Winner of the Someone Haiku from Mollygood:

Tom Cruises By Puke:
Don’t Cry Over Spilled Thetans,
They Go To Venus.

CONTINUED »

OH NO Paralegals, we don't need to tell you that Scrabulous is best Facebook ap since the SuperPoke! Even the makers of Facebook are triple word score over it. But Hasbro Inc., which owns Scrabble, has issued a cease-and-desist to Facebook and the Scrabulous platform developers, claiming it infringes on their copyrights and trademarks. Damn, Hasbro, you just reduced us to the Oregon Trial ap, which doesn't even save your games. This is so boot. [LAT]

You know that little pop-up window that appears periodically on your Windows desktop, asking you to clean-up unused desktop icons? Well Facebook got its own version!

After stocking up on Scrabulous, SuperWall, FunWall, Neighborhoods, Oregon Trail, Texas Hold 'Em, and widgets for all your favorite sports teams, you might find yourself being asked to create an "extended profile." It's their little profile clean-up tool.

Sadly, it does not include a feature called "stop friends from trying to throw vampires at me."

DEMOGRAPHICS 60 Minutes had season-low ratings this weekend for its feature on Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Young people don't watch old people TV. [Silicon Alley Insider]

MySpace agreed to work with attorney generals of 49 states to improve measures to protect children from sexual predators. The site will create a task force to find effective ways to verify ages of its users. Hopefully these measures will include ways to stop over-zealous moms from encouraging teen suicide.

In the meantime, a couple in Queens was arrested for raping teenage girls they met through the site.

Facebook may invade your privacy, but at least it doesn’t invade your nether regions.

FLOP.COM Still unsure how to capture this burgeoning Web 2.0 audience, Conde Nast stuck its tail between its legs in revamping the tactics of social scrapbooking site Flip.com. With audience way down, the better-than-bourgeois magazine publisher is turning the site into a web application that can be embedded into MySpace and Facebook profiles. [CNet]