Amid ongoing debates over the hazards of excessive digital exposure through such Web 2.0 social networking platforms as Facebook and Twitter, a new book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger extols the virtues of forgetfulness.

Since the emergence of digital technology and global networks, forgetting has become an exception, Mayer-Schonberger writes in "Delete".

"Forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making," he argues. "It lets us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events."

Mayer-Schonberger shared his theory on how to fight back against the digital panopticon with Reuters before giving a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.

Remember Leon Hill, the controversial peddler of Facebook souls?

Not surprisingly, Hill said he has received a letter from Facebook’s lawyers informing him that his service selling Facebook friends ran afoul of the site’s terms of service and possibly a slew of trademark and computer fraud laws.

After some back and forth with the lawyers, Hill said that he has stopped offering one of his two Facebook marketing services and will no longer solicit friends for customers that have standard Facebook accounts. And he’s removed Facebook’s logos from his site.

“If they did want to take me to court over anything I’d probably be screwed, to be honest,” Hill said, citing Facebook’s deep pockets (He may also have been thinking about the $711 million in damages Facebook recently won in an anti-spam case).

But Hill hasn’t been scared away from Facebook entirely. He said that his firm uSocial will continue to sell fans to customers and companies that maintain a so-called Facebook Fan page.

That’s because the job of rounding up fans for a customer’s Facebook Fan page doesn’t actually require logging into their account, as was necessary for customers with personal Facebook pages. Instead it seems, uSocial will rely on a network of partners to solicit fans for customers by offering them the URL for a Facebook Fan page.

Whether Facebook considers the case closed is not entirely clear. Hill says he has not heard back from Facebook since he informed the company of his position a couple of weeks ago.

“Either they’ve given up or they’re trying to get a stronger case against me,” he says.

Facebook said in a statement that it will continue to enforce its policies and to protect the integrity of its site. “We’re pleased uSocial has agreed to comply.”

Fresh on the heels of its $43 million financing round, social gaming company Playdom announced a pair of acquisitions Thursday in a move to expand its portfolio of games. It acquired Facebook game developer Green Patch and Trippert Labs, which develops games on Apple’s iPhone. Terms of the deal were not released.

Playdom Chief Executive John Pleasants said in a phone interview that while the company’s main goal is to develop its own titles, it will make acquisitions opportunistically. “We have ample cash to do deals on our own,” he said.

Social gaming companies are suddenly on investor’s radar screens. Earlier this week, Electronic Arts said it would pay $275 million in cash for Playfish, a Playdom rival, along with other consideration that could eventually lift the company’s valuation to $400 million. Social gaming companies earn money by selling virtual goods to players.

Pleasants, the former COO of EA, said the Playfish deal was a validation of what his company is doing. “It certainly validates the credibility of the space,” he said. “The valuation also was another statement of the value we can create.”

Playdom’s financing by a group of venture capital firms valued it at $260 million. Industry watchers say Zynga, the largest of the social gaming companies, could raise $1 billion to $1.2 billion in an initial public offering next year, if it decided to go that route.

Playdom, which has more than 28 million monthly active users and says it’s profitable, will have around 200 employees following the acquisitions.

Media and technology executives are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in New York City at a conference hosted by private equity firm Quadrangle. Note the word private.

When they meet at the Plaza, they will talk about a ton of different things that their customers, their investors and other readers want to know. I have to apologize for them because they’re not letting in any riff-raff. And that includes reporters who get paid to spend all day figuring out how these people decide what kind of entertainment you want, what kind of technology you pay them for and what deals they pursue with the money that you give them when you buy their stock. This event always excludes press, but that’s no reason not to highlight what you probably are missing because of this. After all, who wants to wait for the 8-K filing?

Some press will be allowed, but it will be an assortment of celebrity journalists who will moderate panels and, according to Peter Kafka, author of “MediaMemo” at News Corp’s AllThingsD blog, will not write about the event (I’m talking about Maria Bartiromo and David Faber of CNBC, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, etc).

Peter wrote two posts about this, here and here. He also issued me a challenge to sneak into the conference, but horror of horrors, I’m on a deadline that I can’t shirk any longer. So consider this an invitation from me to you to go to the Plaza and catch these guys on the way in and out of the building. It’s a fun way to spend the day, and maybe you’ll learn something interesting.

Here is the agenda, courtesy of Peter Kafka. Below that is a list of speakers. Outrage breeds corrections: I have to amend the record: The list I had posted here of topics is last year’s agenda. My mistake. The list of speakers appearing THIS year still appears below.

2009 SPEAKERS
EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa
DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare
BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc.
BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy
CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP
REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix
REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation
CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube
JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE
PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia
JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu
LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation
ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation
JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation
BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread
DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP
BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation
PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai
ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google
IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications
BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter
HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation
BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent
DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications

MODERATORS
MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker
MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC
JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart
DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC
MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC
GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co.
JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News

(Photo of Barry Diller, who will remain away from prying eyes at Quadrangle’s confab: Reuters)

MySpace, the online social network (can we still call it that now that it has ducked out of the Facebook/Twitter competition?), appears to be pursuing what I’ll call the “two-pronged news strategy.” You get used to it when you cover media and technology. For those of you who don’t enjoy this privilege, it goes like this:

• Pick a news outlet that you like and whisper things to them about what you’re doing. It doesn’t have to be interesting, it just has to be exclusive. If you’re in public relations, you don’t even have to know that someone in your company is doing this. It works well for you.
• Let the rest of the press read the story and bombard your telephone and e-mail with messages demanding to know if it’s true. Score a big hit on the news cycle. Because you either decline to comment or only want to talk “on background,” it heightens the air of mystery — and newsworthiness.
• The official announcement of the news, which will always resemble 90 percent or more of what you read in the first round of anonymously sourced stories, will get just as much attention as that first round. It’s a 2-for-1 deal that is irresistible to many companies.

I don’t know that MySpace is doing this, and wouldn’t be able to confirm it if I asked. It could just be that the reporters who get the breaking news have great sources and the reporter asked smart questions that would yield good answers. I’ll let you judge.

The first example comes from Kara Swisher, tech blogger at AllThingsD, which is MySpace’s cousin in the News Corp family. She reports:

Microsoft’s MSN is in preliminary talks with MySpace about using the social networking site’s music service, MySpace Music, to help power music offerings on the giant portal. …

Sources said Microsoft execs don’t think they can do as good a job as MySpace is doing and don’t see the point in striking needed but complex deals with music labels, which the News Corp. (NWS) property already has.

MySpace, Swisher adds, would get a “gusher” of traffic. I asked MySpace whether we could talk about this. From spokeswoman: “Off the record I can’t comment.” OK.

The second example is this story in The Telegraph from Monday:

Facebook and MySpace are in talks about sharing content across both sites, according to senior figures at the two companies. The move could potentially see MySpace music and video footage being shared on Facebook via its Connect platform, which allows people to log into third party sites using their Facebook ID.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, told The Telegraph: “Facebook is focussing on building the best technology which helps people share content, while at MySpace they are focussing on more a content-led strategy. We would like to have their content, as we already do with many other sites, shared across our network because it is good for our users.

On this one, MySpace CEO and former Facebook executive Owen Van Natta confirmed the talks on the record. But I’m in the position of only being able to refer you to that article.

On the record, MySpace wouldn’t comment. I suspect that the comments will come later when we rewrite the Telegraph’s story along with the rest of the press corps.

Microsoft may be the only company with the wherewithal to challenge Google’s Internet search dominance head on, but a number of firms are trying to outflank Google with services that handle aspects of search not covered by Google’s index of Web pages.

Aardvark - a firm whose cofounders include two ex-Googlers - is pushing something it calls “social search.”

Instead of looking at Web pages to find answers to search queries, Aardvark’s service taps a person’s network of social contacts. Ask Aardvark for anything from restaurant recommendations to home improvement tips, and the service will relay the question to Facebook and Twitter friends who have identified themselves as “experts” on various topics.

The service, which has earned praise from the New York Times’ David Pogue and other tech bloggers, was launched as a beta version earlier this year but accessing Aardvark required using instant messaging software or an iPhone app.

On Wednesday, the company put the search box directly on a website - vark.com - making its social search service more accessible to a larger pool of people.

Like the so-called real time search engines popularized by Twitter, Collecta and OneRiot, Aardvark represents a still small, but potentially dangerous trend for Google: Much of the content that flows through these new types of search services is not necessarily accessible by Google’s search engine.

Google is trying to address the situation by reportedly licensing the Twitter data feed. As more newfangled forms of search emerge, Google may find itself having more such talks.

For two of the Web’s newest sensations, September was not a good month.

The robust growth that Twitter and Microsoft’s Bing search engine enjoyed in recent months appeared to come to an abrupt halt last month.

Twitter, the microblogging service cherished by everyone from Shaq to Al Gore, saw its growth stall in September — at least in terms of U.S. visitors to its Web site.

The number of unique visitors to Twitter’s site in the U.S. reached 20.89 million in September - virtually flat compared to the 20.83 million visitors the month before, according to the latest comScore data.

As the blog TechCrunch pointed out on Tuesday, Twitter’s flat September came as Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network, lured more than 3 million additional unique visitors to its site that month.

Of course, Twitter’s growth is still up a whopping 1,703 percent on a year-over-year basis. And the comScore numbers don’t tell the whole story, since many Twitter users access the service through third-party applications and thus would not be counted as unique visitors to the Twitter site.

But in the wake of the $100 million funding that Twitter recently secured at a $1 billion valuation, the new data is sure to raise questions about whether the service has peaked.

Questions are also probably in the air at Microsoft, as the software giant’s efforts to take on Google in search appear to be losing steam.

After picking up decent market share every month since its June launch, Bing grew its share by a meagre 10 basis points last month. According to comScore, Bing’s share of the U.S. search market grew to 9.4 percent, versus 9.3 percent the month before.

Google widened its lead to 64.9 percent share, from 64.6 percent in August, while Yahoo fell to 18.8 percent from 19.3 percent the month before.

For Bing, gaining 10 basis points is better than losing ground, which is what StatCounter, another Web measurement service had claimed happened to Bing in September.

But after spending a reported $100 million to market Bing, Microsoft may now need to find new ways to pump up interest in its search engine.

Gaudeamus Igitur!

Friday was a day of great joy and merriment for seminarians, academics and other devotees of Latin following Facebook’s announcement that the world’s largest social networking website is now available in the language of Caesar.

Latin may be considered a so-called dead language, but that didn’t stop Facebook from adding it to the 70 language options offered on the website.

“Most of the time when we stumble upon a Latin phrase, it’s etched in stone: carved in the hallways of universities, chiseled on facades of government buildings or carefully imprinted in cathedral foyers and churchyards,” read a Facebook blog post announcing the news.

“Yet beginning today, Latin - the staid and reliable language - springs to life on Facebook,” the post continues.

Even English monoglots may find that Latin Facebook has a familiar ring. The “chat” feature is labeled Colloqium. Requests are Petitiones.

Like all languages on Facebook, the Latin translation was created by Facebook’s users. According to Facebook there are an additional 55 languages currently being translated or in beta testing including Sanskrit, another language of the past.

The news may give hope to lovers of other dead and extinct tongues including Sumerian, Punic and Manx (a language of the Isle of Man whose last known native speaker died in 1974, according to Wikipedia).

Of course, there’s plenty of living languages for Facebook to focus on too.

The latest edition of Ethnologue lists 6,909 living languages, though 94 percent of them are spoken by only 6 percent of the world’s people.

How much are 1,000 Facebook friends worth?

According to Leon Hill, $177.30.

That’s the price that Hill’s online marketing firm uSocial.net is selling Facebook friends for, through a new service that has already raised alarms within Facebook.

Hill’s reputation as a notorious peddler of online souls precedes him, having launched a similar service selling Twitter followers to clients earlier this year.

Another endeavor, in which he sought to “game” social bookmarking site Digg by letting advertisers buy votes to push certain stories to the top of the site, earned him a cease-and-desist letter from Digg’s attorneys, he says. (A Digg representative said the company could not comment).

Now, uSocial has set it sights on Facebook, which Hill believes will be the greatest opportunity yet.

“It’s going to be massive. There are about 20 times more people on Facebook” than on Twitter, said Hill in a telephone interview from his home-base in Brisbane, Australia on Wednesday.

The idea is to provide a company with a giant pool of Facebook friends, which Hill’s clients can then market to. Hill said that he befriends Facebook users on behalf of his corporate client, approaching users who are fans of Ferraris, for example, if a client of his wants an audience that’s interested in sports cars.

“With Facebook it’s always up to the person whether they want to be a friend or not. They can always remove them later,” said Hill.

Facebook doesn’t see it that way.

“We’re just beginning an investigation now, but it’s clear to us that potential customers of their service should be cautious,” Facebook said in a statement.

“The value of a person that is tricked, coerced or bribed into being a Facebook friend or fan is extremely limited and may actually work against whatever goals the customer is attempting to achieve,” the statement continued.

Facebook also warned that its terms of service prohibit people from using their profile for commercial gain and that users found violating the policy could have their accounts permanently disabled.

Hill says he’s gotten better at covering his tracks since his Twitter and Digg days. He no longer uses any automated software to find users, and he routinely changes his servers’ IP addresses.

So long as a client doesn’t admit that they’ve paid for friends, there’s no way for Facebook to find out, Hill contended.

According to Hill, he’s already signed up 30 clients in the first six hours that his Facebook service has been available. Demand is so strong that Hill believes he’ll easily double the $60,000 a month in sales that he claims his company currently generates.

“The one thing about this business, people either love what I do or hate what I do,” said Hill.

Facebook opened its doors to venture capitalists on Tuesday.

The world’s largest social media company, which landed $200 million in funding in May, wasn’t trying to drum up any more cash for itself.

Instead, it was promoting a couple dozen start-up companies that leverage its technology and could further the strategy of making Facebook a key building block for Internet businesses and services.

The start-ups were selected by Facebook earlier this year through fbFund, a joint venture between Facebook, Accel and Founders Fund that provides seed funding (typically between $15,000 and $75,000 per start-up) to Facebook application developers.

The start-ups toiled through the summer in Facebook’s erstwhile Palo Alto, California headquarters and Tuesday was show-time: a chance to show off their progress and, they hoped, secure a more substantial chunk of funding from the VCs assembled.

Unlike traditional Facebook applications, such as games that run directly within the Facebook Web site, many of the products showcased on Tuesday were stand-alone Web sites that tap into a Web surfer’s network of Facebook friends using the Facebook Connect service.

Thread.com, an online dating site, allows people to cull through their Facebook friends’ friends, searching for say, single women in a certain age group, and to contact a prospective date via a trusted friend.

Another start-up, Sociable, provides a service that it said can boost sales for online retailers by integrating transactions with Facebook. The company said it was already generating revenue and that concert-promoter LiveNation is a customer.

According to Founders Fund’s Dave McClure, who organized Tuesday’s event, five fbFund companies are already break-even or profitable, and another three expect to get there by the end of the year - no small feat given the rough economy.

Facebook will need more such success stories as it seeks to transform its own company from the Web’s top social networking destination into the underlying social fabric of all Web sites.