Facebook has experienced its fair share of user revolts and public relations black-eyes in its five-year lifespan.

So CEO Mark Zuckerberg knows the drill when controversy is in the air and he moved with alacrity on the President’s Day holiday Monday to defuse the latest kerfuffle.

“We wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want,” Zuckerberg reassured his flock of more than 150 million Facebook users in a blog post. “The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work.”

The missive was in response to a warning a day earlier on The Consumerist blog, owned by Consumers Union advocacy group, about recent changes to Facebook’s Terms of Service.

According to The Consumerist, Facebook recently removed a provision in the terms of service that stipulated that when a user closes an account, any rights that Facebook claimed to that user’s comments, photos and other original content expires. The implication of the change, The Consumerist said, is that Facebook has the right to do whatever it wants with a person’s content forever.

The post garnered more than 300,000 views and thousands of comments, according to the New York Times.

Facebook faced unrest among its user ranks in 2007 when it introduced the Beacon program, which alerts a user’s friends to their online shopping habits and other activities. After a backlash over privacy concerns, Facebook made it easier for users to turn the feature off.

Zuckerberg didn’t appear to back down on the latest incident, but he sought to mollify concerns by explaining that the situation was not a change in Facebook’s policy towards content ownership but simply some “overly formal” legal language that addresses a fundamental reality of how services like Facebook operate.

When a person sends a message to a friend, Zuckerberg explained, that friend also has a copy of the message. Even if the original user de-activates their account, the friend retains a copy of the message, similar to email.

“There is no system today that enables me to share my email address with you and then simultaneously lets me control who you share it with and also lets you control what services you share it with,” wrote Zuckerberg.

He promised to post further thoughts soon. The question is whether users will beat him to it.

(Photo: Reuters)

The $15 billion valuation that Microsoft appeared to bestow on Facebook in 2007 provoked some scepticism – including within Facebook itself.

It turns out, the privately-held social networking firm has a much more conservative sense of self-worth, and puts its value at a one-fourth of the Microsoft figure.

According to redacted court documents obtained, and somehow decoded by the AP, Facebook valued itself at $3.7 billion in June, when it was in court over a dispute with a rival social networking site.

Sure, Microsoft invested $240 million for a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook in October 2007. But that was for Series D preferred stock. So the $35.90 price per Facebook share value implied by the deal does not apply to the rest of Facebook’s equity.

In fact, Facebook lawyers told the court, the company actually values its shares at $8.88 share, the AP says. What’s happened to the share price during the economic slowdown since that time is anybody’s guess.

The financial details come as a result of a squabble between Facebook and the three founders of ConnectU, who accused Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of stealing ideas from their own social network site while they were all undergraduates at Harvard.

Facebook settled the case in June for an undisclosed sum (believed to be anywhere from $31 million to $65 million), and the ConnectU gang are now in arbitration with the lawyers that represented them in the case.

Meanwhile, Facebook appears to be eyeing the vast realm of cell phone handsets as its next big growth opportunity.

In September, Reuters reported that Nokia was talking to Facebook about ways to make it easier for people to connect to the site from their cell phones.

A Wall Street Journal article Thursday said Facebook is in talks with Nokia about forming a partnership that would allow Nokia to integrate Facebook features on its handsets. Among the potential areas of cooperation: a feature that integrates an individual’s Facebook Friends with the contacts list on their phone.

(Photo: Reuters)

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may have traded in his Adidas flip-flops for tennis shoes, but he was as coy as ever when it came to talking about the social network.  On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, host John Batelle asked Zuckerberg about Dubai, referring to rumors that Facebook CFO Gideon Yu was in the Middle East seeking financing from the sheikhs.

“I’ve never been to Dubai,” Zuckerberg said. “I’m told it’s nice at this time of the year.”

Never one to give up easily, Batelle dug deeper: “Gideon must have told you that.”

Zuckerberg’s silence was long enough to make a point before he said, “Oh.”

Never mind, Batelle just continued lobbing the questions at Zuckerberg, who was dressed down as usual in a black Northface fleece.

“Do you need money?” Batelle asked.

“No,” Zuckerberg responded.

Batelle then tried another tack to get Zuckerberg to answer the money question. Perhaps Facebook needs to worry about money because it’s running out of it faster that previously thought?

Zuckerberg answered that one. Kind of. He said Facebook’s focus has been on expanding its membership base this year, and the site now boasts 120 million users. Also, the ability of users to translate the site into their native language has helped it expand internationally.

“Growth is our priority,” Zuckerberg said. “We’re not focused on optimizing revenue. Some people have taken that to mean… we don’t have a revenue strategy, which is completely wrong.”

Facebook’s two main revenue streams — direct sales and online sales — are both doing “really well,” Zuckerberg said, adding that the social networking site is on track to make “hundreds of millions of dollars” in revenue this year. It’s an estimate Facebook has given before.

Batelle then asked Zuckerberg about Facebook’s “third revenue stream - Microsoft.” Last year, the software company invested $240 million in the start-up, valuing it at $15 billion.

“We don’t feel any type of pressure to live up to 15 billion dollars,” Zuckerberg replied. “On a day-to-day basis there is no thought that we need to do this… to justify a 15-billion-dollar valuation.”

And no, the company doesn’t have a hiring freeze in place. Now 700 employees strong, Facebook is still looking to hire technical and sales folks. “The key focus right now is hiring really good technical people,” the CEO said. So if you’re looking for a job, just Facebook Mark Zuckerberg.

Photo credit: Reuters