“As of today, Facebook now serves 300 million people across the world,” founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in one of his typically somnolent blog posts. “It’s a large number, but the way we think about this is that we’re just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone. We’re also succeeding at building Facebook in a sustainable way. Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010, and I’m pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter. This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.”

This is important to us because it sets Facebook up to be a strong independent service for the long term.

Interesting remark. It would seem then that Facebook has no interest whatsoever in selling itself off to Google (GOOG) or anyone else. It would much rather go public.

UPDATE: A couple of quick points courtesy Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: Growth is apparently widespread, and while it’s true that 70 percent of Facebook’s user base is now outside the U.S., growth in the U.S. is not slowing.

[Image credit: San Francisco skyline by m.john16/Flickr]

Fifty million new users in under four months: Impressive.

“For us, growing to 250 million users isn’t just an impressive number; it is a mark of how many personal connections all of you have made, and how far we at Facebook have to go to extend the power of connection to the billions of people around the world,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post to the company blog.

If Facebook is able to maintain its growth, it will easily hit 300 million users before the end of the year, perhaps as early as November. And as a recent study from Nielsen Online found, users are spending increasingly more time on the site. Americans spent an average of four hours, 39 minutes and 33 seconds on the site in June–significantly more than any other Web site.

Clearly, Facebook is a lot more than “the flavor of the month,” as News Corp. (NWS) chairman and owner of rival MySpace (and this site) Rupert Murdoch once called it. But how long before it’s able to turn its popularity into profit befitting its user base?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is going to turn the social network’s “stream” of user experiences and information into a revenue stream one way or another. And if that means allowing others to pan its waters for gold, then so be it.

And so, at an event in Palo Alto later today, Facebook will reportedly announce plans to open its stream to third-party developers, offering them the chance to build new services and applications outside the site that–with users’ permission–access the status updates, photos and videos uploaded by users. According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook will provide that access via an open standard and it will do it for free.

An attractive proposition for developers: Access to a community with some 200 million members where the only real barrier to entry is a user’s privacy settings. In the months ahead, we’ll undoubtedly see this give rise to countless new services in much the same way Twitter has spawned an ecosystem of developers.

In doing this, Facebook is positioning itself as a social data clearinghouse feeding a myriad of other third-party services. More importantly, by doing so, the social-networking behemoth is also acknowledging that we’re not likely to conduct all our social interactions in a single network.

But it’s also betting that we may be willing to conduct many of them through one. And in the end, that’s just as good–especially if that social network is Facebook.

UPDATE:

Moments ago Facebook announced the Open Stream API which will allow third party developers to create new apps and services that will allow users to read an interact with Facebook member streams without having to actually visit Facebook.

“The stream is the flow of information on Facebook, which manifests itself on a user’s home page as the News Feed and on the user’s profile as the Wall,” Facebook explains in its developer Wiki. “It represents the content a user shares with friends in a real-time setting. Initially the stream content appeared only on Facebook, and now with the Open Stream API, developers can connect to their users’ streams and let their users read their streams wherever they want. This means that for the first time, you can build new user interfaces for the stream everywhere including Web, mobile, and desktop applications.”

A bold move. And one that will almost certainly let some of the steam out of Twitter’s pistons.

Welcome once more to Weekend Update! I’ll be filling in today for your regular host, Beth Callaghan, who’s on vacation.

And what sane person wouldn’t be, after the slew of Silicon Valley silliness inspired by April Fools Day this past week? Digital pranks were the name of the game as Google (GOOG) and others heaped so many tepid hoaxes upon us that we wanted to call April Fold so as to quickly end this round of gags.

But no bag of tricks was needed for one Web site to April Fool itself into crying wolf about an imminent Google (GOOG) acquisition of Twitter, when a real story around the corner was aboutGoogle turning Turbo Tax tweets into ads.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest jokesters of them all, The Onion, won one of the biggest awards in journalism, a Peabody, meaning that the best sense of humor goes to that panel of judges. And to Stephen Colbert, who was willing to entertain (for a while) Twitter spokesmodel Biz Stone’s biz-model-less thoughts in an interview on “The Colbert Report.” Also on BoomTown this week: Facebook’s former CFO Gideon Yu is out, as was a leaked memo from Mark Zuckerberg about Yu’s departure and the company’s situation.

A sense of humor is certainly an invaluable feather to have in your cap these days. Digital Daily wrote about the most recent doom-and-gloom predictions and events to happen in this econalypse, like analysts’ predictions of YouTube losing $470 million in 2009, the barren IPO-less wasteland VCs are bemoaning and a major global slump in semiconductor sales. Other headlines weren’t quite so dreary: Google’s foray into VC land, the folks at BlackBerry HQ celebrating surprisingly good fourth-quarter results and the world’s worst-kept secret, the anticipated merger between IBM (IBM) and Sun (JAVA).

There was a similar mix of dark clouds and silver linings over at MediaMemo. The National Collegiate Athletics Association forced Twitter and partners AT&T (T) and Federated Media to take down one of its first ad campaigns, “March Tweetness,” crying copyright foul. Also running afoul with big companies in legal waters, free music Web site Seeqpod filed for bankruptcy. And video site Veoh laid off a significant amount of staff and kicked out its old CEO, replacing him with founder Dmitry Shapiro and refocusing the company on its “Video Compass” browser plug-in.

Online video is generally a turbulent space these, but the waiting is the hardest part for Hulu when it comes to the rumored Disney deal in which Disney (DIS) seems to be playing the field. Other gems of the week were URL-shrinking Web service bit.ly’s raising of $2 million and media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s Kindle envy.

In a new Mossblog, Walt Mossberg gives us his first impressions of the BlackBerry App World store in which Research in Motion (RIMM) takes a bold step into what was formerly the sole domain of Apple (AAPL). In Personal Technology, Walt reviews a network hard drive from Western Digital (WDC) that makes the technology gloriously simple for everyone. And in Mossberg Solution, Katherine Boehret takes a look at several laptop trays, designed to protect the–ahem–family jewels and family members in general from laptops’ scorching undersides.

Finally, our exciting Woz-watch, after many weeks, has come to a sad end: Steve Wozniak was voted off “Dancing with the Stars” this week after one misstep too many. Down, but not out, the Apple co-founder swore that the “geeks shall inherit the earth”… just not the dance floor, any time soon. Please.

More next week.

For instance, BoomTown was in Rome earlier this week attending a conference on business, brand and innovation that happens only once every seven years–and one of the biggest takeaways? Hardly any Italians have heard of Twitter, and those who have don’t really use it. Well, that, and conversations with Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, and several Italian business leaders. Mark Zuckerberg, though, is most definitely plugged into the white-hot microblogging service. This week, he used his Twitter account, plus an appearance on “Oprah,” as a platform to herald the launch of Facebook’s own Twitteresque homepage redesign. In other news, Time Warner (TWX) CEO Jeff Bewkes laid off AOL President and COO Ron Grant and Chairman and CEO Randy Falco. BoomTown interviewed Falco’s replacement, Google (GOOG) ad sales exec Tim Armstrong, who’ll start at AOL as Chairman and CEO on April 7.

MediaMemo had the full memo from Time Warner on the Falco/Grant-Armstrong transition and also spoke with Boxee CEO Avner Ronen this week. Boxee is the start-up that lets you watch Web video on your TV, basically bypassing your cable box. Which is probably why it’s caught up in a cat-and-mouse game with Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox that would much rather have you watch TV on the Internet instead. Guess who’s the mouse? Still, Hulu is down two networks, ABC and CBS (CBS)–though presumably, the aim is to offer all three. (News Corp. is the owner of Dow Jones, which owns this Web site.) MediaMemo also noted that Google rolled out its behavioral targeting functionality this week and points out that we all might be hearing a lot more from a man named Rick Boucher in the near future as a result.

Behavioral targeting wasn’t the only thing that Google rolled out this week–it also launched Google Voice, the initiative based on the company’s acquisition of voice communications start-up GrandCentral. Digital Daily covered the story. Elsewhere in the telecom world, major Palm (PALM) investor Roger McNamee made some bold (read: crazy) assertions about iPhone users switching en masse to the Pre, which later needed to be clarified (read: backed away from) by Palm itself. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky is also bullish on the Pre and its WebOS, but in a less crazy way. He gave it a glowing write-up on Friday. For a product that hasn’t yet been given a price or a launch date, it’s certainly building itself some high expectations. Of course, it’ll need to fulfill them to compete with the ever-evolving iPhone, which for which Apple (AAPL) is having a press event Tuesday to announce version 3.0 of the device’s OS.

Walt Mossberg reviewed the new version of Apple’s ever-evolving iPod Shuffle this week, which has the distinction of being the first mp3 player to “speak.” His verdict was in Wednesday’s Personal Technology column. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions about using a stylus with the iPhone and offered an explanation on how to change Apple’s Safari 4 beta so that it looks and works more like the previous version. And in this week’s Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at iSkoot’s Notifier, an app designed to endow basic cellphones with smartphone-like capabilities.

More next week. And beware the Ides of March. Or not.

BoomTown was there Thursday when Facebook announced a new look for profiles and homepages that incorporates a “timeline” or “stream” of realtime updates. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, “This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it.” It’s also reminiscent of some other sites, not that it’ll matter much in the long run. Speaking of Twitter, BoomTown got impatient waiting around for its revenue strategy to materialize and went ahead and started a “Twitter Business Plan Count-Up.” The Chia-Twit has potential, but the winning financial strategy so far, by a mile, is the “Snuggie-Tweet.” BoomTown describes it best.

MediaMemo was all (well, almost all) about old media vs. new media. This week. Hulu, which lets you watch Fox and NBC shows on your computer, has been playing tug-of-war with Boxee, which lets you watch Web video on your TV. Hulu and its TV programmer owners don’t really want you to have that option–the resulting standoff could be long and interesting. MediaMemo also reported on MegaVideo, the Chinese site that makes it easy to watch pirated TV shows and movies online, noting that Hollywood’s Napster moment has probably just arrived. Universal Music Group–which has already had its share of Napster moments–is discussing a music site with YouTube. According to MediaMemo, it would be the most likely way to benefit both YouTube and UMG–not to mention music fans.

Digital Daily must be getting tired of that same old economic refrain. Among the highlights of this week’s crappy news: the jobless rate in Silicon Valley is at 9.3 percent and getting higher. At least Google (GOOG) may be getting some big love soon–Vivek Kundra, President Obama’s chief information officer, famously switched 38,000 workers from Microsoft Office to Google’s Web-based office suite as chief technology officer for the District of Columbia. No word yet on office software for the new White House, but here’s hoping for a more secure Google Docs. DD also noted the lack of a release date for Palm’s (PALM) new Pre from Sprint (S). Apparently it’ll be a while longer before anyone finds out if the Pre really is an iPhone-killer.

On the Personal Technology front, Walt Mossberg gave Apple’s (AAPL) new Safari browser a mixed review, and offered his first impressions of Kindle software on the iPhone. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt answered questions about reading periodicals on Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle 2, keeping a monitor from going to sleep in the middle of a movie, and the benefits of a netbook for traveling. And in the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took an early look at a new Oodle-powered Facebook Marketplace, and reported on its pros and cons.

Spring forward. More next week.

One way to think about this is as a timeline–or a stream. As people share more, the timeline gets filled in more and more with what is happening with everything you’re connected to. The pace of updates accelerates. This creates a continuous stream of information that delivers a deeper understanding for everyone participating in it. As this happens, people will no longer come to Facebook to consume a particular piece or type of content, but to consume and participate in the stream itself.”

A heavyhanded explanation for a simplistic concept, but perhaps there is a deeper meaning to be found in our collective tweet of consciousness mutterings–“John is stuck at SFO,” “Beth is all liquored up,” “Adam is reminiscing about his days on the Newton”…“Mark has a laughably grandiose vision of his social-networking service.”

Or perhaps the deeper meaning here is to be found in another tweak Facebook is making to its service. As part of this redesign, the company is making profiles and pages the same thing. What that means is that pages created by public figures, organizations and companies will now look, feel and behave just like any other profile. Now their proprietors, too, can join “the stream.” “These folks will now be able to share status updates, videos, photos or anything else they want, in the same way your friends can already,” says Zuckerberg. “You’ll be able to keep up with all of their activity in your News Feed. This means that you can find out that Oprah is reading a book backstage before a show, CNN posted a breaking story or U2 is working on a new song, just as you would see that your friend uploaded new photos from her trip to Europe.”

Presumably, that also means folks like Microsoft (MSFT), BlockBuster (BBI) and Coca-Cola (KO) can also tip you off to the fascinating things they’re up to. So in the end, this redesign isn’t about the continuing evolution of the “social graph” or whatever the hell Facebook calls its network these days. It’s about developing a new advertising program that allows businesses legitimate access to the 175 million Facebook members the company has so far failed miserably to monetize.

This weekend, AllThingsD.com is distributing awards for Best Performance in a ToS Slapdown, Fastest Disappearing Subscriber Base, and Best Conference to Attend in February If It’s Cold Where You Live. If all involved keep their remarks on topic, things should move along quickly.

BoomTown followed this week’s Facebook drama from the first rumblings of dissatisfaction (and jaded irony) with the copyright changes in the social network’s Terms of Service on through to full-on rallying cries by the likes of Perez Hilton for mass desertion. The drama ended–for now–with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s public apology and rollback of the changes. If you don’t speak Facebook, you’ll be relieved to know that BoomTown has provided a handy translation. Also, Yahoo (YHOO) CEO “Hurricane Carol” Bartz found an appreciative audience in BoomTown for her Friday Memos, which discuss topics as closely related as the company’s maybe-impending reorg and Saturday night chick flicks.

MediaMemo noted this week that on the Web, the New York Times really is the paper of record, as it beats the online reach of its print counterparts almost as handily as Gawker Media beats the reach of the Los Angeles Times. And Comcast (CMCSA) is feeling the subscriber pinch–it lost more on the basic end and added fewer on the high-end than analysts expected, which is especially bad news during hard times, when people traditionally cling to their cable as they might cling to a security blanket. Elsewhere in the content wars, Hulu was at the center of some interesting questions: Was the content provider forced off of Boxee by the big cable companies? Why did it disappear from CBS’s (CBS) TV.com? And maybe most interestingly, how can the cable guys build their own Hulus?

Digital Daily reported that Sprint’s (S) subscriber base is shrinking too, though CEO Dan Hesse is optimistic about the future, which includes the debut of Palm’s (PALM) new Pre handset. The company is “bullish” about its potential. Google’s (GOOG) adventures in Italy took an interesting turn this week, wrote Digital Daily. The family pressing charges against four of its executives–in reaction to a video in which classmates taunt their son, who has Down Syndrome–decided to drop them. The court, however, is allowing the case to proceed without the family’s involvement. And U2 learned the hard way this week that all it takes is one leaked digital copy of an album–in this case, their latest effort, “No Line on the Horizon”–to facilitate the distribution of millions of unauthorized copies.

In Personal Tech, Walt Mossberg test-drove Unigo, a new site aimed at providing first-hand info on colleges to students (and parents) during what can be a truly stressful time. In Mossberg’s Mailbox, Walt offered advice on working with Microsoft Publisher documents on a Mac, improving searches with Surf Canyon (even the beta version) and using a smartphone as a modem. In the Mossberg Solution, Katie Boehret took a look at Trulia.com, which aims to offer an insider’s view of real estate, and in a special MossBlog, Walt and Katie reported from the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona–not a bad place to go in February, especially from Washington, D.C.

More next week.

Now, the stake Microsoft (MSFT) took in Facebook was in preferred stock, which is inherently more valuable than the common stock on which Facebook’s appraisal was based. That said, it’s doubtful that Microsoft’s shares are loaded up with enough special rights to account for the vast discrepancy between $35.90 per share and $8.88 per share. Remember, Google (GOOG) once purchased five percent of AOL for $1 billion at a company valuation of $20 billion, only to write down $726 million of that investment a few years later.

One last point worth noting here, about the terms of Facebook’s settlement with ConnectU. It was reported earlier this week that the social network had paid ConnectU $65 million to settle the case against it. According to the Associated Press, however, Facebook agreed to pay ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock. At the $35.90 per share “Microsoft” valuation, that stock would be worth $45 million. But at the “Facebook” valuation, it’s worth just $11 million. So in Facebook’s view, the company agreed to a $31 million settlement, not a $65 million one.

Frankly, I’m kind of appalled that they’re threatening me after the work I’ve done for them free of charge, but after dealing with a bunch of other groups with deep pockets and good legal connections including companies like Microsoft, I can’t say I’m surprised. I try to shrug it off as a minor annoyance that whenever I do something successful, every capitalist out there wants a piece of the action.”

–Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, February 2004

The inane dispute over the provenance of Facebook apparently ended in a multimillion dollar resolution. Facebook has reportedly paid the founders of ConnectU $65 million to settle a lawsuit that accused founder Mark Zuckerberg of lifting the social network’s source code and business plan when he worked for it as a programmer. A nice little financial windfall for the founders of ConnectU–brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and their colleague, Divya Narendra. Facebook certainly has money to pay to make the suit go away and a very good reason to pay it: It would be poor form to leave its quaint little creation myth in dispute.

News of the “confidential agreement” was apparently broken by ConnectU’s legal counsel, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which inadvertently disclosed it in a promotion for its legal services.

“Lawyers in the heavyweight fight had expended great effort to keep the settlement secret–even going as far as persuading a judge to clear the courtroom of reporters on one occasion,” The Recorder reports. “But ConnectU’s former lawyers from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges published the settlement amount in a firm advertisement trumpeting the firm’s prowess. ‘WON $65 million settlement against Facebook’ appears, along with dozens of other Quinn outcomes from last year, in the firm’s January business litigation newsletter.”

All parties involved declined comment on the “confidential settlement.”

An open-ended timetable for an employee stock sale program.

Perhaps it’s the same “open-ended timetable” Facebook’s using for that mythical liquidity event, hmm? Without a silver bullet business model and no stable revenue stream to speak of, investors were bound to question Facebook’s perceived valuation sooner or later. And, apparently that’s exactly what happened, according to Valleywag’s Owen Thomas. “Facebook’s common shares…have a value that put the whole company’s worth at around $4 billion,” Thomas explains. “Or they did. A source close to potential investors said they wanted to buy shares from employees at a lower valuation, or with guarantees similar to Microsoft’s. To reward a small number of employees who had enough shares to benefit from the program, [Facebook] would have had to give away something for nothing.”