The collective Interwebz demands answers, changes and – ultimately – alternatives. For once, it’s not using Facebook to do it.

FB HQ held a reported all-staff meeting Thursday, but no one is talking about it. Mere hours prior, four NYU computer science nerds confirmed more than $100,000 in backing for an open, privacy-focused Facebook alternative. As of writing, they’re more than $134k in the honey for the project, named “Diaspora.”

Another code project, trending viral this morning, highlights the number of Facebook users exposing status updates to the world. FacebookSearch aggregates that data in fun (?), easy to use and admittedly creepy search of said updates.

Recommendations from the site include “playing hooky,” “rectal exam” and “stupid boss.” I also suggest “out of jail.”

As the creators note on their about page, there’s a growing discussion about the ethical and moral nature of such a search. The debate: The data – the updates – is already public, but the aggregation and subsequent access to the aggregated data is new. Some discussion contributors criticize the creators for not creating a proactive solution the problem, and instead creating a toy.

For the normal Facebook user, however, awareness of a problem is half the battle.

[via TechCrunch, props to Matt for the find]

Not that you’d expect him to recognize that – he was merely 10 years old in 2002. Despite his youth, he’s the wiz responsible for opening realms of access to stripteasing loners, unsightly masturbation, and intriguing relationships lasting mere seconds.

Ternovskiy is the creator of Chatroulette.com.

While providing some fairly thought-provoking analysis of the Chatroulette phenom, it’s more riveting to read observations of the  Russian teen who brought the concept to browsers.

The article highlights social characteristics of the “18-year-old high-school dropout” (born 1992, if you’re bad at crunching digits) and a generation of nerds currently and soon attempting to rule the world. Starting first with the visuals:

He is thin and nervous, with light sprays of acne on his cheeks and a fuzz of dark-blond hair. He has a hard time making eye contact and learned English by spending thousands of hours chatting online, but he says that his passion is talking with people and “exploring other cultures.”

Later detailing Ternovskiy’s face-to-face social ineptitude:

The best way to talk to Ternovskiy is through some kind of digital intermediary. Shy and evasive in person, he fills with a wry swagger when he is just a stream of text. “They have no business no money blablablabla,” he typed to me one afternoon, feigning phlegmatic unconcern with the financial woes of an advertiser he’d been negotiating with—his only one. Like much of his generation, Ternovskiy has an online persona far more developed than his real one.

Transitioning from his thoughts on school and friendship(s).

Ternovskiy, meanwhile, sees school—and college—as a waste of time. “The last three years at school, I haven’t done anything,” he says. “I just can’t make myself. There’s so much interesting stuff in the world, and I have to sit there with textbooks?”

By “the world,” of course, Ternovskiy means the Internet, which is also where most of his friends are. His closest confidant is a Russian immigrant named Kirill Gura, who lives in Charleston, West Virginia. Every night for the past five years, Ternovskiy has turned on his computer, found Kirill on MSN Messenger, and talked to him until one of them fell asleep. “He’s a real friend,” Ternovskiy says.

Ternovskiy captures a tourist visa for the U.S., visiting New York City, San Fransisco and ultimately capturing an apartment in Palo Alto. The article concludes with a familiar situation for anyone experienced with online-centric relationships.

He also traveled to West Virginia to meet Kirill Gura, the friend he had chatted with on MSN Messenger every night for years, but whom he’d never actually met. The transition was bumpy. “It was a little weird, you know,” Ternovskiy told me later. “We was just looking at each other without having much to say.”

Sucks when you can’t click “next,” doesn’t it?

[Link via Shortformblog]

“If you want to break down someone’s door, why don’t you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone!”

via TechCrunch.

Let’s review.

Out: “Fanning” pages
In: “Liking” Pages

Details from The Facebook Blog:

Feature certain connections: When you edit your profile, you can choose to feature some of your connections over others. You can drag and drop Pages above or below the fold to dictate which ones are most prominent when friends visit your profile. If you move a Page below the fold, your friends will still be able to see that connection if they click “See More” beside the field.

Out: Free-text statements of interests/likes
In: Automatic suggestions to existent pages for your likes/interests

Also from the blog:

Opt-in to new connections: When you next visit your profile page on Facebook, you’ll see a box appear that recommends Pages based on the interests and affiliations you’d previously added to your profile. You can then either connect to all these Pages—by clicking “Link All to My Profile”—or choose specific Pages. You can opt to only connect to some of those Pages by going to “Choose Pages Individually” and checking or unchecking specific Pages. Once you make your choice, any text you’d previously had for the current city, hometown, education and work, and likes and interests sections of your profile will be replaced by links to these Pages. [My formatting change] If you would still like to express yourself with free-form text, you can still use the “Bio” section of your profile. You also can also use features and applications like Notes, status updates or Photos to share more about yourself.

TechCrunch breaks down the changes, pointing to a possible privacy flaw in the new system:

One other thing to point out: historically users have been able to control who their activities and interests would show up for in their profile. They’re losing that ability today with the new changes, because Pages are considered publicly available information.

Privacy concerns aside, linking these terms to pages instead of search results seems like a logical change for the sake of page views. Yet, is “like” still too great of a commitment? It could futher discourage a collection of people for whom “fan” was way more than “just talking.”

Like, omigod, this is sure to cause some controversy!

We couldn’t leave it at just the video. While the Ball State Daily News (rightfully so) has an Gora-recognized obligation to objectivity and, moreover, a sense of dignity, we find ourselves far removed from such honors and giggling like a pack of school gossip girls on Twitter.

We’re not condoning sexual harassment. Notable here is the university’s unintentionally embarrassing overreaction, as even a group of students with no prior context are highlighting.

Behold: linkage.

• “He” – rather, the Butt-Slapper’s fictitious persona – is on Facebook.

• The “official” (wtf?) The Ball State Ass Slapper Facebook page is closing in on 10,000 fans.

• Entrepreneurs at  BSAS: Ass Slappin’ Since April, 7 2010 are selling shirts for $10 through PayPal, or $14.95 shipped.

• Take it for what it’s worth: In Jersey, they fist pump. In Indiana, we ass slap.

• A smaller opposition group, clearly unaware of netiquette, also has as page: WE OPPOSE MEMEBRS OF THE BALL STATE ASS SLAPPERS GROUP. IT IS NOT A JOKE!!!
  
• Some tipsters are trying to get some coverage via The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Forums
  
• When a Gawker Network site picks this up you know it’s in the limelight. Deadspin has a short recap, disclaimer and set of links. We’re on-task to outdo them though, don’t worry.

Did we miss one? Post it in the comments so we can add it.

Even CNN is noting the re-occurrence in a semi-snarky headline.

One thing is for sure: If Google continues this trend of downtime the webizens of the world will collectively lift their index fingers and say – nay demand - that their priceless and valued midday personal conversations not face oppression from the evil tyranny of sporadic tech outages! We will rise above to an uninterrupted day of e-mailing!

Or we’ll STFU, actually accomplish something and then wait for Gmail to come back online.

Zuck’s beast launched a new feature allowing users to tag friends and Facebook pages in its posts.

I’d write something more here, but you already left to go play with it yourself.

The loot: 23 MacBook Pros, 14 iPhones and 9 iPod touches.

It only took them 31 seconds.