Gawker: valleywag, flixster

Slide's Top Friends back on Facebook after third-party privacy audit

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:40:00 EDT

Facebook's third-most popular widget, Slide's Top Friends, is back after Facebook suspended it on June 26. (The offense: displaying Top Friends' users birthdays and other private information that wouldn't normally be visible on Facebook.) What took so long? Following the suspension, Slide wanted to call its apps the most secure on Facebook. To feel comfortable doing so, it contracted a third-party audit firm to review its applications and source code, Slide exec Keith Rabois told us. "The issue with Top Friends was fixed immediately," Rabois told us, "But as you might imagine an independent audit takes time to perform." Elsewhere on Facebook, Slide's privacy troubles seem to be spreading.

Slide rival Rock You's Super Wall saw traffic plummet 70 percent in the last week. InsideFacebook's Justin Smith speculates the dip is due to "some kind of punitive action against the application" over privacy concerns by Facebook, "perhaps by restricting feed access or by lowering the application’s notification or invitation limits." Another source tells us Flixster, the widgetmaker behind the Movies app, is going through similar punishment from Facebook over privacy concerns.

Barry Diller balks at Flixster's $150 million price tag

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:20:48 EST

Barry Diller's IAC began talks to acquire Flixster, but then dropped the idea as soon as the two-year-old, 17-employee company priced itself at $150 million, according to Boom Town. And it seems IAC isn't the only one saying no. Execs from Viacom's MTV Networks gave Flixster a look, but also decided the price was too high. Flixster's Facebook application, Movies, claims 804,748 daily active users, a milestone achieved with just $2 million in funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners. So what's keeping buyers so shy, besides the lofty price?

Likely as not, it's Flixster's desperation to sell. When you try to hire engineers with the promise that your company has "liquidity written all over it," potential buyers get the hint, too. It's kind of like trying to bluff while holding your cards facing out.

More Facebook porn, this time from an app

Nicholas Carlson — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:42:16 EST

Rumor has it Flixster is for sale and it wants $150 million. Not going to happen if the company doesn't clean up its Facebook act — or app, rather A tipster sent in this screenshot from his Facebook News Feed. It's a "story" from his Flixster app, and the glands it portrays put it in clear violaltion of Facebook's platform application guidelines. Be warned, what follows is a rare explicit depiction of the female chest.

What OpenSocial will look like on Ning

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:18:03 EDT

A tipster has leaked us these screen shots of how Marc Andreessen and company plan to integrate Google's OpenSocial platform into Ning. Make sure you're sitting down. We've got a ninja.

Notice the Flixster app installed on this profile, part of the Ask a Ninja socia network by Ning:

Here's a DubPages profile with an iLike app installed. Check out the "activity stream," very similar to Facebook's news feed: