Google couldn't get a piece of Facebook or its hot apps platform, so now it's building its own. Not that it would like people to call it Google's platform; it's trying to persuade people that this is an open platform. It's called OpenSocial, and it's supposed to force developers to reconsider writing apps solely in FBML, the Facebook platform's proprietary language. The idea is that Google will gather a gang of websites whose users combined, will offer an audience as large as Facebook's. It's a fine theory, but let's see the real numbers behind the Google Gang.

Facebook employees may be creeps, but at least they're creeps who hate spam. Today, Facebook added a feature to allow users to flag app-created "stories," or activity updates, in their mini-feed as spam. When flagged, a dialog box opens asking if the user would like remove the overactive app. Negative feedback will also affect how often an application's stories will find their way into other users' news feeds. [Facebook Developers]

Eager Madison Avenue executives be warned: Facebook, we told you, is planning to announce a new ad network in New York on November 6. Likely to be called SocialAds, the network will draw on the personal information users make available on Facebook to target advertising across the Web. New York ad agencies plan to pack the house, desperate to participate in the latest craze — or at least not appear clueless when they gab with their clients. But now, AllFacebook reports the SocialAds network is not close to being ready. Will the advertising agencies be dismayed? Not likely. Remember, these are the people who fund a season's worth of broadcast TV based on a clip from a pilot months before any actual episodes are written.

AOL already owns Advertising.com and is looking to acquire another ad networks similar to text-links broker Quigo, according to a source. And it's rolling up its motley collection of ad plays into a new unit, Platform A. Today AOL announced a new system to allow users to opt out of ads targeted to their online behavior, like the websites they visit. Some users are creeped out by the thought, so AOL's letting them decline the ads. Here's how the news affects others.

Mark Zuckerberg, are you feeling scared? Google isn't just moving in on your turf, it's beating you to the punch. By almost a week. Since hiring Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and a proponent of open standards, Google has been rumored to be working on tools to let developers build software for multiple social networks. An announcement had been expected next Monday. That would have been a day before Facebook plans to unveil a new ad network to compete with Google's AdSense. Instead of being late, as rumored, Google's early. On Thursday, Google will unveil OpenSocial, a set of common software-development standards that Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Oracle have agreed to use. Call them the Google Gang. The Gang, in turn will allow developers like RockYou and iLike to develop one common widget which will work on any of their sites. The goal? To make it unattractive for developers to lock themselves into the Facebook platform. Boo!

Here it is, folks: Facebook's thoroughly nonpalatial offices, courtesy of Silicon Alley Insider. For this, they're paying $29,000 a month? And with this, they expect to woo Madison Avenue to a new ad platform? Good luck, Zuck!

Read/WriteWeb is pondering what websites are worth. It starts off comparing Plentyoffish, the Canadian dating site, with Facebook. By the numbers? Facebook will have about 15 times Plentyoffish's $10 million in revenues this year. So shouldn't it be worth one-fifteenth as much as Facebook, or $1 billion?

Yesterday and over the weekend, we revealed that Facebook employees check out user profiles and activity for lunch-time giggles and to help them get laid. We also reported on a tipster who told us about a Facebook employee who allegedly looked up a user's password, logged into her account, and changed her profile picture to a graphic image. What does it add up to for Facebook and its privacy-violating employees? Potentially, a barrelful of legal trouble.

But there is one area of privacy that we won't surrender: the secrecy of how and whom we search. A friend of mine was recently in a panic over rumors of a hacker application that would allow Facebook users to see who's been visiting their profiles. She'd spent the day ogling a love interest's page and was horrified at the idea that he knew she'd been looking at him. But there's no way Facebook would allow such a program to exist: the site is popular largely because it enables us to indulge our gazes anonymously. (We might feel invulnerable in the spotlight, but we don't want to be caught sitting in someone else's audience.) If our ability to privately search is ever jeopardized, Facebook will turn into a ghost town.

Tonight hosts a gadget-blog party and a lecture on how to stop the Internet from having a future. Oh, and an almost-astronaut too. All in tonight's Valleywag Calendar.

One of the chief justifications for Facebook's $15 billion valuation is that it traffics in real identities. To prove that you belong to a college or workplace, you must give the social network a matching email address. Unless, that is, you're an early employee and major shareholder. Sean Parker reportedly never even made it to college. But on Facebook, he lives out the fantasy of having simultaneously graduated from Columbia, Sarah Lawrence, Pepperdine, USC, UCLA, UC-Berkeley, New York University, and Stanford. All this in 2002, when he was also working on Plaxo. He's also the member of several regional networks; Facebook allows most users to only join one. So why would Parker, of all people, need so many fake IDs?

According to Google Maps Street View, Facebook's New York office on 551 Fifth Avenue is inside a bus. We have reasons to believe this is not, in fact, the case. Silicon Alley Insider reports that the office is actually located on the sixth floor of the building itself. Photographic proof was not made available by SAI's tipster, however. We're pretty sure you can do better. Don't let us down. Google's bad intelligence, after the jump.

Facebook's "secret" New York office is at 551 Fifth Avenue, just up from 45th Street. That is where we will all find adorable but nerdy and newly-rich boyfriends together. RACE YOU. GET 'EM WHILE THEY'RE (SORTA) HOT. [Alley Insider]

Ignoring the perfectly good solution we cooked up in Valleywag Labs, AdBrite and Ad Chap went to market with products for Facebook applications yesterday. AdBrite cofounder Philip Kaplan told CNET that the company already powers the ads on popular apps such as iLike and Zombies. The program is supposed to help tailor those ads better for the social environment. Google is working to do the same thing for developers using AdSense on their apps. Ad Chap's service, itself a Facebook application, is entirely new. Why it's unlikely to work? Ad Chap charges advertisers per click, but doesn't offer any targeting. For right now, there's a proliferation of ad networks on Facebook, but we suspect Darwin will soon cull the herd.

We called it: Facebook is launching an ad network that will reach far beyond its website, much like Google's AdSense. Now others are confirming it. A source told AllFacebook the SocialAds ad network Facebook will announce in New York on November 6 will work by installing cookies on members' browsers. Then, when these members visit publishers in the SocialAds network, Facebook will serve ads, targeted by the personal information it has on those users. The skeptics' take? Some in tech aren't convinced the information a Facebook user puts in the profile indicates any useful information, such as an intent to buy. But then again, the advertising industry plans to fund Sex and the City reruns for the next 40 years with tampon commercials. Just getting basic demographics right will count for a lot.

What happens when you put twentysomethings in charge of a company with vast amounts of private information? Sheer madcap chaos, of course. Not to mention abuses of power. And that's what seems to be happening at Facebook. Valleywag kept hearing reports that Facebook employees had violated their users' privacy in a number of ways. The claimed abuses varied: Looking at restricted profiles to check out dates. Seeing which profiles a user had viewed. And, in one case, allegedly logging onto a user's account, changing her profile picture to a graphic image, and sending faked messages. Oh, and don't dare ask a Facebooker about any claims of misbehavior — they'll report you to customer service for "harassment." Facebook may have sophisticated privacy controls. But they don't appear to be deployed at headquarters.

This morning, we reported on a Facebook employee who allegedly looked up a user's password, logged into her account, and changed her profile picture to a graphic image. When a tipster wrote in to name the employee, I contacted the accused, Jordan Moncharmont, for comment. I wrote, "Jordan — Please read this and then call me immediately," pasting a link to this morning's story. Facebook's response?

Last week, Google failed to get its hands on even a small percentage of Facebook's social graph, as Microsoft walked away with an ad deal and a $240 million stake. Now TechCrunch reports Google might be delayed in announcing plans to build its own "social layer" between users and applications. The project, code-named "Maka-Maka," will connect users and create an "activity stream" similar to Facebook's once controversial, now popular news feeds. Google eventually plans to open this social layer to third parties, just like Facebook did with its platform. Problem is, creating a me-too Facebook from scratch is proving harder than Google thought.

Bard College, the liberal arts school located 120 miles north in Annandale-on-Hudson, "puts the 'liberal' in 'liberal arts,'" according to the 'Princeton Review.' It has a 600-acre campus and nearly 1500 undergrads. This is their story—as told by a student who would like to be known as Stephan K. Names have been changed to protect the guilty.

We were wrong about the identity of the Viking-clad Facebook founder living it up on Friday night. It wasn't Sean Parker, who, we hear, is in Spain. (Sorry about that, Sean!) VentureBeat claims it was Dustin Moskovitz, Facebook's VP of engineering and one of the three official Facebook cofounders. The person in question wore a Viking helmet and a fur skirt. Nothing else. (Ed.'s note: Rawr!) Our tipster must have been pretty hammered, because the description supplied — "tall, has dirty blond hair and glasses, and is not particularly attractive" — fails on two out of four counts. Moskovitz has brown hair and is, according to AllThingsD's Kara Swisher, "such a fox." Again, our apologies. But we're glad Moskovitz is taking notes from Parker on how to get down. Update: We now hear Moskovitz was in Palo Alto Friday and Saturday. Can anyone identify that fur-skirted man for us? (Image by VentureBeat)