What do Yahoo executives and zombies have in common? Besides the obvious, you're likely to encounter both on tonight's Valleywag Calendar:

Former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner confirms our scoop that MySpace will not announce a software platform for third-party apps next week. According to Quittner's source, MySpace will instead reveal a "directory of apps" — what Quittner calls a "PR move" to show off internal MySpace programs. The main takeaway: TechCrunch was wrong — to the dismay of application developers, who are clearly enthusiastic for an alternative to Facebook. [Netly News]

Everyone wants a piece of Mark Zuckerberg's baby: Microsoft, Google, and now Yahoo, according to Kara Swisher. It's widely known that Zuckerberg, CEO of the hot social network, and his backers are asking for a high price on a small stake — selling 3 to 5 percent of the company at a valuation as high as $15 billion. But what no one seems to understand is the hold Microsoft has on the company, through an exclusive advertising deal that runs through 2011 — and how eager Facebook is to get out of that deal.

Facebook traffic dropped nearly 10 percent in September, according to a sneak peak at ComScore's latest stats given to GigaOm. That's a significant drop to a chart that's been climbing steadily all year, and especially odd during the start of a new school year when traffic traditionally soars for student sites. My Valleywag coworkers say that can't be right — it's a huge failure of ComScore's measurement methods that the company will have trouble explaining. Then again, I'm reminded of the anecdotal tale of the scientists who decided there must be a bug in their software because it showed — ha ha! — a gaping hole in the ozone layer.

Benjamin "bling" Ling, described as one of "Larry and Sergey's golden boys," is jumping to Facebook, reports Josh Quittner at Netly News. Ling will reportedly head the white-hot Facebook platform program, having previously succeeded with Google Checkout. Quittner says Google's stunning $600-plus stock price has backfired on the company, making it profitable for top staff to bail out now rather than waiting for more shares to vest. (Photo courtesy of AuctionBytes.com)

British Internet users spend 11 minutes a day on social networks. Want something more interesting than that? Nielsen/NetRatings thinks Facebook is the top social net in the U.K. ComScore says they're No. 3 behind MySpace and Bebo. Either way, we're glad they didn't poll the Valley — based on an informal survey of our peers, we probably waste three hours a day on Facebook. [Times Online]

In teaching politicians in Washington, D.C., how to use the social network, Facebook shows it has learned the art of the empty campaign promise from politicians. "Our goal is to make you win," offered Josh Rahn, Facebook's director of sales. Sure, Josh, sure. Win a portion of your sales quota, you mean. [The Caucus]

Why was a roomful of venture capitalists and lawyers clinking champagne glasses at Zibibbo in Palo Alto last week? The target of their fulsome praise was entrepreneur Anthony Soohoo, a former Yahoo executive. And the reason? He had managed to flip his website Dotspotter, yet another celebrity gossip site with thoroughly derivative social-networking features, to CBS for a quick $10 million. Dotspotter's short one-year lifepspan didn't scare off serial charmer Quincy Smith, the startup-mad head of CBS Interactive. Having bought financial videoblog Wallstrip and Web-based social music site Last.fm, we can only conclude that Smith's strategy is to buy a lot of startups, throw them against the wall, and see what sticks. Nice work, especially when CBS shareholders are footing the bill. And who's receiving the checks? One of Dotspotter's beneficiaries, we hear, is Facebook CFO Gideon Yu. Nice to have a backup plan in case all those social networks turn out to be a fad.

"Somewhere in San Jose, Calif., devotees of all things Facebook have gather"ed to celebrate the cult of Mark Zuckerberg and the little company he started. Dave McClure might call it his Graphing Social Patterns conference, but we all know it's all about Facebook, Silicon Valley's Furby." — Tech blogger Om Malik, on Mark Zuckerberg's toy [GigaOm]

Blog blowhard Jason Calacanis notices what we've been saying for weeks. If you write an application for Facebook and it's the least bit popular or profitable, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will take your idea and crush you. But he'll be nice while he does it. [Calacanis.com]

Apparently, overseas, there are social networks other than Facebook and MySpace. Who knew? Read/WriteWeb mentions that social net Hi5 which tallies 35 million uniques per month according to ComScore, making it competitive with Facebook. And yet the name will draw blank stares at a Silicon Valley tech meetup. Like Google's Orkut, Hi5 is huge overseas and virtually nonexistent in the U.S. Hi5 even launched a developer API in August, but got scant coverage from the Web 2.0 crowd. The bias, of course, is partly driven by economics. Tapping overseas advertisers is tough, and so developers planning to build ad-supported websites and applications naturally turn to U.S. markets. But media myopia is a factor, too. Until magazine editors' teenage daughters start using it, Hi5 is likely to remain invisible.

Former Business 2.0 editor Josh Quittner reports that Seth Goldstein's Facebook application Food Fight — in which you can throw virtual pies and other foodstuff at your friends — really took off after the addition of a "pile of poop" to the virtual arsenal. Ah, bullshit. [Netly News]

Lotus founder Mitch Kapor has some advice for the young guns writing apps for Facebook: "Platform owners have the power." Facebook will take your ideas and crush you; it's just that Mark Zuckerberg will be nicer than Bill Gates as he does it.. Sound familiar? [Compete Blog]

Mark Zuckerberg is gaining a following among entrepreneurs. BusinessWeek writes a profile of J-Squared Media — two friends who wrote the Sticky Notes Facebook app on a whim. Now they're making $45,000 a month in ad revenue and turned down a $3 million buyout offer because under the terms of the deal, they would have been stuck at the purchasing company — unacceptable for the upwardly mobile entrepreneur.

It feels like we've read this story before. Caitlyn Casseday called her assistant principal an "obscene name" and has been suspended for it. No one would care, except she didn't say this to his face. Instead, she wrote it in a comment on Facebook. A student was suspended for getting into a fight and a video of the "altercation" was posted on Facebook. Caitlyn believed the suspension was unwarranted and made her feelings known. Her comment made its way to the principal she insulted who had her suspended for violating the school's code of conduct.

Facebook has realized that inviting application developers to apply for fbFund grants by email could open up a legal can of worms. So they're deleting all submissions and asking startups to start over — this time using a grant-submission application on Facebook that forces developers to agree not to sue Facebook for copying their ideas or funding a rival developer. [TechCrunch]

How sorry is Yahoo that it let Facebook get away last year, after a reported $1.6 billion offer proved insufficient? Sorry enough that the Internet giant is now using a Facebook group to tout Yahoo Mash, its new social network that's currently invitation-only. True, the invitation was extended to members of Yahoo Pilot, a group dedicated to exploring new technologies, so it's not entirely misplaced. But it's telling that Yahoo's so unconfident in the promotional powers of its own properties — anyone remember Yahoo Groups? — and so conscious of its lack of regard on its home turf of Silicon Valley that it's depending on Facebook to get the word out.

Fame in Silicon Valley so rarely manages to reverbate past the Sierra Nevada range. Take, for example, Peter Thiel. The former PayPal CEO is now a rock star at home for his prescient — or, at any rate, lucky — investment in Facebook, where he's now a board member. But even the Facebook connection wasn't enough to fill a measly 200-person auditorium at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where Thiel is, as I write, speaking. According to a Valleywag correspondent, some of the audience was given extra credit for attending:

On Friday we wrote about Facebook launching a possible iTunes competitor. We've now found a new, more compelling rumor from Rafat Ali of PaidContent. Instead of a music store, Facebook is said to be launching an artist platform to compete with MySpace's musician-friendly profile pages — a feature that has been a huge part of the social network's growth. Ali says that the platform includes iTunes integration for buying music through Apple's store, special profiles for bands, and unique widgets for music promotion, tour dates, and more, all within the clean Facebook interface.