FROM THE DESK OF MEGAN MCCARTHY — A note to Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the inhumanly hunky main plaintiffs in the ConnectU-Facebook lawsuit. Yes, we are aware that you are identical twins. Smolderingly hot identical twins. Yes, we are aware that, in your quest to be Olympic rowers — lean, athletic, sweaty Olympic rowers, we might add — you are used to wearing team uniforms, cut and colored to make you look like clones. This does not excuse the fact that you wore the exact same navy-blue pinstripe suits to your court hearing yesterday. And the same belts. And the same shoes. Good lord, have you no taste?

I listened in live to a conference call with Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, two of the plaintiffs in ConnectU's lawsuit against Facebook. "You may wonder why ConnectU is holding its first press conference now," says Tyler Winklevoss in a set of prepared remarks. "This dispute with Thefacebook is over three years old." Winklevoss cites his and brother Cameron's schedules as "Olympic hopefuls" training for the 2008 Beijing games. He says that ConnectU is not trying to shut down Facebook. (Oddly, he keeps calling it "Thefacebook," even though Mark Zuckerberg's company hasn't used that name in almost two years.) Cameron Winklevoss then joins in, largely reciting the facts stated in his lawsuit, but also emphasizing that he challenged Mark Zuckerberg shortly after he launched Facebook, not, as some press reports had it, only recently as Facebook became successful.

Facebook gets a reprieve: A judge has delayed a decision on whether to dismiss rival ConnectU's lawsuit for two weeks, seeking more information from the plaintiffs. A new hearing is set for August 8. [News.com]

"Is Facebook to MySpace as Google was to Yahoo?" — Bear Stearns analyst Spencer Wang [Tech Trader Daily]

Even more fictitious than Facebook's revenues is its valuation. A market value, after all, requires a willing buyer and a willing seller, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and his board members have repeatedly said they don't want to sell. (Facebook has a valuation as a private company, of course, but trust me, it's nothing near the numbers insiders are bandying about.) So why make up multi-billion-dollar valuations for the company, seemingly out of whole cloth? Because it saves them from having to hear out lowball offers, I imagine — and it also sounds mighty fine in the press. Here's a thought for newly hired number-fudger Gideon Yu, however, as well as that stock-plan administrator Facebook wants to hire: The higher a private company's value, the harder it is to dole out lucrative options to new employees. After the jump, my theory on what Facebook's worth, and why.

Facebook board members Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel seem to feel free to make up revenue figures for the social network — even though they differ by $50 million — and they just hired a CFO, Gideon Yu, who doesn't seem like he'd be averse to doing the same. So I figured, why shouldn't I join in the fun? Forthwith, Facebook's estimated 2007 revenues, by the thoroughly imaginary numbers.

"Mo money, mo problems," says a Facebook insider. The wisdom of the late Biggie Smalls explains, in a nutshell, why Facebook has found itself in court. A judge in Boston is considering at a hearing today whether to let a lawsuit filed by the founders of ConnectU — the Dickensian-named twins, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra — against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his company proceed. This lawsuit, of course, only exists because of Facebook's supposed success, and the inflated valuations bandied about by board members tired of fending off buyout offers. I'll be covering this story throughout the day, but if you need to catch up, here's the full coverage.

"The owners of a rival social networking Web site are trying to shut down Facebook.com, charging in a lawsuit that Facebook's founder stole their ideas while they were students at Harvard." We are so hoping these guys will succeed so that everyone will STOP POKING US. Seriously, people, enough with the poking. It's unbecoming. [A.P.]

Peter Thiel's behind-the-scenes war with Sequoia Capital continues. The latest battleground? Gideon Yu, YouTube's former CFO, had planned to leave after the Google buyout of the online-video site to hook up with Sequoia as a partner. Instead, he's joining Facebook, the social network in which Thiel is an investor and a board member, as its CFO. It's a loss for Sequoia partner Michael Moritz, who has feuded with Thiel's Founders Fund. But it's undoubtedly a gain for Facebook. The social network, whose board members already like to play fast and loose with revenue figures, needs a CFO who's not above a little white lie. Like, say, YouTube's budget. Or what his career plans really are.

The Deal has a subscriber-only interview with Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder and Facebook board member, summarized here. Thiel knocks down talk of a Facebook IPO, saying the company wants to wait another 18 months. But this bit, on the prospects of selling Facebook before it goes public, is classic Thiel:

Valleywag was chuffed to receive an email from Leah Borromeo, a producer at Sky News, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled British news service. "Jolly good!" we thought. "A bit of British TV time!" Or at least a change from our all-CNBC-all-the-time broadcast schedule (not that we mind). Alas, turns out Borromeo was looking for comment from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his legal battle with ConnectU. We hear that Valleywag's very popular in the offices of the red-hot social network. Nonetheless, it seems like sending Valleywag an email is a rather convoluted method of inviting Zuckerberg on air. We don't know what's more amusing: Borromeo's cheek in saying she loves "seeing Harvard boys battle it out," or her presumption in thinking that Zuckerberg's PR handlers would ever allow him to comment on live TV about a pending legal case. After the jump, the misdirected missive.

Israeli blogger Orli Yakuel has posted Information Architects' Tokyo subway-style map of the incestuous, hyperconnected world of Web 2.0. No surprise: Facebook is at the center, MySpace on the periphery. [Flickr]

Earlier this week, CNBC asked me to come on the air to discuss Facebook's legal woes. Click to viewI've spent days immersed in legal filings, and the clip, above, just scratches the surface of what I've learned. Next week comes a critical moment for Facebook, the red-hot social network that has captured Silicon Valley's imagination, and its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. After the jump, I explain why Zuckerberg will face a moment of reckoning next Wednesday, July 25, and detail a timeline of Facebook's legal battles.

London is now Facebook's top regional network, with 790,615 profiles.That means it's now overtaken Toronto as the top Facebook city. [Guardian]

No sooner had we gotten a tip about the YouTube video of Jobster's brainstorming session than the video was taken down. Luckily, informants reported on the contents — and I can totally understand why Jason Goldberg, CEO of the troubled recruiting website, thought better of leaving up what he now tells Valleywag is "an early unedited version."

Facebook isn't AOL, says entrepreneur Dave McClure. It's Visual Basic. [Master of 500 Hats]

England's prestigious Oxford University is using social network Facebook to uncover crimes committed by its students. Okay, not crimes, just campus infractions, ranging from "hurling eggs" to "spraying fluids" and other appalling behavior. Administration officials look through photos uploaded to Facebook, and when they find a picture of a student breaking a rule, the student receives a $80-$200 fine in their inbox. Claims one student, "They gave me links to three photos on Facebook where I've got shaving foam all over me as examples of my disorderly conduct." Has this dented Facebook's popularity on the storied campus?

If Facebook is the Brangelina of tech, then Silicon Valley's it company just adopted an Ethiopian baby. So to speak. The baby is Parakey, a startup cofounded by Blake Ross, the Firefox programmer profiled in Wired, and fellow Firefox developer Joe Hewitt. Ross has been promising more details on Parakey since last November, but they haven't been forthcoming. Parakey's website just tells you to "give your computer the bird." Here's what that means — and what the acquisition means for Facebook.

"Oxford University staff are logging on to Facebook and using evidence they find on student profiles to discipline students." [Guardian]

Hate to say it, but Jason Calacanis had it right: NYT gadget reviewer David Pogue's "iPhone: The Musical" was a trite, derivative, and boring piece of Apple propaganda. But a group of San Francisco webheads have come up with a pitch-perfect take on the iPhone phenomenon. Behold the glory that is "Dontcha Wish Your Cell Phone Was Hot Like Me?" — and after the jump, my take on why this spoof gets it right while Pogue's flopped.