You get what you charge for. Facebook Flyers, the social-networking site's cut-rate advertising program, charges a $2 CPM — a rate that amounts to 0.2 cents per person who sees the ad. Those bottom-of-the-barrel prices draw bottom-of-the barrel sponsors: Dan Goodin at sarcastic British tech site The Register calls one ad "crudware." The flyer ad encourages people to join a supposedly free dating network, but clicking on the ad instead launches a pop-up window claiming the user's computer has been infected and pitching antivirus software. Most sites have policies forbidding such ads, but Facebook, desperate for ways to make money off its 30 million users, seems to have no such qualms.

Kara Swisher doubts Accel Partners' Jim Breyer has the guts to put the squeeze on Facebook app developers: "My 5-year-old son could handily best the doe-eyed VC in a fair fight." [AllThingsD.com]

Some enterprising young bucks recently took it upon themselves to start a Facebook group for incoming Princeton freshmen (the Class of 2011, just in case you weren't feeling ancient already today)—but not just any freshmen. No, they're calling themselves the "Princeton '11 Party Crew," and they've got a party manifesto!

New names attending the mogul confab in Sun Valley, ID this week: Googlers Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Facebook COO Owen Van Natta, and "top executives" from LinkedIn. [Washington Post]

We hear Wired Digital, Wired's online arm, splashed out some dough on a startup developing Facebook apps. Anyone know which one? And why the Reddit team, purchased by Wired Digital last year, wasn't deemed capable of writing apps for Facebook?

Over a third of all Facebook users polled by CollegeHumor.com list a Will Ferrell movie as one of their favorites. "The same percentage," quips one of the site's commentators, "listed a Will Ferrell movie as one of their favorite books." The poll also covers drunk Facebooking, ex-stalking, and masturbating to Facebook. [CollegeHumor]

Bay Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, is cutting small checks to startups developing apps on Facebook's F8 platform, VentureBeat reports. Sure, Bay is opportunistically trying to ride on top of the frenzy for apps written specifically for Facebook's user base of 29 million. But Bay's initiative, called AppFactory, is small potatoes compared to what we think Facebook backer Jim Breyer, managing partner at venture capital firm Accel Partners, might be up to.

The Wall Street Journal takes a hard look at a new dilemma in the workplace: What happens when your boss wants to be your Facebook friend? Cubicle Culture columnist Jared Sandberg relates the sorry story of one Paul Dyer, who found himself in that situation. He accepted the request, but not before removing incriminating photos from his page.

For all the buzz Facebook enjoys in its hometown, the social network, oddly enough, is more popular up north, travel website Gridskipper reveals in a new map. Forget the stereotype of Facebook as being for college kids. Really, it's for Canadians. Toronto is the #1 local network by number of Facebook members; Vancouver, #3. Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton, and Halifax round out the top 20. Another fact that leaps off the map: Facebook's near-nonexistence outside the English-speaking world, which you can also see in this earlier Valleywag map. That explains its hiring plans for international business-development types. First, Canada; next, the world.

Sun Valley, the quiet Idaho ski resort town, is about to get a charge from Silicon Valley. Allen & Co., the New York investment bank, has been holding an exclusive conference there for 25 years, but until recently, the invite list has been limited to old-media moguls. On the invite list for this year's conference, which kicks off tonight: Jay Adelson, CEO of Digg, the social-news website, which he cofounded with Kevin Rose. Here's why we think Adelson's on the list — and who else might show up.

Have you ever seen a social network that lets you file people under "acquaintance"? The biggest headache on sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn is deciding your friend threshold. Don't take my word for it — MySpace founder Tom Anderson has a private profile, and even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg might have doubled up on his own site. Instead of making you wade through bad friend requests and pointless updates from people you don't know that well, the double-profile technique puts you in charge of your own friend network. Here's a three-step technique for splitting your online presence between your "friends" and your real friends.

Maybe Facebook really is the new AOL: Ex-AOL exec and "serious poker player" Chamath Palihapitiya joins Facebook as VP of product marketing and operations. [WSJ]

The 23-year-old CEO of Facebook likes to blather on about his social networking site's privacy settings. But if he thinks Facebook's protections are so great, why does he maintain a secret second profile, designed to be hard to find? If you're logged on to Facebook, go ahead and search for "Mark Zucerberg" [sic]. The misspelling, of course, makes it hard to find through a search, and the profile is so locked-down that only "Zucerberg"'s Facebook friends and work colleagues can see it. A Valleywag tipster stumbled across the listing, however, and took a screenshot (after the jump).

If at first you don't succeed — and you can't manage to buy someone — try, try again. That's what Google and Yahoo, realizing the failure of their social-networking products, are doing. Google's Orkut is a nonstarter outside India and Brazil, and Yahoo 360 is, well, a nonstarter everywhere. Here's how the two giants of the Web are trying to fix their social inadequacies.Google's entrant is Socialstream, a Google-sponsored project at Carnegie Mellon University, which, instead of serving as a social network itself, attempts to unify multiple networks. That's a product that users, drowning in multiple logins and passwords, could badly use. And it plays to Google's strengths: Rather than trying to get users to contribute content to a new network, Socialstream just uses software to bring existing information on the Web together in one place, much like Google's Web search.

Justin Rosenstein, ex-Googler, current breathless Facebook employee, compares life at the two companies. "There's free food, but honestly it's not as good as Google's." [Inside Facebook]

The Guardian ranks its annual Media 100. Topping the charts: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, followed closely by our old friend Rupert Murdoch. The list naturally skews British, but it is rounded out by "Facebook," the salvation of lazy English hacks everywhere. [Guardian]

Just in case you had any remaining doubts that Facebook is going public — a fact that Mark Zuckerberg's sister, Randi Jayne, profanely sings about in a video that's since been taken down — check out this job listing:

I've always said that if there's one thing Silicon Valley needs, it's more show tunes. Which is why I'm such a sucker for the oeuvre of Randi Jayne and Jennifer Lee, the comedic duo behind such hits as "How to Get a Guy in Silicon Valley" and "Failure Is Fun (Valleyfreude)." (Jayne, newly solo, has come out with another brilliant number, "Crackberry," which you must go watch immediately.) But if you want to review Jayne's past works, you'll be stymied. "Valleyfreude" has gone missing. "It's a take-down," Jayne's site reads. I can't imagine that the disappearance of "Valleyfreude" anything to do with the fact that Jayne has a day job at Facebook. And that she's the sister of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. And that Facebook's getting ready for an IPO. Oh, wait. I can imagine that.

Comscore notes the obvious: Facebook growing rapidly across all age groups after opening registration. [Comscore]

Remember when all you had to worry about on Facebook was some awkward acquaintance adding you on Facebook too soon? (You know, like they talked to you at lunch once and instantly wanted to be your friend?) Maybe sometimes you got invited to the "Two and a Half Men is TV's Greatest Show" group? But now I'm getting bombarded with crap like "Jim-bob wants to share movies with you" and "Janiqua wants to share secrets." No, I don't want "free gifts." No, I don't want to be a zombie. No, iDon'tLike. So stop spamming me every time you get an app. (Unless it's that rocking graffiti wall.)