VC blogger Fred Wilson argues that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger will be bad for users and for the Internet as a whole. "If you think about the Internet, it's a huge distributed network of loosely connected services owned and operated by literally millions. We don't need or want consolidation of services on the Internet," Wilson writes. But you know who the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is even worse news for? The incompetent executives who landed Yahoo in this pickle in the first place. They're ferociously spinning gullible reporters with rescue fantasies. Here are the five most widespread rumors — and why they're unlikely to happen.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey denied benefits to two minors because they have eating disorders. Eating disorders, the insurance company claims, are emotional, not biological. It gets more fun: Horizon has demanded access to the kids MySpace and Facebook accounds, to "shed light on the causes of the disorders, which determines the insurer's responsibility for payment." So think twice before you make your Facebook status something lame and emo: it could be used as evidence that you're uninsurable. If you can even afford it! [Law.com]

Mark Zuckerberg called an all-hands meeting at Facebook to discuss the company's financials, Kara Swisher reports at AllThingsD. Headcount will swell from 450 to 1,000 this year. (To put that in context, Google adds more employees in a single quarter.) Revenues, at $150 million in 2007, are projected to fall between $300 million and $350 million, with an operating profit of $50 million. But that's before Zuckerberg's spending spree on servers.

Caring is sharing, people, especially when it comes to your personal data. Leading developers from important social-network sites joining a "data-portability" advocacy group doesn't represent history in the making. It's a marketing campaign to make everyone feel sickly sweet, knowing that these websites are so concerned about our information. Like the Care Bears, by signing on to the DataPortability Working Group, top coders like Brad Fitzpatrick, Dave Recordon, and Ben Ling have joined forces to form a group which we can only call by one name. Presenting: The Share Bears!

Facebook has made it easier on users who have lots of friends sending them zombie bites, quizzes and sheep. A notice appeared in my News Feed this evening telling me that Facebook has added a "clear all" option for those who have more than 25 requests pending. Noted Facebook-friend collectors Jason Calacanis and Robert Scoble must be dancing a happy dance at this development.

Creative Capital got ahold of the December 2007 ComScore numbers for the top social networks in the U.S. — and they are, on the whole, not good. Engagement — average minutes spent on the site per visitor — is down for MySpace and Microsoft's Live Spaces, but up for almost all the other sites. Unique visitor growth is ominously low for MySpace and, in the last three months, LinkedIn. Hit the jump to see the numbers for yourself.

Not three hours after I got married earlier this month, my wife's grandfather pulled her aside. "By this time next year," he said, "I'll hope you'll bring a new baby to visit us." It's the kind of pressure you might expect from grandparents. But Jeff Bezos, too? Get off our backs, Amazon dude, wouldya? We most certainly did not set up a baby registry. And you too, Mark Zuckerberg. I'm sure she matches some sort of ad-triggering demographic criteria being under-30 and married, but Anna would like you to relax with the maternity-clothing ads.

After Jerome Kerviel lost his employer, French investment bank Societe Generale, $7.2 billion, he also lost 7 of his 11 friends on Facebook. Smart move by those ex-friends. You never know who's looking at your profile. Of course, at some point, you might be in a similar situation. Because this kind of thing happens all the time. So here's how to defriend that guy who just went into hiding after losing $7.2 billion. You're welcome.

"Crimes committed by sexual predators against children they meet by way of the Internet occur far too often," reads the press release Facebook and a slew of New York politicians including Attorney General Andrew Cuomo put out today. "Far too often" isn't precise language, but it's likely frightening enough rhetoric to drum up votes for the Electronic Security and Targeting of Online Predators Act, announced in the release.

Jerome Kerviel allegedly defrauded France's Societe Generale out of $7.2 billion by falsifying trading records so he could make unauthorized trades. It cost the 144-year old firm nearly a year's worth of net profits. But the Sydney Morning Herald has the real scoop.

Facebook and its two main backers, the Founders Fund's Peter Thiel and Accel's Jim Breyer, set up the fbFund in September, promising to dole out some $10 million in checks sized $25,000 to $250,000, made out to Facebook-app startups. The wantrepreneurs flooded Facebook. Facebook told them it reserved the right to rip off their idea, and mass-deleted their submissions. And still they came back for more. Now, at last, these sad-sack developers are starting to get their rejection letters, AllFacebook reports. Here's your copy.

Facebook can't afford to spurn marketing firms like New York's Attention PR. But it does. Last Friday, Attention PR built a Facebook page for a client — a new kind of souped-up profile that can be advertised on Facebook. Though not as well known as Beacon, Facebook Pages are part of Mark Zuckerberg's once-every-hundred-years change in media he promised in launching SocialAds. But as of Monday evening the page remains unindexed by Facebook's search engine, rendering it essentially invisible. That's a problem for a client who wanted immediate results. Isn't that the whole point of advertising online?

A tipster sends this shot of Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg with Mashable's Pete Cashmore. Our tipster says the photo captures Zuck and Cashmore "drunker than skunks." Don't buy it. Zuck's got a straight-edged reputation and he's holding a bottle of Crystal Geyser, not Cristal. A better explanation for Zuckerberg's awkward pose? He's camera-shy. That jibes with what Zuckerberg told egoblogger Robert Scoble during a three-hour walk the pair took around Davos over the weekend.

"It will forever be one of the highlights of my life," Scoble writes at the beginning of a 1,535-word epic love poem describing a three-hour walk he took around Davos, Switzerland with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Here's a condensed version — though it's a bit long because we included all of Scoble's gratuitous namedrops, which we've bolded.

Everybody knows that reading books is for loners and nerds. But has anybody actually scientifically documented this information? The findings of a very important study by data-miner/WikiScanner creator Virgil Griffith, Books That Make You Dumb, tell us exactly which books will impair your intelligence.

Disgraced tech-stock analyst Henry Blodget, having just discovered Guitar Hero, is already behind the times. Trendy Silicon Valley has already moved on to Rock Band. The music-jammer is threatening Facebook's already questionable productivity, reports blogger Matt Schlicht.

When users quit Facebook, they're forced to manually delete wall posts, message, photos, friend connections — or leave them online indefinitely. After users complained in the U.K., the Information Commissioner's Office announced it would investigate.

A source deep inside Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters says that Facebook's job posting for an executive chef contained an error: The operation, contrary to the description, will not be required to turn a profit. The good news for Facebook employees: Food will continue to be free. The bad news: The new chef will likely look askance at real-world reenactments of Facebook's virtual food fights. (Photo by Dana Gardner)

Everyone knows Facebook groups can be made by anyone, are unofficial and unvetted, and don't have any bearing on real-world decisions even within Facebook. I mean, they're below petitiononline.com on the "gives a damn" scale, since the only effort required to "stand up for the cause" is clicking a link to join the group. But in stories like this one from the BBC, reporters don't make that caveat. Treating Internet comments as commensurate to real-world discussion makes sense to lazy reporters: why solicit quotes when they can lift some from a YouTube comment thread? But giving hope to Facebook users by pretending their "save Scrabulous" or "bring back Studio 60" group has any bearing on the real world, is cruel. Thank god the leisure activists deserve it.

Remember Charlie Ayers, Google's first executive chef, who retired in 2005 after making millions of dollars on the Google IPO? All those cooks who passed on that job now have a second chance, according to Inside Facebook. After years of catering takeout lunches, the social network is hiring its own chef. With Facebook poaching so many Google employees who are used to chef-cooked meals, it's no surprise that they'd hire someone who knows how to poach eggs. But check out this curious line in the job description: "Be accountable for the financial aspects of the F&B department ensuring a profitable operation." Is penny-pinching CFO Gideon Yu insisting that employees pay for their meals? The full job description: