Announcing that a glitch had led to the security and privacy of some user’s profiles being compromised, an official statement from Facebook said “For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the ‘preview my profile’ feature of Facebook privacy settings.” They added that quick action had been taken, expressing “When we received reports of the problem, our engineers promptly diagnosed it and temporarily disabled the chat function. We also pushed out a fix to take care of the visible friend requests which is now complete.”

With Facebook being alerted to the problem when an article was posted on TechCrunch, live chat services were taken offline and have remained unavailable with Facebook saying “chat will be turned back on across the site shortly.” Meanwhile the company, which have come under a series of severe criticism over the privacy policies upheld by the social networking community website, said that they were working quickly to resolve the issue so that service could commence as normal.

Whilst Facebook has previously said that it would not install a ‘panic button’ on every page of its site, director of Ceop, Jim Gamble, revealed that it was imperative to do so after a British teenager was murdered by a man she met through the social networking medium. Whilst Facebook revealed that it would add links to support sites within its reporting facilities, Mr Gamble criticised the lack of support from the social networking giant, expressing that it was a free way to “help save some children.” He added “If you’re going to operate a business that encourages people to frequent your public place so that you can advertise to them, then let’s look after them while they’re there.”

Meanwhile Ceop revealed that for the first quarter of 2010, 252 complaints had been received regarding Facebook, with 40per cent directly linked to the “grooming” of children. It adds weight to the argument that Facebook needs to implement an instant panic button, rather than individuals having to look elsewhere in a bid to make a complaint which could ultimately save a child’s life.

The row first emerged in 2008 when, as they took to a long legal battle, the pair claimed that their site ConnectU was the original idea for what went on to become the global phenomenon known as Facebook. Starting the site in 2003, the pair worked alongside Mr Zuckerberg until it emerged that he had established his own site, thefacebook.com, which rapidly found increasing users. Whilst the pair were awarded what is reported to be $65m in Facebook shares, Cameron Winklevoss exclaimed “I think it is safe to say the chapter is not closed on the matter,” with his brother Tyler adding “It’s our duty to stand for principles. We’re willing to wait around and make sure that’s what right has been made right. It was really just a sense of shock. It turned into how can we right this wrong.”

Elsewhere Facebook revealed a statement indicating that all possible legal battles were now over. “The settlement has been enforced by the courts and attempts to delay that decision have been denied twice,” they said, adding “We hope that discussion of spurious and false allegations and other matters that were concluded years ago are not distracting anyone from their preparations for the race. We consider the matter concluded.”

Using data gleaned from individual’s updates, the application can show social networking’s happiest and lowest days for the past week, month and year. And whilst experts express that the data is far from scientific, it has shown correlation with positivity for holiday seasons and specific events. Speaking of the index and the readings it provides Facebook said on their official blog “Although there are differences between the nations’ GNH graphs, they are more similar than they are different. Christmas, New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are amongst the happiest days across the board. Negativity is trending down over time for most nations, likely due to the changing demographics of Facebook users that now include more older people, and perhaps also due to the economic recovery.”

As results for that of the UK were revealed details of how the application can follow trending emotion were quickly noted. In particular two points of interest last year that noted high emotion were that of the X Factor final and the first day of snow. Meanwhile celebrity lives were noted to cause the most distress, with Cheryl and Ashley Cole’s breakup seeing one of the largest happiness dips.

Whilst Facebook explained that it would place a link to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) centre on its reporting pages, director of the group Alan Johnson said that this was not enough. As Facebook’s director of European policy, Richard Allen, revealed that having the button on ever page was not an option for them, head of Ceop, Jim Gamble, urged that the button needed to be clear and present on every page. “So that children are reassured and empowered, so are their parents, and offenders are deterred. That’s the key,” he said, adding “Facebook is a great environment, they are experts on advertising and engaging with young people in those areas where you can get click-through. But they’re not experts on child protection.”

Elsewhere, and commenting on Facebook’s response that it would look at changing reporting functions, head of Beatbullying’s Emma-Jane Cross explained “That’s why Beatbullying is pleased that Facebook are taking the right steps by working with third sector organisations like us and referring their users to a safe environment where they can get the correct support and advice they need.”

Talking about the plans at the Changing Media Summit 2010, it was revealed that the service, named iPlayer 3.0, had already signed up members such as Bebo, Facebook and Twitter and was planning beta launch any day. “We are close to launching the third version of the iPlayer in beta which will have many more social functions embedded within it,” Mr Huggers said, adding “People will be able to bring their Facebook friends onto the iPlayer so they can share what they are listening to or watching with each other more easily.”

Working on a protected password process, individuals will be asked to provide the login details of the particular social networking websites that they wish to access when starting up BBC iPlayer 3.0. Saving their details for a later date, users will then be able to access all services, in addition to seeing “coloured puffs” detailing programmes that friends are watching. Additionally, whilst not revealing much information, Mr Huggers said that the BBC would also be integrating a lite version of the service on its main website to increase custom user experience.

Whilst Facebook now has a global user database of 400 million, with about 50per cent accessing their accounts everyday to either post updates or catch up on other’s news, the latest increase is largely contributed to the recent explosion in online social gaming. With hundreds of Facebook applications now offering free to play mini games, such as Farmville which boasts 83 million players, the niche has already been heralded as a future multi billion dollar market.

Revealing the figures, Hitwise said that last week had noted a 185per cent increase in the number of visitors to Facebook when compared with the same period a year earlier, resulting in the social networking site receiving 7.07per cent of traffic hits compared to Google’s 7.03per cent. Meanwhile, as the combination of the two websites accounted for 14per cent of all U.S internet visits, Facebook dominance continues to grow after it was shown that it was the most visited on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve. In addition, it again reached the number one spot no New Years Day and March 6th and 7th.

Elsewhere, facing the threat of Facebook and responding to the growing popularity of social networking, Google last month launched their own service, Google Buzz. Launching to a bad start as criticism over privacy poured in, it remains to be seen whether Google will be able to take back the top spot or have been toppled off for good.

However, with the gauntlet laid down, many developers questioned just what exactly an iconic game was, and how it was made. Playrix Entertainment’s Dasha Kobzeva explained “I think a good strategy game might be a winner but at the moment what we are seeing is a lot of games that are pretty similar to each other like farm games and aquarium games. So far nothing really stands out.” However, disagreeing that Farmville was similar to others, Brenda Brathwaite, games developer, said “I think the killer game for me at the moment is Farmville. It is the biggest game that is out there and I would have to give respect to that.”

And developers, if they intend to take up the challenge, will have to be quick off the mark. Though relatively new, the social gaming sector is expanding at a rapid pace with the industry seeing returns of approximately $1bn in less than three years. Now undertaken by millions of individuals around the world, Mr Davis expressed “We are going to see multiple games with more than 100m people playing each one. That is as many people as watched the recent superbowl, the most watched TV programme in American history. The growth we are seeing is amazing and in a short space of time we have developed a brand new mass market audience for gaming.”

As the Pentagon revealed the changes, they added that social networking sites in addition to those such as YouTube would now be accessible to troops, whilst commanders would still be able to block services in the face of certain missions or bandwidth savings. They added that as the internet becomes a larger network for recruiting and public relations, the American forces can benefit from easy access to family and friends in addition to simply interaction with the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, any changes to policies still keep hate-crime, gambling or pornography sites blocked from use. The defence for information technology’s deputy assistant secretary David Wennergren explained “We need to take advantage of these capabilities that are out there – this Web 2.0 phenomena. And what we had were inconsistent approaches. Some websites were blocked and some commands were blocking things. The idea is be responsible and use these tools to help get the job done. There are two imperatives. One is the ability to share information. The other is about security – we need to be good at both.”

Whilst the Ministry of Justice said that social networking sites were blocked to inmates, double murder plotter Colin Gunn was shown to have taunted rivals through posts to his Facebook page. Explaining that he’d asked them to remove content three weeks ago, Mr Straw said “We’ve made requests for the removal of 30 sites and they’ve responded to do that positively, with no single refusal, within 48 hours, so we just want to push this forward.” Meanwhile he added that the government continues to look at ways to protect victims, “We’re looking at other ways in which we can raise the stakes against prisoners who seek to use these sites. It’s unlawful, it’s against prison rules, which is the law.” One such way will be by altering parole and day-release papers “to make it explicit that even if they’re outside prison, but if they are on licence, they can’t make use of sites in this way”.

The news was welcomed, particularly by murder victim’s families who have recently met with Mr Straw. Barry Mizen, father of murder victim Jimmy who was killed in 2008 said “I’m sure Facebook is a massive organisation and there’s lots of money floating around. If you have to spend a bit more on monitoring, then you have just got to do it.”