If you’re annoyed by the Facebook news ticker already, just you wait. Facebook confirmed today that it has introduced sponsored stories, or ads, to the ticker.

“Sponsored Stories now appear in Ticker on the home page,” a Facebook spokesperson told Mashable. “Sponsored Stories are an extension of News Feed, so we think it’s natural that they appear in Ticker.”

The ticker first appeared to mixed reviews when Facebook revamped News Feed in early September. It’s intended to be a repository for those quick, repetitive messages like “Jill Liked Flying Kites” or “Dave and Floyd are now friends,” leaving meatier status updates to the main feed.

At the same time, the different kinds of updates that could appear in the ticker expanded, with services like Spotify introducing the ability to automatically share what you’re listening to via the new feature.

The new approach, and the ticker specifically, received tepid reviews from Facebook users, and some reacted with outright anger. Among the more pointed criticisms: If the ticker updates weren’t important enough for the main feed, why have them at all?

It appears part of the answer may be for the ticker to serve Facebook’s growing advertising platform. After all, if users aren’t paying that much attention to it, they may be less inclined to complain about advertising occasionally appearing there. While there’s no way to opt-out of seeing the sponsored content, users will be able to click the “X” in the post to hide the updates, just like regular ticker items.

The inclusion of sponsored posts among regular ones will be familiar to any user of Twitter, Digg, and other networks. Sponsored content in various “feeds” is rapidly becoming the norm in social media, although most services clearly mark the content as such.

2010 is a great time for the web. Innovation is thriving as new services and content flourish on smartphones and laptops, thanks in good part to industry leaders like Apple and Facebook.

But according to Tim Berners-Lee, – often called " the father of the web" – the open and democratic structure of the web is threatened by sinister forces trying to redesign the web in ways that make it more closed for their own personal gain. These enemies of the web don't just include totalitarian governments. They include industry leaders like Apple and Facebook.

As the web turns 20, Berners-Lee has written a 3,800-word article for Scientific American celebrating its achievements and documenting threats to its future. Most of his words are dedicated to the threats.

The Web as we know it, however, is being threatened in different ways. Some of its most successful inhabitants have begun to chip away at its principles. Large social-networking sites are walling off information posted by their users from the rest of the Web. Wireless Internet providers are being tempted to slow traffic to sites with which they have not made deals. Governments—totalitarian and democratic alike—are monitoring people's online habits, endangering important human rights.

If we, the Web's users, allow these and other trends to proceed unchecked, the Web could be broken into fragmented islands. We could lose the freedom to connect with whichever Web sites we want. The ill effects could extend to smartphones and pads, which are also portals to the extensive information that the Web provides.

Social network sites like Facebook, Berners-Lee says, are silos, connecting data and content only within its walled gardens. Apple's iTunes traps people into a proprietary store. Even Google, whose search revenue is dependent on an open web, is chided for abandoning its support of Net neutrality. All lead to a fragmented web, damaging the "single, universal information space" that made it work in the first place. They can also breed monopolies, which the web was initially designed to resist.

These tech giants might dismiss these arguments as alarmist and argue that their success shows that people are responding to the way a less-open web is evolving. Their counter-arguments might be more persuasive if the Cassandra making the warnings wasn't Tim Berners-Lee.

Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt all owe a huge debt to Berners-Lee and everything he has fought to achieve over the past two decades. They know they would be nowhere without the web as he designed it – even as they pick apart at the very principles of openness that made the web the web.

Earlier today, there was a lot of hubbub over Facebook supposedly enabling HTML5 video playback on their website. This would, of course, allow Facebook videos to be played natively within the browser on the iPad and iPhone. More significantly, it would be another big blow to Adobe’s Flash format. The only problem? These Facebook videos aren’t using HTML5 at all.

Yes, videos on Facebook do play when clicked on from the iPad or iPhone, but only ReadWriteWeb noted that this was through an h264 player (which both the iPhone and iPad have always supported), and not actually any sort of HTML5 implimentation. We’ve since confirmed this with Facebook which says, “You are correct, this is not html 5. All new videos are encoded in h264 format, so we’re playing videos natively in the iPad since it supports h264-encoded videos.”

Okay, but more importantly, are there plans for Facebook to support HTML5 just as Apple, Google, and many others have started to? “We’ll consider it for the future,” a Facebook representative tells us.

I also took the opportunity to ask about the status of a native Facebook iPad app. Facebook’s iPhone app is easily one of the best applications in the App Store, but since it’s not universal (meaning there are versions for both the iPhone and iPad), it, like all other iPhone apps, looks a bit junky when running scaled to twice its size on the iPad. “We don’t have anything to announce re: your iPad question,” is all I was told.

Facebook was one of the first applications ready to go alongside the initial launch of the App Store in 2008, but it has been missing in action in the iPad App Store. And it’s a problem because a lot of people are searching for it, only to find cheap imitations. You might recall that the creator of the Facebook iPhone app, Joe Hewitt, stopped development on it over his distaste for some of the App Store policies. Facebook brought in a team to replace him, but so far, nada.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/27/facebook-html5-ipad-app/#ixzz0mMxPO2r5

The Data Portability wars just got a little more interesting. Power.com, the service that lets users aggregate their social networks into a single hub, is countersuing Facebook for restricting users’ ability to export and move their own data. The company is claiming that Facebook is unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things. This should be fun.

It’s been over six months since we last heard about these two duking it out, so here’s a quick refresher: Power.com launched last August, offering users the ability to import their latest updates and user information from Facebook, MySpace, and a number of other social networks. It did so by tapping into the social networks’ APIs when available, but also by scraping user data when they couldn’t access it through other means — a big no-no for most social networks, as we saw with the Scoble/Plaxo fiasco. It didn’t take long for Facebook to file suit against Power.com for scraping user data and storing user credentials (another violation of Facebook’s ToS). A week later we heard that the two parties might be close to a settlement, but apparently that didn’t work out — the suit is still pending.

Power.com CEO Steve Vachani likens the current situation with Facebook to one the cell phone carriers saw before they allowed for number portability. In the case of the cell phones, users were effectively locked into a certain carrier because they had spent so much time building up contacts and giving them their phone numbers, and it would be too much effort to switch to a new one. It’s an analogy that has been drawn since the data portability movement began, and while it may make sense, there’s no guarantee the courts will view phone numbers and a user’s social network data in the same light.

That said, Power.com is making some good points. The idea that users aren’t allowed to input their username and passwords into other services is particularly hypocritical, as that’s exactly what Facebook invites you to do to import contacts from services like Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Facebook can point to its efforts with Facebook Connect, which lets you log in with your Facebook username at third party sites and import some select data from your profile, as evidence of its openness. But this isn’t true data portability, it’s just a new walled garden — third parties are generally only allowed to cache your data, which means that you’re still tethered to Facebook.

Of course, while we may not like the current situation, there may well not be anything illegal about it — that’s up to the courts to decide. We’ve all agreed to the Facebook Terms of Service, and there’s no question that Power.com breaks them. We’ll be following the upcoming case closely.

It’s one thing when Internet companies like Facebook adopt OpenID, it’s another when a giant retailer like Sears Holdings Corporation embraces it. Sears has just announced that it will enable over 1 million monthly MySears and MyKmart visitors to use their Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or other accounts to log into the community websites, enabling them to write product reviews and share information about products and services without the need to create a separate account.

Customers will also get access to special offers and coupons in return for their participation in the community.

For the integration, Sears teamed up with Viewpoints Network, a social technology and media company that recently integrated JanRain’s RPX solution into their online community and identification platform.

The question is: is Sears – despite its claims of driving innovation in online retailing, which seems a bit over the top – merely a late adopter looking to try something new or is this a sign of OpenID maturing to a point where it can finally reach that tipping point where it really starts taking off with a mainstream audience?

In my recent interview with OpenID evangelist Chris Messina, he expressed the hope that integrations outside the technology industry – such as the U.S. government – would at some point occur more often, but he also acknowledged that the initiative struggles with branding and getting the word out there.

It’s integrations like these that could really help OpenID gain more traction, but the main question will always be if OpenID is just a solution looking for a problem, or if there’s a genuine need for a decentralized, universal login standard.

Despite the flood of criticism from technology pundits, the jury’s still out on that.

A few days ago, we reported that Facebook turned down an investment term sheet that placed their value at $8 billion. But it was apparently the board seat the investors wanted and not the valuation that was the hold up. Now that valuation number has jumped to $10 billion thanks to an offer from some new investors, sources tell The Wall Street Journal.

Specifically, Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian tech investment company wants to invest $200 million in the social network, according to the report. That would place its preferred stock value at $10 billion. The company would also buy between $100 million and $150 million in common stock at a $6.5 billion valuation. It’s not clear if Facebook has responded in any way.

Also not clear is if DST would want a board seat with the investment. But one could imagine that would be a sticking point once again. Though perhaps Facebook will like the $10 billion number — which is closer to the $15 billion valuation it got from Microsoft’s investment in 2007. If Facebook were to accept these terms, and give away a board seat, at least we know what one is worth: About $2 billion.

Facebook’s revenue is the key point in all of these investments/valuations. Internally, the company believes it will make $400 million this year, but it has been telling investors that the number will be closer to $550 million. Perhaps the Russians are biting at that.

Here’s Facebook’s canned response on the matter: “Facebook is a private company, so as a matter of policy, we don’t typically share details about our financial plans or comment on rumor and speculation.”

Earlier this afternoon MySpace scrubbed all traces of Project Playlist music widgets from the site, and users are unable to embed any further playlists. The scrub was the result of infringement notices from the major labels, all of which are in litigation with Project Playlist.

The labels, sources say, sent the same takedown notices to Facebook, which has 660,000 users with playlists from Project Playlist. But Facebook has refused to comply with those demands, our sources say.

Facebook for their part are refusing to comment, as is Project Playlist. But our music industry sources are calling Facebook’s refusal to comply “irresponsible” and saying that a lawsuit is inevitable if Facebook doesn’t remove the application and widgets.

It’s not clear Facebook is fully aware of what they’re stepping into (although the experience of Mark Zuckerberg’s friend Sean Parker, who is the founding President of Facebook and the cofounder of Napster, with labels should give them some indication). The labels aren’t screwing around, and their fury with Project Playlist, who they say have been stalling on a music licensing deal for months, is unchecked.

Expect users to give Facebook a big thumbs up for staring down the labels. My question is, how far is Facebook willing to go to protect Project Playlist? The potential litigation exposure is massive.

Not an hour after Google announced the general availability of Friend Connect, Facebook is doing the same for its competing Facebook Connect service. Now any third party website that wants to pull personal data about visitors from Facebook – and send back activity reports to their news feeds – can do so by first filling out a self-service application.

The general availability of Facebook Connect comes only a few days later than our anticipated launch date of November 30th. The service was originally announced last May, just one day after MySpace announced its data portability initiative called Data Availability and just a few days before Google announced Friend Connect.

The three horse race between Facebook, Google, and MySpace to achieve dominance in the internet identity space doesn’t appear to be letting up any. It isn’t a mere coincidence that both Facebook and Google have announced their public launches on the same day; both are struggling to establish themselves as the de facto standard for both developers and end users. MySpace managed to beat out both Facebook and Google months ago when it publicly launched its service.

While Facebook Connect is now available to all developers, we have yet to see live implementations from many of Facebook’s supposed launch partners, a few of which were highlighted during this summer’s F8 conference.

When UserVoice launched its hosted solution for companies looking to harness user feedback a little over 7 months ago, we wrote it could well be a replacement for e-mail when it comes to aggregating opinions, ideas and suggestions from user / customer bases. Now, UserVoice says its offering is solid enough for enterprise usage and is consequently dropping the beta tag.

Billing itself as an ‘online suggestion box that sorts itself’, UserVoice enables companies to embed widgets onto websites and applications to sollicit feedback from users in combination with a Digg-like voting feature. The idea behind that approach is that it’s easier and more scalable to crowdsource user opinions, ideas and suggestions than other ways of communication.

You can use the UserVoice service for free, but with a rather big limitation on features. More advanced packages are available starting from $289 per month, and there are also special packages for startups, non-profit organizations and educational institutions. If you want to take a look at alternatives, you might want to check out similar service providers such as CrowdSound, Suggestionbox and Get Satisfaction.

UserVoice has attracted customers from various sizes so far, including nice references like Sun Microsystems, Nokia and MySpace but also smaller web application providers like Blip.fm, 12seconds and Alert Thingy. According to the announcement, over 120 million widget impressions have already been served, with over 530,000 votes logged to date. Not bad for a startup that operates without outside financing apart from a small seed round from Nuvoiz raised back in 2007.

Chances are you use at least two major social networks – 49 million people, for example, visited both MySpace and Facebook in October 2008 (Comscore, worldwide). Nearly 7 million people in the UK use both Bebo and Facebook. A lot of people maintain very different friend lists on LinkedIn than MySpace or Facebook. Etc. And when you add in niche social sites like YouTube, Flickr, etc., there’s even more overlap among users.

There has never been an effective way of aggregating and merging all the data and activity on these sites into a single user interface. A new venture backed Brazilian-based started called Power.com launches today, though, that aims to do just that. They’re calling what they do “social inter-networking” because it allows users to view and interact with all of their social networks at once. Data is aggregated, and the sites themselves, if accessed via the Power.com site, are marked up with added features in a way that Greasemonkey users are familiar with.

The service is unknown in the U.S. today, although it’s been live since August and boasts 5 million users already. Until today it supported just a few social networks, notably Orkut. Now, though, the service supports users from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5 and a number of niche networks like YouTube.