online hangout

The popular online hangout Facebook is sporting a new look to reflect changes in how its members communicate with each other and how they share photos and updates about their lives.

Central to the redesign is an expanded Wall, the section of a member's personal profile page where friends can leave comments and photos. People will now be able to add items more easily, and the Wall will incorporate reports on a user's activities previously found on a user's "Mini-Feed."

Marc Andreessen, an entrepreneur and software engineer behind the Web's earliest browsers, has joined the board of the online hangout Facebook.

Andreessen's appointment could bring additional clout and insight to a young but growing startup headed by Mark Zuckerberg, 24, who started Facebook as a Harvard undergraduate.

Matt Cohler, a pivotal player in Facebook Inc.'s rapid growth, is departing the popular online hangout to find other promising Internet startups for a prominent venture capital firm.

Cohler will remain Facebook's vice president of product management through the summer and then become a general partner at Benchmark Capital, according to a Thursday announcement.

Even after joining Benchmark, Cohler will remain a "special adviser" to Facebook's 24-year-old founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg.

Four venture capital firms are betting Internet startup LinkedIn Corp. is worth $1 billion, highlighting the lofty hopes riding on online services that connect people with their friends, family and business associates.

The 10-figure valuation is implied by a $53 million investment being announced Wednesday from Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners.

The investors received a combined 5 percent stake in Mountain View-based LinkedIn, whose 5-year-old Web site helps people use the Web to advance their professional careers.

MySpace can collect $6 million from a notorious Internet marketer accused by the popular online hangout of spamming its users.

An arbitrator has ruled that Scott Richter and his Web marketing company, Media Breakaway LLC of Westminster, Colorado, must pay MySpace $4.8 million in damages and $1.2 million in attorney's fees for barraging MySpace members with unsolicited advertisements. Media Breakaway and its employees were also banned from the site.

Developers of a "social" Web browser called Flock have released a new test version.

Like its predecessors, the Flock 2 beta uses building blocks from Mozilla, an open-source community in which thousands of people collectively develop free products. The newest version of Flock incorporates improvements from Mozilla's Firefox 3 browser, which is scheduled for release Tuesday.

Flock emphasizes the social aspects of the Web with features such as better integration with news-recommendation site Digg, online hangout Facebook and group-messaging service Twitter.

Think twice before you sign up for an online service using a fake name or e-mail address. You could be committing a federal crime.

Federal prosecutors turned to a novel interpretation of computer hacking law to indict a Missouri mother on charges connected to the suicide of a 13-year-old MySpace user.

Prosecutors alleged that by helping create a MySpace account in the name of someone who didn't exist, Lori Drew, 49, violated the News Corp.-owned site's terms of service and thus illegally accessed protected computers.