Facebook board member and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tells Reuters that the social network will bring in more than $500 million in revenue this fiscal year. That’s far more than some had forecast. eMarketer, for instance, said earlier this year it expected the social network to bring in $230 million…

The Inside Word is a weekly feature that looks at compelling industry debates and discussions unfolding on the blogs of employees at digital-media companies. Poster: Raj Kapoor Blog name: the vc in me ... Company: Mayfield Fund Backstory: Kapoor, a managing director at Mayfield Fund and co-founder of online photo-sharing…

Reactions to Facebook’s many redesigns have varied from revolts and petitions, to acknowledgment that the changes led to a better experience. But one consistent gripe has been that the privacy settings were too complex to be useful. Trying to share a blog post, vacation pictures or video clips with a…

In its search for a new CFO, Facebook mentioned only one criteria: public-company experience. And on Monday it announced it had hired an executive who matched that profile in a big way. The company named David Ebersman, the former CFO of publicly traded biotech giant Genentech, as CFO. Ebersman held…

Glubble, an online community that lets families share photos, messages and status updates, has raised $1 million in funding from a group of private European investors. (This brings its total funding to about $3 million). The S.F.-based startup is also getting new leadership with the money: COO Alexander van Elsas…

Facebook introduced two features Wednesday that should better position the social networking site as a source of real-time information on the web. One lets users make their updates accessible to anyone online if they wish, while the other enables outside sites to feature a relevant stream of updates from Facebook…

MySpace’s cuts, announced for the U.S. last week, are spreading as expected. The company will slash its international staff by two thirds, from 450 to 150, and close at least four international offices as part of cuts that affect “all international divisions of the company.” It brings the total jobs…

Twitter management app Tweetdeck has ridden the wave of Twitter’s popularity to become one of the top Twitter clients, with one million downloads. The free iPhone app launched this week got more than 100,000 downloads in its first 30 hours. But its London-based founder, Iain Dodsworth, sees the company’s business…

New funding may be sluggish, but there’s at least one category that investors are more than happy to pour money into: Twitter-related startups. On its blog today (via Silicon Alley Insider), startup site ChubbyBrain tallies up the action and finds that to date, $23 million has been put into 11…

What’s in a screen name, Facebook profile or Twitter account? Brand equity and integrity, for some; potential revenue streams (from selling virtual merchandise or account subscriptions) for others. Which is why the issue of protecting someone’s name—essentially their brand—across these various networks has become such a hot topic. Baseball manager…

When Ford gave 100 social media-savvy people a free Fiesta and told them to document their experiences on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for the next six months, the company had to know that there would be some interesting (and possibly unfavorable) situations that would come up. —The good: In terms…

Last.fm’s founding trio is leaving the social music site, a few weeks its parent reorganised it in a new CBS Interactive Music Group. Martin Stiksel (pictured), Felix Miller and Richard Jones announced their decision in a blog post: “After two years running Last.fm within CBS (NYSE: CBS). we feel the…

With more people playing all types of online games (including social games on Facebook, casual games on sites like PopCap.com, and games on connected consoles), there’s money to be made from giving them a single space to share, store and socialize their game “data.” Which is likely why Sequoia Capital…

It’s been a while since we’ve heard any definitive news about BD Live, the platform that lets studios embed interactive features like games and IM chats into their Blu-ray movies—but at least one studio has figured out that BD Live needs to tap in to preexisting social networks for it…

Here’s another attempt to answer the question of how much a million social media followers, friends or fans might be worth. If Shaquille O’Neal gets even one percent of his more than 1.1 million Twitter followers to pay $0.99 a month for access to a special tweet stream, he could…

*Google* is beating *Microsoft* at search, and *Apple* is pummeling *Microsoft* on the music front—but with the popularity of the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, *Microsoft* has a major edge on all of its challengers when it comes to controlling the living room. And the company made it clear that…

Health and fitness-centric online community DailyBurn has closed a $525,000 seed round of funding. FF Angel LLC (the early stage investment arm of Founders Fund) led the round, along with participation from individual angels. Founded in 2007 as Gyminee, the startup officially rebranded itself DailyBurn and redesigned its site for…

Action sports-focused social media property Loop’d Network has picked up $800,000 in a third round of funding. New investor Tech Coast Angels led the round, with input from company’s previous private investors. Loop’d will use the funding to help scale out its new e-commerce platform. “Action sports brands are struggling;…

MSN QnA, Microsoft’s rival to Yahoo Answers, is shutting down. A spokeswoman says MSN QnA is being closed “as part of our overall investment in updating and re-aligning our online services to provide customers with new ways to share their opinions and ideas.” It’s the latest MSN-branded service to be…