Facebook was the buzzword this week, as the social networking website that boasts millions of subscribers made the headlines on several different occasions.
First, Forbes announced that seven people involved in the company are on it's list of Social Networking Billionaires this year, including Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin. Some may be surprised to see Saverin on the ranking, as his drama with Zuckerberg was the subject of the academy award nominated film The Social Network. However, it looks like he walked away with a nice severance package, even if he and the Facebook CEO clashed claws.
Zuckerberg is worth an estimated $13.5 billion, but that's nothing compared to some of the others on the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires. The 20-something Facebook guru was ranked number 52 on the overall list of the world's richest people.
In other news, Facebook teamed up with the Obama administration to take on cyber-bullying. The decision was made at a White House summit. New safety features on the site allow young users to report any troubling content they witness on the website to Facebook administrators as well as parents, teachers and others in their community who may be able to curb the problem.
“Today's summit is about collaboration and being innovative in the ways in which we address safety,” read Facebook's Safety page. “We hope these new resources will help all of us – parents, teachers, kids, safety experts and Facebook itself – work together to create safer environments.”
Not all student news was this tame, however. Earlier this week, the world was shocked to hear that a professor at Northwestern University allowed a live demonstration of a sex toy to take place in front of 100 students. Though the college kids were warned that the demonstration would be graphic, administrators at the school and many members of the public denounced the sexually explicit lesson.
Though the incident at the college took place on February 21, it was still creating chatter in the news today, March 11. A Google Real Time search at press time for “sex toy demo” was still generating hourly commentary on Twitter.
Of course, that's nothing compared to the amount of interest Charlie Sheen continues to draw to himself. Following the announcement that police had raided his house in search of illegal weapons, a Google News search for his name at 10:30am, March 11, resulted in around 22,300 results.
