MetaData: Facebook Face-Off

The social network's members fret about how it will turn chitchat into cash.

The blogsphere erupted Sunday evening following an observation by the blog Consumerist that Facebook, the watercooler of this generation, recently tightened its policies for using the data that we all so freely share on its platform. The blog summed up the problem succinctly by asserting the new Facebook rules amount to: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever."

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg fired back but sounded a bit wounded by the attack. "We wouldn't share your information in a way you wouldn't want," he said in a blog post on Facebook on Monday. "The trust you place in us as a safe place to share information is the most important part of what makes Facebook work."

Do people really think that their private information is sacred anywhere on the Web? You can read some detailed accounts of the specifics of this dustup here and here, among other places. Zuckerberg has gone to some lengths to say that Facebook's recent changes in its terms of service simply enable the service to let you save copies of your messages and photos and that of your friends. "We still have work to do to communicate more clearly about these issues," Zuckerberg wrote.

Even so, it's lunacy to think that Facebook isn't scrambling to figure out how to make use of all those comments about what movie you liked the most last week or your favorite brand of jeans. Yes, its traffic is spectacular: in 2008, a staggering 6.6 billion "friendships" were made on Facebook. If real life mimicked Web life, that would mean that just about everybody on the planet could have at least one friend.

But unless Facebook gets better turning chatter into cash, it won't have much of a business.

So far, Facebook has made limited headway in weaving advertising into its site. Small-time operations can pay a few cents per ad to deliver their message to people with a certain set of demographics. But earning pennies for ads isn't a passport to a great business.

If Facebook really wants to collect serious money for sharing its "friends" with the highest bidder, that could mean giving up some of the innocent, playful gestalt of the site and yielding to advertisers' demands for a more intimate look at users' characteristics. That may not sit well with Zuckerberg, who cherishes the aura of Facebook more than he does its income stream.

Satellite collision highlights risks in a sector that currently has little financial risk protection.

Imagine an object the size of a pea with the potential to destroy a satellite, and you'll get a sense of the potential new risks posed by Wednesday's collision of an Iridium satellite with an inactive Russian military satellite.

The scale of the damage is still being assessed, but so far the U.S. Joint Space Operations Center has identified 600 pieces of debris greater than the size of a tennis ball that were thrown off in the crash (pieces smaller than that are untrackable). Traveling at around 5.0 miles a second, an object much smaller could do a lot of damage, particularly when colliding with one coming from the opposite direction at a similar speed.

"The issue of debris has been hugely underestimated for a long time," said Sima Adhya, senior technical officer at risk analysis firm Sciemus. "It’s a massive problem that the space industry needs to get a grip on."

"There was an incident where a speck of paint chipped the windscreen of a spacecraft," David Wade, space underwriter at Atrium Space Insurance in London, told Forbes.

Most commercial insured satellites operate in geosynchronous orbit, around 22,400 miles above the Earth, where there is hardly any debris, and onboard control ensures that collision risks are small. For these satellites, the main risks covered tend to be mechanical troubles, or a failure at launch, according to Ernst Steilen, head of space underwriting at Munich Re.

Wednesday's collision occurred much closer to Earth, at a level where the majority of satellites, belonging to research institutes or governments, aren't covered by insurance.

Underwriters have so far been unwilling to predict the impact that Wednesday's collision will have on the space insurance industry, which generates around $800.0 million a year. "It is too soon to tell if the recent collision is likely to affect insurance terms, as we do not yet understand the nature of the debris caused by the collision or the ultimate orbit of that debris," said Jeff Cassidy, chief operating officer of specialist insurer Global Aerospace "We will continue to base every policy on its individual risk characteristics and any risk of damage from debris of any origin is just one of the risks faced by in-orbit satellites."

Munich Re's Steilen agrees that the collision, if it remains a one off and doesn’t result in massive losses, is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the industry. "We have had a reminder of what can happened and will be tracking it closely in the future."

The satellite, belonging to Iridium Satellite LLC, collided with the Russian satellite about 500 miles above Siberia, around midday Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday. With increasing demand for satellite coverage for industry from shipping and mining, to Web sites such as Google Maps, lower space orbits are gradually becoming more crowded.

So, you just got laid off from the struggling portal. Congratulations.

American Autos Worth Saving And Writing Off

Some cars are worth it to Detroit to keep building--others are to blame for the automakers' demise.

In Pictures: American Autos Worth Writing Off

In Pictures: American Autos Worth Saving

The worsening U.S. auto sales slump claimed another 2,000 workers Friday as General Motors Corp. announced layoffs at three more car factories.

The company said it will cut shifts at car factories in Lordstown, Ohio; Orion Township, Mich.; and Oshawa, Ontario, starting in February due to slowing demand for their products.

"It's all market driven, as all of our changes have been of late," spokesman Chris Lee said.

The layoffs amount to 2.4 percent of GM's North American blue-collar work force of 84,000. So far this year, GM has announced 11,000 factory worker layoffs in the U.S.

In Lordstown, where GM makes the Chevrolet Cobalt and Pontiac G5 small cars, 890 workers will go on indefinite layoff starting Feb. 2 when GM ends a third shift at the sprawling complex. The shift was added earlier this year when gas prices hit $4 per gallon and demand for small cars skyrocketed.

Also Feb. 2, GM will lay off 390 workers by cutting a third shift at the Orion plant near Pontiac. The factory makes the Chevrolet Malibu and Pontiac G6 midsize sedans. The Malibu had been GM's hottest seller, but demand has started to wane in recent months. No date has been set to bring the workers back because GM doesn't know when sales will return.

Another 700 workers will go on indefinite layoff Feb. 9 in Oshawa, Ontario, where GM makes the Chevrolet Impala large sedan. The company is cutting the third shift, also due to slowing demand, Lee said.

The Thanksgiving shopping weekend doesn't appear to have been the disaster some had feared, but tempered buying and unprecedented deep discounts likely resulted in soft sales. Now, online retailers are ramping up heavy-duty deals to turn skittish shoppers into "Cyber Monday" spenders.

"Cyber Monday," a term coined by the trade group National Retail Federation in 2005 to describe the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, is the unofficial kickoff for the busy online retail season.

The nation's merchants are struggling to entice financially strapped shoppers for the rest of the holiday shopping season, expected to be the weakest in decades. Online sales are expected to be fairly flat after years of strong growth.

"The consumer clearly is showing us that there is a holiday to be had, but the consumer wants bigger deals. And they are not panicking," said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, a market research group. "They're willing to wait it out at almost any price."

Cohen predicts sales for the weekend, the traditional start of the holiday shopping season, were at best even with the same holiday weekend a year ago. The trade group National Retail Federation expects overall holiday spending will total about $470.4 billion, a 2.2 percent rise from a year ago and the slowest growth since 2002, and online retail is being hit along with brick-and-mortar stores.

If stores are already offering up to 75 percent off - a move likely to hurt profits - what more can they do? With mounds of inventory that merchants need to clear, Cohen said he expects retailers will be doing more two-for-one deals.

Still, the crowds that turned out for the early morning specials on Friday were a welcome relief to the nation's retailers - who since mid-September have suffered from the most dramatic falloff in spending in decades amid a ballooning financial crisis.

OMAHA, Nebraska (CNN) -- Nebraska officials said they're concerned about an apparent rush by parents to drop their teenage children off at hospitals before lawmakers change the state's troubled "safe haven" law.

Four children have been dropped off at Nebraska hospitals in the last two days.

The latest cases came on the eve of a special session of the Legislature on Friday to add an age limit to the law. On Thursday, a boy, 14, and his 17-year-old sister were dropped off at an Omaha hospital; the girl ran away from the hospital, officials said. A 5-year-old boy was left by his mother at a different hospital, officials said.

The day before, a father flew in from Miami, Florida, to leave his teenage son at a hospital, officials said.

"Please don't bring your teenager to Nebraska," Gov. Dave Heineman told CNN. "Think of what you are saying. You are saying you no longer support them. You no longer love them." Watch as lawmakers convene to change law »

Nebraska's safe haven law was intended to allow parents to hand over an infant anonymously to a hospital without being prosecuted. Of the 34 children who have been dropped off at hospitals, officials said not one has been an infant.

All but six have been older than 10, according to a Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services analysis.

State officials said because of legislative procedures it will take at least a week to change the language of the safe haven law, creating a window where more parents could try to take advantage of the loophole in the statute.

"We are ready and prepared that that situation occurs," said Todd Landry of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services. "We want people to understand that this is not the right way of getting the service for your child, your teenager or your family."

State Sen. Tom White said lawmakers have been caught off-guard by the number of teenagers taken in under the law.

"What you've seen is an extraordinary cry for help from people all across the country," White said. "Nebraska can't afford to take care of all of them. Nebraska would like to be able to, but they know that we can't so we are going to have to change the law."

There's growing support among many Nebraska lawmakers to limit the safe haven law to children no older than three days. But several lawmakers said they'll push for something closer to a 30-day age limit.

The safe haven law was meant to protect infants, but there is no age limit under the current law. Five of the abandoned children were brought to Nebraska from out of state. Parents have traveled into Nebraska from Michigan, Indiana, Iowa, Florida and Georgia.

Tysheema Brown drove from Georgia to leave her teenage son at an Omaha hospital.

"Do not judge me as a parent. I love my son and my son knows that," Brown said. "There is just no help. There hasn't been any help."

Safe haven laws allow distraught parents, who fear their children are in imminent danger, to drop them off at hospitals without being charged with abandonment. Nebraska was the last state in the country to pass such a law. But every other state included an age limit.

The Department of Health and Human Services published a background profile on 30 of the 34 safe haven cases. The report found:

There are 6,600 children in state custody, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Per capita the figure is one of the highest rates in the country, Landry said.

"I think this has spurred some really healthy conversations about how do parents get the help that they need when they are struggling with some of these parenting issues," he said.

"And the message that we have been trying to get out is, 'Don't wait until it's a crisis. Reach out to your family and friends.' "