Facebook doesn't make money on hardware, software, or subscriptions. Instead, they make money on the data users put out. They take the data users send out and sell it to advertisers who in turn sell users stuff through the use of targeted ads.

The idea that major corporations sell users data scares a lot of people. These people don't necessarily have anything to hide; they're just ordinary people who like to have a sense of privacy.

These people use Gmail, Facebook, and Google+. Some of them will even probably end up using Facebook Home.

These potential Facebook Home users spoke up about their fears that the app/skin/thing would invade their privacy in a way unheard of previously. So Facebook went on the offensive and dropped a Q&A for Home's privacy policies.

The Q&A basically said Facebook Home doesn't change the way the company handles user data. User's location data won't be collected in anyway that is unique and it won't collect data users create from other apps.

So if nothing changes then what is the end game? Why is Facebook making a free super-app that doesn't do anything new for advertisers? Because by putting itself on your home screen, Facebook can gleam a lot more data using the same policies.

By buying into Facebook Home users will be sort-of using a Facebook ecosystem. Facebook already has an app store which has the potential for growth. It also has a messaging service and a slew of other apps users could use to replace their current Android offerings.

Facebook Home allows Facebook to use the same privacy policy on a much bigger canvas. With Facebook Home, Facebook isn't reinventing the wheel. Instead, it's just the start and it's nothing new. Google's been doing it for years.

The famous Microsoft "Scroogled" campaign derided Google for searching through Gmail messages to serve up sponsored ads. Google uses all of its apps to give advertisers some new kinds of data.

Now Facebook is doing the same thing as its semi-rival Google. It's building out an ecosystem in attempt to better understand how to sell its users stuff. So if you are the type to worry about Facebook Home's privacy policies, you should be less focused on Home and more focused on Facebook as a whole.

Facebook's current privacy policies are the real issue, not the future violations of an unreleased app. If anything is to be done, it should be getting Facebook to update its current policies to better adapt to mobile.

The company has already defined itself as a mobile company so perhaps it should make privacy policies that reflect that. If Facebook really wants to talk up its privacy agenda, it needs to really work to change what its current policies are and not to talk about what its doing with a new app.

Everyone expected a Facebook phone and we all sort of got one. HTC launched the aptly titled HTC First, the mid-level handset with Facebook features front and center.

However, that wasn't really the whole story.

The real news is that Facebook has launched an Android Skin. Mark Zuckerberg and his team just launched Facebook Home, an Android "super-app".

Zuckerberg said Facebook Home is mobile software built around people and not apps (to which Microsoft said this). It's giving users the chance to get Facebook front and center on their mobile device.

So instead of launching a phone, Facebook has launched something phone-esque. It is an Android skin that offers Facebook something different while not offending its friends in the mobile world.

It's a good play from Facebook. They needed to do something to grow and move forward. As a public company they have investors to answer to and needed to show that they have a plan for the mobile market.

A phone may have come on to strong. Giving HTC exclusivity on Facebook would have probably failed in the long run. Too much competition exists in the smartphone arena. Facebook is too big to try to be a disruptive source like Mozilla.

So Facebook did the smart thing and made something that can be used across the world of Android. By doing so, Facebook has the chance to grab some mobile advertising data from all sorts of Android users.

Facebook can now offer location-based data that can be sent to advertisers to offer consumers location-aware ads. The social network can now better monetize mobile advertisements and see improved revenue in the mobile sector, where everybody checks Facebook anyway.

It may not be an amazing announcement, but it's a good one. Slow and steady seems to be Facebook's plan of action. The company is creating something that could branch out into other things but at the moment is pretty simple.

Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has been named most popular chief executive, according to a Glassdoor study.

Glassdoor reported that Mark Zuckerberg had a 99 percent approval rating among his employees. Zuckerberg's approval rating jumped over 10 percent from 2012. Other tech chiefs to make the top 50 included Larry Page, Tim Cook and Larry Ellison.

The Facebook chief's approval rating jumped 14 percent from 2012 to 2013. Zuckerberg's approval rating was only 85 percent last year. The increase in popularity could be attributed to the fact that Facebook had not gone public as of last year's study results. Or it could just be that Mark Zuckerberg has fired everyone who disliked him.

Another interesting note is that Tim Cook's approval rating dropped year-over-year. The Apple chief executive's rating dropped from 97 percent to 93 percent over the course of the last year.

Google's Larry Page also ranked highly, according to Glassdoor's study. The high powered executive ranked as the 11th most popular chief this year. His 95 percent approval rating stayed consistent over the course of last year.

Less loved, but mostly liked, executive Larry Ellison rounded out the top 50. Oracle's founder was ranked the 46th most well-liked chief executive with an 82 percent rating. In comparison, Ellison's former employee (and current nemesis) Salesforce founder Marc Benioff had a 94 percent approval rating.

One executive to not make the top 50 this year was Microsoft's head Steve Ballmer. Redmond's resident chief executive also failed to make Glassdoor's list in 2011.

Facebook's news feed redesign could prove vital in getting advertisers and consumers back on board Facebook.

Facebook is trying to get back to the Wall Street high it received when going public last year. The social network fell quite a few pegs when investors realised its business model left much in terms of future growth.

What's funny is that despite the companies troubling stock prices, usage by consumers has stayed strong. Of course, those users are moving to mobile screens. Something Facebook seemed to not get until recently.

However, with the launch of the revamped news feed Facebook is showing its finally starting to get that it's a mobile company. The engineers at Facebook are now building products and services with a mobile first agenda.

Facebook's news feed update is one of the first major announcements that put a focus on ways to improve the mobile experience. By offering a streamlined, photo friendly platform, Facebook has proved to users that they know how Facebook is being used.

The problem is, even if Facebook appeases users it doesn't make money off of them. The social network only performs well when advertisers like their product.

It's hard to talk about Facebook the company without talking about advertisers. They are the ones that pay to keep the lights on at Facebook HQ. And no matter how much consumers use the social network it's the advertisers who keep Mark Zuckerberg's company spinning.

No matter what consumers think about a product redesign, they only make up half the narrative. The real issue for Facebook is appeasing the brands that pay its bills. And with the new news feed, Facebook is now offering advertisers a better option to get their brand in front of Facebook users.

Take for instance the recently added news feed category titled "Following". The category gives advertisers a personal space to showcase a brands Pages profile. It gives brands prime real estate while also reducing the potential for consumer news feeds to get clogged with glorified ads.

If you're an advertiser the last thing you want is your consumer to be annoyed by you. So by getting their own special news space, on both mobile and desktop platforms, advertisers now have the chance to peddle their brands to consumers without bugging them.

The secret to making money on the internet these days is adverting and mobile growth. By updating its newsfeed Facebook made a big step in getting better at those things. Now it will be interesting to see what the social network does next.

People memorise Facebook posts one and a half times better than they remember a books text, according to a new university study.

The findings come following an extensive study on human memory from the University of San Diego and the University of Warwick. Research from the two school's study was recently published in the Springer Journal Memory and Cognition.

"We were really surprised when we saw just how much stronger memory for Facebook posts was compared to other types of stimuli," said Laura Mickes of the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick.

"These kinds of gaps in performance are on a scale similar to the differences between amnesiacs and people with healthy memory."

According to the study, the huge gap in memory cognition comes from the fact that books are much more mentally intensive and isolating. The study reported that because Facebook posts comes from people you know and are short they are easier to remember.

Because people share rewards and news of potential threats with each other it makes sense that you'd remember a Facebook post, at least from an evolutionary standpoint.

"Facebook is updated roughly 30 million times an hour so it's easy to dismiss it as full of mundane, trivial bits of information that we will instantly forget as soon as we read them," continued Mickes.

"But our study turns that view on its head, and by doing so gives us a really useful glimpse into the kinds of information we're hardwired to remember.

If nothing else, the new information should peak marketers interest. Knowing people are more adept at remembering Facebook posts means sponsored stories ads may actually be valuable.

What does the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, eat for breakfast? Doritos and Mountain Dew, right? Wrong. In fact, Mullenweg eats a specially made slow-cooked egg dish that he calls "Eggs à la Matt".

The revelation that the techie responsible for WordPress can actually cook something other than Pot Noodles comes from the new e-cookbook The Startup Chef. 

Startup Chef is a 75-recipe tome full of the foods that tech start-up executives make.

According to the book's authors, Maya Baratz and Hunter Walker, the e-book sets out to show that the same creativity that one needs to build a tech company can be moved into the kitchen.

"A cookbook by people who make technology products may seem a bit counter-intuitive at first. Technology, after all, is about bytes, not bites," the authors wrote in a description of the book.

"But the creative process that goes into cooking a great meal - and the raw vision, passion and imagination one applies to making something new out of a sum of unsuspecting ingredients - is not so different from the process of creating innovative technology products."

Among the techie's recipes inside the book, readers will find out what gets cooked up at a Zuckerberg family dinner.

Both Mark Zuckerberg's sisters, Randi and Donna, shared recipes for the project, including the family recipe for "Eggnog Cinnamon Chip Scones" in the book.

Unfortunately, there is no word on Mark's culinary aptitude in the book. However, may we recommend hoodie-wearing gingerbread man as an ideal dessert for the holiday season?

Those interested in learning how to eat like a Silicon Valley bigwig can check out the e-book now for $10. As an added bonus all proceeds from the book go to charities that are helping to stop world hunger.

Shares in Facebook closed at $23.23 on Tuesday, a 19 percent single-day jump in price. Wall Street looked impressed following a Mark Zuckerberg investor's call which focused on monetising the Facebook brand.

Zuckerberg spoke with investors Monday. The key take away from his pep talk was that Facebook was getting serious about making money from mobile. It also didn't hurt that Facebook finally had the numbers to back up their claims.

Facebook reported that 14 percent of its third quarter advertising revenue came from the mobile side of its operations. That number came along with the news that 604 million of Facebook's monthly active users were on a mobile device. Following statistics like that you'd expect investors to be interested.

If Facebook fails it will be one of the biggest blunders to ever hit Wall Street. The company's stock opened on the market at $38 a share. That price quickly fell when investors discovered that Facebook had a hard time monetising its mobile operations.

For the company to succeed on Wall Street it will need to prove to investors that it can continue to grow and make meaningful revenue. Third quarter numbers were a good start but to truly get back investor support it will have to have a few more mobile tricks up its sleeve.

An app update has brought a faster Facebook to the iPhone.

Facebook says the new app will open faster, scroll smoother and load photos easier. The new app now also comes prepackaged with Facebook Camera (Instagram) and Facebook Messenger. Both features were previously only available as separate apps.

"Today we're announcing an update to the Facebook app for iPhone and iPad that makes keeping up with friends faster and easier," said Facebook product manager Mick Johnson in a blog post.

"Facebook 5.0 for iOS is twice as fast as the previous version when launching the app, scrolling through news feed and opening photos in feed."

Reports of an iOS redesign surfaced last June when The New York Times reported that the social networking giant was working on faster mobile client. At the time it was reported that the rebuilt app would be based on the iOS-native Objective-C programming language.

The new app looks to kick start some momentum for the troubled social networking site. Since going public earlier this year Facebook has seen its share prices drop drastically. The once much-hyped IPO is now trading at less than $20 a share.