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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/valleywag/2008/10/2975540574_fbee24f298.jpg” width=”332″ height=”500″ align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ /Laid-off sex blogger Violet Blue has resurfaced a href=”http://valleywag.com/5021146/did-the-internets-free+speech-guardians-try-to-hush-up-a-girl+on+girl-love-affair”after her unpublishing/a. She appears to be in good spirits, debuting her Halloween costume as a naughty nun. Never mind that she should be the one getting emher/em knuckles rapped for fibbing! We hear her departure from Fleshbot, Valleywag’s smutty sister site, a href=”http://melissagira.com/sexerati/2008/10/10/the-end-of-sexpertise/”wasn’t as consensual as she’d have you believe/a. Can you think of a better caption? Leave it in the comments. The best one will become the post’s new headline. Yesterday’s winner: a href=”http://valleywag.com/5069528/we-find-what-bonos-looking-for#c8571871″nirreskaya/a, for “Elevation’s new partners.” em(Photo by a href=”http://laughingsquid.com/pre-halloween-at-violet-blue-blogger-bungalow/”Scott Beale/Laughing Squid/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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It has taken Facebook more than a year to pick the 25 winners of its FBFund grants competition, who have received $25,000 prizes. And now those 25 can try for $250,000 more, according to Facebook’s FAQ: “The top 25 applications [in round I] will receive $25k grant. After Round I the top 25 may resubmit to apply for one of five $250k grants awarded in Round II.” So if you win both grants, you get $275K, right? Wrong!

By Facebook’s math, one $25,000 grant + one $250,000 grant = a total of $250,000. In announcing the Round I winners, Facebook’s Catherine Lee pulled a $225,000 figure out of thin air: “Once round two closes in December, we will announce our five finalists, each of which will receive up to an additional $225,000 in funding.” I’m sure Facebook flack Elliot Schrage has some highly entertaining explanation for this which he will deliver straightfaced to other reporters, who will then call us and howl with laughter. For now, we’re content to just blame Sheryl Sandberg.

Silicon Valley’s bubble in Facebook-apps startup has been our own local version of the crisis in toxic mortgage securities. With venture capitalists growing leary of the concept, developers have been eagerly awaiting the outcome of Facebook’s FBFund, a grants program for applications startups. Results were promised on September 22, then again last Friday; Facebook still hasn’t made a decision on the lucky winners. Why? Because Facebook’s applications platform has become, like everything else in the company, a scene of rabidly intense politicking.

Here’s an update for anyone who didn’t get the memo: Facebook’s applications “platform,” a set of software tools for embedding timewasting entertainments within the social network’s pages, is not a level playing field. Some applications are more equal than others. That’s only become clearer since Facebook foolishly put Facebook’s platform in the hands of its top flack, Washington-trained bloviator Elliot Schrage. Facebook’s Great Apps program, meant to designate higher-quality applications, has become a shameful excuse for nepotism.

Awarding money on the merits is hard enough. When you mix in the need to help out your COO’s brother-in-law’s pet startup, or your ex-president’s latest venture, it complicates matters. Is Facebook going to come out with a list of apps to fund that it’s truly proud of? Or will this look more like an appropriations bill after it’s made its way through Congress, larded with earmarks?

Slide and RockYou, the two largest developers of Facebook apps, have long had a serious rivalry over the most frivolous Web software. But the two may be pulling apart. Slide, Max Levchin’s SuperPoke machine, signaled yesterday that it’s betting on online entertainment, partnering with Hollywood to bring mainstream content to its FunSpace apps. RockYou, meanwhile, seems to be turning into a gamemaker. “We want to be like the Electronic Arts of social networks, and build games for social networks,” RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, shown here, said today at the Startonomics conference in San Francisco, referring to the dominant maker of videogames.

Build, or perhaps buy. In July, RockYou acquired Speed Racing, one of the top games on Facebook. But RockYou, in diverting its attention from its rivalry with Slide, will face well-funded competitors in startups Zynga and SGN. By the time all this becomes a serious business, isn’t it just as likely Electronic Arts will be the Electronic Arts of social games?