​Facebook wants your money!

The social networking behemoth filed its initial public offering today, so now you will soon be able to spend time and cash on the site by becoming a stockholder. (It's the American way!)

Facebook, which was birthed in a Harvard dorm some eight years ago, the New York Times reports, hopes to raise $5 billion with stock -- and some say its potential value, $75-100 billion, could make it worth more than corporate giants such as Goldman Sachs and Ford Motors.

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​Listen up, Wikipedia, Google, and all you other folks who shut down websites and changed your Facebook profile pic in solidarity! Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand heard you loud and clear and said this morning that it's time to take a step back and reevaluate PIPA and SOPA.

This times well with reports that that's actually happening. The future of the legislation was already looking grim yesterday, and, as of this morning, it was determined that SOPA will be redrafted, and a key vote for the PIPA bill was postponed.

Gillibrand went to the Internet today to make some statements about the controversial anti-piracy legislation that has Internet-lovers (and, you know, free-speech lovers), up in arms. On Twitter, she wrote: "Congress must take a step back & start over to work to curb online piracy & allow tech cos to thrive. NY tech community must be at the table."

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​What do you get for the person who has everything, including a Facebook account? A Facebook "business" card, of course! We're not sure if these are more or less insufferable than the Facebook shower curtain (equally so, perhaps, but different?). On one hand, the point of Facebook is, we suppose, to network, so giving someone a card with your contact info on it instead of making them search through the "Jennifer Dolls" to try to find you in the bleary hours of the next day may be an efficiency-positive move. On the other hand, do you really want to proclaim your devotion to Mark Zuckerberg's social networking beast with such American Psycho devotion? What's the thickness of this card stock, anyway? (200,000 users will get them free -- otherwise, they start at $15 for 50.)

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​Alec Baldwin -- closer, formerly prolific tweeter, and fake future mayoral candidate -- had a little incident with American Airlines yesterday because of his refusal to stop playing Words With Friends. Baldwin wouldn't shut off his phone when the flight attendant asked him to and says he was kicked off his flight. Words were exchanged, and now American Airlines is trying to set the record straight on its Facebook page. They don't refer to Baldwin by name, though:

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​As was reported last week, free yoga studio chain Yoga to the People is being sued by Bikram Choudhury, the inventor of Bikram yoga, for "stealing" poses. Choudhury, who is very litigious, and his lawyer sent in an undercover yogi into the YTTP hot yoga class to confirm Choudhury's suspicion that his poses were being used. Bikram yoga involves a specific 90-minute-long series of 26 poses performed in a 105-degree room. Choudhury has trademarked the phrase "Bikram Yoga" and the poses along with it.

YTTP's owner Gregory Gumucio used to be close with Choudhury and "considered himself Choudhury's right-hand man for five years, before the pair fell out of favor," according to DNA Info. Now Gumucio is discussing the situation with Choudhury on YTTP's Facebook page and not mincing words.

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​Mayor Bloomberg, Sen. Chuck Schumer, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg announced today that Facebook is opening an engineering office in New York City. Though Facebook already has 100 employees in New York, this is their first engineering office outside the West Coast. It will open in early 2012.

Facebook reps and the assembled politicians emphasized the new office as a boon for employment in New York. "It is accepting applications now, if any of you need jobs," Bloomberg said. But for a moment, the presser switched gears and turned the spotlight on Mayor Bloomberg to defend his comments from yesterday that implied he would be OK with slashing teaching staffs by half.

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​The above screengrab (via Reddit) from Mountain Dew's Facebook page shows a man's apparent cry for help. Naturally, this has spread around the internet, and people have found it anywhere from hilarious to disturbing and offensive. Runnin' Scared got in contact with Michael Abraham, the man who made the above post, and he says it was all a joke. Why would he do that to DEW Nation?

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​Here is some weird news that you can brag about, if you happen to be one of the privileged few with many, many Facebook friends and a giant brain. Actually, you should probably post this information, along with a photo of your brain, on your Facebook wall -- we hear that's the way to get even more friends! According to a study done by researchers at University College London, not only are certain regions of many-friended Facebook users' brains bigger, the big-brainers also have more real-world friends.

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​Prepare to get indignant at a bunch of people you did a summer program with in high school and friends of friends you had the first week of college. They have been unfriending you on Facebook, and thanks to the new Facebook Timeline, you can see exactly which people have unfriended you and when. You wouldn't want to think that it's depressing, but it is actually kind of depressing. Go do it (BuzzFeed can show you how, it's quite simple)! And feel depressed and nostalgic.

Thing is, it's not all bad. There are some positives to being aware of who has cast you out of their online existence. Pros and cons, cons first:

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​FYI: Teenagers who frequent social networking sites like Facebook and watch bawdy, scandalous, delightful television shows like Jersey Shore, Gossip Girl, Skins, and 16 and Pregnant are more likely to use drugs and alcohol than teens who don't have computers or cable TV and are locked in their rooms by their parents when they're not at school or in the basement practicing clarinet. Given that about 70 percent of the teens surveyed used social networking sites, and thereby were privy to their evils, the only answer to this is, obviously, kill Facebook.

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