Facebook and other Web sites such as MySpace, Bebo and Google are creating technology platforms that let third-party developers build applications to run on those sites. The concept has opened the door to innovation, but also prompted worries over how those applications could be used for spam or to steal personal data.

Nobody reads terms of service agreements, those legal documents new users have to click a box to say they’ve read. And the truth is, they hardly matter to anybody but the cyber-rights-now crowd and paranoid lawyers at large Web companies. But sometimes they go far beyond protecting corporate interests into la-la land.

A new study published in July’s Journal of Experimental Social Psychology claims that participants could guess fairly accurately (”better than chance”) whether men were gay or straight by looking at photos of their faces. The photos used in the study were taken from Internet personal ads and from Facebook, and then examined by 15 undergraduate students.

The group now has 65 Facebook members, including defeated Prime Minister John Howard’s former press secretary Ben Mitchell and several former Costello staffers. More than 200 invitations to join are pending - including to Mr Howard, The Australian’s columnist Janet Albrechtsen, Ms Bishop and Alexander Downer.

Hasbro Inc, the company that owns the North American rights to the word game, last week sued the creators of Facebook’s popular Scrabulous program. Separately, Hasbro asked Facebook to block the game, something the site resisted despite risks of losing immunity protection from copyright lawsuits.