Facebook looks like its worth close to $10 billion right now, based on actual transactions in the stock. The social networking site has seen its shares surge on an exchange for private companies, suggesting that the company is perceived to be headed in the right direction. Of course, private companies don't have to disclose all their dirty laundry, so assume that the current "market" value is based on only the rosiest of impressions. Some see this as a leading indicator of a Facebook IPO, which is bound to ignite unparalleled excitement.

There's room for a little common sense, though, and investors should take advantage of it. Facebook remains down 33% from its 2007 peak value of $15 billion, and the recent trading activity implies a value slightly below that defined by the latest investment in the company. It probably makes sense to keep the corks in the champagne bottles a little bit longer, but only because the vintage isn't quite right yet.

Can Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg create the first truly dominant global social network? It's a big ambition, but it's looking less implausible all the time. Previously, social networks were strong in one region primarily or in several, but never globally. Friendster couldn't catch on in Europe or South America. MySpace was much weaker in Asia than in the U.S.

Facebook, however, is well on its way to establishing dominance in several parts of the world. Already very strong in North America and Europe, Zuckerberg (pictured) looks set to take Asia, too.

There is a lot of buzz these days over a new product called Google (GOOG) Wave. Some are under the false impression that it's the next Twitter, but this new tool from Google is very different. Think of it as a real-time collaboration tool that includes, among its many features, email on steroids.

Greg Dalesandre, Google Wave product manager, in an online video, describes Wave as a "shared space," where users can communicate using text, videos, photos and maps. So you can have a conversation while working on a document with a group of people in another city -- or in another part of the planet. You can both work together in real time using richly formatted text, photos, videos and more. The wave is the shared experience that you are involved with. So you could be working with 10 people and everything you do -- from the conversations you have to the changes you make to a document, will be inside a wave. What's really cool about this is that the wave allows you to rewind, allowing you to see who said what when. Since everything is in real-time -- it's fast.

Facebook's plan to memorialize its dead users is certainly well-intentioned. The idea got underway after a Facebook employee was tragically killed in a bicycle accident. As his co-workers struggled to come to grips with the tragedy, they also came up with an idea: Why not offer Facebook memorials for users who pass on? Last week, that is exactly what Facebook did. Now, you can memorialize a dead Facebook user.

But the decision could open the door to a litany of problems. Among the potential issues: Who has the right to determine if a site is memorialized? What if the husband memorializes his wife on Facebook but the wife's parents think that such a move is in poor taste -- can the page then be taken down?

It sure was fitting that Google (GOOG) killed an entire product segment on Oct. 28, just a day before the 80th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash. And appropriately enough, on Wednesday the tech-heavy NASDAQ tumbled mightily. Contributing to that fall was the pummeling of GPS makers Garmin (GRMN) and TomTom (TMOAF), whose shares plunged 16% and 21%, respectively. TomTom shares kept falling the next day, dropping by 11% more.

That's because search giant Google unveiled what appears to be a revolutionary GPS guidance unit for smart phones running Google's Android operating system. Collectively, those two GPS companies lost more than $2 billion in market cap. Even shares of iPhone maker Apple (AAPL) fell by a startling 5%, more than retracing all the recent gains the stock had made after posting stellar earnings last week.

When I wrote a post a month ago detailing why I thought Facebook could really hurt Google (GOOG), lots of readers scoffed at my logic. So I was relieved to see that Sean Parker agrees with me. Parker, a babyfaced wunderkind tech enterpreneur, played key early roles in Facebook and, before that, music filesharing site Napster. He gave the most provocative presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week -- laying out, in broad brushstrokes, how and why he thinks Facebook will kill Google.

Parker believes, in short, that businesses that connect people are worth more than businesses that collect data. Google collects data; Facebook connects people. So network effects will go to Facebook, and not Google.

This holiday season, the big draw in online shopping will be the free shipping. Consumers are demanding it, and with this year's bareknuckle competition, retailers have no choice but to give it to them.

Four out of five retailers will offer free shipping with minimum purchases this holiday, according to a survey by Shop.org, the online arm of the National Retail Federation. And 57.4 percent will offer no-minimum free shipping offers sometime during the season.

The top executives at some of the biggest internet companies on the planet -- as well as the hottest upstarts -- have joined the fight for net neutrality, the principle that broadband providers should not favor their own programming over competing content.

Among the executives that signed a letter on Monday expressing their support to the Federal Communications Commission are Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (pictured), Twitter's Evan Williams, Google's Eric Schmidt, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, and Barry Diller of IAC/InteractiveCorp, Genachowski's former boss. Other signers include Digg's Kevin Rose and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark. The letter comes just days before the FCC's key vote on Thursday regarding Chairman Julius Genachowski's proposed internet rules.