Congratulations Mark Zuckerberg and the team at Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)!

According to Forbes, Mark Zuckerberg and other elite Facebook insiders are cashing in on their shares while demand for the social network is at a frenzy. This week it was discovered that bankers will unleash Facebook shares at a higher price ($34 to $38 a share) than previously planned and that smart money insiders intend to sell more shares.

Yesterday Facebook announced that it had upped the amount of equity it could sell on its Friday IPO to a possible total of 484,418,657 shares. Executive officers and directors (which includes Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Peter Thiel and others ) could sell a total of 189,369,144 (or $7.2 billion if it goes off at the top of the price range).

Who will also be selling?

Tiger Global upped the number of shares it will sell to 23.4 million, from 3.4 million.

Mail.ru upped its planned sale to 19.6 million from 11.3 million.

Accel Partners now plans to sell 49 million shares, up from 38.2 million.

DST Group will sell 45.7 million shares, up from 26.3 million.

Goldman Sachs will sell 28.7 million shares, up from 13.2 million.

Greylock will sell 7.6 million shares, up from 7 million.

Peter Thiel will sell 16.8 million shares, up from 7.7 million.

These investors can turn their paper gains into hard cash. But insiders who don’t sell on Friday–and rich investors who bought shares of Facebook on secondary markets (like SecondMarket and SharesPost) have to wait a lot longer to cash out.

And it could be along wait. The hype is hot and the bar is high. Current Facebook shareholders will have to endure at least one quarterly report before they get liquid. If Facebook disappoints many paper gains (especially for accredited investors who bought shares on private markets for about $40 a pop) could turn into real losses.

Mark Zuckerberg has been inspired by his girlfriend Priscilla Chan to use Facebook as a tool to help raise awareness about the importance of organ donation. Chan, a medical student who is aspiring to be a pediatrician, shared stories with Zuckerberg about sick patients who are desperately waiting for organs.

One story in particular that touched Zuckerberg is about a young boy in need of a heart transplant. His skin had turned blue from lack of oxygen, but within weeks of receiving a transplant he was out again playing sports.

“How can that not make you happy,” he asked.

“Facebook is really about communicating and telling stories… We think that people can really help spread awareness of organ donation and that they want to participate in this to their friends. And that can be a big part of helping solve the crisis that’s out there,” Zuckerberg told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an exclusive interview at the company’s headquarters.

Starting today, users in the United States and U.K. will be able to add that they’re organ donors to their Timelines, and if they’re not organ donors, they can find links to official organ donation registries and instantly enroll.

“We want to make it simple,” said Zuckerberg. “You just put in the state or country that you’re from, so that we can help link you to the official registries.”
In the “health and wellness” section of users’ timelines, users can list their status as organ donors and explain the decision to their friends, in an effort to raise awareness about the need for donors.

More than 112,000 Americans are awaiting organs, and 18 people die every day from the lack of available organs, according to Donate Life America, a nonprofit alliance that is partnering with Facebook.

The technology behind the donation application, Zuckerberg said, is a “pretty simple thing.” But the ability to link people across hundreds of miles and save their lives? That, he called, “amazing.”

Both the company and organ donation advocates are hopeful the new tool could change the landscape of the organ donation process.

I think it’s possible that we will see an impact over the next couple of years, where we would imagine eliminating the transplant waiting list,” said Dr. Andrew Cameron, Transplant Surgeon at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Here’s how it works:

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has agreed to sell 650 patents to Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) worth $550 million.

Facebook will open its pockets in exchange for various social networking patents that were registered by AOL (NASDAQ:AOL) and were later sold to Microsoft for $1.065 billion earlier this month.

The deal also leaves Microsoft with 275 of the original patents and applications it purchased from AOL. Microsoft will also retain a license to 650 of the patents and applications now owned by Facebook, in addition to the 300 or so AOL patents it gained a license to earlier.

“Today’s agreement with Facebook enables us to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction,” Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel of Microsoft, said in the release.

Its assumed that the social network will likely utilize the portfolio to better defend itself from litigation like the lawsuit brought by Yahoo back in March.

You can read the official Facebook press release HERE.

Facebook for Android 1.9 includes performance improvements as well as shortcuts to share photos and messages faster.

Now you can share photos and messages right from your home screen. Messenger and Camera shortcuts will appear in your app tray after updating your Facebook for Android app.

​Android 1.9 also comes with many of the messenger features found in the standalone Messenger app including:

-Mobile/online status
-If you have already started a group conversation, you can add people on the fly
-Your contact list sorted by the people you interact with frequently

Head over to Google Play and update to FB for Andriod 1.9 HERE.

Facebook’s new data center in Forest City, North Carolina, officially opened today and is online and serving live user traffic.

The data center currently comprises two buildings: Building 1 broke ground in November 2010 and opened today, while Building 2 is expected to open later this year.

The facility takes advantage of technology developed as part of the Open Compute Project, launched by Facebook last year to drive more innovation and a greater focus on energy efficiency in the data center industry. The Forest City data center will be the first live test of the Open Compute Project’s outdoor-air cooling designs in an environment where temperature and humidity conditions are considered to be outside the range of typical data center operations.

Facebook has announced that they have increased the amount of information users can archive when they download their account histories using the site’s Download Your Information feature. The feature was first introduced in October 2010. This allowed users of the social network to download an archive of their history and content they had shared, including photos, posts, messages, friends, and chat conversations.

An expansion of that list on has been announced saying that previous names, friend requests initiated by the user, Internet-protocol addresses used to log in, and other categories of information are being added.

For more information you can check out the Facebook and Privacy page or you can read the announcement below:

Facebook has just announced a new feature ‘Groups for Schools’, which will allow users with an active school email address to join the new groups at their college or university.

According to Facebook’s Announcements page by engineer Michael Novati, users will be able to see what’s happening on a particular campus. This includes options for you to discuss classes with other people in your major, to plan upcoming events with your fraternity or sorority, and simply share photos with friends in your dorm.

“We are also introducing file sharing for these groups, to make it even easier to share lecture notes, sports schedules or class assignments.”

Groups for Schools will gradually be rolling out to colleges and universities around the world. You can sign up to find out when it will be available at your school. Facebook encourages users to make sure that they are able to work out the new features by pointing them to the Help Center.

Facebook just announced that it has agreed to buy mobile photo-sharing app Instagram for approximately $1 billion in stock & cash. This is Facebook’s largest acquisition to date, and comes just weeks before its highly-anticipated IPO.

San Francisco-based Instagram had raised around $47 million in venture capital funding, from firms like Andreessen Horowitz, Baseline Ventures and Benchmark Capital.

For context, Yahoo (YHOO) acquired photo-sharing company Flickr for just $35 million 2004.

Mark Zuckerberg posted the following release just minutes ago on his timeline.

You can read the offical press release here.

You can also read Kevin Systrom’s, CEO of Instagram posting about the merger here.

Facebook, which is preparing for its highly anticipated initial public offering, has picked a home.

The social network will list its shares under the ticker symbol FB on Nasdaq, according to people familiar with the matter.

The listing decision marks the end of a tense and drawn out courting process between the company and numerous executives at the NYSE and rival Nasdaq. Both exchanges launched aggressive marketing campaigns to woo the multi-billion dollar listing, and have made numerous pitches to the company in recent months.

Because both exchanges’ listing fees are relatively nominal for companies with billions in revenue like Facebook, the decision was seen by many observers as a choice of branding and image. The NYSE is widely seen as the home of the traditional “blue chip” company while the Nasdaq’s reputation is more associated with Silicon Valley.