HOW TO: Get Facebook's Hidden iPad App Right Now (AAPL)

We heard about Facebook's new iPhone app a month or so back, but now there's proof Facebook is building an app for your iPad.

And it's almost finished.

Buried deep within Facebook for iPhone, the iPad app lingers in a nearly-complete state, TechCrunch discovered.

It doesn't look a whole lot different from the iPhone app, but it includes some deft pop-ups for Notifications, status updates, and more.

There's also a big navigation sidebar on the left which replaces the grid of icons the Facebook iPhone app uses.

You'll need to jailbreak your iPad to get it, as of this point. There are no signs yet of an official release date.

Once we get it up and running on our iPad, we'll have a full photo walkthrough.

Here's how to do it:

1. Check for updates to make sure you have the latest version of Facebook from the App Store. Also, backup your iPad in iTunes.
2. Visit jailbreakme.com from your iPad. Jailbreaking your iPad is legal, but voids your warranty if you bring your iPad into an Apple Store. It's easy to undo if need be. Just plug your iPad into your computer and restore it from your previous backup. (If you're running iOS 4.3.4, this will NOT work.)
3. Once the jailbreak process is complete, tap on Cydia, the jailbreak app store that was just installed on your iPad.
4. Tap the Search tab in Cydia and search for iFile. Download it using the button in the upper right hand corner.
5. Once iFile installs, open it up, and navigate to the "var" folder of your iPad. Then go to "mobile," then "applications," then "directory."
6. Click the settings gear icon in the bottom navigation bar and turn "Application Names" to "On."
7. Open the Facebook folder within the "directory" folder you're inside of. Once you're inside the Facebook folder, open Facebook.app.
8. Look for the info.plist file, then open it. Pick "Property List Viewer" to view the hexadecimal settings for the Facebook app.
9. Look for the UIDeviceFamily field and select it.
10. Delete the 1 you see, and put a 2 in instead. Tap "Done" to complete the process.
11. Hold down your power button to reboot your iPad.
12. Open up the brand new Facebook app! It's a bit buggy, but it works.

Don't Miss: How To Download All The Pictures Of You On Facebook

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HOW TO: Get Facebook's Hidden iPad App Right Now (AAPL)

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Inside Facebook's Next Billion Dollar Business

Facebook's road to becoming a $100 billion company is to infect every sector of the internet with its social graph, letting other companies build and expand their business on top of it and taking a toll in exchange for that.

Facebook is now number one in display advertising, which is a $2 billion business for them. 

Facebook is the enabler of social games, which is now a multibillion dollar industry, and takes a cut through advertising and credits. 

Facebook is staffing up and partnering with Amazon to drive commerce through Facebook. 

But the next big endeavor is music, Giga Om says in a report revealing Facebook's upcoming big social music service.

Here's how it will look, according to Giga Om: your Facebook homepage will include a Music tab leading to a Music Dashboard where you will be able to listen to music and see what music your friends are listening to.

Facebook will partner with Spotify but also other services to provide the service. There have long been talks of some kind of big partnership between Spotify and Facebook when it launches in the US, but it seems that it's only a small part of a much broader endeavor to build a huge social music service. 

The goal is to do for music what it did for games: use its social graph to help Facebook users discover music and help music startups get users. 

At eG8 Forum, Mark Zuckerberg said he thought the next industry to get disrupted by social, after games, would be music, and then movies.

It's not clear if and how Facebook can make money directly from music. Facebook can take a 30% cut off social games because virtual goods have zero marginal costs. By contrast songs streamed over the internet (at least legally) have high licensing costs; indeed, most internet streaming businesses have unprofitable unit economics. It doesn't seem likely that internet music startups can afford to pay yet another tollmaster.

However, a music dashboard would get Facebook users to stay on Facebook.com all through the day if that's where they stream music from, and so they would see a lot more ads.

Also, it's a nice swipe at Apple if their music service ends up rocking and being really good, given how undewhelming Apple's own social music service Ping has been. The rivalry between Apple and Facebook is heating up in a big way with Apple integrating Twitter deeply into iOS and Facebook trying to bypass Apple's app store with an app platform based on HTML5.

Don't Miss These Amazing Photos of Facebook's Secret iPhone Photo Sharing App →

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• SPOTIFY: Now It's A $1 Billion Company
• Sony's Music Service Puts The Pressure On Google
• Spotify Exec Hints U.S. Launch Is A Couple Weeks Away

Inside Facebook's Next Billion Dollar Business

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Facebook's iPad App Is Almost Ready To Go (AAPL)

More than a year after Apple introduced the iPad, Facebook is finally getting around to releasing an app for it.

Nick Bilton at the New York Times reports that the app has been in development for almost a year, with Mark Zuckerberg taking a personal interest in its design.

The Chat and Groups features have apparently been tweaked for the iPad, and it users will be able to upload photos and videos from the iPad's camera directly to Facebook.

It all sounds very similar to the Facebook app for Android tablets -- and the Facebook iPhone app, for that matter -- but it's nice to see this glaring gap finally filled.

Bilton also reports that Facebook is redesigning its Web site for the iPad as well.

That redesigned Web site might be part of Facebook's reported plan to redesign itself as a full Web-based mobile platform, where users can download other apps, buy items with Facebook Credits, and so on.

Facebook is also reportedly getting some sort of new photo-sharing feature as well. Looks like a busy summer down in Palo Alto.

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• LEAKED: Facebook's Secret iPhone Photo Sharing App
• P&G Opens Facebook Stores, Paving The Way For Facebook's Next Billion Dollar Business
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Facebook's iPad App Is Almost Ready To Go (AAPL)

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Meet Facebook's First Employee-Turned-Millionaire

After a VP job at AOL, Vince Thompson was Facebook ad sales boss for about six months before leaving in 2006.

And yet, he was probably the very first Facebook employee (cofounders aside) to become a millionaire thanks to the hot startup. We don't mean a paper millionaire. We mean the kind with lots of cash in his bank account.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Brad Stone reports that Thompson, who, after he left Facebook wanted to sell his shares but found it very hard to do, is one of the few people responsible for getting the whole secondary market phenomena going.

Who would buy his shares? How could any outsider value a small, private company with hardly any revenue?

One banker introduced Thompson to a New York firm called Restricted Stock Partners, which in mid-2007 had a small office near Battery Park with two windows that looked onto a brick wall. The firm specialized in facilitating trades of illiquid securities, such as assets of bankrupt companies and preferred shares in public companies whose holders have special rights. Moving Facebook stock would be an altogether different kind of transaction, but the tiny firm had been looking for a chance to break into the market for private-company stock.

The resulting experiment stretched out several months, primarily because prospective buyers couldn't come to terms with Thompson on a price. Finally, using Microsoft's (MSFT) $240 million investment in Facebook in October 2007 as a guidepost, a hedge fund purchased the shares at a price that valued the fledgling social network at $7.5 billion. The trade netted Thompson and his partner millions of dollars.

That sale—among the very first of its kind—sent shock waves through the insular world of Facebook employees and investors. Facebook shareholders could get rich regardless of the company's plans for an initial public offering. Soon other former Facebookers were buzzing about the opportunity, and investors and employees at other pre-IPO firms started thinking about cashing out their holdings as well.

The whole Bloomberg BusinessWeek story is worth a read, and you should check it out here >>

Related: Meet Facebook's (soon-to-be) Billionaires >>

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• Why The Most Important Part Of An Acquisition Is What Happens After
• Huge Facebook App Loses 75% Uniques After Facebook Threatens It
• Suddenly, The Russian Billionaire Drowning Silicon Valley In Cash Thinks There's A Bubble

Meet Facebook's First Employee-Turned-Millionaire

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