If half the stuff published about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is true, the 23-year-old Harvard dropout is a major league kook. But he's also one of the most important entrepreneurs of the past 20 years.

People -- including me -- thought he was nuts when he turned down a $1 billion buyout offer from Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) and a $750 million one from Viacom Inc. (NYSE: VIA). It turns out that Zuckerberg got the last laugh. In October, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) agreed to invest $240 million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook in a deal that values the company at $12 billion.

Zuckerberg also reportedly drove the suits who wanted to buy his company bananas for, among other things, delaying meetings in order to spend time with his girlfriend. But he knows his user base. When Facebook users revolted over the company's Beacon advertising program, he admitted the company screwed up, saying on his blog "we simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it." Now, users who don't want to participate in Beacon can opt out of it.

But like all great entrepreneurs, Zuckerberg has a gigantic ego and is attracting his share of nasty lawsuits. The New York Times recently reported that Facebook tried to get the magazine 02138 to remove documents from its website related to a lawsuit against that claims Zuckerberg "stole the idea and some of the computer source code for Facebook from some fellow students."

Let me make a not so bold prediction and say that this case will be settled sometime next year. The settlement amount will be considerable and kept confidential, allowing Zuckerberg to continue tinkering with his company, enabling him to wreak havoc in the media world for years to come.

He's got plenty of time to make and lose several billion before he turns 30.

Be sure to check out more Money Winners of 2007.

Facebook brags about how it understands its vast community.

However, some members of the community have been perturbed lately, if not creeped out. Even MoveOn.org initiated an online protest.

The reason is Facebook's attempts to monetize things through its Beacon advertising system. Basically, it shows your online friends where you are shopping, such as from places like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN).

True, this may be useful in terms of getting helpful information (think of Beacon as a recommendation service) – but it also raises serious privacy issues.

Well, Facebook has blinked. Now, the company will provide an opt-in option to its users.

All in all, I think it's a smart move and should help quell some of the protest. However, it's likely to make it tougher for Facebook to crank out more money for its investors -- such as Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) -- that have valued the company at frothy $15 billion. No doubt, the money-privacy balance will be a continuing struggle for the fast-growing website.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

The news that radical left-wing interest group, MoveOn.org, has started to focus their ammunition on popular social networking site Facebook, has to leave one wondering if presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton, is actually behind this move. It's been widely speculated that MoveOn.org, is a front organization for the Democratic Party, and is this a potential "trial balloon" that the Clinton campaign is sending out?

The issue surrounds Facebook's new product, Beacon. MoveOn is claiming that the platform allows advertisers to sell goods to subscribers by placing customized ads in users' conversations. MoveOn calls this a "gross invasion of privacy." MoveOn would know something about invasion of privacy. Their whole agenda is for the government to intrude more and more into our personal lives. See their push for nationalized, socialized medicine.

By adding an opt-in option, I think that Facebook would be fine regarding invasion of privacy. Is MoveOn against an invasion of privacy, or an invasion of capitalism?

I'd love to hear Sen. Clinton's take on all of this. Could she really be against the biggest thing to hit the internet?

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer holds no position in any stock mentioned as of 11/21/07.

Facebook has had a breakout year -- BloggingStocks probably should have listed the social networking site among our Hot Products of 2007. It sold a small stake to Microsoft for $240 million, and its success with encouraging third-party add-ons forced News Corp (NYSE: NWS)'s MySpace and even the mighty Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) to change tactics. But as Tom Taulli and The Wall Street Journal addressed yesterday, Facebook's stock with privacy advocates is dropping over its über-creepy Beacon targeted advertising method.

On Facebook, you're as private as you are modest. You have the option of laying bare your bookshelf, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) queue and purse contents for all your friends and neighbors to pan through, or you can leave all that business blank and keep your fancies as mysterious and enigmatic as you are, you unique snowflake. My profile tells users -- not to mention advertisers -- that I like to put on CNBC and dust my marriage-prohibitive record collection. Consequently, I've got E*Trade (NASDAQ: ETFC) and the occasional ironic t-shirt vendor after me, greeting me with animated ads whenever I log in.

By now, web users have learned to deal with e-tailers and ad-serving scripts tracking their behavior, realizing that oft-maligned cookies effectively just save you the effort of typing your password. This is reasonable targeted marketing: I pay nothing for a service, and in exchange, some vendor imagines it got a little closer to a selling me something.

Where Facebook and all the participating advertisers that sail with her cross the icky line is with Beacon. Beacon goes beyond serving up targeted ads -- it takes my purchase information from participating advertisers and broadcasts it endorsement-style to all my Facebook friends, as well as any others in my network who, for whatever illness or boredom, feel like probing my Facebook essence.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Bluefly, Inc (BFLY), Leap Wireless International, Inc (LEAP), Kona Grill, Inc (KONA), MetroPCS Communications, Inc (PCS) and Beacon Roofing Supply (BECN) were today's more noteworthy initiations:

• Merriman believes FY07 is a transitional year for Bluefly (NASDAQ: BFLY), starting the company with a Neutral rating, and finds the stock fairly valued at current levels.

• Robert W. Baird expects growth at Leap Wireless International (NASDAQ: LEAP) to be fueled by upcoming market launches, starting shares with an Outperform rating.

• Thomas Weisel is positive on Kona Grill's (NASDAQ: KONA) expansion, same-store sales growth, ramping unit volumes and corporate G&A leverage, starting shares with an Outperform rating.

• Robert W. Baird expects MetroPCS Communications (NYSE: PCS) growth to be fueled by upcoming market launches and initiated shares with an Outperform rating and $14 target.

• Needham believes shares of Beacon Roofing Supply (NASDAQ: BECN) have overreacted to the weak residential new construction market, which represents only 20% of business, and started shares with a Buy rating and $22 target...

OTHER INITIATIONS:

• JP Morgan started Array BioPharma Inc (NASDAQ: ARRY) with an Overweight rating.

• Lehman initiated shares of McGraw-Hill Cos, Inc (NYSE: MHP) with an Overweight rating and $81 target.

• MVC Capital, Inc (NYSE: MVC) was started with a Neutral rating and UBS.

• Morgan Joseph started Cash Systems, Inc (NASDAQ: CKNN) with a Buy rating and $9 target.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).