Salesforce.com unveiled a new customer service help desk tool this week. Desk.com works with customer requests delivered over a social network. It is the byproduct of Salesforce.com's acquisition of Assistly last year. However, it is no mere product integration, said Alex Bard, former Assistly CEO and now vice president and general manager of Desk.com. "Desk.com has been built from the ground up to work with Salesforce.com, although it can also be a standalone product. We've been working on it around the clock since the acquisition."

It can be a little tricky talking about how and why media outlets allow, and indeed encourage, the diffusion of their content throughout the Web. For starters, people tend to be tightlipped about this strategy. No one from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or Viacom agreed to speak on the record for this article. They are, apparently, much less eager to discuss sharing content than they are to actually share it. But a public relations manager from CNN, Erica Puntel, did reply to our email. And she helped, perhaps unwittingly, shed light on a vocab technicality.

Facebook has finally filed for its IPO. The social networking giant submitted an application to the SEC on Wednesday. It plans to raise up to $5 billion. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who cofounded the company in February 2004, currently holds a 28.4 percent stake. Details in the SEC document illuminated the extent of Zuckerberg's control over Facebook. He has the ability to control management and affairs at the company as well as the election of directors. Zuckerberg also has the ability to choose a successor in the event of his death.

Facebook filed it's long-awaited S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, announcing its intent to raise $5 billion and begin public trading. The highly anticipated move caused enough of a stir to clog traffic on the SEC's website and provided some insight into the social network's financial situation. According to the filing, last year's revenue almost doubled to $3.7 billion, and profit came in at $1 billion, a 65 percent growth on the year. The filing also offered a glimpse of Facebook users' daily usage habits.

Apple has suffered a setback in its multicountry, extremely complex, and seemingly everlasting patent fight with Samsung. In the latest episode, its request to ban Samsung from selling two devices in Germany -- its Galaxy Tab 10.1N tablet and its Galaxy Nexus smartphone -- was rejected by the Munich Regional Court. This particular dispute began last April when Apple filed suit against Samsung for infringing its mobile device patents in these products, citing how similar they looked to Apple's iPad and iPhone.