Although it's not apparent to many, Facebook is in the process of transforming itself from the world's most popular social-media website into a critical part of the Internet's identity infrastructure. If it succeeds, Facebook and Facebook accounts will become an even bigger target for hackers.

As security professionals debate whether the Internet needs an "identity layer"—a uniform protocol for authenticating users' identities—a growing number of websites are voting with their code, adopting "Facebook Connect" as a way for anyone with a Facebook account to log into the site at the click of a button.

LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners.

6 short years ago, Richard Florida made waves with his national best seller The Rise of the Creative Class which examined the growing role creativity was playing in our society. 6 short years later, creativity has become almost commonplace taking a back seat to a movement towards a "Collaborative Class." As part of this movement, people are finding new ways to leverage technology to develop more meaningful and purposeful connections with others creating virtual affinity groups and communities--treasure troves of information. And although technology has made collaboration much easier, the primary driver behind the unparalleled uptick that is currently taking place has been the need to fill education gaps and provide targeted information to niche groups that were otherwise overlooked or lumped in to "one size fits all" communities.

For the past decade and a half the decision around outsourcing has been a relatively straightforward one: it allows companies to cut costs, to make better use of their resources and to focus on growth.

Over the past 18 months, however, we have seen that the business landscape has changed and the old realities no longer hold true. The future is not now about rapid growth. The risks of outsourcing are now more obvious, and its financial advantages much less clear.

At the same time, some companies see big opportunities by in-sourcing and near-shoring.

Social media productivity is an important topic based on the reaction to a recent Brainzooming article on a strategy for efficiently integrating social media listening, participation, and content creation activities. The article prompted sharing these 13 additional social media productivity-enhancing tips for a strategy to integrate “in real life” and online activities to develop new content sources and ideas.

Your Daily Activities

1. As you anticipate blog topics, develop a related question to ask people you interact with, expanding your point of view and gathering material for the post. Even better, carry a Flip video camera to capture answers to your question for a video post.

This has been a bad year for Israeli venture capital funds -- but then 2009 was a bad year, too. That alone can go a long way to explaining the angst gripping much of the VC industry in Israel.

But the soul-searching now under way in Herzliya, the sleepy seaside town just north of Tel Aviv that has been transformed into the heart of the Israeli high-tech and venture sectors, suggests that something deeper is amiss. Perhaps the most dramatic public expression of this growing groundswell of gloom and doom came in a letter sent in May by Ze'ev Holtzman, founder and chairman of Giza Venture Capital and former chairman of the Israel Venture Association, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Finance Yuval Steinitz. Holtzman's message was blunt: "Israel's venture capital and start-up industry is heading for collapse.... The industry, which is the economy's growth engine, is liable to be irreversibly damaged."

One year in 2 minutes from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

Oregon suffered defeat at the hands of Cam Newton and Auburn last night in the 2011 BCS championship game. But hard as it may have been to watch the gut-wrenching loss, you probably couldn't take your eyes off the Oregon players the whole time, thanks to flashy uniforms that made Auburn look stuck in the 1950's. How'd those Oregon guys get to looking so sharp? And why did those uniforms look the way they did?

How are things at the Allegheny Conference and what does the future hold?
Building the energy economy is the biggest new thing and it's going well. It's been a pretty good year. Macroeconomics is good, ahead of plan in terms of projects and pieces of legislation passed (Senate Bill 1429 to more easily merge municipalities).

And the energy sector?

The Marcellus shale is just booming with projects and jobs. Nuclear hub driven by Westinghouse is going very well and the supply chain aspects such as solar and wind.

Are we really becoming known as a nation's energy center?

Moreso in the global profile which was enhanced significantly by the G20. And our recent visit to China.

Bullpen Capital thinks there’s a lot of need and opportunity investing in the second round of financing after a seed investment, what Union Square Ventures Managing Partner Fred Wilson recently called “the mess.” The new fund is looking to give start-ups the additional support they need as they move from seed round to more traditional funding.

The idea is to make follow-on investments for companies that were often initially founded with seed investments from super angels. The new money allows founders to keep operating without having to decide whether to take larger venture capital investments and the larger expectations they come with. Instead, they can continue to work out their business models and sort out their exit options with the additional funding. It can be an ugly time, Wilson wrote on his blog, as adolescent companies that have built a company are still trying to build a business. And it’s tough for VCs to figure out who needs the extra oomph. But it’s a glaring need, one that Bullpen hopes to address.

Do government antitrust measures help break up monopolies and increase innovation? Not according to new research from the Technology Policy Institute, which looked at the high-profile antitrust investigations of IBM, AT&T and Microsoft. The research found that in each case, the innovation that changed the industry did not come as a result of government intervention, but from sources that regulators could not possibly have predicted. This is likely to be music to the ears of Google, which has come under increasing pressure from both regulators and critics as it expands beyond search into other areas — including a controversial acquisition offer for travel industry player ITA that is currently under review.

Marc, Oliver, and Alexander Samwer are near-legendary in Europe as entrepreneurs and investors.

What do they do?

They clone American startups.

They do it fast, they do it well, and they cash out.

Among the companies they've cloned are eBay, Facebook and Groupon -- and they've had successful exits for all of those.

Venture capital funds are at a seven year low, according to data from Dow Jones.

The problem? Limited partners, the people that put money into venture capital firms, are "still haunted by the industry’s lackluster returns over the last decade," says Dow Jones.

See More Charts Of The Day

Every startup with any traction quickly reaches a point where they need to hire employees to grow the business. Unfortunately, this always happens when pressures are the highest, and business processes are ill-defined. At this point you need superstars and versatile future executives, yet your in-house hiring processes and focus are at their weakest.

The result is a host of hiring mistakes that sink many young companies, or take years to fix. The solution is to never forget that hiring is a top priority task for the CEO, which should never be delegated, and which often has to supersede the urgent crises of the day.

Putting the word social into our innovation thinking is going to be a really important thing to do in the coming year, if you haven’t already. It will dominate our actions increasingly.

The challenges of ‘social’ is everywhere; within organizations, in all sorts of collective movements, in politics, across government, society, markets, academic institutions and effecting our personal lives in a host of ways.

Society has to face up to some really tough challenges and only innovation can solve these with human beings inventiveness and ingenuity. Regretfully we have still an accelerating ‘creative destruction’ and we are often more Schumpeterian than ever. Something has got to give and it will be within the broad social domain where it will all come together, many social things are converging or feeding off each other. Let’s take a brief look at all this social orientation going on.

Cleveland Clinic Innovations has reached a deal to help a Maryland health system develop and commercialize medical inventions by the health system’s clinicians.

Officials told the Washington Post that the Clinic’s deal with Columbia, Maryland-based MedStar Health is the first of its kind between two major U.S. health systems. MedStar, which operates Washington Hospital Center and Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, D.C., has nine hospitals and 27,000 employees. It’s the largest health system in the Maryland-Washington, D.C., area.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Silicon Valley isn’t the only place to go when you get serious about building a new company in the technology space.

Sure, it’s a great place to start this sort of business, but the case for moving your company there is not as strong as it used to be. I’ve stared, run and sold many companies far from the Valley – with my latest venture firmly based in Philadelphia. Here’s why I’ve avoided ground zero for many tech companies:

If you are currently located outside the Valley but in a so-called secondary market such as Philadelphia or Boston, Seattle or Austin, you may be well-placed to succeed without moving. Yes, Silicon Valley still has large amounts of human capital, venture capital, and deal-making expertise, but there are also a very large number of companies competing for it.

I once did a workshop at a company trying to establish processes for innovation. This company was in much better shape than others, because it was run by entrepreneurs who liked spinouts that offer many opportunities for employees who have the drive and capabilities needed for creating new ventures.

Nevertheless, the management team was spending much energy on one big question: How do we become an innovative company and how do we convince our employees that we can reach that goal? I invited them to turn this question around: What if it is not a question of becoming, but one of being? The company already had initiatives that would qualify it as being innovative, so the foundation for this shift was in place. A better question: What should the next steps be?