“We’re testing a new look and feel of our site among users and the response so far has been positive,” according to a MySpace spokesperson. ”As always, we’re interested in hearing feedback from our community as we roll out enhancements to the user experience and look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks.”

The new profile pages feature:

The Facebook Toolbar allows you to log into Facebook direct from your browser.

You can quickly navigate to friend requests, new messages, event invitations, group invitations, upload photographs and even share pages you are currently browsing to your Facebook profile.

I personally like the ‘quick links’ facility where I can navigate to my friends lists to quickly review what my friends have been posting or keep up to date with Facebook Pages I am a fan of.

Be warned that if you activate the Facebook Friends sidebar that it could distract you as you will see all the updates from your friends in real time.

And I would also recommend that you review the ‘settings’ so that you customise what if any pop-up notifications you want to receive from Facebook.

You can download the Facebook Toolbar for Firefox of Internet Explorer here.

What is your favourite way of connecting with your Facebook Friends and your community on your Facebook Page?

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I’m going to guess that it was B, because since the articles on True Slant and ValleyWag have run, Zuckerberg’s profile is a lot more private.

On his Page (where you can be his fan, not to be confused with his profile), Zuckerberg defends the change:

For those wondering, I set most of my content on my personal Facebook page to be open so people could see it. I set some of my content to be more private, but I didn’t see a need to limit visibility of pics with my friends, family or my teddy bear

Oh, really? Because when I try to visit his profile, I get a “Mark only shares some of his profile information with everyone.” message at the top of his profile, and no photos.

Zuckerberg does still share some of his info with everyone: his basic info, personal info (only the about me: “i’m trying to make the world a more open place.”), education and work, and five of the pages he’s a fan of. (These five rotate; screen caps from the privacy changes indicate he has 17 pages.) Also public: his links, friends and events.

There is, of course, another possibility as to why some people like Kashmir Hill can see his photos—they have mutual friends (Hill’s is another Facebook employee). When you update your privacy settings, the new default setting for photos is to make them visible to “Friends of Friends.” (I’ve contacted Ryan Tate to see if he also has at least one mutual friend, but haven’t heard back yet. Mark and I share no friends.)

But really, as Facebook is pushing more people to go public, and if Zuckerberg is really “trying to make the world a more open place,” he could do a lot more opening himself. The CEO of the site might be seen as an example to users—and if he really wants them to go public, should he be willing to do the same?

What do you think? Was this an accident on Zuckerberg’s part, or because Tate and Hill have mutual friends?

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So today’s update comes from Facebook. According to the WSJ

Facebook Inc. is expected to announce significant plans to open up core parts of its sites — namely the information that appears in the stream of updates on users’ homepages and profiles — to third-party developers so that they can build new services on top of it, people familiar with the matter say.

It appears as if Facebook may be loosening its grip on the look and feel of the site by allowing these third party folks to have access to the data (with user permission). The end game is to make the site something that people would like to come back to more often. Interesting take considering the recent turnout for the big vote on the terms of service proposed changes. This opportunity will be free so there is no initial revenue generation angle here but hopefully someone is thinking that making money will be a good thing at some point.

In addition, the Palo Alto, Calif., company is expected to announce that developers can pull the Facebook data using an open technology standard that other Web sites can also use, a decision likely to broaden the service’s appeal.

It appears as if Facebook has reached that point where they are going to be both congratulated and vilified for just about anything they do. That is the price of success really. The article closes with the following statement

Still, Facebook, which has around 200 million users world-wide, has been heavily criticized for not doing more and for requiring developers to write some services using a customized Facebook programming language. Other companies like micro-blogging service Twitter have generated buzz by opening up more of their core features to developers.

So whether you feel that Facebook is ahead of the curve, behind the curve or making their own curve the changes will most likely continue to come at a fast and furious pace. One thing the social media industry is certainly establishing is the ability to change more often that traditional tech players who introduce buggy ‘major changes’ every year or so. While forgiveness may be hard to come by for these trendsetters you have to admire their willingness to change.

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Here’s how it works: you write 25 facts about yourself, post it on Facebook, and tag your Facebook friends so they could fill out 25 random things about themselves. Have you done it yet? If you don’t know how to tag someone, you learn.

It ended up being big – as in about 5 million of these have been written in just one week big. As a result we know far more about the minutia of each other’s lives than we ever did. I’ve known my cousin since we were born and I learned new trivia about her from this meme.

Sometimes in a complex world it’s refreshing when something so simple works so well. The universal appeal is that there’s a bit of peer pressure to do it since all of your friends are, and it’s not complex.

Compete.com says as a result of this meme: 60 percent more Facebook profiles were created in January than in December. Since it uses the “notes” feature, Compete says notes has gotten 4X the attention. And Facebook didn’t even start it.

25 is too many. So if everyone who reads this will please post 15random facts about themselves, we’ll get the Marketing Pilgrim meme going right away.

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During the Web 2.0 Summit, John Batelle interviewed Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, and if you listened closely enough, it was clear that Batelle was prodding Zuckerberg to validate the rumors that Facebook was exploring the possibility of acquiring Twitter.

With a teasing smile, Zuckerberg described Twitter an “elegant model” and professed that he was “ impressed by what they’ve done.”

Following the session, attendees poured into the hallways dissecting the dialogue to support or discount the prospect of such a bold acquisition.

Kara Swisher has confirmed the rumors, however, an acquisition is not imminent – at least not yet.

For the record, I had heard the rumors and was pretty confident that the discussions were taking place. What I couldn’t fathom was how Facebook would leverage Twitter’s unique model and culture as its community is radically more liberal and protective than that of Facebook. And, with Facebook Connect looming, it seems that Twitter, which is already appearing as an opt-in service in the Facebook News Feed, is only one of the many distributed communities that can collectively position Facebook as your central dashboard for managing the relationships that define your social graph and the information, content, and insight that defines, strengthens, and elevates it.

Mark Zuckerberg at F8 announcing Facebook Connect

For those who aren’t yet familiar with Facebook Connect, it is a technical bridge that links your Facebook profile with other online identities and associated activity back to Facebook. It enables seamless integration between Web sites, pages, communities, and networks and the Facebook identity system. For example, if you’re commenting on a blog hosted on the Moveable Type platform, you can now login with your Facebook details and not only will your comment and link to your Facebook profile appear on the blog, the activity of commenting is also linked back into your activity feed for your friends and colleagues to see. Digg will also allow Diggers to log on using their centralized Facebook ID and for each story they digg, the activity is documented back on their profile. Facebook Connect partners already number in the hundreds.

Did I mention that Twitter is one of the original Facebook Connect partners?

Twitter has grown by over 600% in one year. From a business perspective, I can understand why Facebook would consider engaging in negotiations. Twitter is currently reporting six million registered users and last month, the micro community experienced its greatest traffic to date – bolstered by the 2008 Election.

The deal was close to finalization, but (thankfully) fell apart for very valid reasons.

According to Kara Swisher’s post, Facebook was attempting to acquire Twitter for $500 million in a pure stock deal based on Facebook’s heavily disputed $15 billion valuation. Analysts peg the true estimate of Facebook’s market value closer to $5 billion, which would have positioned Twitter’s sale price at roughly $150 million – a number that investors, the board, and the company’s founders believe is far too low. Just for the record, Twitter’s investments total ~$20 million with a valuation of $98 million.

Twitter preferred a cash deal, perhaps with stock, and that’s understandable in this market. And there’s a pervasive sentiment that the company might just have a successful run at generating revenue while continuing to grow the community and redefine how its users communicate with each other in the process.

From Facebook’s perspective, the stock offer was a conservative approach that reflects the business state of Twitter. The company is not only generating $0 revenue, but its basically a substantial cost centert. Among salaries and other expenses with innovating and managing the service, Twitter pays for SMS fees associated with each text-based update. Facebook estimates that this could cost the company upwards of $75 million annually if Twitter was rolled out to its 120 million users.

While this deal might equal a Fail Whale for the moment, it potentially could have equated to a Fail Whale had it closed. I’m not privy to the integration strategies the companies discussed had the acquisition completed, but I can attest to the Twitter pushback that would have immediately surmounted. In simply tweeting Kara’s post this morning, I was confronted with an overwhelming sense of relief that the deal fell apart. This isn’t to say that Facebook won’t eventually acquire Twitter or perhaps one of its eco-dependent services that also enhance and centralize the distributed micromedia experience, something like FriendFeed perhaps.

When Facebook Connect rolls out Web-wide, the terms of any acquisition discussion will dramatically change as personal Facebook News Feeds will only increase in value as they connect disparate services from across the web, your updates and the updates of your friends, to a centralized social dashboard.

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We’re geeks. You’re a geek. We’re proud of it (well, most of the time…).  Hopefully you are, too.  So let’s wear our social media geekiness, not just on our sleeve, but on our whole upper body.

The first shirt is now available, and you can win your very own, free.  Details below.  Here it is:
Eliminate confusion by carrying your own profile face with you wherever you go.  This shirt will be available only during August 2008, so if it makes you chuckle, buy one today.

If you feel lucky, leave a clever comment below like, “I want it” or “Pick me”, by midnight Eastern Time, August 11.  We’ll choose a winner at random one week from today and contact you by email to get your mailing address.  Good luck.

Remember, don’t leave any confusion about exactly what your profile face looks like, order “This is my profile face” today, before time runs out. From your friends at your favorite social media agency.

In the future, click the category below that says “social media shirts” for a list of all the shirts we’ve offered, but remember, they go quickly.

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