If you are pregnant, you can now add your unborn baby to your list of family members via the “Expected: Child” option. Little baby X will appear alongside other labeled family members like your siblings, cousins, parents and aunts & uncles.

This minor little addition to the network’s information options has apparently creeped out the internet community. Of all the things, Facebook…this one is the worst! Some of the response on Twitter would lead you to believe that Facebook how now implemented a mandatory ultrasound photo-album for every expectant user. “NO FACEBOOK, PLEEEAASE DON’T ADD THE EXPECTING STATUS FFUUUUUUUUUUU.”

Other quips: “REALLY?!” “Ugh….” and “Very, very wrong.”

And my favorite, “Too far, Facebook. Too far.”

Really? And yes, the outraged public has got me saying “Really?” to their “Really(s).” This is the strange, creepy action of questionable privacy practices from the good folks at Facebook that makes you “want to rip your eyeballs out,” as one Mashable commenter said?  Apparently for some interweb denizens, this is the ultimate Facebook faux pas.

In light of this turgid reaction, I thought I’d make a quick list of things that Facebook allows users to do that are either just as creepy or more creepy than this new expecting baby thing -

• Poking.  Did you realize that poking any one of your friends at any time is still an option?  And people still do it?  Nevermind the strange sexual connotations of “poking” your friend, but the act of poking (with your finger or an inanimate object) is strange enough on its own.
• Facebook allows you to tag people at places without their knowledge.  If users haven’t disabled this in the privacy settings, they can be geotagged anywhere for all of their friends to see.  This option is loaded with chances for pranks – “No, I wasn’t with Jake at the sperm bank…I swear.”
• Religion and Political affiliation – two of the oldest profile categories around.  Can you honestly say that baby news is inherently more private than personal ideology?
• Relationship Status changes are creepier than the new pregnancy status changes.  Hands down.  People volunteer their breakups minutes after they occur.  “John went from “In a relationship” to “single.”  And people can LIKE that!  Plus, the announcement of an engagement is just as personal announcing a child, but people love to do that on the social network.
• Every single thing that every single person says about their daily lives.  The weird everyday things that people divulge on Facebook can make announcing a pregnancy look as mundane as “liking” the page for “cheese.”

An unborn child becomes part of a family as soon as the parents learn of its existence. They love it, prepare for it, and accommodate it in the same way they do for existing children. At least that’s my experience with expecting parents. Why not share that information with your Facebook friends? Sure beats creating a profile page for the little guy/girl.

Some have complained that these kind of things will make the sharing of scared information very “clinical.” Sure, to some, announcing your pregnancy on Facebook sounds like a terrible idea. But for others, would it really be bad to log on and see hundreds of “likes” and hundreds of congratulations from people in their life? Sure beats calling everyone on the phone. (And people announce babies on Facebook anyways, just not as members of their family until now)

Of course it could lead to an awkward situation if an expectant mother or father lost the child.

And the Daily Mail quotes one woman as saying, “‘Have duly added “Expected: Child” to Facebook profile. Will now await deluge of targeted pregnancy ads.” So yeah, there’s that.

But like most other options to share information about yourself on Facebook, there are privacy settings involved. You don’t have to do it. And to call the new “expecting” option on Facebook the creepiest thing ever is just ridiculous.

The procedure is rather simple.  Step one, as a post on the LinkedIn Blog explains, is to "[e]nter your company name and your email address.  This ensures that you are a current employee of this company and that your company doesn’t already have a profile."

 Company Profile Mockup

Next, you provide some basic facts.  Think website address, number of employees, a short description, and the company’s type and industry.  Toss in the headquarters location, and you’re about set to move on.

The final step is just a matter of fleshing things out.  The LinkedIn Blog post suggests naming related companies or adding a logo, and then notes, "[Y]our colleagues from the company can also edit the information once they’re identified as belonging to a specific company group."

Creating company profiles on LinkedIn may help businesses attract new employees, which has the potential to be useful.  Also interesting is the way in which company profiles have become public, meaning they can show up in search results and give businesses an extra edge with Google.

You can take the pages owned by Amazon and Intel as examples.  LinkedIn’s Joe Betz goes on to note, "We’ve got over 160,000 company profiles, which anyone can now link to, . . . run through a translator (Yahoo! in German), etc..  These company public profiles are densely linked both with each other and with our member public profiles, making for a pretty substantial web of publicly available data."

Not too long ago, LinkedIn made its site’s content available in Spanish.  This fresh development follows the same sort of internationalization trend on a rather larger scale.  Users’ profiles can now be translated into 40 different non-English languages.

 Final English-To-Spanish Profile

On the LinkedIn Blog, Elliot Shmukler explains, "Once translated, your original profile remains unchanged, but members that prefer to use or search LinkedIn in a different language will see the translated version instead.  So if you create a Spanish profile . . . LinkedIn members using the site in Spanish will see your Spanish profile instead of your English one."

Creating a non-English profile is pretty simple, starting with a "Create your profile in another language" link on the "Edit My Profile" page.  The original English content is always shown in blue so that users can more easily translate things and see a sort of before and after, and the "View My Profile" tab will also display the translated profile at any point.

Since LinkedIn doesn’t really provide any translation tools, we’ll go ahead and toss in a nod to Google Translate here.  But Shmukler notes, "We’re still very early in adjusting LinkedIn for the needs of our multilingual and multinational professionals," so stay tuned for other interesting updates.

Profile 2.0 allows users to take control of several aspects of their presence on MySpace.  First is some simple visual stuff, with 50 new profile styles on tap and more (designed by celebrities, musicians, and athletes) on the way.

 

Then there’s the rather advanced drag-and-drop interface.  Members can rearrange entire profile modules (like those listing friends and comments) in just about any way they please.

Finally, we have what’s been described as "Viewing Flexibility."  An official release states that this feature "enables users to display certain information on their profile to specific friend categories that they create or have already created through ‘Friend Categorization.’  For example, a user may choose to share specific profile modules like their calendar with their classmates and share their previous companies with co-workers or any other group of their choosing."

This update could cause at least a few people who have been on the fence to create MySpace profiles.  Even more long-dormant users can be counted on to log back in and make some changes, and active members may spend hours playing with the new options.

Perhaps best of all, since the profile editor is available on a completely opt-in basis, MySpace hasn’t risked causing protests and desertions.

The advantage of a tabbed interface is that you’ll gain more screen real estate and your content should be categorized more efficiently.

Although having used the original single page layout, I prefer the old format:

Which gave a friendly, personal feel, compared to the more ‘corporate’ feel of new interface.

At the moment, Facebook has an option for users to switch to the older format, which is a better fit for its traditional college/university demographic.

If the new ‘corporate’ look is intended to give Facebook a leg up in competing with more B2B-focused networks like LinkedIn, it needs to still remain in touch with it’s core audience and provide the option of the old one-page format.

Would it have been better to create a parallel “Facebook Business” network and launch the new profile there?

I’m not sure, but I don’t appreciate how the new format has cut up my old profile with the applications laid out the way I want them.

For the moment, the new facebook is not hot in my books.

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Facebook’s Updated Profile Pages

Fair warning: these are technically-oriented details, and they were published on the Facebook Developer Blog.  We won’t be held responsible for the boredom of any non-developers reading this article.  There are only two points we want to share with those individuals: first, the updated profile is supposed to be released in early April.

Second (and you probably already know this), the Wall and Mini-Feed will be combined into a single place to learn about friends’ lives.

Now, with that out of the way, on to the specifics.  Pete Bratach wrote, "Facebook applications won’t appear in the narrow column by default, but users can add them there if they so choose."  Then, "By default, three applications will appear in the narrow column.  The rest will appear in the extended profile, like they can today."

Later, Bratach continued, "[W]e are changing the Platform API and creating new FBML tags.  We will release more information about them very soon on this blog."  So stay tuned, you developer types.