Since the launch of Google Buzz, there has been a seemingly endless amount of chatter about the things that are wrong with it. Privacy concerns and other gripes have kind of taken center stage, even though Buzz usage was impressive pretty much right out of the box.

There has been a bit of discussion throughout the Blogosphere that MySpace is changing its direction, trying to differentiate itself from other social networks like Facebook. They reportedly have a new product strategy called "Discover and be Discovered", which would include a feature simply called "Discovery."

Not many details are known about MySpace’s forthcoming new direction, but the company gave WebProNews the following statement on the subject:

Facebook wants to keep users on Facebook. So far, they are doing a pretty good job of that. More and more people are spending more of their online time on Facebook, not to mention, spending more time connected to the web in general (at least partially due to rising use of smartphones).

How much time do you spend on Facebook in a month? A week? Let us know.

LinkedIn is often discussed as a powerful social networking tool, particularly for business professionals, employers, and jobseekers. What is not discussed as frequently is the site’s ability to simply drive traffic to your site. We talked to entrepreneur Lewis Howes (who claims that LinkedIn is one of the top traffic sources to his blogs) about how powerful LinkedIn can be for driving traffic.

Update: Fousquare has issued a respons to the attention PleaseRobMe has brought to potential privacy issues associated with location sharing. What it boils down to is that Foursquare "takes privacy seriously" and it’s "really a bigger question about the pros and cons of location sharing in general". Read the company’s entire response here.

Update: Microsoft also reportedly has deals in place with Facebok and MySpace which will see these social networks integrated with Outlook as well.

Facebook has responded to a news feed issue that users have been experiencing and bellyaching about. On its Facebook Page, the company posted:

"We’ve heard from many of you who are seeing a delay in your News Feed posts. We’ve fixed this issue and you should see your News Feeds gradually return to normal. Thanks for your feedback."

Google often takes a lot of flack for not being incredibly successful with its social media efforts. Most recently, Caroline McCarthy and Tom Krazit tackled this subject in a CNET article claiming that "Google struggles with social skills." I would not go so far as to say that I completely disagree with them. They make plenty of factual points that are simply undeniable. Orkut hasn’t set the world afire. Jaiku and Dodgeball didn’t work out.

It’s been a pretty big week for Facebook. Not only is there a lot of talk about Facebook’s potential for becoming the top news source on the web, but the company celebrated its sixth birthday, is passing the 400 million user mark, and began rolling out some new design changes. In addition, the company is said to be rewriting its messaging feature and preparing to launch a webmail product, but first things first.

Update 2: Facebook has responded to the privacy concerns with the dashboards: "To ensure that the dashboards meet user and developer expectations for a trustworthy experience, we’re giving developers the ability to hide their applications in the Friends’ Recent Activity, Friends’ Applications, and Friends’ Games sections of the dashboards.

Twitter has introduced a new feature for Twitter.com called Hovercards. These are simply little windows that pop up when you hover over any name on your timeline.

It’s important to note that a lot of people use Twitter through different applications and never even see Twitter’s actual site. It is nice to see that Twitter recognizes that people do still use Twitter.com.

Hovercards display information like name, profile pic, location, whether or not you follow them, verified user info, etc.

Even as social media has grown to be a much more widely accepted form of communication among businesses over the years, there is still plenty of data out there depicting the flaws and setbacks that can occur when social networks are used in the business environment.

We recently discussed how social media complements the news industry, and how a study has even found news to be a top priority of Twitter users. Facebook wants to let users know that it can also be used to keep track of news, when you set up a news list.

Every month, WebProNews has been looking at Twitter’s growth in terms of new user registration and number of Tweets. In January, we looked at December’s numbers which showed an increase in tweeting frequency, as Twitter surpassed a billion tweets in a month.

In January, total tweets sent were the largest on record. However, they increased at 6.34% over December, which is the second lowest increase for the last twelve months. Only August saw a lower rate at -6.2%.

For a week or so, some Twitter users have been seeing a new feature called Local Trends. This feature shows users things that are being heavily talked about at the city and state levels. Twitter has now announced that the feature is live for all users.

Back in the summer MySpace launched its own email service called MySpace Mail. The company has now announced that it has surpassed 15 million accounts for that service.

"Adoption by our users has experienced phenomenal growth, well exceeding initial expectations," says MySpace’s Rajit Marwah. "At launch we set a goal of 10 million accounts created within a year – we knew we were on to something when we surpassed this goal in less than a quarter."

LinkedIn has announced some upcoming features related to the way users browse their connections. The company says users will start seeing the changes over the next few weeks.

There is a new browse panel, which allows users to browse their connections by their current companies, locations, and industries. They can also search connections by entering their first name, last name, or current company in the search box. Users can browse new connections and connections that may have also recently added connections by using the "Recent Activity" filter.

We knew it was coming. It was only a matter of when. Back in November, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told a crowd at a conference in Malaysia that the current suggested users list would be going away, and that it would be replaced by something "more programmatically chosen, something that actually delivers more relevant suggestions." Twitter has now announced the reality of that new kind of suggested users list.

If you run a Facebook Page, you may be very interested in some new features that are rolling out for admins. Eric Eldon at Inside Facebook has discovered that some admins are starting to see impression counts for each post, as well as the number of likes and comments for each impression.

Today Facebook announced that it is giving users the option to receive updates from Facebook applications in their email. This would work similar to how email notifications do, but don’t worry, you have to opt in for developers to be able to email you. According to Facebook, they will not be able to access your email address without your consent.

The first Matt Cutts Answers Questions About Google video of the year has been posted, and in it Matt addresses links from Twitter and Facebook, after talking about his shaved head again. Specifically, the submitted question he answers is:

Links from relevant and important sites have always been a great way to get traffic & acceptance for a website. How do you rate links from new platforms like Twitter, FB to a website?