Facebook Rocks Its World
TweetDeck offers users the option of setting up a Facebook column to view contact updates from both sites in one interface. TweetDeck v0.24.1, which will also allow users to direct their updates to Facebook, can be installed now. Facebook failed in its attempt to buy Twitter for $500 million at the end of last year and some of its redesign activity seems to be targeted at emulating Twitter's success.
For example, Facebook has changed the privacy options on the social networking site as part of its redesign so that users have more control over which parts of their profile information they want exposed publicly. One of the many recent tweaks to the site has been to allow users to open parts of their profiles to a wider audience. Before the site's refresh, details about users were, by default, largely kept private except to those acknowledged as "friends." Only a thumbnail picture, common friends and friend lists were divulged.
On the Facebook blog, Mark Slee, an engineer at Facebook, notes that, "None of your existing privacy settings have changed. This is an additional setting for those of you who wish to share with a broader audience."
The iPhone now offers another level of interactivity among Facebook friends. Using an iPhone, Facebook Connect lets users log into a Facebook account by simply clicking a button. Facebook friends can then see the same profile information as they can on the site, controlled by those aforementioned privacy settings. Users can then share what they are doing with any iPhone application with Facebook friends by publishing stories back to their profiles. The service is very similar to the Connect service already available on the Web.