Yesterday Facebook Launched Facebook Places.

I can already hear the worriers screaming about how terrible this is, because places is the ultimate stalkers tool.

But seriously.  Watch the video below.  When I did I thought of the millions of meetings that will take place serendipitously thanks to this new innovation.  I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  I think places is a great thing.

This is not just a social innovation, but also a new way for businesses to reach out to customers in the immediate area.  Already foursquare facilitates special offers for it’s users with deals such as free lattes for foursquare mayors of certain Starbucks locations.

Once everyone has places, imagine how interaction will change.  The world will have another means become more social.  I think that this is the kind of “openness” that Mark Zuckerberg is talking about.  The kind that improves lives.

You might think that facebook places serves stalkers, but it is my position that this small risk is far outweighed by the immense value in the serendipity places will supply.

Here are some links about the new Places feature of facebook:

emarketer.com: The Advertising Opportunity in Facebook Places

mashable.com: A field guide to Facebook Places

techcrunch.com: The Facebook Effect: Foursquare Had Its Most Signups on the Launch Day of Places

Let me know what you think of facebook places in the comments below…

December 21st | By: Garin Kilpatrick

If you go to facebook.com/family/ you will find a nifty directory that allows you to search for people on Facebook with the same last name as you.  Facebook also made the announcement, on mothers day of 2009, that now you can list family information in your profile.  Now, not only can you list the person you are in a relationship with, but also your parents, and any siblings and children you may have.

The We’re Related App

There is also a Facebook app called We’re Related by FamilyLink that allows you to keep track of your relatives, and perhaps discover relatives you did not even know you had.  We’re related also allows you to build your family tree.  A testimonial from FamilyLink.com reads:

“This tool has made it possible for me to communicate with my children whom I have not seen close on nine years now. It has also afforded me the opportunity to keep in touch with my relatives far and near, I have even managed to find long lost friends. This is a really great tool.”

Easily create a Facebook Group for your Family

Facebook even has a custom page that makes it easy to create a group for your extended family on facebook.

Feedback

Do you have your family on Facebook? Do you list your parents, siblings, or children on your Facebook Profile?

In the years that I have been using facebook I have not been able to login twice. Both times when facebook was broken it was probably just the result of crowded bandwidth.

During these occasions a simple workaround I used to access facebook was logging into Facebook lite.  Most people just use regular facebook, and many do not even know about Facebook lite.

If facebook.com ever goes down just call facebook lite to the rescue!

What is Facebook Lite?

Facebook lite is a stripped down version of Facebook. It is optimized to be lightning fast, and has no application integration.

That means you won’t be able to play Farmville but you will be able to do core facebook tasks in a way that is supposed to be “faster and simpler.”

Screenshots

Facebook Lite Settings:

Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Profile on Facebook Lite:

Feedback

Have you ever used Facebook lite?  Would you ever use it?

Sometimes words just are not enough.  For times when words just can’t express, there are emoticons.  With the somewhat recent implementation of facebook chat came a new set of emoticons too.  Here is a graph showing all of the different facebook emoticons that you can use in chat.

The above graph was derived from a website called fbemoticons, but the symbols are property of facebook. Fbemoticons also features pages with special symbols, basic symbols, and more!

By: Ray Miles

It seems like whenever Facebook makes a big change, thousands of people will be there to complain.

The newest complaint is coming from Facebook’s new redesign.

These are some recent comments that were made concerning the changes:

But despite these comments, with a user base of 175,000,000 these groups represent only a tiny fraction of the Facebook population.  Even if 1,000,000 people are unhappy with the new Facebook this is still less than one percent of Facebook.

Facebook did try to warn it’s users by posting a blue box on the top of their home page that read, “Changes to the Homepage are Coming Soon.”  They even offered a tour of the new homepage, so users could prepare themselves for what it would look like.  These changes to the Facebook homepage were then echoed through the Blogosphere but apparently this was not enough.

Many users were still outraged at the fact that their homepage did not look the same and they might have to learn slightly different navigation scheme.  Many users demanded the change be reversed, some making groups that allowed users to express why they don’t like the new features, or describing how to get the old Facebook back.

My question is: Why all the complaints?

The general consensus amongst the Facebook crowd is that the new layout is confusing and mixes up their information.

What the users did not try to grasp was if the new design made more sense than the old one, which is does.  Redesigns like this are essential to the growth of Facebook, and to make it as user friendly as possible to the ever growing Facebook user group.  Keeping up with the times and the latest technology are part of what Facebook and Web 2.0 are all about.

Not to mention, there are many good things that come with the redesign:

• “Pages,” or “Fan Pages” are more like profiles, now. This encourages more two-way communication. It also encourages more musicians, companies, and entertainers, to get on Facebook.
• Information is updated quicker and more effectively, supposedly in “real-time”
• Profiles are now tabbed more efficiently to provide for better organization of information.
• There is now a “Everyone” option that allows anyone to see your profile if you choose it.
• And there  are more security features than ever

Facebook may also be trying to compete with “The New Kid on the Block,” Twitter.

Many Twitter users were not impressed with the new Facebook design because it looks so similar to Twitter that is seems like a ripoff.

This is the second major redesign and layout change Facebook has made in the last year.  There will certainly be more to come.

One innovation that will be coming to Facebook in the future is a news feed that updates itself without having to refresh your browser.  This innovation is already implemented in FriendFeed, and may take some time before Facebook can afford the bandwidth to implement it across it’s wide user base.

So, what’s better than complaining about the new layout of Facebook?

Embracing it!

Use the time that you might use complaining to learn about the new Facebook its features.  By learning how the new facebook works instead of fighting it you will ensure that you maximize your social-networking experience.