FaceBook folks are very smart people. They understand that Twitter and Microblogging as a trend is catching fire. So it was not surprising to see them release their Live Feed service. The Live Feed is not technically a clone of twitter, but you can technically use it as you would Twitter.

The Live Feed feature shows FaceBook’s intention to be more than just a player in the microblogging market. They want to own it, and one wouldn’t be surprised if people switched from Twitter to FaceBook with all the problems that the microblogging has been experiencing lately. Out of curiousity, will you switch to twitter now that they have added Live Feed?

Facebook is the top dog in the social networking community. A whole lot of people log on to FaceBook everyday to catch up with their friends, the latest applications, and even their favorite blogs. While Facebook dominates the social media market, LinkedIn seems to be a more viable social network for the future. The FaceBook generation are much younger than the average overall LinkedIn users. In essence, at some point, FaceBook users graduate to LinkedIn, and while they continue to use FaceBook, they will use LinkedIn and similar sites to advance their networks and business relationships (see diagram below):

There is no question that FaceBook has all the tools to retain the majority of its users, but LinkedIn is a more niche social network that continues to grow faster than LinkedIn in the foreseeable future. One thing that gives me the impression about LinkedIn’s bright future is the fact that you need to network to be successful in your career and while networking on Facebook could work out well for you, LinkedIn is a more professional way of networking, which goes beyond people’s hobbies and personal stories. Can LinkedIn catch FaceBook eventually? That’s hard to tell, but with the current 10% monthly growth rate, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Here is the question that has baffled Web 2.0 experts for a couple of years now. The fact is sites such as DIGG or FaceBook have way too much information about their users activities, preferences, and … But there are no set of guidelines that prohibits them from collecting information about you and I. Sure, they do not collect or share our SSNs or credit card numbers, but other than that they pretty much know everything about what we do online. It’s true that data is treated as asset in the Web 2.0 world, but you can’t bank on consumer’s data to make cash (at least not on personal data). The question here now is, what is personal data? Is the information about all the books that you have bought in the last 24 months personal? How about the profiles that you have checked out in the past 5 days? How about the groups that they have joined? One thing is for sure here, nobody’s certain.

Here is an interesting take on this whole issue on Technology News Law.

That’s how life works really. One needs to accept that everyone can have everything they want in the world, and you can still find people who just have fun destroying what other people like. FaceBook, and myspace are two great social communities with millions of users, and that’s exactly what makes them hot items to hackers. TheStar is reporting that another virus has infected these communities and is sending bogus emails to everyone you know about some video or note that they should look at.

The trend is really too depressing at this point. We are basically dealing with two kinds of anti-communities here. First we have the so-called guru marketers who find ways to get around the system and shove things down us and our friends’ throats. Then we have spammers who constantly tweak their codes to find ways to send spam to others. I personally feel the penalties should be much greater for people who disrupt online communities. We all spend time in these communities, and time is the most valuable thing in the word. Reading a spam e-mail is the worst way you can waste your time, so I look at spammers as thieves. In my mind, they should be punished like thieves! May sound harsh but that’s the reality of it all.

Scrabulous is the latest application to have been pulled off by FaceBook to avoid any legal troubles for the social media giant. Scrabulous was a very popular application on FaceBook, and apparently a few people were concerned they could not go on without Scrabulous on FaceBook. But since it’s not coming back, they can look elsewhere now. Scrabulous joins Shank on the sidelines, but for more legitimate reasons.

I actually thought it was a great game. I don’t know if you are familiar with the knifing game, but this FaceBook App allowed users to knife each other. Shank was removed by FaceBook due to it being a violent form of poking. It’s true that “shanking” mayh not be appropriate for children, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable for adults who want to use it on FaceBook. FaceBook is no longer just for kids anymore, so I don’t understand why FaceBook would remove the application without asking the users first. I think for FaceBook to truly become a community, it needs to factor in what its users want. It’s all about the consumer, remember?

You can’t blame Facebook for trying to monetize the huge amount of traffic that they receive on a daily basis. SitePoint duly notes that FaceBook is now running more ads than ever to monetize Facebook application pages among others. Now I am not sure the amount of money that FaceBook will receive from these ads, but I am sure the CPM deals will bring significant revenue to Facebook. But the question is, how long FaceBook can go before having a more sound business model. Also, how long Facebook can go before the content generators ask for a piece of the pie>