My biggest problem with Facebook is the fact that I have to read through a whole lot of “Like” links, stupid updates that tell me nothing and other information from my friends feeds, just to pay closer attention to those friends I actually want to be following.

Sure I could delete friends I don’t talk to on a regular basis or just hide certain friends messages from appearing on my feed, but then I might miss something important down the road. Thankfully, Facebook is now looking to make it easier to stalk…ummm, I mean follow certain friends.

The new feature, called “Subscribe to (person)” creates a separate feed for each subscribed user, that information is then sent to a separate notification screen so you know when the messages you actually want to receive have arrived.

TYPES OF INFORMATION YOU MIGHT LEARN ABOUT YOUR FRIENDS

Want to know if a friend used Facebook Places to check-in somewhere? Want to find out what your BFF said today? It’s no problem with Facebook’s new option. Basically you know EVERYTHING your friends do on the social networking website, aside from sending private messages and you know that information without having to search out their profile all the time to check up on their activities. read more

It’s been long time coming, since Netflix hammered the first nail in the coffin of the social networking features of their site this past spring. But Friday the end became reality as the doors closed definitively on Netflix community features.

The move comes just days after Apple launched its new product-based social networking service Ping in iTunes. Now Netflix admits the community aspects of their site were hardly used and their engineering resources would be better spent devoted to developing aspects of the site that are highly popular – such as video streaming. Whether Netflix’s poor experience blending products, services, and social interaction will bode unwell for Ping remains to be seen. read more

Apple’s new Ping network has debuted with the most recent release of iTunes.

Ping, not to be confused with social network updating service Ping.fm (or the web site Ping.com, which has nothing to do with music or social media whatsoever), is Apple’s new niche social networking service dedicated to connecting people based on their tastes in music. Ping is not a standalone web site; it comes packaged only with the software, which is available for both PC and Mac.

Interestingly, Ping is disabled by default and is therefore an opt-in user experience. One might think that Apple would be pushing for users to try the free service, but Apple is promoting social interaction by making users’ details such as name and hometown visible to the public unless specifically set to private. Furthermore, the types of music you enjoy, based on your iTunes statistics, can be hidden – so that embarrassing fetish for show tunes need not be known to the world. read more

Despite popularizing the art of reblogging (or at least convincing WordPress, Typepad and LiveJournal of its worth), crediting the original author has (more or less) been an ugly affair on Tumblr.

Instead of ignoring the problem (something a few other platforms do) Tumblr has decided to skip the “requotes” and credit the original author instead.

Starting today, reblogging will no longer insert attribution into the content/caption of the post except to quote content added by the parent post.

This means we’re no longer cluttering up post content with reblog attribution. But where did it go? The Dashboard already attributes reblogs’ parent blogs, and now it automatically attributes the source blog clearly and consistently[.] (Tumblr Staff Blog)

Another benefit of Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging is that sites outside of Tumblr (or at least those credited within a post) receive proper attribution and attention minus the reblog distractions.

Tumblr’s approach is similar in many ways to Twitter’s native retweet, who made a similar move in November of 2009.

Unlike the twitterverse however, Tumblr’s new approach is receiving praise from the community (minus a few disgruntaled souls of course), and it will be interesting to see if other platforms copy Tumblr’s new approach to reblogging in the not so distant future.

(Image Credit: Tumblr Staff)

Today is a sad day for Vox fans. After having launched the social networking blog platform in 2006, it looks as if the Six Apart execs are shutting down Vox at the end of the month.

Vox has been a fun place to explore, create and connect with your friends. But Vox is closing its doors on September 30, 2010.

This doesn’t mean you have to say goodbye to your blog. We want you to make sure you can keep the great content you’ve shared on Vox, and continue to have a home for your blog. To help you make the transition off of Vox, we’ve added new export features that make it easy to move your blog to a free TypePad account, and your photos & videos to Flickr. (Official Vox Blog)

The few passionate users of the service are not thrilled with the news (as one can tell by the comment section) and many are already reporting errors when it comes to migrating to Typepad and Flickr. read more

Facebook wants their users to have active control over where there accounts are being accessed from and for that reason the world’s largest social networking website is rolling out a new feature which allows users to see what devices and locations are accessing their accounts and then remove them as they see fit.

The move is a smart one by Facebook, by doing so they can proactively fight back against spammers who steal accounts and then use the good names of those Facebook users to sell their products and phish for other users data.

Trusted source spamming has become a huge problem for Facebook as thousands of accounts have been compromised over the months, causing an uproar among Facebook users and security specialists. I reported last week about a Free iPad scam that hit the site while stealing personal information from users and that was just one of many examples. read more

After releasing an official iPhone app in May, the folks at Twitter HG have unveiled an iPad app that may strike fear in the hearts of third party tweet developers.

Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. [...]

When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen. [sic] (Official Twitter Blog)

Although the official iPad is receiving glowing reviews from around the twittersphere (not to mention the blogosphere as well), Twitter’s iPad app will probably not cause a mass extinction of the “few” tweet iPad apps in the app store.

Third party developers will probably respond to Twitter’s official presence by integrating other social networks, a trend we have seen on the iPhone as well as other smartphones.

While Twitter’s official presence will place some iPad tweet apps on the endangered species list, as long as tweet developers are able to out-innovate Twitter, then they should be able to fend off their own demise.

Gowalla today rolled out a new feature called ‘highlights’ and by using this feature users can now give little items to places they visit, marking them with useful icons to show off their importance.

While the program offers basic items, such as “Best Cup” for cups of coffee, it also features some wacky options like “My Happy Place” and “Guilty Pleasure” along with “Celebrity Sightings” and even “Hitched” in case you decide to tie the not in a drunken night in Las Vegas.

Highlights is available for immediate use and allows you to add your own and view friends highlights from the Gowalla website.

The Gowalla team has also promised that the mobile versions of their program for iPhone, iPad, Android and Blackberry will also soon receive the option. read more