Just in case you didn’t know, you can see what the new Facebook profiles are going to look like here http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php

The new layout has a lot more dependence on AJAX/Javascript and they’re clearly focusing on the news feed.  To access the application boxes & info that used to be on the profile page you need to click on one of the tabs under the person’s name.  Also the link to comment on a news item is now the word ‘Comment’ instead  of the rather ambiguous little icon it is currently.

The obvious comparison here is with FriendFeed.  The current version of Facebook doesn’t allow you to comment on items directly from the news feed, you have to go to an individual person’s profile to do that.  We can’t see whether this will be possible in the new version of Facebook because it’s not showing us the news feed yet.  When you click on the home link on the new facebook site it just reloads the profile page.  If they do allow this it will become very much a FriendFeed clone. 

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FaceBook has been slowly updating the Mini-feed displayed on a user’s profile page to look more and more like a FriendFeed-esq lifestreaming application, by allowing you to include actions from other sites, and now allowing comments on the items.

Triston McIntyre has a good post on the details and possible implications of these changes on Profy, especially as to why FriendFeed probably doesn’t have to worry too much about this:

In execution, I seriously doubt Friendfeed has anything to worry about. Though Facebook does have a friends feed on each user’s homepage, and individual mini-feeds on every user’s profile, Facebook’s feeds are structured very differently than FriendFeed. Where on FriendFeed, the feed is pretty much the focus, mini-feeds on Facebook are largely overlooked, except perhaps by those jealous lovers and "interested" others (oh, come on, everyone has them.right?).

Facebook is essentially Social 101 for those looking to get connected to friends. Platforms like FriendFeed and Twitter, at least at this point in time, are just a higher level of social media. Adoption of both platforms is increasing, but I don’t think that FriendFeed needs to worry about losing its user base to Facebook-happy comment heads. Sleep easy, FriendFeed, and enjoy the flattery by imitation.

However, Google Operating System has a post today outlining the features in the new beta of the iGoogle homepage.  The new iGoogle will have a lot more ’social’ features in in, including a gtalk chat & gmail directly on the page, but the thing that I noticed was the ‘Updates’ box on the right.  This seems to be a feed of all the things you’re doing on Google’s products.  The box there has a number of items on it: shared items from Google Reader, photos from Picassa, shared themes for iGoogle, shared gadgets and status from Gtalk.  There’s also the ability to add free text (and presumably links) in a box above the list.  There doesn’t seem to be any non-google content in there, but I can’t believe that it would be possible to do that.  If it’s not a feature now, you know it will be very soon.

So FriendFeed may have some more competition in the not too distant future.

Nick Bradbury announced today that shared news aggregator site ReadBurner has added Newsgator (ie FeedDemon) shared items feeds to their site.  This means that us FeedDemon users can join all the cool Google Reader kids over there.

Along with including NewsGator feeds, they’ve added NewsGator as a tab up the top of their site along with Google Reader & Netvibes so you can read your feeds without leaving the ReadBurner site.  While that’s not a huge feature to me (FeedDemon FTW!) I’m sure it would be handy if you used the Newsgator web interface.

Here’s the instructions from Nick on how you add you Newsgator clipping feed:

Here’s how it’s done:

1. If you haven’t done so already, share one of your clippings folders as an RSS feed (this screencast explains how this is done in FeedDemon).
2. Copy the URL of the shared clippings feed to the clipboard (in FeedDemon, you can do this by clicking the “Copy” link from the clippings properties).
3. Browse to http://www.readburner.com/
4. Go to the "Add Feed" option on the right hand side of the ReadBurner menu bar, then select “NewsGator Clippings” and enter the URL of your clipping feed.

Also, as Nick mentioned, FeedDemon allows you to share web pages as well as feed items.  Just drag the url into your clippings folder & it will get added (Just the title, the content of the page won’t be added).

This is great, and a great boost for Newsgator & FeedDemon as they get more visibility in the RSS reader market place.  Remember kids, FeedDemon, along with the syncing ability of Newsgator is free! You need to download it now.

Update: Here’s my clippings folder on ReadBurner.  It’s just showing up as ‘Link Blog’ despite me putting in my alias.  Oh well, I’d prefer to have my name there, but at least it’s working! Drew from ReadBurner responded to my issue & has already fixed it, thanks Drew! (see comments below)

I just received an SMS from the Jaiku bot saying that their SMS service was back up & operational.  I’ve sent a post via the SMS bot and it is working, so it would seem that maybe Google hasn’t completely abandoned the service after all.  This would be good. I liked Jaiku when it was first launched, it had a few features that I feel Twitter lacks (channels for one, plus native image posting) without over-complicating the service.

I’ve always thought that with GMail, GTalk, Grand Central & Jaiku, Google had the building blocks for a really comprehensive communications platform.  Add into that mix Google Apps & Google Docs and you’ve got a solid business system to work from.

Imagine if Google rolled GTalk, Jaiku and Grand Central into a single app/service.  It would suddenly become a serious competitor to Skype if they could get the sound quality and pricing right.  Skype was supposed to be the communications platform of the future (if you believed the hype), but due to a number of factors, including the acquisition by eBay and the fact they use a proprietary VOIP protocol, it hasn’t happened.  GTalk runs on an open VOIP protocol, so you can talk to non-GTalk VOIP clients. If done right that could be one killer app.

You may think you’re a big user of FriendFeed, you may think you have heaps of followers and everything you submit gets liked & commented on.  Sorry, that’s nothing.  Google has spoken and the most important FriendFeed members are…

Deepak & Kevin, congratulations.  Google says you’re more relevant than the About page, the FAQ or the public feed.  That’s pretty impressive!

Additionally, if you go the ‘More results’ page you’ll note that the order goes like this:

1. Homepage
2. About
3. Public Feed
4. Scoble
5. API
6. Bookmarklet
7. Blog
8. Louis Gray
9. Changelog
10. Steve Rubel

Hands up anyone who’s surprised to see Robert at number 4?  Anyone, anyone?

No question for me that Windows Live Writer is the best product to come out of Microsoft’s Live project/platform/whatever. The Writer Zone blog announced today that there’s a new release available.  It’s a CTP (Community Technology Preview), not a stable release because they’ve added a bunch of new SDK plugin stuff along with the updates to Live Writer itself.

Steve Hodson has a great post outlining all the new features in the application, there’s heaps of great stuff in there, including some little things like recognising what lighbox plugin you’ve got installed on your blog & allowing you to set the images to use this.  The Auto Linking features is also cool, an automatic glossary.  Download the installer here.