Facebook has Upgraded Pages. The new page design looks similar to profile pages, with latest photos showcased and navigation links on the left (tabs have been done away with).  Other new admin features worth mentioning:

• There is now a profanity blocklist, which you can set at none, medium, or strong. If you choose to use this feature, Facebook will block commonly reported profane words and phrases from posts or comments.
• There is now a moderation blocklist, in which you select words you want to be blacklisted. If someone posts or comments with blacklisted words, the content will be marked as spam and hidden from the wall.
• Page administrators will now be able to login to the page itself, which will allow them to comment on other Pages and profiles on behalf of the Page.
• Admins can now get notifications when fans interact with a page or post.
• You have the option to change your page category.

Facebook Ads:

Facebook has also upgraded their advertising options.  This week, Facebook rolled out a new kind of ad called sponsored stories, and updated their ads to allow for tab selection. Learn more:

• Sponsored Stories
  • From Facebook: “Sponsored Stories are stories that your friends published into your News Feed. These show up on the right hand side of pages on Facebook. The types of stories that can be surfaced include: Page Likes, App interactions, Place check-ins and Page posts.”

• Landing Tab Selection
  • If you are directing those who click on your ad to your Facebook Page, you can now select which tab you would like them to land on. You can now choose whether you would like visitors from the ad to land on the wall, information, a custom tab you have created, etc.

Book Reservations with Yelp:

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, you can now book dinner reservations through your Yelp app on your iPhone, iPad, or android phone. This is part of Yelp’s integration with Open Table, the real-time online reservation network. Yelp already integrated Open Table with their website, but making reservations will be even easier with the new app update.

Email Use Decreases:

You may not want to send your Valentine’s cards via email this year. A recent study by ComScore shows that email use is on the decline. From 2009 to 2010, overall email usage decreased by 8%. Email usage decreased 59% among 12-17 year olds, 1% among 18-24 year olds, 18% among 25-34 year olds, 8% among 35-44 year olds, and 12% among 45-54 year olds. Email usage actually increased in the older demographics, with a 22% increase among 55-64 year olds and a 28% increase among those 65 years or older.

Google for Weddings:

Also just in time for Valentine’s Day, Google has launched a page dedicated to weddings. As Mashable described it ,“The site is the latest attempt by Google to insinuate itself into consumers’ lifestyles.” Teaming up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, they have created wedding specific templates in Google docs, Google Sites, and Picnik. Google wants this to be the place brides-to-be gather tips and tricks, create a wedding website, create save-the-date cards, and use tools to simplify wedding planning.

Getting hitched?
Google is hosting a wedding sweepstakes, where you can enter to with $25,000 and help from wedding planner Michelle Rago.

-Anna (@alucas9)

UPDATE: Note that we weren’t meant to see these new features just yet. As they were rolled out, Feedback took quick screenshots and analyzed the changes. Shortly after (as in, minutes) Facebook took itself off the internet for nearly 30 minutes in order to fix the changes, saying some prototypes had inadvertently gone live.

Hello from snowy Virginia!

Facebook unleashed a number of interesting tweaks today, but none so significant as the addition of the Page Login concept for administrators of Facebook Pages.

Now when you visit a Page you are an admin of, you can actually comment as you (previously when admins commented on a Page they administered it only posted as though the Page itself was responding). You can do this because you have an option to essentially login to Facebook as the Page.

When you do this, you then see the world as the Page, complete with a newsfeed wall – and in fact all of the Notifications are now the Notifications of the Page.

As the Page, you post as the Page, Comment as such, ask Questions (now integrated into Pages) and more. So now that you ARE the Page, how do you get back to being you? In the upper right, you can switch back to yourself, referred to as the, “primary account” and login.

Other tweaks to include the disappearance of Tabs; Photos accessed through Notifications create a pop-up window for browsing; and a new face-recognizing, Photo-tagging feature is also being rolled out. There’s a new version of Comments, based on Questions, being trotted out as well.

An example of the new pop-up photo viewer

The Next Web has more on the changes here.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

Groupon has been on the tip of everyone’s tongues lately, but this week, deal rival LivingSocial made the news. LivingSocial’s deal on Wednesday was 50% off an Amazon gift card – allowing people to get a $20 gift card for only $10. Over one million vouchers were sold.  As Mashable pointed out,

“Amazon, clearly interested in helping the startup it just invested $175 million in, will likely take a big hit as a result of the deal’s popularity. The online marketplace will lose millions of dollars — at least $10 per voucher — when LivingSocial members make good on the offer. The company, however, probably sees the loss as a net gain and a worthwhile marketing cost.”

Google Offers:

More daily coupon news: Google will be launching their own deal service, Google Offers. The deal service will work much like Groupon and LivingSocial. Users will receive a deal of the day email and have an allotted time to purchase the deal. Google Offers appears to still be in the testing phases – but look out Groupon – there’s about to be a new coupon deal in town. As many are saying about Google’s failed attempt at buying Groupon (for $6 billion) and their subsequent plan to launch Google Offers, “If you can’t buy ‘em, beat ‘em”.

Social Network Takes Gold:

I love that a movie about social media won a traditional media award. Actually, it won several of them. The Social Network took home four Golden Globes this week for “Best Motion Picture, Drama”, “Best Director, Motion Picture”, “Best Screen Play, Motion Picture”, and “Best Score.”

Google’s CEO Switch:

Google has made some changes to their upper management this week, replacing CEO Eric Schmidt with co-founder Larry Page. Schmidt will still be working at Google as executive chairman. The change came as a surprise to many, and left people wondering, “Why Is Eric Schmidt Stepping Down at Google?” As Mashable reported, Schmidt’s current ownership stake at Google is worth $5.77 billion and he intends to sell half a million shares, the dollar equivalent of $335 million dollars.

Facebook & Feature Phones:

On Wednesday, Facebook launched a mobile app for non smart phone users. The app is compatible with over 2,500 mobile phones, and can be accessed via a data usage plan. For some global users, the first 90 days of accessing the data plan for Facebook will be free. The facts, from All Things Digital:

“Facebook today released a feature-phone app that is designed to be kind of a gateway drug for both Facebook participation and mobile data usage. The company has arranged deals with 13 carriers to give users of the app free Facebook-related data access for 90 days. If you look at the countries where the launch partner carriers are from, you can see where Facebook thinks it can grow: Romania, India, Mexico and elsewhere.”

-Anna (@alucas9)

I’m presently putting a new social network, Quora, through its paces. So far, so good. It’s all part of my interest in seeing what works for people and businesses/clients -and what doesn’t.

I recently reviewed a social network called Path that bills itself as an “anti-social network” of sorts wherein it limits a user to 50 friends. I like it and continue to use it, and recommend you do, too. And after a few weeks of use, I’ve come to realize that digital services that require a user to selectively limit their friend list to a small number of connections must be getting the idea from other networks, where such friend-limiting activity happens naturally.

At Feedback, we call this phenomenon “Selective Connection.” Take LinkedIn, for example.

Where Facebook has now become the primary network that enables friends to find each other after losing touch with one another over time, LinkedIn has become a quiet network for business professionals.

Most users typically keep their personal profiles on other social networks separated from their LinkedIn profiles for good reason: it’s a professional network for the purpose of being professional. Nowhere on LinkedIn do you ever anticipate that photo of you doing a kegstand to appear. Instead, it’s the place where you can share your talent and skills, learn more about others, and make recommendations and engage in meaningful professional discussion.

The limitations that a user has come to expect on LinkedIn were welcomed in business world much faster than Facebook’s more casual usage and customs. Sure, LinkedIn has integration with Twitter accounts to allow for cross-posting of content that might have something to do with your job. But overall, LinkedIn is kept pretty civil.

So you might start to wonder, why hasn’t Facebook come in and taken command of the online business networking scene? Can’t Facebook flip a switch and do that?

Of course not. Well, not presently, anyway.

A recent conversation that I had on Twitter concluded with the revelation that the social graph online has been replicated from what has long existed outside of the Internet: Some people keep work at work, while some might want to keep home at home.

How Facebook operates right now on a fundamental level is drawn straight from the actions of promoting someone that you just met to a level of friendship. As Facebook continues to grow, the assumed action and reaction of sending and accepting a friend request is slowly solidified as the proper etiquette.

A separate network, LinkedIn, exists for those who feel that they don’t want to share what might appear on their Facebook profile with those at their workplace or potential employer. For those who don’t want to share every particular photo with all of their Facebook or Twitter followers, there is a network like Path.

And there will be more to come, as closed-circle networks and selective connection becomes one of the latest darlings of the new media industry. While it seems like a niche market, closed-circle social networks continue to grow and become successful. LinkedIn might be a closed or specialized network with the most amount of visibility, but smaller online venues could influence the direction that networks are taking in 2011 and beyond.

-Brad (@bcarr)