It’s a big step forward from the current Facebook Pages: at the moment users don’t spend that much time on them and mostly visit the pages once.

Ever since Timeline debuted at the f8 conference, marketers have been waiting to use them for businesses as well. At this moment, brands are required to use Facebook pages instead of profiles. 

But not all companies are equally excited about the pending introduction, as the change could also affect existing page tab apps. A lot of companies have been building and marketing those over the years, and a change could devalue their investments significantly.

We’ll know more at the end of the month and keep you updated.

Only the more popular users (think Lady Gaga) with plenty of followers can have their accounts verified, and we don’t expect this to become mainstream in the not so distant future.

Users who can participate will be automatically notified, after which they can opt to have their accounts verified. To do so they need to submit an image of a government-issued photo ID, which Facebook promises will be deleted after the verification process. 

Before, you could only display a nickname by changing your official name (go figure).

It has been only 3 months since Facebook launched their public subscription feature, which enables users to subscribe to public updates from people they aren’t friends with (similar to Twitter’s core business).

Last January, Facebook announced the first ever fellowship program, opening it to post-graduates studying Internet economics, cloud computing, social computing, data mining, machine learning, systems operations and information retrieval. 

Applications were solicited in the following months, and chosen candidates were named in late March. Greg Badros, Facebook’s director of engineering, says several hundred applicants threw their hats in the ring.

“One of the things we wanted to do was keep the process as open as possible,” Badros says. “We were amazed with the talent and range of accomplishments. The value of academia is everybody’s many feet deep in a particular topic.”

Reflecting on the selection process, Badros confesses it was a daunting task. In the end, however, he says fellows were chosen based on their history of academic accomplishment, the diversity of their research fields and how their existing work applies to social media and Facebook in particular.

The five fellows are enjoying several perks this school year, beyond the obvious practical, hands-on opportunities that come with a fellowship. Badros says each fellow has been given a $30,000 stipend that is being paid out throughout the program, which ends in May.

The company also has dolled out $5,000 toward a personal computer and a $5,000 allowance for conference attendance and related travel. Facebook also is covering all tuition and fees for the fellows this academic year.

Leslie John, who is working toward her doctorate in behavioral economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, is among the five fellows.

John, who learned of the opportunity through a professor, says she was pleasantly surprised when she received word this spring of her acceptance into the program.

“I had a feeling there were going to be a ton of people applying, so I really found this to be very generous,” she says. “Privacy has been a big topic when it comes to Facebook, and I’ve been eager to see where the concern is.”

The other fellows include Vinayak Borkar, who is researching cloud computing at the University of California at Irvine. Borkar’s research, relevant to Facebook, includes a look at improving how computing platforms for data analysis can benefit the complex data processing challenges at Facebook.

Parmit Chilana, working toward her doctorate at the University of Washington – Seattle, is focusing on social computing. She has been applying her ideas for crowdsourcing to the real world setting of social media sites like Facebook.

John was not the only Carnegie Mellon University student selected as a fellow this school year. Mladen Kolar, also working toward a doctorate at the Pittsburgh institution, specializes in machine learning. He has been studying the structure of networks and how they change and evolve over time.

Rounding out this year’s class of fellows is Yaron Singer, who has been studying Internet economics at the University of California at Berkley. His research focuses on algorithmic game theory and mechanism design.

Singer is founder of Bidwave, an advertising network for social media.

Badros says the selection process was so difficult, Facebook gave $500 to 22 finalists.

While he acknowledges the Facebook Fellowship Program is still in the pilot stage and its future is uncertain, Badros says he anticipates it returning for the 2011-12 school year.

“I wouldn’t just expect this to go away after a year,” he says.

Answers to this and other questions were discussed in April at the Facebook F8 Developers Conference, and some of the results are starting to take shape late in the year.

When founder Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials held the third consecutive conference earlier this year in San Jose, California, a number of topics relevant to expanding the ever-growing site were discussed. 

The Facebook Platform was one such hot topic at the conference. Last year, Zuckerberg was been touting the limitless possibilities that come with maximizing social and personalized experiences across the web for the more than 600 million people who use the service he founded.

Zuckerberg’s quest to socialize the entire web comes through an initiative dubbed the Open Graph API.

“Like” buttons have been appearing on myriad websites – from blogs to commercial sites – in an effort to connect users from their favorite Internet destinations to their personal Facebook profile page. A growing number of companies also are prominently displaying their presence on their sites with Facebook logos cropping up at a growing pace.

At last year’s conference, Zuckerberg announced Facebook would teamed up with three outside entities to build on its social media platform. One of those sites, Yelp, offers user-submitted reviews of top restaurants, shopping, nightlife and entertainment venues.

Ben Bleikamp, Yelp’s designer and product manager, says the partnership has created an enhanced experience for users.

“One of the coolest features (from the partnership) is that Yelp can now be instantly personalized for new users if they have a Facebook account,” Bleikamp says. “A new user will land on Yelp and be able to see which Facebook friends have reviewed a business and easily read their reviews.”

Another site working in tandem with Facebook and its customization process is Pandora, an Internet radio service that gives users an opportunity to create their own playlists based on artists they enjoy. Officials from both sides have described the partnership as a win-win since both entities thrive on social experiences on the Internet.

The third service partnership is with Microsoft Docs, and the arrangement has given users an opportunity to post everything from recipes to resumes within their social network.

Since rolling the new services out earlier this year, tweaks and refinements have been made as bugs are worked out.

Career Sabotage

It’s not a secret that employers are using Google as a reference for prospective employees. When you are posting pictures of your Saturday night shenanigans, you may want to keep this in mind. 

Talking about how much you hate your job is not advised either. Even though your colleagues are not on your friends list, they could still hear about your unprofessional behavior from someone who is your Facebook friend. There are far fewer than six degrees of separation out there.

Love Online

Many marriages have come under fire due to the effects of Facebook. A recent example is the betrayed wife who found her husband’s secret second wife on Facebook. While not all of us have two wives, many have been caught by their spouses engaging in online flirting.

Facebook has also become the tool of the stalking ex-lover. Tools like the ‘see friendship’ feature seem to throw sensitive information at the wrong people. You don’t need to be friends with your ex for them to know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with, even if your privacy settings are on high. If they’ve made it to your friends list and you know they’re still holding a candle, then beware. Midnight posts, sarcastic comments, and constant messaging can become an issue fast, especially if you are now involved with someone else.

What Your Grandmother Knows

What your grandmother doesn’t know doesn’t hurt her. The problem is, since she got online she now knows everything. Even if you are selective with status updates, once your relatives are on Facebook they’re going to discover the ins and outs of your life. You might not be giving out information, but your friends’ comments, photo tagging, and unprotected status updates do. Unless you’re comfortable with Aunt Agnes finding out about your failed blind date last Friday, think before your friend.

Money Moochers

There are plenty of money moochers on Facebook, and in fact all over the Internet, who are after your hard-earned cash. These stalkers are rarely the friends you know in real life. They’ll be strangers who have become your online friends over time. Games like Farmville are full of these people. They’ll chat with you for a month or two, tell you personal details about themselves, and seem generally nice. Look out, you’re being groomed. Wait for the email about their mother who has cancer, then the follow-up asking to borrow money for medication.

Facebook is a great tool, and also a whole heap of fun to use. Just remember, no matter how high your privacy settings might be, nothing is really ever private. Especially when your grandmother is around.

Publicizing your personal goals may be as simple as telling your best friend or family member, or you may want to publicize it more broadly.  With the availability of online social media, there are hundreds of easy ways to publicize your personal goals to a vast number of people all at once. 

Facebook is a great social networking tool used for both fun and business purposes.  Facebook might just be the modern-aged economical tool that will help you stay on target with your fitness goals.

How to Publicize Your Goals

Set up a personal or business profile page in Facebook if you haven’t done so already.  Then, after identifying your fitness goals, simply announce them to your friends or followers by posting them on your Facebook status.

If you have a Facebook “Page” designed to promote your products or services, it is not unheard-of to let your business contacts know of your fitness plans too.  A good marketing tip in general is to show your human side in your Facebook updates now and then.  It is important that followers know there is a real person behind your updates otherwise they may see your Page as nothing more than an advertorial.

Telling Your Story in Detail

If you’d like your friends to hear a more detailed explanation of your fitness goals, you might want to create a Facebook “Note”.   A Note is included in Facebook’s basic applications.  It is blog-like in that there is enough space to write up lengthier comments. Look for the “Notes” tab on your profile page in order to access this feature.

If you are using the business Facebook Page tool instead of a personal profile page, you could use an application tab to create a full-size dedicated page just for reporting your fitness progress.

Another way of sharing your goals in detail is to write them up in a blog and then share the link in your Facebook status.

Facebook:  The Jewel of Accountability

Once you’ve stated your goals, make yourself accountable to your friends or followers by promising to post updates as you make progress.  You probably shouldn’t make all your status updates solely about your exercise and diet plan though.  Your followers will get bored reading it.  They probably won’t care that you’ve eaten five less crackers in a day and walked an extra block before bedtime.  But they will likely want to cheer you on when you share that you’ve worked out three times a week, run five kilometres or eaten healthy meals for two weeks straight.  They may be keenly interested to hear how your first hot yoga session went or to hear about the delicious calorie-reduced entre you sampled at a mutually favourite restaurant.

Facebook can be the jewel you’ve been looking for to accountability.  It is a great way to catalogue your progress in a quick and fun way too.  You will look forward to being able to brag about your progress to your friends and followers this way because most people crave acknowledgement for their efforts.

Photo Reality

Posting pictures on Facebook is another challenge that will remind you it’s important to look good.  Trying to get a great profile picture is important to every Facebook user.  This in itself provides motivation to keep working out.  You’ll want to put your best face forward, and God forbid that someone would tag you in an unflattering photo.

Even if you aren’t tagged in a photo, chances are you will appear in the background of someone else’s collection of photos.   Unbeknownst to you, hundreds of friends of friends may get a good glimpse of you.  That possibility in itself should be worry enough to keep you on task with your goals.

Pay Off for Others

One of the reasons others will be interested in your progress is it will give them hope for themselves.  Your posts may be just the motivation they need.  Hearing that you did a spinning class and ran a few kilometres might make them take notice and think twice about how they are keeping themselves fit.

Facebook’s capacity for real-time dialogue is what makes it a unique social medium.  Your updates may be about you, but as comments are added, the conversation easily opens the way for others to share their own stories and thus gain accountability themselves.

Information Exchange

Facebook is a useful information exchange platform, for instance, a user may have never heard of a Zumba class and you may be the one to explain it.  You may be thinking of trying kick-boxing and someone in your group suggests where to go or asks to join you.  As friends or followers interact, all kinds of valuable insight is gained.

If you’re looking for a new way to motivate yourself in order to stay on task with your fitness goals, try the Facebook method.  It is a cheap and easy way to get the accountability that might just help you get in shape and stay there.  It is also a great tool to help motivate your friends and get the conversation started!

A 2011 psychology department study at Stanford University shows that we have a tendency to over-estimate other people’s happiness.  And this, in turn, makes us feel sadder.  The idea for the study came from Ph.D. student Alex Jordan, when he observed that his friends always seemed more dejected when they’d finished looking at Facebook than before they started. 

In the study, a group of students were asked about positive and negative events in their own lives and the lives of their peers.  The students had to rate the frequency with which negative events (such as something which made them feel sad enough to cry) and positive events (such as scoring a high grade) occurred during a two week period.  All the participants over-estimated the number of positive events and under-estimated the frequency of negative events in their friends’ lives.

Another group were asked to rate their peers’ positive and negative emotions.  The students again over-estimated the degree of positive emotions and under-estimated the prevalence of negative feelings.  They believed their friends to be happier than they really were.

The participants also misjudged the quality of their peers’ social lives.  They thought their peers attended more parties and social events than they actually did.  The students believed their friends were leading more interesting, active and fulfilling lives than their own.

This assumption that even people we know well are having way more fun than we are, is what causes feelings of dejection.  Sites such as Facebook can exacerbate the problem.  Facebook lets us gauge the quality of our friends’ social and family lives, personal and professional achievements and relationship success.  We think we can measure their happiness.

But what the Stanford study also highlights is that in social settings (including social media) people tend to play down negative aspects of their lives.  We subconsciously promote our positive side.  Our jaunty status updates let our Facebook buddies see a happy version of ourselves.  It’s OK to be ‘down’ occasionally, but only in an upbeat way.  The more our peers hide negative emotions, the more likely we are to imagine they are happier than they really are, the study concludes.  Combine this with our tendency to envy others’ happiness and we have a downward spiral leading to more discontent.

So when we log in to Facebook to observe the wonderful worlds of others, perhaps their lives are not as fulfilling as they appear.  Perhaps to others, you appear sublimely content.  Could your friends be envious of your life?

The Steps:

1) Type the Facebook.com address in your browser to bring up the Facebook website.

2) Enter your information, such as “First Name” and “Your Email,” in the text fields that appear on the page. Click the “Sign Up” button to continue to the next step. 

3) Type the CAPTCHA code, which are the squiggly-looking words that appear in the “Security Box,” and then click the “Sign Up” button to proceed. If you can’t read the letters, click the box to the right to hear an audio version. Facebook makes you perform this step to ensure that you are actually a live person creating the account rather than a spam program.

4) Send friend requests to people now, or click the “Skip this step” link at the bottom of the page to do this later. To do it now, click the “Find Friends” link to the right of the email program you use, such as “Yahoo!,” or click this link next to “Other Email Service” if your program isn’t listed. Enter your email address and password when prompted and continue to follow the onscreen instructions to give Facebook permission to access your email account and generate a list of your contacts. When the list automatically displays, click the “Send Request” button next to the people that you want to add as your Facebook friends.

5) Enter your high school, college or employer names in the fields that appear, or feel free to skip this step by clicking the “Skip” link at the bottom. This information gives Facebook a way to help you connect with other people you may know. Click the “Save & Continue” button to finish.

6) Add a picture to your page, or click the “Skip” link to bypass this task. The photo appears next to your name on your Facebook page and in other areas, such as the “News Feed,” where you make comments. Click the “Upload a Photo” link to select an image from your computer, and then click the “Choose File” button in the dialog window that appears to upload the file to your page. Alternately, click the “Take a Photo” link and click the “Allow” option to let Facebook use your webcam to take a picture immediately.

7) Check your email and find the message from Facebook. If you don’t see it, look in your “Spam” or “Junk” folder. Click the link the note to confirm your address and finish creating your account. You are now a registered member of the Facebook community.