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Facebook has become the new kid on the block for me already, first it was blogging, then it was bookmarking, then it was the tweeting darling, and now I’m knee deep into Facebook…infact now I can do most of everything in Facebook, it’s my social network and productivity dashboard.

Some thoughts…

Absolutely love that you can tag people when you write a note, it can be become a distributed discussion, and it’s also like a way of trackbacks, as you may want that person to know you are mentioning them in that note, or even more you are explicitly tagging them as you want them to reply (as the note is about them).
They could write a new note and tag you, or just go to your wall and leave a comment, or even message you, lots of ways to communicate all with their own purpose…this tag feature is missing in Posted Items.
I blogged about a similar thing not long ago.

Since I re-syndicate my feed in my notes stream I’d like to filter this stream to just see my written notes or just see my imported notes, or perhaps even set it this way. Same goes when I look at notes from all my friends, since some of them re-syndicate their feeds I’m doubling up as I’m reading their feeds in my RSS Reader.

Reading your Friends notes stream kind of reminds me of an RSS Reader, only you can’t mark read/unread…there is also a feed module to read people’s blog feeds that don’t re-syndicate in their notes or people who don’t use Facebook….after all this is a startpage social network.

Since you can’t mark read/unread, and you don’t want to miss anything you still have the option to subscribe to the RSS feed of your friends notes stream or posted items stream or even visit a friend to just get their notes or Posted items feed.
You can subscribe to this feed in the Facebook 3rd party RSS module I mentioned before, but this still lacks mark read/unread (unlike Netvibes and PageFlakes), so you will have to use your regular RSS Reader.

Anyway, since I’ve been in Facebook for the last hour I’ve noticed a friend commented on my wall, I wouldn’t of known this if I didn’t check my wall. Same goes with friends that leave comments on your notes and posted items or tag you in their notes or photos…you just got to look around to see the lastest.

More time passed and I opened my email later on and noticed these notifications of friends interacting with me…feels a bit odd that I leave Facebook and then find about new stuff in my email which happened while I was in Facebook, so then I go back to Facebook.
Couldn’t the Facebook Inbox have a notification stream (and even a pop-up), I mean I don’t want to live in Facebook, but that’s probably the idea…heck, when there’s a Gmail module I can write and receive emails in Facebook.

Whether you live in Facebook or email, that is the question?

NOTE: I just joined the RSSbook group (RSS feeds module) in Facebook, and posted a new topic, I wonder how I’ll know if someone replies, no doubt I’ll get an email notification, but what about an Inbox notification in Facebook.

Actually…the Minifeed module documents stuff you do in Facebook, so maybe we need a Minime module to document stuff people do to me, as well as Inbox notifications.

Read/Write Web is right Facebook is like a startpage social network, or what has evolved into a digital lifestyle aggregator.

Facebook is everything:
- social network
- startpage (dashboard)
- photos/video
- link blog
- note blog
- classifieds
- events/calendar
- inbox messaging
- online indicator
- presence/status blogging
- networks neighbourhoods (a slice of Facebook)
- groups (member based content)

Looking at this list you’d think Facebook have displaced a lot of web 2.0 services like; Twitter, outside.in, upcoming, flickr, edgeio, del.icio.us, YouTube, etc…

Well the inhouse versions are not as robust, but then they have gone one step better and become a widget dashboard, if they can’t offer the best modules they let what’s out there come to them.
What they do is social networking and community base, so bringing the best of the web into its fold is catapulting them into the biggest thing we have seen so far in web 2.0…I think anyway.

It’s a good thing Netvibes and PageFlakes have got into topic portals, somewhat like Zimbio wikizines, because I’m afraid Facebook will dominate, it’s a social network and startpage in one…and the Groups feature is not too far off a topic page.

Now that they have gone the full startpage widget path, you will be able to do anything within Facebook…mashable showcases a few like: box files, splashcast, slide, jangl, widgetbox, yackpack, scrapblog, etc…see the apps directory…I found one called Trakzor, seems like some kind of MyBlogLog recent readers, I’ve also added Twitter, Feeds, del.icio.us…

You can label your interests but not tag based, so it could do with a little people tagging.

I’m just imagining Facebook for the enterprise, well you can create groups…but this type of networking and knowledge sharing tunes to your content and people interests, you know longer have to go look for stuff, it comes to you. You know what you need to know, if not it won’t take long to be connected. It’s not just you and an impersonal static document management system anymore…experiences and daily work people do in the work cubicles is now online and social. Someone is bound to already have done or looked for what you are after, and now you can know or connect to that, as we are expressing stuff we do and our interests in an online social network and sense of place…we are not alone anymore in the information junkyard.

Features

There are lots of settings and email notifications eg. non-friends can’t see your profile, non-friends can’t see your list of friends, all can’t see your notes.
What I noticed is that you can send a message to a non-friend.

BIO/INFORMATION/CONTACT DETAILS
- details about you and an image

FRIENDS
- add friends (until it’s reciprocated)
- there isn’t a list of people you have tried to friend (waiting friend list)…but if you do visit one of these profiles, it will say you are waiting to be friends
- search, browse, imported from your email contacts
- search your friends, limit by region

FRIENDS - LIST
- click to profile
- click to send a message
- click to view their friends
- poke

FRIENDS - STATUS UPDATES
- your friends currently online indicator
- set your status (presence)…choose a setting or micro-blog your own presence…this is a bit like Twitter as you can also see the latest status of all your Friends. Unlike Twitter you can’t see the archived stream, and it’s not used for chatting…well it could be, as you can subscribe to a feed containing your friends status updates, as well as posted items and notes (I’ll explain these last 2 later).
And the Minifeed section (explain later) has an archive of all your status updates, and you can send and receive status updates by mobile phone texting.

FRIENDS - SOCIAL TIMELINE
Not sure yet, perhaps a time linear view of your interactions with friends

WALL
- post to your wall or others can post to your wall

From a wall post you can:
- click to friends wall
- wall to wall is viewing a friends wall limited to just posts you have made to each other (archive of wall exchanges or discussions I guess)
- click to privately message your friend
- click to their profile
Once you are at their wall page you can
- give a gift
- poke (must be similar to “nudge” in Twitter)

INBOX
This is for private messages
- kind of like email, but you can only attach rich weblinks, you can’t upload files
- can’t limit messages by friend

PHOTOS AND VIDEO
- add and label photo’s (not tags) and create albums
- see all your friends latest photos or just your photo’s or even friends photos that have been tagged with your name because you may be in the photo
- comments for photos and also comments for photos that friends have added that have you in them

I don’t know if I have the above right, but it’s very granular and social

- send a photo as a message or post it to your profile (explain later)
- send an email from your phone or PC to upload a photo

NOTES
- Kind of like your inhouse blog or notes or to-do, you can even re-syndicate any RSS feed to be spliced into your Notes
I’d like to see these three split up: I’d like notes, to-do and a blog
- see all your friends notes
- keep them private or for your friends to see, etc…
- when you add a note you can even tag someone, this way they can see notes about them (kind of similar to trackbacks)
- comments
- send to a friend as a message or post to your profile (explain later)
- RSS feed
- send an email from your phone or PC to add a post or SMS a post…what about getting an SMS or email back of your current notes like Gubb

POSTED ITEMS
- via Facebook or a bookmarklet or a button on a website (even blog post footer)
- see all your friends posted items
- so this is more like a link blog with comments and a feed
- and this is the place where you can send photo’s and notes to your profile (it should say send to your Posted Items)…funny thing is I even sent a Posted Items to my Posted Items (should be grayed out and just have send message to a friend)

MOBILE
- Send and receive texts from your phone, kind of like Twitter
- Profile info
- update status
- Get a friends mobile phone number sent to you
- Send a message
- Poke
- Wall post
- Add a friend
- Write a note

Get the cheat sheet
Also a full mobile web version of Facebook

MINIFEED
- funnily enough this doesn’t have a feed, it is a stream of items documenting most things you do on Facebook eg. notes, wall, added a friend, added an application, status change, etc..limit stream by type.

EVENTS
- Your events calendar, friends events, etc…

MARKETPLACE
- classifieds and wishlist

GROUPS
- contains a list of members, photos, wall, discussion board, news
…there are groups that represent a blog (treading into MyBlogLog territory), a community spot around your blog where people can hang out and contact you and discuss. This adds value to your blog as it is an explicit environment for your blog visitors to engage with you and other members. Let’s face it blog sidebar tools and widgets are good for communicating, but it’s not the same as a community hang out around your blog.

NETWORKS
- subsets of Facebook, so for the Australia network you have people, events, marketplace, groups, posted items, discussion board, wall

In Facebook we find Communities, sometimes called CoP interwined in the same system as networks, plus you as an individual have your friends and view from your spot…more.

From all this knowledge sharing we can add value to our lives or business (knowledge is the competitive and productive edge), as people are connected by interests, they have tools to collect stuff, publish tacit or personal idea’s, questions, experiences…so could it be of any more value.
I think a relationship analysis like Visible Path fine tunes this social knowledge network environment and can further connect and recommend to a finer degree.

[ADDED: Whether you live in Facebook or email, that is the question?]