Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a lengthy blog post Wednesday on Facebook’s blog in response to raising privacy concerns. Zuckerberg said, “Over the past few weeks, the number one thing we've heard is that many users want a simpler way to control their information. Today we're starting to roll out changes that will make our controls simpler and easier.” He introduced some changes to Facebook’s privacy settings by offering a “one-click” mechanism that allows users to have full control over their shared information. The CEO said that the new security aspect enable users to know how much of their personal information is publicly available on the web.

Yahoo has been constantly adding more Facebook features to Yahoo Mail. As the first step, Yahoo enabled Y! Mail users to import contacts from their Facebook account. Yahoo then allowed its users to update Facebook status from Y Mail along with the ability to see photos of their Facebook friends when they email them. Well yesterday Yahoo announced in its Yahoo Mail Blog yet another feature of Facebook available with Y Mail. Now Yahoo users can view, comment and like their Facebook news feed items directly from Yahoo Mail. The activities of friends at Facebook will now show up in the Updates section, in addition to friends’ activity on Yahoo, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

The Web 2.0 Summit announced the initial list of speakers participating in the event that is to take place on November 15-17 this year at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. “Program Chair, John Battelle of Federated Media and O'Reilly CEO and founder, Tim O'Reilly zero in on the theme 'Points of Control: The Battle for the Network Economy,' and have confirmed an unprecedented initial line-up of industry leaders to join them on stage.” 

For the past month or two, the growing issues surrounding Facebook, and the group account deletions and boycotts because of them.  At the opening of the second day of Disrupt, Vice President of Facebook Chris Cox (among others) spoke a bit about addressing those issues, particularly privacy.  Whether privacy is really the key issue, or it’s just been blown up by the tech media, it’s what the folks over at Facebook are working the hardest on.  According to Cox, within the next day or two, Facebook will be releasing an updated and “simplified” security settings interface to try and solve what they believe to be their biggest issue.  Depending on how this interface change is implemented, it may or may not be a good thing. If implemented wrong, it could be disastrous.

TweetUp, a search and advertising startup, launched yesterday at Disrupt. Serial entrepreneur Bill Gross appeared on stage and unveiled TweetUp’s core service. They call the service “Adsense for Twitter”, as it has an algorithm that sorts tweets based on relevance and importance.  Tweetup does have the potential to benefit all parties. Advertisers can promote themselves in a relevant manner, plus readers will see tweets that are relevant, this improving the flow of information.

Facebook is constantly introducing new features. The company announced yesterday that that it has launched an exclusive mobile version of the site: 0.facebook.com. The brand new mobile site is absolutely free, super fast and has been made accessible for more than 50 mobile operators in 45 countries, said Sid Murlidhar, product marketing team, Facebook Mobile. This mobile version is said to include most of the features that users are used to seeing on the site.

Sick of video conferencing with your family in those slow grainy images on your computer?  Panasonic has just announced the answer.  The HD technology king has developed Skype on your VIERA, which can be used to video conference right on your HD, VIERA CAST enabled TVs!  If you're the proud owner of a VT25, VT20, G25, or G20 series VIERA HDTV, you can easily activate the service, install the Skype-enabled communication camera, sit back on the couch and talk to family and friends in pure comfort (and a more natural setting for conversing!).

Nowadays, mobile apps that enhance vehicle connectivity have been a hot topic. Last month, Ford enabled some Michigan University students to develop social networking apps for cars. The winning team started a drive to Maker Faire, accompanied by Ford engineers. As the excitement about the event has not subsided yet, General Motors has officially announced that it is developing new mobile app features for the yet-to-be released Chevrolet Volt electric car. It is OnStar that employs Google technology to develop the apps, said GM. It added that the Android applications will be explained briefly at Google’s I/O conference.

Some people are upset about Facebook’s increased security measures, some can’t get over the recent security breaches, some are irked by the coming monetization, and some are just tired of the ubiquitous nature of the social networking giant.   Regardless of their reason, recently there has been a movement for a mass abandonment of Facebook.  So far, there hasn’t been a staggering number of people to officially sign up, but there are certainly plenty of people unsatisfied with Facebook.   No one is sure yet whether or not this will actually hurt Facebook’s bottom line or social credibility, but the fact that such a movement exists in the first place should have them at least a little worried.

Diaspora – This is the name given to an open source personal web server that helps users have control over their data. This idea has sprouted out of Facebook's privacy concerns and has received much attention from social we lovers (and Facebook haters). Four New York University students started this project. They aimed to collect funding of $10,000 for completing the project. They hoped to have the amount in hand by June1, but instead it came in just 12 days. The team achieved this with the help of the fund raising platform called Kickstarter. 

In an attempt to keep user accounts well-protected from scams, Facebook has recently introduced new tools and systems specially meant for throwing out the scammers and keep the users educated about any suspicious activity that needs immediate action.

Twitter has taken its business features to the next level by planning for the launch of Twitter Business Center. Mashable has confirmed with Twitter that beta testing of the new feature has begun. Mashable has quoted Twitter as saying, “only a handful of accounts have these features presently.” One of the best features so far is the option for businesses to accept direct messages from people they aren’t following. This can be good news for bringing more customer service functions to Twitter.

Over at Twitter Media, a new tool called Blackbird Pie was posted today that can convert tweets to html for easily embedded around the Web. So far Blackbird Pie seems to be working well for most. Some have reported it works fine, while others are having issues. It is important to note that Blackbird Pie is not an “official feature,” just a new addition released by a helpful developer who has found it to be useful for himself.

As I posted a few weeks ago, six teams of students from University of Michigan were working with Ford Motor Company’s Research and Advanced Engineering to come up with social networking applications for cars. The six teams attempted to improve on road connectivity by incorporating internet access, social networks, GPS and real-time vehicle data. It was all made possible with “advanced technology and development tools provided by Ford, Microsoft and Intel, along with a crash course in vehicle interface design provided by Ford engineers,” said a Ford press release.

Google has just made sharing your Picasa pictures and albums a whole lot easier.  Typically your images are shared by inviting your friends to view your album, but now Google has made your albums "social" by creating easy share buttons for Google Buzz, Blogger, and Twitter within your albums.  And sharing is as easy as clicking one button, hence the "easy-share."