Today, Facebook will be rolling out a redesign of their homepage. Selected users will see the redesign first, the remaining FB users will see it over the coming days. The new design will boost Real-time updates (very Twitter like), which allows users to post and receive immediate updates from friends, family, companies, and public figures. The emphasis will be on sharing media and links, which I’m really excited about. My biggest grip about FB’s previous update function was the nested message on the top that always asked you “What are you doing now?” and the attachment of your name with every status update. The new ‘Publisher’ interface will let users share links, photos, status, messages; and will make pulling in twitter messages more practical. I have yet to play around with the new interface, but can’t wait to see the update in my account.

Update: Facebook’s new publisher interface is NOT satisfactory! Yes, it can import feeds in real-time, but there is one major design flaw. The fact that the new publisher interface allows you to update more than just your status, your name SHOULDN’T be included with ever update as part of the content. This makes updates harder to read and impractical to use. They already have your FB icon identify the owner of the content, WHY must they also include your name to break your content? This needs to be seriously corrected!

[Via TechCrunch]

Zoho, an online office suite provider has launched a Zoho Facebook application.

Zoho for Facebook will allow users to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from within Facebook. However, Zoho is not fully integrate with the Facebook’s user/ login system thus all Facebook users will still need a Zoho account (which is free).

[Via TechCrunch]

The Lending Club is a Facebook exclusive person-to-person lending service that launched with F8 on May 24. “Since its inception it has closed 28 loans for a total of $101,250. An additional $212,650 in loans will close in the next 12 days. More than $180,000 is currently available from 271 lenders with around 10-15 new lenders transferring money to Lending Club every day.” “The Facebook platform has allows Lending Club to enabling lenders to find borrowers within shared networks. Lending Club uses technology to pair the two parties based on shared connections without giving lenders direct access to the borrowers Facebook profile.” “P2P lending is a rapidly growing market. Lending Club faces stiff competition from companies such as Zopa, CircleLending and Prosper. Although it may not be the market leader in terms of volume, Lending Club’s growing success demonstrates the potential of Facebook as a sales and finance platform.”

[Via TechCruch]

Last week, Facebook removed the restrictions on registration and anyone can become a member now. Was that smart? Are they trying to become Mysace? Exclusive registration was the only thing they had going for them and now they have even given that up.

Anticipating another revoit by existing users who like enjoy the exclusive club, Facebook has put in a place a number of new privacy controls:

• Block other users in specific networks from searching for his or her name.
• Prevent people in those networks from messaging, poking and adding him or her as a friend.
• Control whether his or her profile picture shows up in search results.

Expect Facbook to grow rapidly in the up coming weeks.

Only hours after facebook released a feature entitled “Feeds” & “mini Feeds” users responded with aggression. A petition has been launched and many are planning to boycott the site if the featured is not removed or provided optionally. I personally don’t mind the feature. From a technical stand point it’s really cool because it lowers pages views, all in the while allowing users to see what’s up with friends. But, what I’m hearing from a couple of my buddies who use facebook regularly is that it’s invading their privacy. In some aspects the new features are leaking out information that users may not want featured. An example would be if I visited facebook on the hour and left message and checks friend’s profiles, I can easily see how people can infer that I have no life outside of facebook. I don’t personally logon to facebook all that much (to be honest, some of my buddies have been try to get me on facebook more often lately shooting messages there rather then my email) but, I know many do and feeds of there activity is definitely not appealing.