We know that Facebook is moving at lighting speed to stay 20 steps ahead of the social networking game. Here’s a couple of other features that Facebook has in the works to do just that:

The ability to sort your friends and organize them into groups is an upcoming feature that nicely aligns with the objectives and functionality of Facebook. This will allow you to better determine who sees what kind of content, and simply offers more privacy options within your personal networks.

Another upcoming feature is the ability to read email messages in digest form, which means you can receive one single email with all of your notifications, sent to you on a daily basis. These are small tweaks, but good tweaks nonetheless. MySpace, Xing and Friendster have been modifying their profile pages for the better as well.

Sam Sethi at Blognation UK has a scoop: apparently, he got a preview of a new instant messaging app for Facebook — and according to his description, it doesn’t require you to download or install anything, or to register, as many Facebook apps do. You just sign in and use it. At the risk of sounding like a Facebook fan-boy, despite the ugly interface I think this could be huge.

I think it could be good not only for Facebook, which has been missing real-time chat — making do with messages and “wall” posts — but for instant messaging as a whole. Like Sam, I see it as a way of doing an end-run around the fact that you still need multiple IM clients to chat with all of your friends, who might be using Yahoo or AIM or MSN or Skype or GTalk

“No more MSN, AIM, GTalk, Yahoo chat — one instant messenger for all your friends.” All your friends who are on Facebook, of course. Still, it sounds like a pretty good solution to a Balkanized IM environment. And it could stand to make Facebook even stickier than it already is.

We heard last week that WordPress would be launching a new release today. Well, it’s here. Tagging and tag clouds are now available for WordPress bloggers. There’s also the new update notification feature that lets you know when there’s a new release for WordPress, or when any other plug-ins you have get an update as well.

There’s also the cleaning up of URLs, which redirects post with changed slugs so links won’t go bad, redirects URLs that get cut off in emails, and more. This particular feature should help you with SEO as well. Be sure to check it out. See here for more WordPress resources and tools. Download the new version..

Bill Gates ranked tops (surprise!) in Forbes’ newest list of the top 400 richest Americans with a commanding $59 billion. Half of the ten wealthiest earned their billions from the tech industry.Among those that made the $1.3 billion cutoff were five Googlers (GOOG), including employee #12 Omid Kordestani and early investor Ram Shriram. Three of Silicon Valley’s most influential VCs made the super rich list:  Kleiner Perkins” L. John Doerr and Vinod Khosla and Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz. The Valley’s most revered entrepreneur, Steve Jobs (APPL), made the No. 56 slot with $5.7 billion.
But striking it rich through tech is still a small and elite business. Just 10 percent of those on the list make their billions that way. Compare that to nearly 5 percent who make money by inheriting it. Here’s a look at the ten richest tech titans and their staggering net worth.

Blog Rush is a blog syndication network. It works around a widget that the blogger needs to put in his website, and the widget displays headlines coming from the blogs on the network.

The goal of service is straight forward: to give you more traffic and readers.

There have been many similar services in the past, but Blog Rush is introducing some interesting innovations. First of all you earn “syndication credits” every time the widget is loaded on your website (i.e., one credit for each page view). If your blog has 500 daily page views, your headlines will be displayed on other blogs using the widget 500 times daily.

Secondly, you can also earn credits by referring people. Every time the widget is displayed on the blog of your referrals you will also earn one credit. So early adopters will be rewarded – Get it now!!

Recently Apple introduced the iPod Touch. It’s essentially an iPhone without the phone gizmos, and without the speakers and built-in microphone. $299 buys you an 8GB sytem, complete with all the iPhone-like touchy goodness you’ve come to know and want. $399 buys you a 16 GB model with which is still relatively small storage for a media player.

The iTouch includes built-in WiFi so you can use Safari and YouTube on-the-go as well as make purchases from the iTunes Store. (the iPhone will offer the same ability later this month). Its main button bar offers direct access to Music (great icon), Videos (ugly icon) and Photos (same old icon), as well as the new iTunes WiFi store.

The specifications as listed on Apple’s website are:

* Screen material: glass
* Screen size: 8.9 cm (3.5 in)
* Screen resolution: 480×320 pixels at 163 ppi
* Input method: Multi-touch screen interface
* Operating System: OS X
* Storage: 8 or 16 GB Flash memory
* Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)
* Built-in rechargeable, non-removable battery with up to 5 hours of video playback, and up to 22 hours of audio playback
* Size: 110×61.8×8 mm (4.3×2.4×0.31 in)
* Weight: 120 g (4.2 oz)

The iPod touch has a lower amount of storage space, compared to the lower-priced flagship iPod classic, due to flash memory limitations.

More photos and video clip after the jump (more…)

Yahoo’s rumored social network, dubbed “Mash,” has arrived. The company started inviting people outside the company to test it on Friday, the company says in a blog.

Mash is different from other social networks in that you can start profiles for your friends and “open” your own profile to friends you trust, according to the Mash blog. What that means, exactly, is still a bit unclear. You can also reportedly customize your profile or friends’ profiles with other apps, ala Facebook.

“One last note before you jump in: Mash is still pretty raw–there are bugs and we haven’t gotten to several of the features it really should have. We need to hear from you about where to focus our efforts,” writes Will Aldrich, the head of Mash.

“Mash appears to (be) Yahoo’s way of saying adieu to its existing social network, Yahoo 360, but no word yet on whether the company will actually be shutting down 360,” the post says.

More social networking news

More screen shots after the jump
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Nielsen/NetRatings has released online traffic data for social networking, blogs, and video sites dating from August 2006 to August 2007. The report indicated a 117%, 19 million unique users, traffic growth for Facebook and a lagging, albeit still strong, MySpace growth of a 23% pace of 60 million. In the video sites ratings report, MySpace videos dropped 6%, while YouTube gained 66% and Veoh soared 346%. Has all the spam and glitter graphics finally caused a traffic jam at MySpace?

An interesting item to note in the blog statistics is that the entertainment blog TMZ actually draws more unique visitors than major blogging communities comprised of millions of users such as LiveJournal and Xanga.

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