While the mid-atlantic has wrapped up this week by posting photos of the blizzard to their Facebook profiles, Facebook itself has had a busy week. The most significant news about Facebook this week has been the backlash against Facebook’s privacy overhaul. With a new FTC complaint filed by 10 privacy organizations, Facebook is under increasing pressure to adjust how they transition users to the new privacy settings. Considering that most users (if not all) have been transitioned, it may be too little, too late.

Facebook Ads Fan Feature To Poll And Event Engagement Ads

On Friday, Facebook announced that they had upgraded their poll and event engagement ads to include a “Become A Fan” call to action, after the user completed the initial action (watch a video or take a poll). While not a massive upgrade to the advertisement, it highlights how Facebook Pages have become an integral component of Facebook’s advertising offering.

Facebook Announces A Spring-Time f8

On Thursday Facebook announced that the third f8 developer conference will be hosted on April 21st and 22nd next year. We’re expecting Facebook to have rolled out their Credits offering to developers by then as well as have a working version of the new Open Graph API. Facebook hasn’t announced any other details aside from the date, however we’d expect more information to be released in the coming weeks.

Facebook Adds Anniversaries To Relationship Statuses

Facebook made a minor change to profiles last week: the addition of relationship anniversaries. Now when you specify that you are in a relationship or married, you can also include an anniversary date. Your upcoming anniversary will then be listed on the homepage of Facebook. While not yet a feature, Facebook plans on rolling out notifications about your friends’ anniversaries as well.

Facebook Releases The Preferred Developer Consultant Program

Last week Facebook provided a new directory for those individuals and businesses in need of Facebook development services. The Preferred Developer Consultant Program has a list of 14 companies who can help you out with custom applications. Rather than handling all inquiries that come in to Facebook directly, they are providing the list so that organizations can reach out to the companies directly.

Facebook Now Testing fb.me And More To Come

Last week Facebook began testing the fb.me short URL for all links posted out from Facebook. The company also began testing a service which lets users publish public status updates directly to Twitter, then linking back to Facebook. While Techcrunch said the service would be rolled out by the end of the week, we’ve yet to see the service up and running. Maybe next week?

We Have A New Facebook Privacy Guide!

Last week we released out new Facebook privacy guide which outlines “10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know”. We’ve received a lot of positive feedback and will continue posting updates about any changes to the privacy settings. If you have any questions about the new Facebook privacy settings, I highly recommend that you check out the guide.