Windows Live Messenger is set to receive a major revamp, and "social" will be its main highlight. With social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter getting more popular than ever, it appears that the Windows Live team at Microsoft will integrate these social sites and blogging platforms such as Wordpress into its upcoming Windows Live Messenger, beyond its current chat functionality. The latest leaked screenshots of Windows Live Messenger 2010 Beta or better known as Wave 4 have started surfacing on the web showing its improved interface and some new impressive social features. From the screenshots taken by Chinese site cnbeta, the "Social" view allows users to "connect" to Windows Live and Facebook, including Twitter and Wordpress. As both Twitter and Wordpress do not support IM services, it is too early to determine how Windows Live Messenger will be "linked" with the two platforms. It could be similar to the current Web Activities after all.

Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc, has emerged from an orphan in San Francisco to one of the world's most respected CEOs. His company designs great stuff -- iPhone, iPod and Mac. Although he may look rather serious while work, but he is actually a cheeky person when it comes to Facebook. Tay Yek Keak from The Straits Times imagines what Steve Jobs' Facebook page might look like. Full credit goes to The Straits Times (information) and Facebook (design). I have compiled them together to form what you see below. Don't forget to share with your friends!

Facebook Chat is a great way to talk with friends. Almost all of your friends are on Facebook, so it's the easiest way. There has always been one annoying part to Facebook Chat, it is only available on Facebook.com. Today Facebook announced support for any IM application to include Facebook Chat.

Facebook recently rolled out a new redesign that places a new emphasis on search, with features that help you find what you are looking for on the social networking site without any much hassle. For example, the top menu has been simplified to make it easier to get to what's fresh and important. The notification bar, which was located at the bottom right hand corner of the page, has been moved to the top menu section alongside with the more prominently placed search bar. And it has been rumored that Mark Zukerberg and Co. are working on a full featured webmail product called Project Titan. Few days ago, the folks over at Facebook have launched a simple yet useful auto-clicking photo slideshow prototype feature that allows users to view photo albums without clicking the "Next" or "Previous" button. No longer would you need to keep clicking through an album -- enjoy the photo albums hands-free and let Facebook do the job. This feature has already been implemented on Friendster for quite a while, and it's not known why Facebook didn't include it from the start of the day they release photo albums.

The social networking juggernaut yesterday celebrated its sixth birthday and impressive milestone of reaching 400 million registered users this week. What's more titillating is that Facebook has already rolled out a major revamp of its home page to 80 million users all over the world, and it appears that the gist of the redesign is on simplicity. It places a new emphasis on search, with features that help you find what you are looking for on Facebook without any much hassle. For example, the top menu has been simplified to make it easier to get to what's fresh and important. The notification bar, which was located at the bottom right hand corner of the page, has been moved to the top menu section alongside with the more prominently placed search bar. I haven't gotten gotten the new user-interface yet but from the screenshots taken by lucky users suggest that the folks over at Facebook have done a "pretty good job" and I personally love the redesign. Hopefully, Mark Zukerburg and Co. will continue to work on the privacy issues and reduce the amount of spam (Farmville, Click Here To Donate To The Victims In Haiti, etc.) on the home page.

Apparently, PHP is too slow for Facebook. In an effort to make drastic improvements to the speed of its applications and software, the social networking juggernaut has rewritten its PHP runtime from scratch, and will launch a big announcement to its 350 million users on Tuesday regarding the project. According to Alex Handy from the SD Times blog, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. plan to make it available as open source software, but no specific details on the project have been revealed. However, commentators of Handy's blog post claim otherwise, saying that Facebook will release a compiler for PHP rather than a completely new runtime. Last week, the core PHP team was invited to Facebook's headquarters where they were forced to sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement). It was rumored that Facebook hired someone two years ago to work on this project and believes it was done solely.

There are over a dozen of desktop clients out there that enable users to access Facebook without visiting the social networking website itself. One of the latest in town is Microsoft's Silverlight 4 Beta Client for Facebook. Although the tech juggernaut has already released SilverFace and FishBowl on April and November last year respectively, but neither of them is as impressive and awesome as its successor. Runs on both Windows and Mac OS X, the Silverlight client for Facebook works really fast and its user interface is way beyond words can describe. It comes complete with essential functionalities -- Status updates, photo browsing, mail and even a neat photo uploading tool. I personally love its dark interface. On the home screen, you would see the News Feeds in the middle, with the filters located on the left. The right section is pretty outstanding -- mouse over the random pictures and the user who uploaded them. Posting your first update using this client may be an "arduous" task to some because the option isn't as prominent as the original Facebook website. Click on the "What's on your mind?" link located at the top of your news feed and a box will appear.

In an effort to make the Internet more secure, the world's leading dedicated security company McAfee yesterday announced that it has collaborated with social networking juggernaut Facebook to provide discounted security services to all of its 350 million Facebook members. The partnership states that Facebook users will be eligible for a complimentary six-month subscription of the McAfee Internet Security Suite. After the six-month period, users who are satisfied with the software can purchased the subscription plan for a discounted price. The Santa Clara-based security company claimed that Facebook will not get a slice of the pie of the revenue from the sales of the subscription plans.