When I approach social networking applications, I like to split out what you can do on your own site from what you can do through other social networking sites like facebook. This article refers to the latter, and it looks like Google is putting the heat on facebook:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/31/technology/31google.html?_r=1&ex=13515...
The beauty of this is that their competition will result in better services for us. An obvious statement, I know, but when it comes to Google, they really like to give away services and this has been extremely helpful in helping education reach students more effectively. The new applications that will come out of this competition will likely have a dramatic effect on what we as educators can do with these sites to help improve our online classrooms. It may be confusing at first as people choose "sides", but in the end, I see this as a very beneficial development.
