Your Face, getting bigger. Facebook ads Bigger Photos – Finally!
In a new post on the Facebook blog, Facebook have announced they will be rolling out a new updated photo size for ‘better viewing’.
Old photo size (left) compared to the new size. (Note that actual photos are larger; this shows scale only.)
There is a caveat for external applications that upload photos to Facebook (i.e. Windows Live Photo Grallery, iPhoto etc).
All uploads on Facebook.com will support the new photo size, but uploads made from some external applications may continue to use the previous size.
This will likely be remedied with an update to the application or plugin.
Ultimately this is a good thing, the limited photo size has been a contentious issue for many, particularly photographers eager to show off their work. Sites like Flickr allow photos to be uploaded and viewed in a variety of sizes including full resolution.
Twitter helps people find you
Stop! Before privacy advocates rush to burn twitter at the stake (assuming they’re finished with Google Buzz), please remember this latest move is entirely optional. When logging into http://twitter.com you’ll be prompted with a screen that reads ‘Be found on twitter’ and asks you confirm your profile information.
Twitter say they are aiming to increase discovery of your profile. I already have a public profile, so for me, this was a no brainer – the more followers the better.
Update
Post updated. Thanks to James for pointing out your email won’t be displayed publicly.
Facebook hits 400 Million active users
Well you sure like your facebook don’t you. After the launch of their (first) 2010 UI redesign, Facebook has just made the announcement they have reached 400 Million Active Users. A phenomenal number, and phenomenal growth, with the 350 million announcement only a few months back.
The next milestone is surely the big half a billion users, could it happen in 2010 ?
More @ Facebook.
Facebook launches new UI
Continuing along the never-ending quest for perfection, the Facebook UI has been changed again. The main change is a restructuring of the top navigation bar. Yes people it’s a change, so grab your pitchforks and scream to the hills, but spend some time with it, you’ll find just like last time, you can actually adjust pretty quickly.
Here’s a handy guide as to what’s new in the update. 
Learn more about it @ Facebook
8 million Australians are on Facebook
Facebook has just passed a major milestone in Australia. 8 million Australians are now Facebook. When using the advertising system on facebook, you can select a targeted demographic for your ad campaign. If you select ‘Australia’ for the country and leave all the other fields blank, you’ll get a user count for that, this is shown below.
This is quite an amazing statistic for a country of 22,135,317 people, more than 1/3 of the population.
Via Laurel Papworth
Twitter local trends, not so local
What used to be a very useful feature of Twitter – Trends, is now mostly filled with uninteresting rubbish, instead of being an insight into the most discussed topics online. Looking to solve this issue and make trends more appropriate to your part of the world, Twitter has just launched Local Trends to the public.
Sadly the localisation is extremely limited with only 6 countries available and the rest of the world being slumped into the all too familiar “Worldwide” mess.
If your country or city missed out (most will have) then Twitter has a message for you – “Don’t see your location? We’re working on it.” With only 15 cities this feature is clearly undercooked.
A more productive workaround for now is to use a search like “Albury OR Wodonga” for your city / town and surrounding area to see the conversations happening in your local area.
If you do happen to live in one of the “lucky” countries or cities, then you can see Local Trends by logging into http://twitter.com
Bill Gates joins twitter, connects with 100k users in a day
Could Bill Gates soar to the top position on twitter ? With news that he’s officially on twitter spreading like wildfire, his follower count continues to grow at an astonishing rate. In a matter of hours, he’s gone from 0 followers, to over 100,000 in one day.
Head over to http://twitter.com/billgates and hit the refresh button on your browser to watch how fast they’re piling on. Expect this rate to be sustained for the next few weeks as more tweets and blogs help spread the world. I predict he will become one of the top people on twitter, if not THE top.
So what’s the world’s richest man got to say ? Well his first tweet is a tip of the hat to his geek past – “Hello World.” There’s also news about his work at the Bill and Melinda foundation and the disaster in Haiti.
He’s only following 40 people right now, including powerful people like Barack Obama, but also some more interesting accounts from the tech community – Ina Fried from cNet and also TechCrunch. Apparently Bill’s also a fan of Ashley Tisdale
Something else to watch with interest, is Gates’ first hand exposure to the power of twitter, a service his beloved Microsoft does not own. Could we see a buyout or investment of twitter by Microsoft in the not to distant future ?
Ultimately, it’s an import celebrity for twitter to get on board and an important platform Gates to use to hopefully benefit humanity.
Update
Today the count is over 250,000 followers on twitter. Add to that his Facebook page – http://www.facebook.com/BillGates has 58,817 fans. He’s also now posting blog entries at http://www.gatesnotes.com/