Just a quick note on my way between meetings, Facebook launched a redesign of its .com homepage late on September 29th, 2008.  The new design (shown below) uses much less whitespace, and features a new banner image.  Other than appearance, the biggest change seems to be that the public search box has been removed - although it is still available on the site, it is no longer on the homepage. 

My Friday gift to you is actually from Facebook.  In honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Facebook has added Pirate to the list of langua

From EduWeb 2008 

By: Jennifer Brady, University of Massachusetts & Dave Reske, NowSpeed Inc.

Tip: Use A/B/C landing pages for instant look/feel, headline, images feedback.

Ongoing Optimization: Review keywords, bids, ad copy and landing page data; and then optimize based on results.

Here are my brief notes from the Eduweb pre-conference session given by Mark Greenfield and Brad J. Ward:

Links to stories, articles, blogs that I recommend from the last week …

Social Ads are the Facebook equivalent to a classified ad in your local paper, when it comes to look and feel.  You don't have much control over the format or general appearance of your ad - but you do get to drop in an image, and you do get to craft your own demographic recipe.  

"Digital Handshakes in Networked Publics: Why Politicians Must Interact, Not Broadcast" by danah boyd has been recently published in the book Mobilizing Gen