Today, Facebook filed its S-1 paperwork to take the company public, and along with the filing came a letter from its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

In the letter, Zuckerberg discusses how important the connections that his company is making are. Along with social connections, Facebook’s CEO points out that connecting consumers to businesses can have a big impact on the global economy:

We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.

Of course most people won’t put down a lot of money to invest in a company that lets you poke your friends, so the company mission will start to become clearer as we get closer to May, when the company will start being publicly traded. It’s no accident that Facebook is starting to sound more like a grown-up company than ever before. Connecting the world is no small task, and Facebook hopes that its $5B IPO will help them get there.

Here’s Mark Zuckerberg’s letter in its entirety:

LETTER FROM MARK ZUCKERBERG

Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.

We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do. I will try to outline our approach in this letter.

At Facebook, we’re inspired by technologies that have revolutionized how people spread and consume information. We often talk about inventions like the printing press and the television — by simply making communication more efficient, they led to a complete transformation of many important parts of society. They gave more people a voice. They encouraged progress. They changed the way society was organized. They brought us closer together.

Today, our society has reached another tipping point. We live at a moment when the majority of people in the world have access to the internet or mobile phones — the raw tools necessary to start sharing what they’re thinking, feeling and doing with whomever they want. Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.

There is a huge need and a huge opportunity to get everyone in the world connected, to give everyone a voice and to help transform society for the future. The scale of the technology and infrastructure that must be built is unprecedented, and we believe this is the most important problem we can focus on.

We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other.

Even if our mission sounds big, it starts small — with the relationship between two people.

Personal relationships are the fundamental unit of our society. Relationships are how we discover new ideas, understand our world and ultimately derive long-term happiness.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.

By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date. We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring.

We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.

We hope to improve how people connect to businesses and the economy.

We think a more open and connected world will help create a stronger economy with more authentic businesses that build better products and services.

As people share more, they have access to more opinions from the people they trust about the products and services they use. This makes it easier to discover the best products and improve the quality and efficiency of their lives.

You’ve got to start them young, right? With kids picking up on how to use a computer faster than ever before, why not teach them how to program too?

Kids Ruby is a piece of software and set of tutorials that teaches kids the art of development, with Ruby as its programming language of choice. Forget science fairs, your son or daughter could be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

The software is available for Mac or PC, or if you’re feeling really adventurous, you can install the KidsRuby OS, which is built on Ubuntu. Now that’s a cool weekend project, especially if you’ve purchased a new household computer for Christmas.

Teach your kids how to program

The KidsRuby site speaks about programming in a way that kids can understand. It often suggests that children “hack” their homework:

When we say “hack your homework” we mean “learn how to write a computer program to help you with your homework”. For example, writing code to solve a particular math problem. By showing kids that programming can apply to the real world, like any subject, it becomes a lot more interesting to learn about.

The term “hack” in the computer world, means to be able to do something with hardware or software that the original designers did not realize could be done, usually in a good way. This term is often confused with the term “crack” which means to bypass security of some kind, usually considered something bad that you do not wish to do.

How adorable is that? Soon, your kids will be running around the house looking for things to automate. They might even come up with the next big thing, you never know.

With the KidsRuby editor and curriculum, children can jump right in and start creating simple programs in Ruby:

With all of the code for KidRuby sitting on GitHub, people are starting to collaborate on it and make more curriculums for your budding rock star developer. The site even announced a new learning game for programming called “RubyWarrior”, which is also available on GitHub. By learning commands in Ruby, you have to navigate your warrior up a set of stairs to beat the game.

Even though this is a text-based game, think of it as two-dimensional where you are viewing from overhead. Each level is always rectangular in shape and is made up of a number of squares. Only one unit can be on a given square at a time, and your objective is to find the square with the stairs. Here is an example level map and key.

If you unleash your children on KidsRuby, be sure to share your experiences with us in the comments.

➤ KidsRuby

The BBC aired a one hour profile of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday (if you’re in the UK, you can watch it here). All in all, most of you will have heard every detail shared before; aside from perhaps one question, does Mark Zuckerberg really see Google+ as a threat?

The question was met with a wry smile that almost dismissed the question before he’d answered it but thankfully he continued:

“Yeah Google’s a great company and I think we want to look at and learn from everything that they do. But at the same time, people have shared a lot on Facebook and have already told a lot of their life story on Facebook. And we think that we have by far better tools for doing that.”

As far as we’re aware this is the first acknowledgement of Google+’s potential threat, aside from his brief mention of Google’s “little Facebook.”

Zuckerberg will almost certainly be paying attention to Google+ because irrespective of how Google wants to market it, Google+ is a director competitor to Facebook. And with Google continuing to plough resources into Google+, user figures are growing, time on site is growing, features are being added on a weekly basis, and it has a backing of a company with deep pockets of cash and plenty of places to direct traffic to it; the next couple of years could see dramatic changes in the way we communicate.

One of the questions that I get asked the most is “what is the next big thing on the Web?”. Usually, when people ask this, they’re trying to find out which company will be hot next, or which app will get our attention for six to twelve months. That’s a short view and not an answer to what the “next Web” looks like, meaning how we’ll use the Internet in three to five years.

Things will change; our interfaces to the Internet will start to alter, our communication styles will continue to evolve. I think I have a pretty good idea of what the next web will look like. It won’t be more services or social networks, it will be more control over the wild west of an Internet that we have today.

Control of data is a big part of the next web. Our data, specifically. We’ve given up a ton of it, and now it’s time to get something in return.

Successful companies know this, and that’s why they’ve been collecting heaps of data over the past ten years. Let’s look at the companies who have the most data, and how they’ll use it to usher us into a more personalized web, where we’re in the driver’s seat.

Facebook will be an operating system

Facebook has our relationship data and has a pretty good idea of who we are. By analyzing what we like, comment on, and by who we interact with, Facebook could nearly clone some of us with the amount of information and tendencies they’ve learned from us since launching to the free world.

On September 26, 2006, Mark Zuckerberg and company started what would be one of the longest term visions of any company known to man. On that date, the company became available to anyone with an email address. Over years and years, they would collect information about us. And we’d give it to them willingly. Make no mistake about it, Facebook owns at least a part of your digital identity, along with over 800 million other people’s.

Having said that, you’d think that the next Web involves Facebook advertising to us based on the information we’ve given them. That’s a short-term goal for Facebook. The long-term vision could be an operating system in the cloud that starts with you and ends with you. The feature that will begin giving your data back to you in a presentable way is Timeline, which is yet to be released to the world.

When you install a fresh version of an operating system, there’s nothing there. You have to install software, tinker with settings, and get your environment to your liking. A Facebook operating system doesn’t need any tinkering whatsoever. Facebook knows what you like, what you do, when you do it, and how you do it. The service stores your social brain.

What if a random stranger let you log into their Facebook account? You could get a pretty good idea of who they are pretty quickly based on the friends they have, and the things they’ve interacted with.

One of Facebook’s investors is Microsoft, and its consumer operating system, Windows, should be retired for a more social and web-based experience. Facebook.

To prove my point, ask yourself this. If Facebook had an integrated Web browser, would you really ever have to leave the site? A lot of people would say No.

Twitter will replace texting and take a bite out of email

Twitter, the land of goofy trending topics and celebrities, has solidified one thing – brevity. Communicating in 140 characters or less is a trend that will continue, and simply the action of keeping our thoughts brief is something that warrants the $1.16B that Twitter has raised to date.

How many companies and services you can think of have changed the way you communicate? Email, the cell phone, texting, Twitter, and yeah…that’s about it.

Apple integrated Twitter into iOS for a reason, it sees the company as a communication medium that will be around for years.

Since Twitter could take a bite out of email, the service has to eventually give us more control over our data. Personal dashboards that aggregate the contents of our thoughts and tell us things about ourselves that we might not have cognitively known is a perfect example of how Twitter is a part of the next Web. Data in, insights out.

Google will think for us

Google arguably has some of the most valuable data, that being a record of all of the things we search on. Search is one of the most important data points in learning our tendencies. Our aggregated search data can tell us what we’re curious about, what we’re interested in, and what we need to learn more about.

If we took the top thousand Google searches and removed all references to porn, you could probably put together a pretty strong school curriculum. Our data today could help teach people in the future.

Managing your own data

There’s a pretty good chance that we’ll be getting more out of the data that we put in over the next few years, simply because it’s inevitable. It’s like a relationship, the more you give, the more you expect in return. Nobody likes to be the giver in a relationship that has little or no return. Google’s gift to us right now is free services. Eventually, that simply won’t be enough.

As the government puts more pressure on companies that hold your data hostage, the more data we’ll get back, simply because the services will want to stay out of sticky legal situations.

The next web will also involve a suite of tools that let any person comb through their own data to find out trends about themselves, their friends, and anything else they want to learn from the data they’ve shared and interacted with. Unfortunately, as of today, that’s not something John Q. Internet can do.

I’ve been playing around with a service called ThinkUp lately. It pulls in my Google+, Facebook, and Twitter data. Hosting it all myself on Amazon servers, it gives me bits and pieces of information based on the things I’ve shared and said online. It’s astonishing. Not because the data points are impressive or overly insightful, but because it told me more than the actual services do themselves.

Not only did I learn a thing or two about how I use the Web, but I learned a lot about my friends and followers on those services. Based on what ThinkUp tells me, the most interesting stuff I’ve shared on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ are the things I would have least expected.

For example, I left a comment that took three seconds of thought, and two seconds to post, and it got the most reaction of anything I did on Facebook all day. Who’d of thunk it?

Here’s a video demonstration of the service:

Data has been a powerful thing for years, driving businesses to huge success and revenue. Insights gathered from data help you predict things and alter current paths. Personal data could do amazing things for our self-awareness, self-education, and help us with our overall self-worth. It could stop us from over-sharing or push us towards a career we would have never planned for ourselves.

While we’re a long way from being able to rewind and review moments that happened in our life, we’re getting closer to it with all of the bits and bytes we leave in our wake on the Internet.

Imagine a day when you turn on your computer or your mobile device, and you’re presented with things to purchase, search for, learn more about, and think about for the day. And more importantly, insight as to why you were shown those things. It’s all right there already, we’ve put the time and effort into giving our data to services, the next Web will let us actually make something of it.

Today, Facebook has settled a court case with the FTC over privacy issues.

Mark Zuckerberg responded to the settlement with a long blog post, and here are some of the key sections from it:

Overall, I think we have a good history of providing transparency and control over who can see your information.

That said, I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes. In particular, I think that a small number of high profile mistakes, like Beacon four years ago and poor execution as we transitioned our privacy model two years ago, have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.

I also understand that many people are just naturally skeptical of what it means for hundreds of millions of people to share so much personal information online, especially using any one service. Even if our record on privacy were perfect, I think many people would still rightfully question how their information was protected. It’s important for people to think about this, and not one day goes by when I don’t think about what it means for us to be the stewards of this community and their trust.

Facebook has always been committed to being transparent about the information you have stored with us – and we have led the internet in building tools to give people the ability to see and control what they share.

But we can also always do better. I’m committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy.

Facebook will be taking further steps to strengthen its privacy and communication around its controls, and Zuckerberg noted that the FTC suggested that Facebook work on its internal processes.

In response to those suggestions, Zuckerberg has named two new corporate roles to handle its privacy and security. Erin Egan is now Chief Privacy Officer for policy, and Michael Richter will hold a similar role for products.

Even further, effective today I am creating two new corporate officer roles to make sure our commitments will be reflected in what we do internally — in the development of our products and the security of our systems — and externally — in the way we work collaboratively with regulators, government agencies and privacy groups from around the world:

- Erin Egan will become Chief Privacy Officer, Policy. Erin recently joined Facebook after serving as a partner and co-chair of the global privacy and data security practice of Covington & Burling, the respected international law firm. Throughout her career, Erin has been deeply involved in legislative and regulatory efforts to address privacy, data security, spam, spyware and other consumer protection issues. Erin will lead our engagement in the global public discourse and debate about online privacy and ensure that feedback from regulators, legislators, experts and academics from around the world is incorporated into Facebook’s practices and policies.

- Michael Richter will become Chief Privacy Officer, Products. Michael is currently Facebook’s Chief Privacy Counsel on our legal team. In his new role, Michael will join our product organization to expand, improve and formalize our existing program of internal privacy review. He and his team will work to ensure that our principles of user control, privacy by design and transparency are integrated consistently into both Facebook’s product development process and our products themselves.

One has to wonder why it took so long for such a formal position to take care of its users privacy, or at least talk about it publicly like this. These moves most certainly were in response to the FTC claims that Facebook wasn’t exactly forthcoming with what was private on Facebook and what wasn’t.

In Facebook’s defense, the company has made handling personal privacy easier, as outlined by Zuckerberg in his post:

In the last 18 months alone, we’ve announced more than 20 new tools and resources designed to give you more control over your Facebook experience. Some of the things these include are:

• An easier way to select your audience when making a new post
• Inline privacy controls on all your existing posts
• The ability to review tags made by others before they appear on your profile
• Friend lists that are easier to create and that maintain themselves automatically
• A new groups product for sharing with smaller sets of people
• A tool to view your profile as someone else would see it
• Tools to ensure your information stays secure like double login approval
• Mobile versions of your privacy controls
• An easy way to download all your Facebook data
• A new apps dashboard to control what your apps can access
• A new app permission dialog that gives you clear control over what an app can do anytime you add one
• Many more privacy education resources

As creepy as Facebook appears to be sometimes, nobody makes us use it after all. But with 20 years of audits ahead of it, thanks to this new settlement, it appears that Facebook won’t even have the option to pull a fast one on its users. I bet that quite a bit of FTC brain power was put on this thing to try and close every loophole it could think of. Those Facebook chaps are smart.

So, can we stop complaining about privacy on Facebook now?

In a video dating back to June 2005, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg discusses the mission of “The Facebook”.

Zuckerberg describes the early iteration of Facebook as an “ice breaker”, and an “online directory for colleges” that’s “kind of interactive”.

Early on, you can tell that Zuckerberg is interested in, and almost obsessed with, collecting information and data about Facebook users. He shared during the interview:

I realized that because I didn’t have people’s information like a school would in making a face book, I needed to make it interesting enough so that people would want to use the site and put their information up

It’s pretty amazing how relaxed and focused Zuckerberg is, and that focus has stayed with the company all the way through to a growth of over 800 million users. Facebook’s plan was laid out before us in 2006 as the young CEO describes in this interview:

Part of making a difference and doing something cool is focusing intensely

Mark Zuckerberg will be visiting colleges on the East coast starting November 8th, including Harvard University, where ‘The Facebook’ started.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg will be visiting three colleges during an East coast speaking tour starting November 8th. He will be visiting Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, and MIT.

Zuckerberg started Facebook in a dorm room at Harvard University and then left the school in 2004 to move offices to Palo Alto.

Carnegie Mellon University says that while at its school, Zuckerberg will join Facebook vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer to talk to a select crowd of computer science and electrical and computer engineering students.

Facebook spends a lot of time recruiting employees from Carnegie Mellon, which has one of the top-ranked computer science programs in the country.

Dean of the School of Computer Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University said this about Zuckerberg’s upcoming visit:

We are very excited by the prospect of hosting a visit by Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has profoundly changed the nature of social interactions worldwide. Supporting these interactions requires massive information processing capabilities, for which Facebook has become a leader in advanced computing technology.

Zuckerberg was recently quoted as saying that you don’t have to be in Silicon Valley to be successful, suggesting that the next tech whiz kids could be scattered all over the world.

In one of the most interesting scenes of the movie “The Social Network”, Zuckerberg watches a talk by then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates while attending Harvard. Will the next Mark Zuckerberg be watching during the CEO’s East coast tour? More than likely, they will be. The earlier we bring technology into schools, the smarter minds in tech we’ll have.

With the importance and power of technology shining through every major initiative in the past five years, early technology education is becoming more of a need in schools all over the world. From natural disasters to political campaigns, technology is at the forefront.

One non-profit called CodeNow has decided to take on bridging the gap between technology and underrepresented youth.

The organization explains itself this way:

CodeNow works with underrepresented youth to develop the next pioneers in technology by teaching foundational skills in computer science and programming to narrow the digital divide. Creating a fluency in this language spurs innovation and opens doors for our youth, while creating a pipeline of talent for American companies.

Tech for everyone

Since the movie “The Social Network” was released, people everywhere have gotten the tech sparkle in their eye, be it for an app they’d love to make or by changing the world. The power of technology, especially the backend skills required to make great ideas a reality, is in the hands of few. There are major companies in Silicon Valley hiring top talent as we speak, and there will be many jobs available for the youth of America if they have the right skill set.

White House approved

CodeNow was featured on the White House blog, with Director of the Office of Public Engagement Jon Carson saying this about the initiative:

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet Ryan Seashore of CodeNow and I was immediately impressed with the work he and the organization are doing. Ryan got me thinking about ways that we could engage non-profits around the country and the ways we could share their incredible stories. I am happy to announce a new weekly blog series highlighting non-profits dedicated to improving their communities. It felt appropriate to have CodeNow inaugurate the series.

Here’s a video about the CodeNow program:

I had the chance to interview CodeNow Co-Founder Ryan Seashore about why this movement is important for the advancement of technology.

TNW: What is it about technology that gets you excited the most?

Ryan Seashore: What’s exciting to me about technology is that it gives people the ability to create, which is power. Programmers are modern-day artists constantly shaping the world we live in. The boundaries are as endless as their imagination.

TNW: Tell us why it’s important that the youth of America gets involved with technology early on

Ryan Seashore: Coding is the language of the future. If we want our youth to be competitive globally we need to teach them be tinkerers and look under the hood of technology.

TNW: What’s the story behind CodeNow and why did you start it?

Ryan Seashore: I’m a social entrepreneur with a diverse background in Film, Technology and Politics. I became involved in the Obama Camapaign overseeing youth outreach in SF and was forever changed. I moved to DC to work for the administration on an interim basis. After this amazing experience I decided to join the non-profit sector. I worked for an organization doing great work but they were stuck in the confines of being a “Non-Profit”.

Last year I came up with the concept for CodeNow. I expected to see dozens of organizations in the space. I was shocked to find only a few organizations teaching youth to code and no one focusing on undeserved youth in a scalable way. Out of frustration I started CodeNow in February of 2011. Though we are a non-profit we function more like a start-up. We take a “lean” approach to our work and are in constant beta. It’s been an amazing experience.

TNW: Please share some success stories since you started the project

Ryan Seashore: An early validation of our success is that after our pilot program in August I had 4 students friends email me about attending our next training. With high school students there is no higher praise. We’re still early on. We have three more trainings by the end of the year. We expect to learn a lot in the next few months.

The children are our future

Early education is essential to drive the next advancements in technology. It might not be a social network that changes the world, it could be a cure for cancer or another major disease and technology could be a contributing powerhouse behind it. It could be a 12-year-old girl in Iowa who has the thoughts and imagination to accomplish such a feat. Without an organization like CodeNow, she wouldn’t have the opportunity to focus on bringing that imagination to reality.

Facebook has taken its fair share of hits in the press about privacy and security, while managing over 800 million users on its platform. Today, Facebook has announced a series of features focused on strengthening the security for Facebook users, as well as making people more comfortable with giving their data to the company.

In a blog post, Facebook discussed its dedication to personal security and support of October’s “National Cyber Security Awareness Month”. The company had this to say:

Security and safety are at the core of Facebook. We have entire teams dedicating their time to building tools that give people even more control over their account and specifically the way they access their information. In fact, many of our most talented engineers are working exclusively on creating a secure environment on Facebook. This October, as part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we are working with others in the community to help educate those online about techniques and tools for securing your devices and networks. Additionally, we thought this would be a great opportunity to tell you about some of the systems working behind the scenes to keep you and your data safe.

Today, we wanted to provide all of you with an update on some new features we will be testing in the coming weeks – Trusted Friends and App Passwords – and remind you of the many user tools we offer to help keep you secure on Facebook.

The features, which are slated to be available in “the coming weeks”, are aimed at personal account security, and are quite creative and advanced.

Trusted Friends

If you’ve ever forgotten your password or locked yourself out of your account, you know how frustrating this can be. In the event that you can’t get into your email address, Facebook will soon let you designate three to five “trusted friends” who can help you once again gain access to your account. This will happen through a series of codes sent to your friends, who will then give them to you, which will help confirm your identity to Facebook.

Facebook had this to say about “Trusted Friends”

We’re excited to begin testing this new tool to help you in case you ever get locked out of your account. Similar to other features that help you prove your identity through your friends, you can now select three to five trusted friends who can help you if you ever have issues accessing your account. It’s sort of similar to giving a house key to your friends when you go on vacation–pick the friends you most trust in case you need their help in the future.

If you forgot your password and need to login but can’t access your email account, you can rely on your friends to help you get back in. We will send codes to the friends you have selected for them to pass along to you.

App passwords

Up until now, you’ve had to log into Facebook apps with the same credentials you use for your Facebook account. If you’re an avid Facebook app user, you’ve probably given your credentials to hundreds of developers and apps. Facebook will soon let you generate a new password just for apps, and you’ll be able to access it through your privacy settings. This is a good move for Facebook, and can help users feel more comfortable with using third-party applications without worrying about having their account hacked.

Facebook shared this about app passwords today:

There are tons of applications you can use by logging in with your Facebook credentials. However in some cases you may want to have a unique password for that application. This is especially helpful if you have opted into Login Approvals, for which security codes don’t always work when using 3rd party applications.

We’re rolling out a feature that allows you to use app passwords for logging into 3rd party applications. Simply go to your Account Settings, then the Security tab, and the “App Passwords” section. You can generate a password that you won’t need to remember, just enter it along with your email when logging into an application.

Understanding Facebook Privacy and Security

Along with these two changes, Facebook has realized that all of its privacy and security features might be a little too difficult for the majority of users to figure out. The company provided us and its users an infographic demonstrating all of the work Facebook has put into keeping you and your data private and secure.

Facebook explains:

Over the past few years we have introduced a number of new security tools – Login Approvals, Login Notifications, and One Time Passwords to name a few – and developed several back-end systems to help keep you and your data secure. To better illustrate the full range of these features and show how they all work together to keep you safe while on Facebook we are releasing this infographic. Check it out yourself so you can find out more about our security infrastructure and an overview of the tools available to all our users to increase their level of account security.

Facebook Security Infographic

Future dedication to Security

Even though there are groups that call Facebook unsafe or point out their privacy concerns, the site continues to grow. You can call me naive, but I truly believe that a company that employs as many people as Facebook simply has to focus on keeping data safe and secure. It would be silly to think otherwise. I remember when Gmail was launched in private beta and many yelled about how creepy it was that Google was looking at their email. Of course Google doesn’t “read” emails, it just processes the data.

On its security post today, Facebook had this to say about the future of security at Facebook:

Our considerable work has undoubtedly made Facebook a safer environment – less than half a percent of users experience spam on any given day and only a fraction of fraction of a percent of our users ever experience any security-related issues. But we know there’s plenty of more work to be done, so we will keep striving to make sure that every time you log in to Facebook, you have a safe and social experience. We are adapting and responding to new threats everyday and will continue to bring the people that use our site new ways to protect themselves. Be on the lookout for more announcements throughout the rest of this year, and remember to stay vigilant while online and remind others to do the same.

Again, these new features will be available in “the coming weeks”, and perhaps these changes are in preparation to launch “Timeline” sitewide. There have been privacy concerns about new information popping up in the Timeline feature, thus causing users to scramble and learn how to change their privacy settings.

Well, he doesn’t just use Twitter, he’s also on Google+ as well. He doesn’t show whose circles he’s in or who is in his circles. It’s definitely him, as he has a verified Google+ account.

While his first post on September 26th isn’t all that exciting, it is interesting to note that Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, is said to be launching a blog, a new video company Airtime, and of course is heavily involved with music streaming service Spotify.

Sean Parker is a busy man, and he’s getting out and about on the web more and more these days.