As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, Facebook acquired photo-sharing application Instagram for an astonishing $1 billion dollars in cash and stock this morning. The social Web was abuzz with excitement, but also much confusion. One billion dollars is a lot of money to spend on a company that generates no revenue.

But there’s a lot that Instagram offers Facebook. For starters, Facebook was said to be working on its own photo-sharing app. Instagram offers them an excellent platform with an active user base. Then, there’s the defensive benefits. Google was also said to be interested, and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey was an angel investor of the start-up.

But there’s one more advantage that Instagram offers Facebook, that could be far more lucrative than the rest. It’s not so far fetched to think Facebook could serve ads on Instagram at some point. This acquisition just delivered Zuckerberg an extra 30+ million potential ad viewers. That’s not a small figure for a company hoping to trump Google in the $2 billion mobile ad space.

I suppose only time will tell what Facebook’s true intentions are with Instagram (and I’m fairly certain Zuckerberg will take as much time as he needs). But all in all this looks like a very good deal for both sides. Congratulations to Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom.

TheNextWeb reported today that Google plans to launch a third-party commenting platform to rival Facebook’s. In recent years, many sites have adopted Facebook’s commenting platform, hoping to take advantage of the company’s Open Graph data push. 

The Google comment system, which will almost certainly rival that of Facebook, will have deep links to Google’s network of services and websites, indexing comments in Google Search, and most significantly, the system will be available for use on third party sites.

This is likely an effort to draw Web users one step closer to Google+, but that won’t be must of a perk to site managers. Indexing comments in Google Search, however, could provide publishers more opportunities to surface in search results. Will be interesting to observe early adoption of Google’s comment platform. My company uses Disqus, which I’m generally very happy with. 

Former Yahoo board member Eric Hippeau took to Twitter this morning to respond to the lawsuit his former company brought against Facebook. 

Pathetic and heartbreaking last stand for Yahoo bit.ly/yirCcj It’s all over. I loved you very much.

— Eric Hippeau (@erichippeau) March 13, 2012

Yahoo claims Facebook infringed on 10 patents which cover tasks that include social networking and messaging. The lawsuit comes as the portal struggles to keep up with Facebook in display-advertising sales.

The company used this same tactic against Google leading up to their IPO, VentureBeat reports, and pocketed a nice helping of the search engine’s pre-IPO shares.

Facebook unveiled the new “Timeline” feature today during their annual F8 Conference, and all I can say is WOW. Of course, I had try it out immediately on my own profile. Take a look:

Talk about a makeover. First, you’ll notice the profile cover (meet my dog Taz) — a canvas to express yourself in ways the photo windows never made possible.

Next, on the far right you’ll see the timeline, an easy-to-use “jump to year” feature that starts at birth and ends in the present. I was amazed to see some of my first Facebook posts from 2005, but quickly realized I needed to censor a few of updates from my days as an immature high-schooler.

Lastly, you’ll find the new Wall. This is where things get a bit dicey. Organization of posts appear to be chaotic (at best). Also spotting the occasional duplicate post (particularly if I liked a post, and then reposted the link on my Wall). Lastly it looks like FB is still working out some kinks, as my 2008 Wall is entirely dominated by one person. While I don’t remember exactly who I talked to in 2008, I suspect I interacted with more than one person that year… I hope.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the update. The organization will take some getting used to, but once I can overcome that, I can see myself enjoying these new pages much more. I’ll be curious to hear public reactions when the pages go live September 29th. Facebook is certainly pushing to become a bigger part of our lives, the only question is, will we let it?

Today Facebook made two noticeable additions to its platform. The first, a “subscribe” button which is now available on profile pages, has been widely reported, so I won’t delve into that.

However, the second (and surprisingly unreported) addition was far more exciting to me as a social media brand manager.

Take a gander at the image above. You’ll notice a little notification, stating the number of times that article has been shared by page viewers (in this case it’s 26).

Upon clicking the button, one is able to see what each of these sharers had to say about the story. A nice feedback tool, perhaps, but that’s not what excites me.

What makes the brand manager (and sociology minor) in me jump for joy is the potential effect this simple notification might have on share totals. It not only serves as an explicit reminder that one can share the story, but better yet, highlights how many others found it interesting enough to share with their friends. The groupthink (hypothetically) starts there.

Will simply seeing others have shared a story be enough to influence more readers to share with their friends? I think so. But I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

How Facebook Will Put Google Out of Business

A fascinating study of how Social Search may one day put Google out of business.

As a young professional in the field this is something I’ve thought plenty about. Right now Social Media is hotter than ever, technologically, and of course financially. But have we learned from our mistakes during the dotCOM Bubble? Are we headed down the same path? Check out this Infographic Report from G+:

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We’ve all seen those awful “Roast of…” specials on Comedy Central. Well College Humor decided to take the concept digital with this “Roast of Facebook.” Familiar voices include:  Gilbert Gottfried (as Twitter), Penn Jillette (as Google) and Lisa Lampanelli (FourSquare).