ReadWriteWeb

News and activity feeds are more alive today than ever before, even as engagement with their simplest format, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), appears to be waning. What were the Top 10 Most Awesome RSS & Feed Products of 2011? We offer our list below. Though some of these weren't born in the past year, all of them have made a big impact and are thoroughly awesome.

Anyone with an interest in competitive knowledge work should be aware of and give some thought to these applications. We'd love to hear your thoughts on others in comments below, too, readers. I've put the following 10 in a particular order: from the most geeky to the most mainstream.

It's the end of a big week here at ReadWriteWeb. For one, we just got acquired by SAY Media. As I sit here thinking about what happened in 2011 and what's to come in 2012, I keep in mind the simple fact that soon ReadWriteWeb will be operating under a very clean look and feel in this brave new tech world. What does that have to do with 2012 predictions? Not much. Just thought I'd remind you about the state of tech news right here and now.

Which brings me to my 2012 predictions for Facebook, e-commerce, location and social networks, the four areas I've been watching closely since I joined the rad team at ReadWriteWeb this past October. Come along to the next page!

Facebook's new Timeline profile feature is great, even if it is a little strange. It's narcissistic, but that's a big part of the fun of it, and I'm not sure that other peoples' timelines are nearly as interesting as mine is to me.

It's an incredibly feature-rich new type of social network profile. It's a re-imagination of what a profile can be. It makes me want to use Facebook more, to share more data with Facebook so that it can be preserved and displayed so nicely, years into the future. While other Facebook features have pushed users into posting publicly by default, or posted their activities from other places they didn't understand would become part of the public record, I think Timeline is a genuine value add to incentivize users to share more. I think it's great.

Facebook's new Timeline is rolling out to the public, offering users the chance to upgrade to "a new kind of profile." The new profile was revealed at Facebook's f8 developer conference on September 22. The rollout began in New Zealand on December 6, and it's now spreading worldwide.

Timeline turns the profile into an illustrated, browsable history of a user's entire life, with major milestones and little moments smartly chosen by Facebook's algorithm. The recent history is specific and full of activity, but Facebook automatically focuses older stories on life's big moments.

Social media is supposed to be all about engagement and authenticity, but sometimes it can feel so distributed and overwhelming that conversations get lost. A new web app called Engag.io has tackled this classic problem and offers a pretty good solution that I think you'll want to check out. It's in private alpha right now but we've got an invite code at the bottom of this post. That someone is making an app like this gives me hope that there are still great ideas that can be built on top of the most basic building blocks of the social web.

Engag.io, which gets its name from being the place for your online engagement input and output, is like an inbox for all your conversations on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare and blog comments. It's an inbox with analytics. It's built by the team behind content curation company Eqentia. Eqentia is ambitious but a little too complicated; Engag.io is very simple and the value of it will be immediately obvious to many people.

Facebook just confirmed with us that it's testing a feature that would allow people and Pages to communicate privately. This update was first spotted by communications agency WeAreSocial.sg. The private messaging feature would give customers the opportunity to speak privately with page owners. This is actually another Twitter-like move by Facebook.

On Twitter, brands that follow their followers back can easily communicate through private DM messages. On Facebook, however, most of the conversation between brand and user takes place on the wall, something that not all customers may feel comfortable with.

Facebook is announcing a new execution engine for PHP in order to try to boost performance. Facebook introduced HipHop for PHP nearly two years ago. Today the company announced a new tool in the HipHop toolbox, which it claims is 60% faster, with a 90% reduction in memory cost.

Facebook engineer Jason Evans writes that the company put together a team last year to replace the HipHop interpreter (HPHPi). Today they're taking the lid off of the new HipHop Virtual Machine (HHVM) which will replace HPHPi and eventually be used in production.

This was the year social networks became normal. Next time you're in a crowded restaurant, close your eyes and listen to the chatter around you. Count how many times you hear the word "Facebook" in an hour. This year, the number of people on Facebook reached 800 million. Remember when it was for college students only?

Google+ also launched this year. It's not just a new social network; it's what Google+ chief Vic Gundotra called "the + part" of the new Google. Every part of the Google experience, especially search, involves social connections now. And Twitter was no also-ran in 2011. It became a system-level part of every iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch on Apple's new iOS 5. In the ongoing war of the social networks, this year's pivotal battles were over three key territories: identity, location and sharing. How did it play out?

Facebook just released its 2011 Memology, which gives a complete rundown of top Facebook's most talked about topics and biggest memes of 2011. In the top global topics on Facebook category, the death of Osama bin Laden wins, closely followed by Packers win the Super Bowl and Casey Anthony found not guilty. We've also picked out the most read/write web-y Facebook trends on the list, so be sure to take a look.

Ten weeks ago Facebook said it would launch Timeline in the next few weeks. Today Facebook began rolling out the Timeline user interface to users in New Zealand. Facebook's Product Manager Samuel W. Lessin made the announcement today on the Facebook blog.

We reached out to Facebook about why Timeline began rolling out in New Zealand. Here's what they said:

"As a global company, we need to gain perspective and insights from outside the US. One benefit of starting rollout in New Zealand is that it's English speaking, so we can read the feedback and make improvements quickly."