ReadWriteWeb

Last week Facebook IPO rumors swirled about the Internet. Few in the tech world were able to focus on anything else. Facebook's estimated $75-$100 billion IPO had tech-meisters and analysts drooling. Finally, the world's largest social network decided to put a price on everyones' personal data.

But there was an official announcement that dropped just days before the IPO: Games would start appearing in the main news feed.

Only one month before, Facebook began including games in the mobile news feed. If you're already feeling annoyed, remind yourself that this is nothing new. Remember when sponsored stories began appearing in the news feed?

On the same day that Facebook announced its IPO, the FoodSpotting app dished up a few new offerings. Now it creates a personalized picture menu for you, the FoodSpotting user, delivering "smart dish recommendations" based on what you like. The "filter wheel" categorizes food into dishes that you want to try and have already tried, and those you hope to never eat again; you can also see how your friends feel about various dishes. FoodSpotting connects to your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare and Instagram accounts so you can immediately share any food photo you've taken. You can also cruise through nearby locations.

If you've read this far, you've probably already downloaded the app for your iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows phone, and are contemplating not reading the rest of this because you're too busy salivating over your next meal. Get ready for the complete food-pornification of Facebook, curated by you.

Users made a big stink about the Facebook news ticker, that annoying, constantly updating feed in the upper right-hand corner of the homepage. Facebook responded. Now some users have the option to hide the ticker. This is good news for people who prefer to use the news feed and would like to avoid noisier information about which links their friends "like," what friends are listening to on Spotify and who is now friends with whom. Teenagers spoke up about the news ticker, calling it the "stalker feed" and insisting that it provided too much information.

If you feel compelled to curate more of your Facebook life, there's an app for that: Timeline Movie Maker. Go to TimelineMovieMaker.com and click the green button. As with most Facebook apps, this one asks for your basic info, email, profile info and your Timeline stories. Then Timeline builds a one-minute movie for you. It's similar to Intel's Museum of Me, a virtual museum of you - all it needs is access to your Facebook data.

Pinterest is growing fast, and 80% of the site's users are women ages 25-44.

Laura Skelton, owner of Prix-Prix, told me about Pinterest months ago when we met up one chilly Chicago morning for brunch. "Have you tried Pinterest?" she asked me with a glint of excitement in her eyes. I shook my head no. "Try it out, but be careful, you'll get addicted." I am always wary of that caveat because I do end up getting addicted. I decided to stop by just to see what was up. I registered for an account and then left. Everything looked too pretty. Then, a few months later, I started receiving a slew of notifications: "So and so is following you on Pinterest." It was around then that Pinterest blew up.

AdAge's David Teicher wrote about how Pinterest is driving traffic to sites like design magazine RealSimple. But more importantly, he writes, "the true potential in Pinterest may be in its ability to impact purchases, which is why retailers like Etsy, Nordstrom, and Lands' End have taken to developing a presence on, and strategy for, this new platform."

The rollout of Facebook Timeline forces you to take a look back at your own "Facebook past," and think about whether you want to add to it.

Today 1000memories launched the ShoeBox Facebook app, which gives you an opportunity to scan paper photos from the past and post them to Facebook. It brings back those "pre-Internet photos from the past."

"A Facebook Timeline-integrated app (such as ShoeBox) which lets you post photos into the past, represents a recreation of an autobiographical memory," says Dr. Ash Nadkarni of the Boston Medical Center's Department of Psychiatry. (She co-authored the study "Why Do People Use Facebook?") "There are several facets of this activity that could influence our perception of our memories -- specifically by triggering memory bias, a cognitive bias that enhances or impairs the recall of a memory."

When Facebook announced 60 new social sharing apps, I wrote about two that weren't joining the party. And now I'm trying to tell you about the top 5 social apps on Facebook?

I know what you're thinking. But as much as we (and I) have issues with Facebook's feelings about privacy and data, sharing intrinsically makes us feel connected. Here are five frictionless sharing apps that do so in a non-creepy way.

Facebook is pushing Timeline out to all 800 million of its users. And there's no turning back to the "old" profile.

Users have seven days to clean up their profiles before their Timeline goes live, transforming the bulletin board-like profile into a visual scrapbook of their lives.

With Timeline, users have the option to add a second, bigger magazine-esque "cover photo" in addition to the profile photo. The profile photo has changed in size from a rectangle or square to a thumbnail that resembles a driver's license photo. Social apps, which automatically share a user's activity, are one of Timeline's key features.

This weekend Google announced that it was shutting down Picnik, its handy dandy free photo editing software. I've used it on a number of occasions for fast, easy jobs that didn't require anything more than simple resizing. But let's be honest: How many of those types of quick photo editing jobs are just for Facebook photos? Aviary, a photo editor for Web and mobile apps, saw this opportunity and jumped on it, launching a photo editor app today for Facebook.

The world's biggest social network wants to change the way you share TV shows, music and games. Think frictionless sharing meets social TV for all media. Given what Facebook recent announcements about integration with cameras and cars, is full media integration? If you're still unsure, take a hint from this: Earlier this week, Facebook announced frictionless sharing for your TV with Boxee.