ReadWriteWeb

Chris Poole delivered the most powerful 10 minutes of Web philosophy of the afternoon at Web 2.0. The man formerly known as moot - founder of anonymous image sharing den 4chan and its new, better-lit cousin, Canvas, gave us a rousing and principled picture of what the big players get wrong about online identity.

"Google and Facebook would have you believe that you're a mirror," he said, "but in fact, we're more like diamonds." - multi-faceted. It was an appeal reminiscent of the one he gave at SXSW earlier this year, but it hit harder. Google Plus has since arrived, and Poole says it's even worse than Facebook for the future of online identity.

New data from Hitwise shows that Facebook is the top-searched term in the U.S. for the third year in a row. It accounted for 3.1% of all searches, up 46% from last year. Four variations on "Facebook" were also among the top 10 terms, accounting for 4.42% of all searches. "Facebook login" was the third most-searched term of 2011, followed by "craigslist" and "facebook.com." The search term "www.facebook.com" came in eighth place after "yahoo" and "ebay."

This year wasn't the first time any of us heard about the impact of social media on television. People have talked about TV shows on Facebook and Twitter for about as long as those social networks have existed, and the trend has only accelerated as social media usage in general has exploded.

Last year, chatter on Twitter helped the MTV Video Music Awards boost its audience to the biggest it had been in eight years. In 2011, services like Twitter and Facebook served as the virtual water cooler for just about every major news story and broadcast media event. It may not have been invented this year, but 2011 was pivotal for social TV.

Just days ago, Barack Obama officially announced the end of the Iraq War. Today Facebook launched its social media guide for military families, which outlines how family members can connect with loved ones who are stationed far away. To find it on Facebook, go here. This guide provides tips for staying in touching via Facebook, detailed information about uploading photos, status updates, sending messages, groups and pages and using chat and video chat.

Military personnel and their families must be extra careful of the types of information they share. The social media guide outlines ways to maintain operational security (OpSec), which is essential for all service members and their families.

Alicia posted an infographic today that showed how most people Friend on Facebook. Are you close to the 'friends' you have on Facebook. Are they really friends or random folks you've connected with at some point in your life?

We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

New research from Nielsen's NM Incite reveals that knowing someone in real-life is the number one reason people friend them on Facebook. Of the 1,865 adult social media users surveyed, 82% reported that they friend people they know in real life and 41% cite "don't know well" as the top reason for Facebook unfriending people. How does this data size up against Facebook's purported purpose of "helping build closer ties among friends"?

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.