Taking a look at some of the other "new" features shows MySpace continuing to play catch-up in a race that may well already be over.

• Sharing music tends to remain the big draw for the site, so it only makes sense that MySpace will improve that service. Now they offer a Music Playlisting feature which allows users to share playlists publicly the same way users have shared songs in the past.
• MySpace has added more than 90 new themes under "Profile 2.0," a feature designed to improve the layout of MySpace pages and the management of the information therein

• In addition to trying to make MySpace look better, they're also trying to make it easier to use. The development team has worked on "systematically changing the way features work around the site." That means fewer steps to get things done.
• Moving MySpace content from online to offline - by printing. You can now print practically everything on the site. Now those embarrassing photos on your co-worker's MySpace page don't have to remain stuck on the site - you can post them in his or her cube.
• More than one person in the TO: line. That's right. Being able to send mail to more than one recipient. It's a feature.
• Show full name. Running neck and neck with the TO: feature.

Unfortunately, for those well versed in social networking there isn't anything new here - which doesn't come as much of a surprise. But it is new for MySpace. And the MySpace community seems to be liking it. As of this writing, the features post was approaching 2000 "kudos" from the MySpace community.

Truth be told, the most interesting part of the announcement had nothing to do with the features. It had to do with a seemingly innocuous comment about the improved usability, "Plus you see less advertisements. Yay :-)" That's an interesting position for a company that finds its revenue by showing those advertisements.

Are we missing something? Is there a more poignant take of these latest MySpace features? We'd love to hear your take.

As avid users of FriendFeed will tell you, Facebook's implementation of FriendFeed's features are nothing but a pale imitation of the real thing. Still, there's a growing concern among the service's fans about its sustainability. Although FriendFeed's founders believe they can still innovate to profitability, we're no longer sure that's true.

FriendFeed is a web application that's very much like Facebook's News Feed, except that it incorporates far more services. Where Facebook lets you import content to your News Feed from a dozen social web services that range from YouTube to Flickr, FriendFeed offers nearly sixty..including Facebook status updates. That's not the only difference, either. In FriendFeed, commenting on and "liking" items causes them to "bubble up" to the top - that is, it brings popular content up to the top of the page. FriendFeed's "FOAF" (friend-of-a-friend) feature also integrates posts from your friends' friends into your activity stream which can expose you to more interesting people who you might want to follow.

Although on the surface, FriendFeed might appear to be just a more robust version of the Facebook News Feed - a News Feed on steroids - the differences between the two go far beyond a list of features. Where Facebook users track their real-life friends' activities, FriendFeeders tend to track news and topics they're interested in. Most have probably never even met half the people they're subscribed to - they just like what they have to say and the things they share.

Wait...Doesn't FriendFeed Need to Make Money?

What FriendFeed delivers is something that's more than just the sum of its parts. It doesn't have one single killer feature that defines it. It is simply a mashup of pure innovation. So what if Facebook rips off bits and pieces of FriendFeed's better qualities? Why shouldn't mainstream users enjoy this too? For what's innovation's worth if it doesn't spread?

Ah, but therein lies the root of all FriendFeed's problems. The innovation of the social "like," of aggregating your web activity and letting others comment on it - all of this, all of FriendFeed's innovation, is spreading off-site. It's becoming popularized on Facebook, where a good portion of the social network's users have never heard of FriendFeed and (possibly) never will.

That doesn't bother FriendFeed, though. Says co-founder Bret Taylor:

"The ability to comment on and like entries has always been popular on FriendFeed, so it is not surprising to see it appear in other places. We have always been focused on building a unique, but open sharing and communications product, and we think that it's great when users are able to share things in more places. While there will always be some overlap in functionality between FriendFeed and large social networks, we believe there is a lot of room for FriendFeed to grow. The problems of sharing and communication are large, and we don't think they will be solved by a single product or company."

While that's true to a point - we certainly don't think Facebook will solve all our communication problems either - there is a valid concern that if FriendFeed can't cross over into the mainstream, they may not make it, especially given our current economy. Businesses still need to make money...and for web startups to make money they need users. Yes, more users than web celeb Robert Scoble and his 25,000 followers. Unless FriendFeed can prove to us that they can, without a doubt, monetize the long tail of technology early adopters, then they need to grow their user base. Can they do this? How? These remain unanswered questions as of now.

FriendFeed's Real Value

But don't get us wrong, FriendFeed's financial success (or lack thereof) is only one way to measure its real value. Obviously it's the one that investors and business owners care about. If that describes you - if you only care about the bottom line and all the nickels and dimes - then seeing FriendFeed's features swallowed up by the social giant that is Facebook may be worrisome.

However, if you measure success not by money alone but by pure, unadulterated excitement, the feeling that you've witnessed the birth of something new -something different - then it doesn't matter how many features Facebook steals for their own. All that matters is that innovation happened. It happened on FriendFeed. And you liked it.

Says Beltzner, the goal is to have tabs that are related grouped together. The change will be landing on the trunk shortly and then they will decide whether or not to take it to Firefox 3.1. (Please do!)

Tabs, tabs, everywhere

The tab ordering feature is one of the little things that doesn't get a lot of attention when people talk about Google Chrome. Instead, the focus is on the WebKit engine, the lightweight feel, the speed, and, of course, the lack of RSS (the horror!). However, if you often switch between Chrome and Firefox, you're probably frustrated when you start opening tabs in Firefox and they end up at the end of a long list of your open sites, forcing to you to scroll to see them.

Getting tab ordering right is not as minor as it seems. When it's right, it "just works" and you don't even really have to think about it. Minor features like this are the sort of things that you can't quite put your finger on when people ask you why you prefer your Chrome browser - you just know that you like it better. It just seems easier to use in some way.

Chrome showed us how tab ordering should work and we can't wait to see Firefox adopt this useful feature.

This afternoon the GMail team announced the addition of a new feature in the Gmail Labs - a Task Manager, or to do list. It's quite an elegant little feature, when it and the rest of GMail work. Below we've got a two minute video tour that shows how the feature works, in case Gmail is down for you and you can't see it for yourself!

Do you foresee yourself using this?