ReadWriteWeb

Facebook allows users of its social networking site to comment on its pages without Liking them now.

This is a step in a direction that might make advertisers, brand managers and marketing people feel a little uneasy, because it means they may have to start thinking deeply for their brand rather than just counting hits.

Klout revealed a beta version of its new topic pages today, which it hopes will turn the company into something more like a Nielsen-type rating service rather than a vanity metric for people using social media.

The pages are Klout's way of scanning the Web looking for influential discussions and the people who are leading those discussions.

Facebook users who choose not to link their user accounts to Facebook's public Pages are ending up with blank profiles containing no information at all. If you haven't experienced this problem, it's probably thanks to the somewhat high-pressure tactics Facebook is using to get you to accept these changes.

The next time you visit your Profile page (if you haven't done so already), you'll be introduced to the new "Connected Profiles" option, one of the many potentially concerning privacy-related changes announced at Facebook's f8 developer conference last week. With this option, the text in your Facebook profile section where you list your hometown, education, work and interests, is now being linked to the respective pages on Facebook. So for example, if you live in New York, that's linked directly to a page for New York. If your favorite TV show is "Lost," you'll be linked to that show's page, and so on.

Those who choose not to link, though, are informed via a Facebook pop-up box that their Profile page will be left empty.

Earlier this morning, Wikileaks began to post pager messages that were sent on September 11, 2001. According to Wikileaks, these messages were intercepted by an "organization which has been intercepting and archiving US national telecommunications since prior to 9/11." Some of these messages are from officials in police and fire departments, though a large number of messages are also from businesses. Others are automated messages to engineers that were sent by computers about network and hardware issues.

In 2008, Google acquisition JotSpot announced that it would "expand upon the Google Page Creator already offered within Apps." The idea was that JotSpot would power a system to help businesses set up their own collaboration, project management and customer extranets. After 3 years of sitting quietly in the Google arsenal, JotSpot has now reemerged in the form of a Google Sites Data API.

Earlier this week something interesting happened in the world of social networking: Verizon, which this week became America's largest mobile carrier after moving to acquire Alltel, moved its branded social network to Facebook. The company announced a plan to shut down its Verizon Community site -- a moderately popular corporate social network -- in favor of its 18,000 member strong Facebook fan page. Right now, Facebook Pages can't be considered full social networks, but could they ever be the best place to center your social media strategy?