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At last week's F8 developers' conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans to offer "instant personalization" all over the Web - a way for websites to become instantly more social. Without even signing in, sites gain access to publicly available Facebook information like your name, profile picture, friend list and more, in order to personalize your experience on the site. At launch, only three partner sites are offering this feature: Microsoft's new Docs.com, Internet radio Pandora and user review site Yelp. You can opt-out of this experience if you like, but by default, you're opted in.

Flash mobs are "spontaneous" gatherings that are organized by emails and text messages. Everyone from celebrities to schools have created them. To keep it real, our Top 10 YouTube list is based only on non-commercial events.

From a giant flash mob shootout in a shopping center in Poland, to a ninja mob at U.C. Berkeley, to a light saber mob in Bristol, these events are a global phenomenon. In Australia and New York City - even a record 3,000 people all freezing in place in Paris - these mobs demonstrate how new ideas for email- and text message-based event organizing have only just begun.

A couple of months ago, we asked whether MySpace could make a comeback. Since that time, they've become #1 on Android and jumped into bulk user data sales.

Today, MySpace has unveiled a new events plaform.

Called MySpace Events, it presumes to be "a global events and calendar platform providing users with new tools to create, discover, share, and manage events across MySpace and multiple social networks."

Viadeo, the social network for business, has added five applications built on Google's OpenSocial platform. These apps are Twitter, YouTube, PollDaddy, a doc sharer called Ayos iShare and Google Presentation.

iShare will allow users to upload any file up to 100 MB and post it for download on their account. The Twitter app will allow a user to post their Tweet automatically on their Viadeo page. The Google Presentation function will allow them to convert Powerpoint presentations to Google and share them.

In a memo released yesterday, the White House made it significantly easier for federal agencies to use everything from social networks to online forums. But with the newfound freedom comes a surprising caveat: User ratings and rankings on those services, the new guidelines warn, "should not be used as the basis for policy or planning."

In other words, a million Americans can Digg or retweet an important blog post, but government officials shouldn't use that popularity as an indicator of the post's value.

An innovation at Ping.fm now lets users direct a blog feed to all of their social networks automatically.

"A blog post can automatically go to up to 50 social networks," said Loic Le Meur, CEO of Ping.fm's corporate overlords, Seesmic.

This new feature is a real-time feed effected by Superfeedr, a service that transforms a wide variety of feeds into normalized XMPP or Pubsubhubbub format.

Are location-based social networks privacy disasters waiting to happen? Or are the supposed "dangers" simply being overhyped by those without a thorough understanding of what these new networks can and cannot do? Today, these questions are the subject of a serious debate among early adopters - the group of people who are first to sign up for and try out the latest technology innovations, testing everything from iPads to mobile apps.

There are currently a number of location-based social networks clamoring for your attention, including earlier contenders like Loopt and Brightkite as well as the later-to-arrive, game-based networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. Even user review site Yelp is getting in on the action. So is Google. And so is Facebook, apparently.

But is sharing your location with your online "friends" asking for trouble?

Here's an idea for you: instead of slowly amassing followers, like on Twitter, or carefully culling your friends list over time on Facebook, making sure everyone is in their appropriate list and category, collect and dispose of friends like you ask for the time or a spare cigarette on a busy city street.

That's what Lokast, the self-described "disposable" social network lets you do - carry your throw-away lifestyle over into the digital world.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new policy which allows all users of unclassified computers in the .mil domain access to popular social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube among others. This change in policy effectively reverses the previous ban on accessing these types of sites - a ban that had been in place for nearly three years. In embracing the new policy, the department also launched its own social media hub, a blog-like site complete with live Twitter feeds, Tweetmeme buttons and "share on Facebook" links.

After looking over recent stats from Hitwise Intelligence on the decline of e-cards and the simultaneous rise of social media, we were stopped mid-yawn by this weird little blip on the radar:

On Mothers' Day, e-cards show a less drastic YoY decline, and social media visits actually temporarily plunge, showing a 13 percent decrease in site visits between Mothers' Day 2008 and Mothers' Day 2009. Do we think Mom isn't checking her Facebook? Or is it that we consider a more old-fashioned and difficult method of communication more "personal" somehow?