Currently, user profiles focus on letting people share what they are doing in the present, with the status update section being the center of a user’s Facebook world. This section shows updates from all of the other people in the user’s social network and allows them to interact with those updates. But with the new Facebook Timeline, that feature will be drastically changed. The space for updates is truncated and once it leaves your front page, it will probably never be seen again.

The highlight of the new design is the large image banner at the top of the page, called the Facebook cover, where the user can display a picture they feel defines them.

Overall, the design of the Facebook Timeline profile feels eerily like MySpace in its early years.

It is obvious the new design will allow people to be more creative with their Facebook profile. They can use it to tell the story of their life from birth to present. With the site’s map feature, a Facebook user could create a travel journal that shows everywhere they have been. It can also be used as a tool to display accomplishments, which is immensely helpful if you are searching for a job like the millions of unemployed Americans.

But like all other changes Facebook has made to the site, it is doubtful people are going to accept the new profile without complaint. While some people are welcoming Facebook Timeline with open arms, there are already grumblings in the blogosphere complaining about the impending update. However, you can also start getting Facebook covers to personalize the new profile.

Facebook is planning on rolling out the new profile over the next few weeks. However, if you want to enable it right now, here is a tutorial by Mashable that will help you do it. [Link]

2. Tweet Trivia – Every day or week, as time permitted, tweet a piece of trivia relevant to your industry. This works best in conjunction with a blog or static website where visitors would click through to view the answer.

3. Facebook Fan Deals – Create and give away special coupons to people who are your Facebook Fans. The same could be done on Twitter.

4. The Complaint Department is Open – Use all social media channels to track down complaints (and praise) about your company, product, or service and resolve the issues. You could also set up a specific social media channel for problem resolution.

5. Look, Listen and Learn Contest – Have a contest where participants have to watch a video on YouTube and then Tweet in the answer to various trivia questions to win cool prizes.

6. Tweet My Video Contest – Have entrants post a YouTube video on their website and Tweet the link for an entry into a contest. Give extra points to people who actually blog their opinion about the article for additional promotional coverage.

7. Internet Scavenger Hunt – Participants would visit several pages on the internet looking for answers to a list of questions. This promotion could involve all the social media channels where the company is active as well as the corporate website.

8. Facebook Fans United – Designate a day where the company’s Facebook fans (or Twitter Followers or MySpace Friends) all post on a topic to drum up awareness about it. For example, Breast Cancer Awareness. Dedicate a page on the corporate website listing the entries.

9. Tweet-A-Product-Suggestion – Ask Twitter Followers to suggest future products or product features they would like the company make. Asking customers what they want is a surefire way to develop a product you know will sell.

10. Where’s Waldo Contest – Have a contest where followers have to tweet the location of sale’s team as they travel the countryside. Foursquare is a great location based social networking site that may assist with this.

About the Author

Delish iBusiness provides internet business development tips that move you from daydreams to profit. Business ideas, marketing advice, tools, and more for building a delish online business.

Even though Mars is our neighbor in the solar system, their orbit around the sun ensures that we never meet. And if we ever did…well, let’s just say it won’t be a happy reunion.

So if the Mars hoax, and other email like it, is fake then why do people start these crazy rumors and encourage others to send them to their friends. Well, some do it for fun. Some do it because they don’t know any better. But the overwhelming majority of people that start these letters and send them around are spammers.

That’s right. Spammers.

It’s pretty clever when you think about it. You create a compelling email that people can’t resist sending to other people. It could be a motivational email filled with cutesy sayings, a fake email claiming something outrageous, like the Mars Hoax, or an email that taps into people’s greed, like the emails that say Bill Gates will send you money if you forward it to 10 of your friends. And then you add a special tracking device within the email that sends you the email address of each person who opens the letter which will allow you to collect thousands of emails as the chain letter runs its course.

A real life example: I used to have a private email address that I only gave out to family and friends. I never got spam. Never ever and I had had that email address for at least 3 years.

Then I gave that email address to a friend so we could keep in touch. Little did I know, they had a love of forwarding chain letters. As soon as they began forwarding those chain letters to me, I began receiving spam. On top of that, I started getting chain letters from other people in the chain mail loop who now had my email address and felt compelled to send me more of that crap. It was out of control.

And even though I’ve now managed to get out of that loop, the damage was done. Once you get on a spammers mail list, your email account is doomed to receive offers for Viagra, dating sites, and penis enhancement for the rest of your internet life.

The lesson here is, next time you get an email that seems too good to be true don’t forward it. You’ll only be adding to the problem of spam. If you really must forward an email chain letter to your friends and family, us the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) function. This will mask the email address that you have forwarded to and prevent others from obtaining it.

Before you do that, though, you should check to make sure that what the email says is true (Snopes is a good place to start for busting Mars hoaxes and other untrue tales). Especially when it comes to “prize” emails that claim you will get something if you send the email to all of your friends. Because generally, all you’ll end up getting are angry friends and tons of spam. And what kind of prize is that?

MicroInfoSource is an information portal that provides tidbits of useful information on a range of topics including marketing, home based business, holidays, fashion, home improvement, celebrities, product reviews, and much more.