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Facebook is about ready to launch a replacement to your “profile” with “Timeline”. Timeline is a radical new look to your profile. A large photo is featured at the top, known as a “Cover” to your Timeline. Your profile picture is smaller and displayed on the bottom left of your Cover. Your Friends, Photos, Map (check-ins), and Likes are displayed below your Cover.

Timeline essentially a scrapbook of your life containing photos you’ve posted, status updates, places you’ve checked in, when you joined Facebook, all of the way back to your birth. The items displayed in this scrapbook-like style are your “Stories” and can be starred, or featured, on your Timeline and will be expanded to a widescreen view.

All of your Stories displayed on your Timeline can be controlled for privacy concerns. Editing the information displayed is done through a new style interface, which I found to be surprisingly easy to manage.

Facebook will be officially launching Timeline on September 29, 2011.

For a closer look at Facebook’s Timeline click on the image below. I’ve blurred out my friends’ Stories (just to be safe).

Finally, Facebook has granted me access to Lists!

A much needed feature (mimicking Google+ Circles) allow you to organize your friends and control what you see in your News Feed and allows you to post updates to specific people.

In addition to Lists, Facebook provides “Smart Lists” which creates lists for you based on your friends’ profiles to help save time. I noticed it didn’t really find everyone that should be in the Lists but it did assist in providing suggested Lists for me to create.

Google has announced a social sharing project called Google+ to compete with the seemingly unstoppable Facebook. It seems BIG. Big enough to make Facebook worried? Not sure about that but there are some VERY creative features with Google+ that I am really excited about and can’t wait to give it a try.

“Circles” is how Google handles the topic of selective sharing of your content. You can organize everyone according to their real-life social connections (ie. Family, Work, Friends, Motorcycle Buddies, Mountain Bike Buddies, etc.). Sometimes you want to only share your content with just a select “Circle” of people (and in a much faster and easier fashion that with Facebook). Your contact information, location, and relationship information can be selectively visible for certain circles as well allowing for a lot of privacy options.

“Sparks” is a way for you to find news videos and blog posts on subjects by keywords. Additionally, you can engage with others in discussions.

“Hangouts” is a pretty neat video conferencing system. It allows up to 10 simultaneous people to come and go as they please and join the hangout.

“Instant Upload” is where you share your photos. But Google goes further and lets you (with your permission) sends every picture you take on your phone to a private album in the cloud. Then later you can share them as you see fit. GPS location is an option as well.

“Huddle” is a group text messaging system that works with your “Circles” of people so it’s easy to keep everyone in the loop in a discussion.

Google+ Overview