Right on the heels of Google’s launch of social gaming, Facebook has just announced changes to its gaming system that it says will make games easier to find and play.

Those who play games on the social network will now have a separate stream that displays their friends’ game activity, as well as their scores and achievements in a ticker, Jared Morgenstern, Facebook’s product manager for games and credits, said in a Facebook blog post. (more…)

Many of you may have noticed that Facebook has recently started grouping status updates by topic, in the hopes that the update will help make sense of your News Feed.

Now, should your friends share posts with similar themes or about a certain topic you’ll see a single News Feed story that groups them together. (more…)

On Thursday, Facebook unveiled their new high tech and futuristic-looking data center in Prineville, Oregon. Even more impressively, the project is open source, meaning Facebook will actually share what the company has learned about designing energy-reducing, cost-efficient computer servers and data centers.

Facebook claims their green data center uses 38 percent less energy to do the same work as its existing facilities, while costing 24 percent less – and they want other companies to adopt the technology.

The Facebook data center uses custom-designed servers, power supplies, server racks and battery backup systems to achieve an initial power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio of 1.07, compared to 1.5 for its existing facilities. In the winter, the data center will re-use hot aisle air to heat offices.

Facebook also announced the formation of the Open Compute Project, an industry-wide initiative that it says will share best practices for creating the most economical and energy-efficient data centers. Facebook will start by publishing specifications and mechanical designs for hardware including motherboards, power supply, server chassis, server racks and battery cabinets. The specs can be found at www.opencompute.org.

Facebook has begun to roll out it’s new Photo Viewer. All users should see the new viewer over the course of the next few weeks. This is aimed at having the ability to browse more photos faster without losing your place in Facebook.

The development team has announced three big improvements to Photos: high resolution images so you can store larger photos, a better viewer for browsing, and a simpler uploader for when you have lots of images. (more…)

Today Facebook launched a major redesign and expansion of functionality of its Pages for businesses, brands, media, and public figures. The new page layout will now match the user profile redesign, with a left-hand navigation panel replacing the tabs above the wall. Page admins will also be able to login as their Page, giving them access to Facebook and email notifications about activity on their Page, and other options.

The Page redesign does not affect the Page APIs, so FB developers don’t need to worry about their applications breaking. The expanded tab name space in the new navigation panel means developers can try using longer, more descriptive titles for when their application is installed as tab. (more…)