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Think your programming skills are world class? Facebook is asking you to prove it at its second annual Hacker Cup challenge.

“Hacking is core to how we build at Facebook,” the company said in a blog post announcing this year’s competition. “Whether we’re building a prototype for a major product like Timeline at a Hackathon, creating a smarter search algorithm, or tearing down walls at our new headquarters, we’re always hacking to find better ways to solve problems.”

Open to coders anywhere in the world, the competition pits participants against each other in five rounds of programming challenges. Starting January 20 with a 72-hour qualification round. Three more online rounds will narrow the field to reveal the final 25 competitors, who will be flown out to Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters for a final competition in March. (more…)

Have too many friends on Facebook? Jimmy Kimmel thinks so. That’s why, for the second year in a row, he’s celebrating National UnFriend Day or NUD, in hopes to make it a tradition.

Last year, Jimmy Kimmel declared that November 17 would be National UnFriend Day (NUD). Kimmel explained that NUD is supposed to be a holiday dedicated to giving Facebook users the opportunity to unfriend people they no longer want to be friends with. This annual event was created so that everyone can weed out people on Facebook without any feelings of guilt.

Once again, he will be asking his audience to cleanse their Facebook accounts of non-friends. Kimmel is clearly hoping his campaign to clean out Facebook friend lists will become an American tradition. Facebook users typically have hundreds of friends on the social network, though occasionally they’re in the thousands. (more…)

Since the beginning of Facebook, the user profile has been the place where you tell your story. People use it to share everything from the small stuff, like their thoughts on an article, to the most important events of their lives, like the photos of their wedding or the birth of their child.

Over time, your profile evolved to better reflect how you actually communicate with your friends. Now you can can share photos of what you did last weekend, and updates about how you feel today.

But since the focus is on the most recent things you posted, more important stuff slips off the page. The photos of your graduation get replaced by updates about what you had for breakfast.

Say you’re catching up with an old friend – would you rather find out that they had eggs this morning, or hear about their new dream job? (more…)

Exact details are rather scarce, but Facebook will be launching a music service later this month. That’s right — Facebook may be about to unleash unlimited free music to all its users. Music is enjoyed almost universally, and free music services have been among the fastest-growing on the web — Napster, to name but one.

Facebook is partnering with top music services Spotify, MOG and Rdio to let users stream music on Facebook. Spotify is a service that lets you listen to virtually any song for free on your desktop, with the occasional, but infrequent, ad. Users can pay a small fee to remove the ads or use the service on their phones.

Though Facebook is the world’s most popular social networking service, with more than 750 million users, founder Mark Zuckerberg is keen to increase the amount of time users spend in the Facebook environment.

Music is said to be just one aspect of the strategy to improve Facebook’s “stickiness” and it is also expected to partner with other media content owners such as movie studios.

“They are working on a platform for music where the goal is to create a connective tissue for fans,” said one person familiar with the talks who asked not to be named as plans are confidential.

Facebook has declined to comment on its new music platform before, but in July several technology blogs reported a software engineer had uncovered programming code for a Facebook product called Vibes, for music downloading. (more…)

Miramax Films has debuted its new Facebook app dubbed ‘Miramax eXperience’, which will stream movies over Facebook and incorporates features such as sharing.

Miramax eXperience premiered with 20 films available for rental in the U.S., and 10 apiece in the U.K. and Germany, and the movies are available for 30 Facebook Credits ($3) apiece. The number of titles available via Facebook puts Miramax ahead of competitors Warner Brothers, Paramount and Netflix, among others. (more…)