The image above was a welcome surprise when I logged on to Facebook this morning – There is now a real time chat service, like Instant messenger. At the moment the features are nice and simple (which I like), you can set your status to “Online” or “Offline” depending on how chatty you feel. You can see which of your friends are online at any time.

Thinking about this service after the initial “surprise” is this feature something Facebook users want? For me it’s a place where I can message my friends, join groups, read discussions and occasionally find some good links (SEO related of course). If I wanted to chat to friends I would phone them or use an IM service – Facebook was my getaway from the real world for me – Perhaps I liked someone enough to “add them” as a friend but to actually engage in conversation is a whole other matter.

I’m sure Facebook will add and add to this feature eventually consuming what was once a simple medium to interact into a complicated web of ads and notifications. Anyway – I’m not casting judgment yet and have setup a poll – let me know what you think?

Well it has to be said Google has been anything but predictable regarding Page Rank updates in 2008, having 2 already in 2008. Check your own page rank at Dig Page Rank to see the numerous datacenters are behaving abnormally. I detected this activity before the last PR update, which I was quick to blog about. This could be however a Google link update, the same activity happens then also – Either way, an update is happening.

If you want to find out some more information about Page Rank then visit Google’s Page Rank page to learn a bit more.

Checking on a late Saturday night I have seen that Google UK have officially tried to go “green” by going black. Some of you may remember Google black a while ago created by persons outside Google. On the homepage of Google they have called it “Earth Hour” to help increase awareness to the environment.

In all fairness they have specified that by turning the pixels black it does not lower power consumption but the idea is nice if a year behind the original idea.