If you’ve been on Facebook this week, you might have noticed this:

If you have a fan page, this change will affect you. Fan pages, in essence, don’t really exist any more. They’ll just be called “pages.” What’s the difference between “Becoming a fan” and “Liking” something? Facebook’s argument is that using the “Like” feature makes things consistent across Facebook. If you have a personal profile, you have no doubt used the “Like” function: it’s a kind of virtual thumbs-up or high-five when someone posts a status update that you like.

What’s the upshot? Well, I can be a little liberal with my “Like”ing. I’m not as liberal with my “fanning.” Facebook seems to think that this change will increase users’ interaction with businesses who have pages. My feeling is, that numbers of what used to be “fans” will climb much quicker with the new system.

The other thing that is new about this system, and this part I think is pretty cool, is that it opens up Facebook to the web. You can, now, for example, put a Facebook Box in the sidebar of your website or blog, and one “Like” click will lead the user back to Facebook and make them your “Fan.” You can also install the “Like” button on every blog post you write, and if someone “Likes” your blog post, it will show up in their status updates (if they have opted in to allow FB to do this). This could really help to bring traffic to your website or blog–others may see it and click on the link.

To install the “Like” Box, go here to create the code: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box

Here’s a screen capture that shows you how to install it on your blog.

You can also install a “Like” button on your blog that will automatically be added to each blog post and page. This will add a little box to the bottom of that post saying that you “Like” it. To do this, just do a search under Plugins–>Add new.

Here’s a more comprehensive explanation (thanks to @thenextstagemag)

Note that your WordPress blog MUST be self-hosted. They haven’t yet come up with a widget for WordPress hosted blogs that makes this simple.

Twitter introduces the “ReTweet” button.

Late last year, Twitter introduced an automatic Retweet button. In the past, if you wanted to RT someone, you had to copy the tweet, then past it into your update, and precede it by RT@{person’s name that originated the tweet}. Now, you simply click the RT button, and it does it for you.

If you are following more than 200 people, you should probably not be using the Twitter interface. You should look into using another Twitter platform, like TweetDeck, Hootsuite, or Seesmic.

I’m not crazy about this feature. I often like to comment on RTs, if there’s room. The other thing I don’t like about the new system is that Twitter has made away with the @ part of the RT, so it doesn’t show up in my @ replies. In order for me to know if someone RTed me, I have to log into my Twitter account via the Twitter interface and check. Which I never do, because I use Seesmic.

Now you’re up to date with the hottest news in social networking.

I’ll leave you with the latest statistics: Facebook currently is pushing 400 Million users Worldwide, and Twitter just passed 106 Million.