It’s always interesting to watch the social media giants at play.
And by play, of course, I mean, “continue on their quest for domination of the universe…”

It seems that Facebook has really listened to the complaints of the vocal rebel minority, who actually care enough about their privacy, to be morally outraged by the repeated shenanigans on the Zuckerberg DeathStar. First they (hugely) simplified the privacy controls. Aside: The video clip where Zuckerberg is interviewed by Robert Scoble, and recounts his own “WHAT??” moment on discovering that there are [insert absurdly huge number here] privacy settings, is pure gold. Next, they offered users a (almost) one-click “Deacivate My Account” option (In 14 days…If I don’t touch my account…Maybe.)

And now…There’s evidence of a “Delete My Account” option. Apparently being tested on a subset of Facebook users, the option will greatly simplify (and perhaps shorten) the process of jumping ship. It’s likely that the proviso in the Terms Of Use, that gives FaceBook rights to use uploaded content in perpetuity (and even after account closure), will remain in force. The rumors were confirmed by Facebook:
“…we are constantly testing new ideas, including the placement of various features. One of these recent tests included variations of the delete account option for a very small percentage of people.

And, in other news from the Twitter universe, we see that the Force is strong in this one. The force to become a Facebook clone, that is. Twitter is testing inline media display. So, when people that you follow, post links to photos and videos, those items will load and appear in your stream. That may be great in bandwidth-flush areas, less so in others. Personally, I like to choose to load and view media, even within my following stream.

Twitter’s official response?
“We’re constantly exploring features and settings. What you saw was a small test of a potential consumption setting for inline media. We show inline media on our own iPhone and Android apps.”