Warning: Do not read this post if you want to keep your ‘real life’ friends.

Long gone are the days where you need a laptop of desktop to mange your social networks. In fact, thanks to the developments in smart phones, you can set up, manage and use each of your social profiles on the move.

That’s right, we’re going to show you how you can ditch the heavy equipment for good and go 100% mobile!

Let’s begin by assuming you are aware of and are using many mobile versions of the most popular social networking sites. Just in case, let’s recap the big ones:

Facebook for Android, Twitter mobile, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare and Tumblr.

Now, let’s dig a little deeper.

The ‘supporting’ cast

• Facebook Messenger - If you want to take your Facebook chat function with you, then this is the app for you. It tells you who’s online and allows you to carry out instant chats from the palm of your hand. Nice eh?
• TwitPlus – addon for Twitter - This should probably be called ‘Twitter on Steroids’. This adds things like ‘odd style retweet’ and other functionality not available in the native Twitter mobile app.

All-in-one solutions

Of course, if you don’t want to have a million separate apps you can download one of the many cross-platform services. The best of these include: Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Seesmic, UberSocial (although this last one is more a Twitter-specific app).

Time to show off

As readers of The Next Web, we expect you to be familiar with most of these apps. Now it’s time to show you some stuff that’ll really impress your friends. The hottest social apps and games doing the rounds at the moment include:

• Draw Something (collaborative drawing app), Words with Friends (like scrabble), Hooked (a game recommendation app), Fancy (a Pinterest style curation app), and Path (the semi-private social network).
• Pinterest hasn’t released an official app yet, but you can always download Pin’d.
• We haven’t really talked much about video yet, and there’s more to life than just YouTube mobile. The best of the bunch is an app called SocialCam from Justin.tv which allows easy video sharing with your friends.

Useful utilities

If you want to manage your online life from your mobile, there are some great socially-inspired apps to choose from too, including:

Evernote (web clipping and note taking app), ANY.do (collaborative to-do list) and DropBox.

That should ensure you never miss a beat!

Additional resources:

• Zeebox launches in Google Play
• Spotify unveils its new Android app

Yuri Arcurs via shutterstock

Facebook has made another minor change to users’ Timeline profiles, incorporating a new design for Friend listings that include both a person’s name and profile photo, making it easier for other users to make new connections via their existing connections.

The update appears to have rolled out over the past 24 hours, ensuring that when a user visits their friend’s Facebook profile, the Friends box immediately draws the their attention:

Before, friends were listed but a user had to mouseover the person’s image to view their name on the resulting popup.

You could argue that Facebook’s new design has elements of Microsoft’s Windows Phone/Metro interface, a layout that is both simple but effective at encouraging users to click through to other people’s profiles and expand connections.

Facebook recently increased the size of Timeline profile images, just days after Google updated Google+ profiles to sport a larger photo. It appears that Facebook has been working to make the most of images on the social network, helping with the identification of its users and driving interaction between them.

As we reported earlier today, Yahoo has added two more patent claims to its case against Facebook.

A Facebook spokesperson gave us the following comment regarding Yahoo’s latest move:

We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions. We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.

Clearly, as I noted previously, this is turning into a war of epic proportions, and neither company is standing down. With this latest comment from Facebook, it’s clear that the company is shocked by the actions that Yahoo has presented them with.

Of course, Facebook came back with its own patent claims, which Yahoo referred to today as “not in good faith”, since the patents themselves were purchased by Facebook from other entities.

The cases themselves are barely underway, and it seems like the back and forth could seemingly go on forever. To me, it appears as if Yahoo is trying to disrupt Facebook’s march to going public.

The two patents that Yahoo added to its case against Facebook today have to do with a “System and Method to Determine the Validity of and Interaction on a Network” and a “System and Method Allowing Advertisers to Manage Search Listings in Pay for Placement Search System Using Grouping”.

Sounds pretty vague to me.

According to a tweet by CNBC, Yahoo has filed claims against Facebook in regards to two additional patents.

The two companies have sued one another regarding patents over the last month, with Yahoo starting the war. After the two companies couldn’t resolve its issues internally, Yahoo took the legal route, at which point Facebook returned the favor with its own claims.

When Yahoo initially filed its claims, the company spoke confidently that it would come out on top:

Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed. These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail.

Here are the details of the two new claims:

Yahoo! asserts 2 more patents against Facebook (U.S. Patent No. 7,933,903 on a “System and Method to Determine the Validity of and Interaction on a Network” and U.S. Patent No. 7,698,315 on a “System and Method Allowing Advertisers to Manage Search Listings in Pay for Placement Search System Using Grouping”.

This is turning into a shoving match of epic proportions, with the latest move from Yahoo clearly sending the message that it won’t be pushed back without a fight.

Yahoo also says that Facebook didn’t have a basis for its counter-sue over infringement, because there is no public information about Yahoo’s inner-workings to make the claim in the first place:

Unless Facebook has unlawfully acquired Yahoo! confidential business information, Facebook could not have developed a good-faith basis for many of the infringement allegations in its counterclaims.

In addition, Yahoo stated that Facebook lacks a “good faith basis” for its counterclaims, since the patents involved were purchased from others, and were for the most part not being used at all by the original owners.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and will let you know if we hear anything from the company.

UPDATE: Facebook has responded.

Here is the entire document, filed by Yahoo:

91552655 Yahoo Reply to Facebook Counterclaims

Social networking is old school these days it seems. A certain group of people, mainly late-twenty and thirty-somethings are tired of sharing everything with everyone on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Smaller has become better as we’ve learned by watching the growth of Path and the impact of Pair.

Intimacy is a difficult thing to mimic with technology, particularly on the small real-estate offered by a mobile phone. There are quite a few companies working on the “less is more” solution, and one of them is launching some really cool stuff at our TNW Startup Rally in Amsterdam.

VCNC, a company founded by Jaeuk Park, Youngmok Kim, Sungwook Cho, Kyungjae Woo, Junghaeng Lee, based out of South Korea, is offering an app called Between that helps you keep track of your personal relationship. It doesn’t have to be with a significant other, but it’s definitely suited for it.

We’ve covered Between before, long before Pair launched, and what they’re launching is definitely worth checking out.

Going global

Previously, we noted that Between was aimed at Asian users, who don’t like to share personal moments publicly. However, the team is taking great steps to move outside of the market and go global. that look back at their special moments. Now the couples know where their relationship is stored.

At The Next Web Conference, Between will be adding support for five more languages, in addition to its current four. By the end of May, Between will be supporting a total of 13 languages. App translation is completely important to appeal to more markets, as we learned by Path’s latest initiative to crowdsource its translation efforts for twenty languages. The fact that Between is ahead of the curve here is impressive.

The nice thing about Between is that it’s a mix of Path and Pair, in that it groups together your “moments” by day so you can go back and check everything out that you’ve discussed or shared in the past. This is where Pair lacks quite a bit, as it’s just a continuous stream of a conversation, much like SMS.

The Event Box

Since Between’s launch, the app has had a feature that was closed to its users called “Event Box”. The curiosity as to what this feature will be is now over, as the Event Box is officially open as of The Next Web conference.

Get this, the Event Box is a “business model”. Imagine that, right? Basically, the Event Box is a place where businesses can interact with couples. Couples will be able to find out about cool products and services, and the businesses get exposure.

During the conference, the company will be sending out a “Between Box” to companies all over the world, filled with products for couples, sponsored by LG Healthcare. It’s called ‘Delivering Happiness’. We will be delivering a ‘Between Box’ to 100 couples all over the world. The ‘Between Box’ is filled with our customized products and cosmetics, sponsored by global companies like LG Healthcare. Check out this page for more details.

Between has had over 690,000 downloads since its launch last November. It’s available for both iOS and Android and is totally worth checking out.

➤ Between for iOS | Android

I think it’s fairly safe to say that when we see a “Like” button on the Web, we almost instantly associate it with liking something on Facebook, at least I know that I do.

Two years ago, WordPress.com launched its own “Like system”, which allowed readers to like something that they read, which would then add their gravatar to a cluster of other people that liked it, too. When it was announced, the company said that it hoped the feature would drive people to explore other blogs and bloggers.

It seems that users liked the idea, because WordPress.com has posted some of its recent success with the system, as well as some new enhancements.

According to the graph below, the traction of the feature has picked up since its launch, seeing well over 800,000 clicks a week:

While those number might not seem overwhelmingly huge, the growth is definitely a good thing and shows that Facebook might not own the “Like” after-all. Either that, or all of the users clicking the button are assuming that it’s related to Facebook, even though WordPress.com blogs have a share button for the service. Confused? Don’t be.

In what seems to be a push to turn WordPress.com into more of a social network, the company announced that it has added the option to put the buttons on all of your content, instead of on each individual blog post like before.

By editing your Like button options, you can allow people to click the button on your home page, blog posts, and individual pictures within slideshows. Here’s what the button looks like on a front page of a WordPress.com blog, which now lets you click the Like button without having to drill into the content:

Since liking posts can be a way to bookmark items for yourself and to show off on a profile, your interactions will now show up on your profile page under “Posts I Like”:

So go forth and get your Like on, but don’t expect it to show up on Facebook. You’ll have to click the share button for that.

Hernandez shares some insight, a load of impressive stats and then talks about the launch of 12 new apps for Facebook Timeline in the video. It’s worth a few minutes of your time, for certain.

Keep up with all of our TNW 2012 content by checking this link.

User support hasn’t been a strong suit of Facebook for as long as I can remember. The word among many users that I know is that they feel like submitting suggestions or complaints to the company feels like a bit of a “black hole”.

The company announced some changes today to change that perception as well as strengthen its ties with the Facebook community. To that end, Facebook has launched what it calls a “Support Dashboard”, which will let users track all of the requests that they’ve submitted.

Now that the gigantic social network has over 900 million users, it must be able to keep them there, so this feature is aimed to do just that. Here’s what Facebook had to say about it on their safety blog:

At Facebook, we believe that safety is a shared responsibility. We encourage the more than 900 million people who use our service to report content to us that violates our Community Standards. These reports enable our team of review professionals to quickly and effectively remove abusive content from Facebook. However, we have consistently received feedback that once people report something to us, they did not know where it went or whether it was handled. Today, we are excited to announce initial testing of a feature that allows you to see what happens after you click “Report.”

Here’s what the dashboard looks like for users:

To make sure that the community feels safe and secure, the company will track all incoming requests and provide a new level of transparency for users to see the issue all the way through. This could be a simple feature request or a report of harassment or other safety related issues.

This is a massive shift for the company, as it promises to update the status on all submissions, giving users the ability to see why an action was taken, or why it wasn’t.

Terry Guo, Product Manager for Support Engineering and Site Integrity at Facebook added:

We are always looking for ways to make reporting easier and more transparent for the people who use Facebook. Through these vital reports, people help us effectively take down content that is against our policies. That is why we are excited to launch this feature that will enable people to track their reports and inform them when action is taken. The hope is that the Support Dashboard will provide greater clarity and accountability to our processes.

Once you click the “report” button on a piece of content, you’ll be taken to this new dashboard, which the company is now in testing phases with.

When a status on a submitted issue has been changed, the user is alerted so that they can review it. I can’t overstate how much of an undertaking this is for any company, let alone one as large as Facebook. In what is mostly regarded as an engineering-heavy organization, bringing this level of communication and support to the table is a welcome addition.

Christian Hernandez is Director of Platform Partnerships at Facebook, and he took to the stage at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam today, to talk us through local and global social connections, and how global brands are leveraging the so-called ‘viral loop’ through the open graph.

“900 million is the current number of active users on Facebook, think about the scale of what that means on a global basis,” he said. “Half a billion is the number of people who come back to Facebook on a daily basis.”

Big numbers for sure, and it’s these kinds of numbers that Hernandez based today’s main announcement on, whilst noting that there may be just three degrees of separation between the people in the room…friends of friends is key to how virality grows. And it’s this that helps to highlight the power of Facebook apps for brands.

Since f8 in 2011, Facebook has been providing a platform for a number of companies’ apps, including Deezer, which Hernandez says gets 200,000 new users a week from the social network. Today, Hernandez revealed “a new class of Timeline apps”, covering 18 companies across 11 countries in Europe and the Middle East.

He stressed ‘local’ appeal too with these latest roll-outs, with the likes of Le Monde, Le Figaro, Sky Italy and Canal+ among the slew of new additions. “If I watch a video on Canal+, that now becomes part of my timeline”, says Hernandez.

Then there’s donation platform JustGiving, which has already been harnessing the power of Facebook to encourage people to give money to good causes – it received £22m in funds through Facebook last year. “Each share on Facebook generates £5 in donations”, says Hernandez. “We give them tools to make that giving more efficient.”

Indeed it’s anticipated that by 2015, more than half of all donations will come through Facebook. Today, JustGiving is switching on a Timeline application, which allows you to share with your friends while you donate, and it will let you see how much you’ve donated to different charities over time.

The Next Web will be getting a hands on with all these new apps later this afternoon, and we’ll be sure to bring you the lowdown on these. Meanwhile, you can follow all of TNW’s conference activity here.

Christian Hernandez is Director of Platform Partnerships at Facebook, and he took to the stage at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam today, to talk us through local and global social connections, and how global brands are leveraging the so-called ‘viral loop’ through the open graph.

“900 million is the current number of active users on Facebook, think about the scale of what that means on a global basis,” he said. “Half a billion is the number of people who come back to Facebook on a daily basis.”

Big numbers for sure, and it’s these kinds of numbers that Hernandez based today’s main announcement on, whilst noting that there may be just three degrees of separation between the people in the room…friends of friends is key to how virality grows. And it’s this that helps to highlight the power of Facebook apps for brands.

Since f8 in 2011, Facebook has been providing a platform for a number of companies’ apps, including Deezer, which Hernandez says gets 200,000 new users a week from the social network. Today, Hernandez revealed “a new class of Timeline apps”, covering 18 companies across 11 countries in Europe and the Middle East.

He stressed ‘local’ appeal too with these latest roll-outs, with the likes of Le Monde, Le Figaro, Sky Italy and Canal+ among the slew of new additions. “If I watch a video on Canal+, that now becomes part of my timeline”, says Hernandez.

Then there’s donation platform JustGiving, which has already been harnessing the power of Facebook to encourage people to give money to good causes – it received £22m in funds through Facebook last year. “Each share on Facebook generates £5 in donations”, says Hernandez. “We give them tools to make that giving more efficient.”

Indeed it’s anticipated that by 2015, more than half of all donations will come through Facebook. Today, JustGiving is switching on a Timeline application, which allows you to share with your friends while you donate, and it will let you see how much you’ve donated to different charities over time.

The Next Web will be getting a hands on with all these new apps later this afternoon, and we’ll be sure to bring you the lowdown on these. Meanwhile, you can follow all of TNW’s conference activity here.