Today (in fact, just a few minutes ago), Facebook officially launched their “Pages” platform for advertising. This was something I have eagerly been waiting for, as it finally allows businesses to have their own pages on Facebook, allow discussion, have “fans”, and even add their own applications on their pages. This truly gives businesses a presence directly within Facebook. This is huge news! You can sign up here.

The one little thing they revealed with this launch that I doubt will get much attention, is it seems they have finally revealed their full reason for using 64-bit profile ids. If you look at SNAPlicate, Inc.’s (my company) Pages profile that I created, it uses the exact same “profile.php”, with the exact same “id” tagged onto it. I’m guessing their database has some sort of profile_type table that tells if it’s an individual or business profile, so the application can act appropriately. Therefore they had to accommodate for all the additional profiles they would add through businesses. This 64-bit id was actually a hint and we never knew it!

Some people didn’t want to believe me, but it appears I was right about the gPhone launching on November 5th. I was not completely right about it being their Social Networking platform. Of course the platform launch of OpenSocial was launched early. It appears the November 5th launch so anticipated by all the blogosphere was, in fact, the gPhone and their new platform, Android.

I am the CSO, or Chief Social Officer for my new company, SNAPlicate. I have interpreted it to be a mashup of a CTO, with a social twist. I am in charge of ensuring my company stays up on social technologies, has communication and networking with other Social developers, and keeping an overall social direction for the company. As a Social Development and Innovation company, I think companies like SNAPlicate need positions like mine to keep them in a forward-moving direction. I wonder how many other social-related positions will be created from this new wave of platform development.

I guess I should use this opportunity to tell a little about SNAPlicate. We’re a social development and innovations firm, perhaps somewhat similar to RockYou, or Slide that also outsources work for other companies desiring a social direction. I am starting this company with my partner, Allan Young (our COO), and already we have applications such as our Holy Rolls suite of meta-religious apps, the SAC App, the GrandCentral App, and several other apps currently in development I will announce shortly. Several of the apps we have developed have tens of thousands of users on them, and we have consulted and helped architect other applications with millions of users. I’ll be updating snaplicate.com soon with more details, so stay tuned!