While a handful of Senators spoke out against Facebook’s new automatic opt-in privacy policy, this week the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a formal Federal Trade Commission complaint against the social media network – requesting that the FTC "investigate Facebook, enjoin its unfair and deceptive business practices, and require Facebook to protect the privacy of Facebook users."

However, Facebook was preoccupied attending to a more pressing privacy issue. The chat feature suffered a major technology glitch, causing some users private chats and friend requests to be exposed to the entirety of their friends list.

Which brings us to our prediction that Facebook will be upgrading this chat feature in the coming months. Especially since Russian investor DST, who bought the instant messaging relic ICQ from AOL, has increased its stake in Facebook from 2% to 10%. Giving DST more power in the decision making process and the chance to put its newest purchase into something useful.

Sadly, the future doesn’t look bright for all of social media. Digg is the most recent social media company to announce layoffs, sending an email to employees informing them that 10% of the workforce would be let go. And this comes on the heels of Ning announcing it would be cutting its workforce by 40% and removing all free services.

And what do the people have to say about all of this? Well, we take a stop at Denver, Colorado and get some interesting opinions from three individuals who actually don’t have a Facebook account, a very rare breed in this day and age.

We almost had the chance to ask Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois, what his thoughts were on the subject when we spotted him in the car next to us…unfortunately he drove away too soon.

But the best part of our Roadtrip so far has got to be this week’s CRUSH of the Week, where we got to meet up with the creator of Captain Planet. This was only stop one, so be sure to stay tuned for more in the upcoming weeks and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to find out if we’re coming to a city near you!

Don’t forget to join us on Facebook and Twitter, and get your daily crush at www.commonsensenms.com

Facebook took center stage this week with its annual developers conference, F8. What were the biggest announcements? Although Facebook founder Marc Zuckerberg displayed a dozen new tools and widgets, the most significant announcement to prepare for is the "open graph platform". Open Graph plans to connect all corners in the web in order to "create a Web that’s smarter, more social, more personalized, and more semantically aware". As one element of this platform, website owners will have a chance to place a "Like" button on their pages, allowing Facebook to then publish whatever a user likes directly to their Facebook profile.

Of course the privacy police have already stated concern over the new development, and with good reason. When does sharing data on what we read, view, listen to, and interact with on the web become invasive as opposed to interactive? Stay tuned to CRUSH for latest in what is sure to be an upcoming battle over personalization versus privacy.

In honor of the recent celebration of Earth Day, we encourage you to fly on over to the "We Love Birds" community on Ning. Hosted by NRDC and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, "We Love Birds" is one of the best uses of Ning we’ve seen yet. View some of natures’ finest yourself with the over 7,000 stunning photos.

While social media sites continue to innovate at a crushing speed, the honorable justices of the US Supreme Court seem to be experiencing technical difficulties. The divide between "the hip justices and hip-replacement judges" was made painfully clear during this week’s court discussion over sexting and privacy rights. Embarrassing highlights from the case:

• Chief Justice Roberts asks what the difference was between email and a pager
• Justice Kennedy wondered what would happen if you were sent a text the same time you were sending one to someone else – "Does it say: ‘Your call is important to us, and we will get back to you?"
• Justice Scalia’s confusion on service providers and concern of whether they can be shared by printing them – "You mean (the text) doesn’t go right to me?"…"Could Quon print these spicy little conversations and send them to his buddies?"

In other online sex news, we would like to commend Apple’s decision to trash nearly 6,000 sexually suggestive iPhone apps. Refreshing to see some leadership within corporate America, and hats off to Steve Jobs for refusing to chose profits over the objectification of women.

And that brings us to our CRUSH OF THE WEEK – Our story this week truly reveals the power of social media, as Mayor of East Haven Connecticut donated a kidney to a Facebook Friend, Carlos Sanchez, after seeing the status update Sanchez posted saying his friends and relatives had all been tested but were not a match. Making the Mayor a hero in our books, and Facebook her loyal sidekick.

All this and more. Watch the video:

Twitter held its first developers conference, appropriately called "Chirp", this past week and revealed the following key announcements: it has surpassed 100,000,000 users (with more than 300 thousands users signing up a day), the site boasts more than 180 million unique visitors a month, and that twitter will be releasing every tweet to be archived in the Library of Congress. Up next in the spring conference circuit is Facebook, which is preparing to display its latest news at F8 this Wednesday.

In international news, various social media tools covered the latest British debate between the leaders of the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative parties, providing instant snapshots of the country’s reactions into the debate. More than 184,000 tweets were sent during the debate and Facebook saw even more action – with over 45,000 people joining the Democracy UK page, which featured a "Rate the Debate" app. However, Facebook crushed under the pressure as the swarm of traffic caused the app to fail during the event.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was among the thousands of unlucky individuals whose travel plans were delayed due to the volcano that erupted in Iceland and created an ash cloud that caused the closure of European airspace. However, Stoltenberg is also one of the 450,000 people who own an iPad, which is how he has been running the Norwegian government from the United States.

Congressional deficit Commission Co-Chair Erskine Bowles is hoping that technology will be the key to balancing out our national debt. Bowles has asked Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to develop a game that will solve the national debt crisis, signaling both a new way to gain the interest of public, and opening up the possibility of fresh ideas by "crowdsourcing".

In other game news, if you are a Foursquare geek you will enjoy this new web series "Foursquare cops", brought to you by HubSpot and featuring the new police force the game has sent out to patrol the streets for cheaters.

Speaking of geeks, Glee fans are singing praises for the new "Glee" app, recently released and available for the iPhone, iTouch and iPad. The special "sonic network" adds a slew of interactive elements, making it more than just a music app. Users are able to not only sing and record their favorite show songs, but also share recordings, join people in their performances, and start Glee clubs.

And that brings us to our Crush of the Week, featuring another company who hit a high note with their innovative use of social media, the Belgian beer maker Stella Artois. But we don’t want to ruin all the fun by just telling you how they did it, so check out their recent promotion to see it first hand.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the massive lines outside the Apple store have been for the much anticipated, release of the iPad. With over 450,000 sold, it appears that having the iPad will be as commonplace as the iPod. But while there are already 3,000 iPad-specific apps available, there is one thing noticeably absent – Adobe Flash. Apple has banned flash from any of its iPhone and iPad apps, instead choosing only programs developed in HTML5.

Another media mogul Apple is taking a bite out of? Google. Apple is challenging Google’s online advertising dominance with the introduction of the iAd platform, which allows advertisers to develop interactive ads within another application. Although Apple CEO Steve Jobs has concluded it won’t be able to compete with Google’s search advertising, he is hoping Apple can become the leader in the mobile advertising sphere.

The war on climate change is heating up as the NRDC Action Fund rolled out its new media campaign to one-by-one get the 68 Senators who are not actively pushing for comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation to get in the game. And Senators, if you think they aren’t serious, just look at the recent activity towards target number one, Scott Brown of Massachusetts…

While the NRDC Action Fund works on the Senate, fifteen-year old Parker Liautaud is showing his commitment to the environment by skiing to the North Pole. His expedition, funded by none other than General Electric, is in hopes of becoming the first person to check in at the North Pole on Foursquare, which will earn him the coveted "Last Degree" badge.

Freedom of speech has been not only a liberty our country holds with pride, but also the source of controversy when it comes to media. Most recently, the forces for a free and open internet have been dealt a blow by the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C., taking away the FCC’s power to move forward in it’s plans to get more Americans connected to a faster and cheaper internet, and potentially allowing Internet service providers to block internet content they don’t like. Luckily this future isn’t set in stone, and a majority vote of FCC commissioners could give the power needed to both protect consumers and close America’s digital divide. Go to savetheinternet.com to lend your support to this important cause.

The latest news from Twitter is bringing applause from the business community, as the site’s plans for a huge redesign shows a greater emphasis on data. Hopefully this will allow better insight into solving the riddle that has plagued many of us, Tweet R-O-I.

And the quest to solve new media riddles brings us to the CRUSH of the Week, where we highlight a number of individuals who are moving up in the world after making the leap from old to new media. Proving once again that the future where new media rules the day, well, is now.

CRUSH is a fast and fun weekly round-up of social media news – Join us on Facebook to keep up with all the latest.

What was this week’s theme among your favorite social networking sites? Change. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are all rolling out a handful of new features. Including Twitter’s addition of "most popular tweets" to its search capability, a new interactive layout for YouTube, and the introduction of language alterations and community pages from Facebook.

Facebook was especially busy, as it also acquired "Divvyshot", a program that will allow users to tag photos by event. You can expect to see this application in the upcoming months. Music artist John Forte has already gotten a head start on how this might work, pausing mid-set during his latest tour stop in Boston to snap a photo for his morning Twitter feed.

More politicians are beginning to find audiences via social media. Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is reaching out to his constituents on Facebook. He follows New Hampshire Governor John Lynch, who did a live stream chat courtesy of the Live Free of Die Alliance a few months ago.

But beware, the power of social media is a double-edged sword. Just ask the RNC, as the release of controversial financial records and activities have been blasted to the public by an army of bloggers, as well as a video mashup of RNC Chairman Michael Steele’s speeches to Fat Joe’s music video "Make It Rain".

On a lighter note, April Fool’s Day did not go by unnoticed. Here’s a list of Mashable’s favorite pranks from this year.

And of course, we couldn’t resist pulling a prank of our own, which brings us to our CRUSH of the Week. Haven’t heard of a Rick Roll? Let us introduce you…

Can you get Syphilis from Facebook? According to a public health report in Britain, you can blame social media networks for the recent rise in disease cases by making it easier for individuals to meet up for casual sex.

While it’s far-fetched to believe Facebook is responsible for STDs, it could be aiding insomniacs. If you’ve started counting tweets instead of sheep when you’re having trouble sleeping, a new study reveals you’re not alone. An increasing number of Facebook and Twitter users are checking their accounts when they wake up during the night.

The big news on Capitol Hill this week – the health care bill was passed. But, as expected, along with it came strong reactions from both the left and right. The tweeter who threatened to assassinate President Obama has been taken into custody, and his Twitter account is gone. ABC News does have screenshots of the profanity-laden tweets here. Can 140 for characters still land you 15-20? We’ll find out soon. From the left corner, we have the first (of possibly many?) mash-up remix of House Minority Leader John Boehner’s "No You Can’t" rant with Will.i.am’s "Yes, We Can" video from the ’08 election cycle.

Google’s newest project, which promises to install high speed fiber-optic Internet cables in at least one lucky city, has got mayors across the country going to extreme measures. It started in Kansas, where the mayor of Topeka temporarily changed the city’s name to Google, Kansas. And the stunts have only gotten more adventurous, as Mayor of Duluth, Minnesota took a dip in frigid Lake Superior, while the Mayor of Sarasota Florida jumped into a tank filled with sharks.

But someone not happy to be catching the attention of Google? The British Special Air Service. It seems Google camera cars have "outed" a secret base of the SAS by marking the location on Google’s maps street view, and the British military and parliament aren’t happy about their cover being blown.

That brings us to our CRUSH of the Week, where we would like to take a chance to applaud Google for standing up to China.

Mid-March means many things: The death of Caesar, spring break, and the conclusion of SXSW. CRUSH takes the best of what happened in social media, and serves it up hot, in about 3 minutes. Among other things, we found Sonic the Hedgehog this week.

What was the coolest thing to come out of South by Southwest Interactive? While Twitter’s "@Anywhere" shows some promise, our money is on Aardvark, the social networking tool that lets you pose a question to your networks, and finds the best person to give you an answer.

Not featured at SXSW this year, but sure to make a splash when it is: The new app from the Iphone that lets you form an instant social network with the people around you wherever you are.

In other news, Facebook ads are getting more expensive since the news came out that Facebook beat Google for the number one spot in Weekly U.S. web traffic last week.

On to politics…Healthcare has passed! And in addition to the massive email traffic that urged everyone to contact congress, Organizing for America scored in our book for being the site meant to personalize reform.

On the other hand (and on the other coast) Carly Fiorina’s California senate campaign may be trying to ingratiate itself with some folks in Humboldt County, because we suspect her latest political web ads are – well – chemically induced.

Finally – Sonic the hedgehog lives, and you got to see it to believe it.

Last week was an eventful one for Facebook and Twitter. Facebook patented it’s newsfeed, partnered with Paypal, and sent some of its users hundreds of messages that were intended for other people.

Twitter added the people in the headline, with its newest users the Dalai Lama, Robert Gibbs, Ozzie Guillen and Conan O’Brien, and Denny’s tried to enter the twitterverse – and failed. All this and more on this week’s Social Media Newsladder CRUSH.

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Much has been said of the President’s health care summit, and much of it was said through social media. The 7.5 hour summit had 3 times the online viewership that the State of the Union did, and twitter traffic was off the charts.

Finally – If you have nothing else to do (really) take a look at Chatroulette. It is the Social Media Newsladder Meme of the Moment. Basically it is a place where you go and fire up your webcamera. One at a time you see people and they see you, and you hang out together until one of you clicks next. While some people have found creative applications for this model i.e. Catroulette, it looks like it is mostly bored young men and boys and therefore it is NSFW. Idle hands . . .

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