After Google Plus was launched, Facebook made some tweaks to its social networking site. The 800 million users of the site founded by Mark Zuckerberg can now update their Twitter accounts or make calls via Skype within the social network. Now 35 million people who own an iPad can also access the world's second most popular Web site that is customized for the tablet's gesture-based user interface.

But the hype for Facebook's most serious competition yet has died down. While Google Plus appears to be losing traffic, Facebook continues to add new features, and more is in the pipeline.

Zuckerberg at this time has been expected to be focusing on Facebook's initial public offering. Valued by Sharespost at $75 billion, Facebook could gross more than $100 billion from the IPO. But Zuckerberg has deferred his huge payday to lead his development team in making the blizzard of "coming soon" announcements into reality.

While Google Plus has exposed privacy issues of Facebook, there's no stopping the world's most popular social network. The new features allow "frictionless sharing," which in effect makes users' accounts less private. Unless your friends adjust their privacy settings, the new features will automatically inform you what your friends read, watch and listen. Then there's Ticker, which is actually great, given that it gives you real-time updates from your friends, without having to refresh the page. But here's the catch, knowing everything that your friends do mean that (i) they would also know everything that you've been doing, and (ii) Facebook is taking logs of you, your friends and everyone else.

With all the changes made to the site, it seems like Facebook is undergoing an identity crisis. Facebook used to be your personal page that you use to connect to your friends; Twitter is a news platform for sharing your views to everyone. But now you can actually send in your tweets directly from Facebook. Replacing the "Poke" button is a "subscribe", which you can use to follow any public updates of any person not in your friend's list.

Aside from that, there are more changes to come. Facebook has just acquired question-and-answer service called friend.ly. The service, Facebook says, will allow people to express themselves and answering others through answering questions. And later this week, Facebook is set to announce a deeper partnership with e-commerce company eBay Inc., according to Reuters. The two firms already have an existing partnership that allows the purchase of Facebook ads and credits using PayPal, eBay's electronics payment system.

And soon, everyone's plain vanilla user profile will be replaced by a "completely new aesthetic." The Facebook Timeline uses algorithms to unearth everything that a user has posted on the site and will show, all in one page, all photos and other data that a user has posted on the site. A user can customize his page by adding apps. Each user will have a seven-day window between activating Timeline and publishing their new profiles to work to hide any embarrassing stories or private moments. Given that the site is now organizing our personal history, does it expect everyone to stay on Facebook until the time-line becomes a slide-show for one's funeral?

Years before, Facebook was just about writing something on your wall and browsing through others' profiles. But now you can listen to music, read news, buy stuff, watch movies, have conference calls, and have a virtual scrap-book.

Many have been ranting and screaming on the "unnecessary" changes to Facebook. But these same people have not abandoned the site.

Sooner or later though, people will get tired of the big chaotic marketplace in Facebook and will look for a site that would offer peace and privacy. And at that time, Google+ will take in all those users... as long as it doesn't try to be another Facebook.

The Titanic was thought to be unsinkable. But it sank, didn't it?