In case you haven’t heard, Facebook released two significant features in the last week.

First up is a spam control feature.You know how there are always this person (or more) who keeps trying to add you as a friend even if you have ignored his/her invite in the past?

What it basically does is prevent anyone who spams your Add Friends list from, well, adding you again if you have ignored the person before.

Well, now when you have ignored a person, you get this text showing.

Reporting him/her will indicate this person as a spammer (not sure how Facebook verifies it though!), while marking will not allow this person to ever add you as a friend again. You will need to add him/her first.

Of course, there is a potential problem that arises from this. Say I have ignored you and mark you as someone I don’t know. Then I meet you the week after at an event and we get acquainted. You won’t be able to add me again unless I add you. But what if I forget your name and can’t find you? Oh oh.

Which is the lesser evil? Any thoughts?

The other development is the release of the version 3,1 of the Facebook iPhone app. Two major features in this release is Push Notifications and Contact Syncing.

What this means is that you will be notified of everything happening on your Facebook stream – like new friends request, messages coming in or responses to status updates, for example – via Push technology. So you’re basically going to get an alert anytime something happens.

Don’t fret that this will get annoying though because you can select which, if any, kinds of notification you want pushed. For me, only messages and new friend requests are pushed. So it really is what you make of it. At least you have the choice!

The other feature is syncing of your Facebook friends with your contacts. Basically, Facebook takes your contact list and searches for matches on their databases. When it finds a match, it will include a link to the users Facebook profile on your phone contact list, as well as the person’s current Facebook picture.

One thing that worries me however is that pictures of people who I am not friends with on Facebook, but have them on my contact list, will also appear. This is potentially a privacy issue.

Has anyone tried this? What are your thoughts?