In the next few weeks, Facebook will be rolling out a feature which lets you tag fellow Facebook users, groups, fan pages, events and applications in your status updates and other posts by typing the @-character (Twitter, be afraid). Here’s how Tom Occhino, software engineer at Facebook, explains the feature.

Barack Obama today spoke directly to schoolchildren across the USA, motivating them to rise above their mistakes and challenges in order to succeed in school. “Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago”, the president said, “founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.”

Cue the cheers of joy, because we reached and passed the “2000 fans on Facebook” milestone during the weekend, thanks to all of you who Became a fan of reface.me! If you’re a fan of this blog and are using the Pieces of Flair application on Facebook, you can now add the official reface.me button to your Flair.

Hurray for all the quiz/app/notification-haters! Facebook is building a “faster, simpler version of Facebook” called Facebook Lite. The slimmed down version is far from finished, but a happy few have been given an early preview.

Even though we’re enjoying a short time off blogging, we haven’t been sitting around doing nothing either. Instead, we’ve opened a reface.me shop full of Facebook inspired t-shirts. Or hoodies. Or tote bags. Just choose any of the designs and start customising your product of choice.

Millions of Americans have an Internet addiction of some sort, according to Dr. James Mol, a psychologist for Providence Behavioral Health. Although issues specifically with Facebook haven’t been studied, most health professionals will tell you their patients are bringing it up.

A man and woman, both named Kelly Hildebrandt, are getting married in October this year. And it all started with the following innocent Facebook message, sent by the female Kelly Hildebrandt to the only male name-alike she found on the social network site: “Hey, I saw we have the same name,and I thought it was kind of cool, Just wanted to say hi I guess. LOL.”

Another freebie for the Harry Potter fans out there: 3 free Harry Potter Facebook Gifts. You have the choice between a memory vial, a cauldron, and the Half-Blood Prince’s very own potions book. Don’t let them fall into the wrong hands!

Riot police stormed a 30th birthday party for just 15 people and shut it down, thinking it was a rave because it was advertised as “an all-night party” on Facebook. The party was organised by Mr. Poole, a coach driver, using the create an event facility on Facebook, through which he invited 17 family members and friends.

With Facebook reaching the milestone of 250 million worldwide users this month, it’s time for some updated user statistics for July 2009 about general growth, user engagement, Facebook applications, international growth, etc.

There’s a free “King of Pop” Glove gift available for sharing with all your MJ-loving Facebook friends. More than 800,000 gloves have already been exchanged, making it the most popular gift on Facebook to date.

We’re currently on a short break, hence the lack of blog activity the past few days. We will return next Monday, so stay tuned!

The way to think of this is before the Internet, we wouldn’t see our acquaintances very often: every once in a while, we might show up at a wedding and suddenly have 100 of our closest friends around. With Facebook, it’s like every day is a wedding. And just like leaving a wedding may leave you feeling energized and inspired by reconnecting to old pals, so can spending time on Facebook.

As suggested by Alex Pribble and as requested by some of our readers who use the Pieces of Flair application, here’s the link to the official Upside Down Facebook Day flair for those who participated in the 1st edition. Enjoy!