Ever since Google+ came out (as an invitation-only field-trial version) on June 28, the online community has been anticipating a head-to-head battle between the search engine giant and Facebook. That moment has yet to come, but in the meantime, Facebook and Google+ have each announced some major enhancements to their respective sites.

In July and August, Facebook launched several new features including video calling and group chat functions, two much-needed improvements in light of Google’s Hangouts feature. See “Google Learns to Facebook” for more information on Hangouts and other basic features on Google+. Facebook also launched Subscriptions, a Twitter-like tool that lets you follow people you’re not friends with, and more nuanced privacy settings, especially for photo tagging.

Then, shortly before Facebook’s developer conference, f8, was to take place on September 22, the web began circulating rumors of some truly radical changes. These included the addition of new activity-specific buttons to join the Like button – Read, Listened, Watched – and the integration of social music services such as Spotify, Rdio, MOG, SoundCloud, and Rhapsody. The rumors gained credibility with the introduction of the Ticker, a sidebar that displays real-time updates of your friends’ activities, for example: “Bill McDermott is reading SAP.info” or “Jim Hagemann Snabe commented on your photo”.