Today's Facebook News: Prepare to Be 'Shellshocked'

Oh, baby. If you were peeved by Facebook's latest changes, you may want to pop a Valium. Because the changes Facebook will announce sometime after 1pm EDT at its f8 conference in San Francisco will "forever transform" Facebook, writes Ben Parr for Mashable, who was briefed on the changes but won't spill them. What he will share are great, big, hyperbolic pronouncements, like "I have seen what Facebook is launching on Thursday, and it’s going to change the world of social media."

He calls the changes "mind-boggling." He says that what's coming is the biggest thing we've seen from Facebook since the 2007 "launch of the Facebook Platform." What Facebook cares about most deeply is emotion, explains Parr, who says the site "has lost its emotional resonance over the years"—we come back again and again because we have to, not because we want to. Parr, of course, won't leak the ways in which Facebook plans on rekindling the flame, but he prophesizes that the "changes will make it so you know your friends better than you ever thought you could. On Thursday, developers will be elated, users will be shellshocked, and the competition will look ancient. On Thursday, Facebook will be reborn. Prepare yourselves for the evolution of social networking." (Update: Click for the big news.)