Once again, it’s been a roller coaster of a week for Facebook. More announcements, more rumors, more speculation on what this latest set of changes to the world’s largest social networking site will mean in the long run – both in terms of user experience and in terms of what those of use who use Facebook to communicate professionally will need to do to stay ahead of the curve.

Whether you use Facebook to promote your small business, speak on behalf of your large company or just bring your offline professional networking into the virtual world, there’s a chance that this week’s slew of changes will affect you in some way. Here’s a brief look at a few notable developments:

– Users will be able to request a one-time password for use on public computers by texting Facebook for an access code. You’ll also be able to see whether you’re logged in to Facebook from more than one location (such as your home and your office) and kill off any sessions that you don’t recognize. While this isn’t an earth-shaking feature for social media marketers, it does mean that – in addition to creating an increased psychological sense of security on a platform that hasn’t always received the best press about privacy – users are less susceptible to password skimming on public computers infected with keystroke-monitoring malware.

– The Farmville tab on your friend’s profile? That’s going away. Facebook announced to developers some time ago that support for custom tabs on individuals’ profiles would be discontinued, but now that it’s actually happening, confused users are making noise wondering where their applications ran off to. (Answer: There’s an “Applications” menu item in the left-hand rail on the front of facebook.com.) In addition to making tens of thousands of users suddenly hunt around for where to find their online games, this means that if you put your business on Facebook back when many folks were setting up profiles as “people” rather than Pages, you may want to think about making the switch – or making sure you’re not using an application tab to list relevant information about yourself. (Pages, however, will still be able to keep application tabs, at least for now.)

– If you use Microsoft’s Bing search engine, your search results now include info on what your friends think of what you’re searching for. If your search results include a page that a few dozen of your friends “like,” you’ll see that – and, hopefully, react accordingly. In addition, the Facebook/Bing partnership includes “smarter people search results” in Bing based upon mutual relationships in Facebook. While it’ll take a while to learn just how many people switch from search giant Google (rumored to have its own social engine in the works) to Bing, it may well bring a new – and untested – variable into the delicate dance of search engine optimization.

– In case one major partnership in a week isn’t enough, there’s also the news that Facebook is now extensively integrated into Skype – meaning that your Facebook phone book is now in the Skype application alongside the rest of your numbers, as well as the latest from your Facebook news feed. See that your BFF just changed her relationship status on Facebook? Give her a call. It’ll be interesting to see whether users rely on this addition to the Skype interface as a substitute for accessing Facebook – and its advertising – directly, particularly since this is the first major occasion where that’s actually possible on any sort of a large scale. (Well, PC users anyway; the feature isn’t yet available for Skype on the Mac.)

What are your thoughts? Do any of these changes impact your work life – or your home life – in a significant way? Give us a shout using the comment link below.