A collection of the best links from the past week.

Our collection of the best links, articles, news and tips from the week. Facebook Timeline Increases Engagement Today marks the day that all Facebook pages will switch to the Timeline layout. Preliminary studies have shown that the early adopters of Timeline are seeing increased engagement on their posts.

After many years of delays and hand-wringing the era of federal privacy legislation is finally upon us. Two years ago the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) caused quite a stir when it released its preliminary consumer privacy framework.

The term “Big Data” is definitely a leading contender for the marketing buzz-phrase of 2012. On November 11, 2011, a Google search on the phrase “big data” got 252,000 hits. By April 4, 2012, that had number increased by a factor of 5,000, to 1,390,000,000 results. And for good reason A 2010 IBM/MIT Sloan Management Review survey of 3,000 executives across 30 industries from 100 countries reveals that 60 percent of respondents have more data than they can effectively use.

It’s only March and it has already been a very busy year for privacy professionals. In January, Viviane Reding, Vice President of the European Commission, announced a proposal to reform the European Union’s data protection framework. On this side of the Atlantic, the White House recently released a lengthy paper titled “Consumer Data Privacy in a Networked World” with the intent of finally launching comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States.