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Business networking site LinkedIn has confirmed reports that its founder, Reid Hoffman, will return to the CEO post to replace resigning CEO Dan Nye.

Hoffman had stepped down as CEO in 2006 but remained chairman of the board and stayed active in product development operations. This month, LinkedIn hired Dipchand Nishar as vice president of products, with the objective of taking over some of the duties that Hoffman had been handling. Meanwhile, former Yahoo executive Jeff Wiener, currently the executive in residence at Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, will take over as interim president at LinkedIn.

Nye plans to step down in mid-January. No reason was provided for his departure.

"Dan joined LinkedIn with a mission to help us build a company that was strong and sustainable. In two years, he has succeeded in this objective, transforming LinkedIn from a young start up to a high growth business," Hoffman said in a release. LinkedIn does not make its financials completely public, but says it has been profitable since 2007.

"Dan deserves tremendous credit for his contributions to LinkedIn. His passion and commitment will continue in the efforts of the team that he's helped build here."

Currently, LinkedIn has about 33 million members and has raised more than $100 million in venture capital, giving it a valuation that's reportedly right around $1 billion.

It hasn't happened yet, nor is there a timeline for it, but Facebook has stated that it's working on allowing its members to "organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what." No formal announcement was made, but you can see the little tidbit--along with something about forthcoming "daily digest" e-mail options--on the What's New on Facebook page. It looks like TechCrunch was the first to spot this.

"Friend grouping" is a move that, unless the company really screws it up, Facebook members are very likely to applaud.

Technically speaking, it's hardly revolutionary. The Six Apart-owned blogging pioneer LiveJournal, for example, has allowed the simple creation of "custom friend groups" for years. But what you have to understand about Facebook is that millions of young "early adopters" signed up with the (not particularly forward-thinking) expectation that the only people who'd be seeing their profiles were their college friends and other contemporaries.

Several years later, many of those then-college students are now young professionals; Facebook's new open-registration policy has allowed their colleagues and relatives to create accounts; and there are a whole lot of St. Patrick's Day Keg Race photos circa 2004 (and office happy-hour photos circa 2007) that perhaps those members don't want their bosses or parents to be seeing.

Presumably, if Facebook members are able to sort their contacts into custom groups, they'll be able to display varying degrees of profile data to those groups. That way, for example, your boss might only be able to see your profile photograph and work information, whereas your college buddies would be able to keep reminiscing about the old days with those St. Patrick's Day snapshots.

This will put Facebook even further ahead of "openness"-advocating rivals like Plaxo Pulse, which lets members group their contacts into "friends," "family" and "work" but doesn't allow any custom functionality.

You've probably heard it by now--LinkedIn founder and chairman Reid Hoffman hinted to Dan Farber at our sister site ZDNet that within the next nine months, his site will be opening itself up to developers, Facebook-style. There's not a whole lot else to report now aside from speculation--and the speculation thus far has indeed been rampant.

This is especially interesting, because over the past few months I've seen a few trends: first, a more professional crowd gravitating toward Facebook; and second, that recent college graduates entering the work force haven't pounced on LinkedIn the way I would have expected them to. Some of the expressions I've heard have included "not functional enough," "glorified address book," and the ilk. We all know APIs are trendy, but in the case of LinkedIn, they might be necessary for the professional social network to survive in a world that increasingly places emphasis on the all-in-one factor. (Case in point: iPhone.)

I've contacted LinkedIn and they have not responded to my request for comment. Keep an eye on this one.

TechCrunch reported late on Friday about a hot new rumor in the social media space. The Germany-based business networking site Xing, according to TechCrunch's Michael Arrington, may be in talks to acquire online address book management company Plaxo. The deal is rumored to be in the $250 million range--a significant buy indeed.

Plaxo, for some background, was founded in 2002 by Napster co-founder Sean Parker. Since then, the company claims to have hit 15 million members (as of September 2006). It synchronizes primarily with Microsoft Outlook address books, but has also formed deals with companies like Yahoo and AOL's Instant Messenger division.

When I met with Xing founder and CEO Lars Hinrichs this spring, he made it very clear that the company believes an acquisition strategy is the best way to spread the company's influence beyond Europe and across the globe. For example, when Xing's team wanted to make inroads in Spain, it purchased regional networking site eConozco. Hinrichs also emphasized that Xing hoped to make some inroads into the U.S. market, so it's not all that surprising that news would surface concerning a potential Xing acquisition of a big stateside name in business networking.

But as we all know, here in the U.S. there's a big obstacle for Xing in the form of LinkedIn--it's virtually unrivaled in its field at the moment. As a result, any influence-spreading acquisitions on Xing's part would have to be pretty major.

So while this is a rumor, and a rather unsubstantiated one at that, it's certainly a deal that would make some sense if it were to materialize.