It's a party; you're invited

Political news curator The Huffington Post has launched HuffPost Social News, which enables HuffPo readers to highlight news stories they like, dislike, are reading and have made commentary on, via Facebook Connect.

The offering's objective is to become the "go-to place" for Facebook users that wish to share news with friends, according to CEO Eric Hippeau of HuffPo.

Co-Founder and editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington called HuffPost Social News "a digital water cooler, enriching and deepening conversations around the day's news." She added that users' relationship to news has "fundamentally changed" since the rise of social media.

"We now engage with news, share news, react to news — news has become something around which we gather, connect, and converse," as opposed to passively consuming, she observed.

From a promotional perspective, Hippeau expressed his hope that the site will "appeal to marketers interested in reaching passionate, savvy readers who care about the news and who want to share their interests with friends."

Facebook Connect is a service that enables websites to integrate elements of Facebook into their offerings, and share transactional or conversion data with the social network that appears on users' walls.

Last year the Huffington Post was ranked one of the fastest-growing independent political sites. It was valued at $100 million as of December 2008.