Sweet! I try to avoid everyone's favourite social networking sites, and I recently left another one I was spending retarded amounts of time on, so your timing for getting all these features going is ace.
Not that I don't wuv dis site with all of my heart, I don't think it should become anything like a social networking site. I like coming here to read stuff about games, not talking to anyone else with wonderful tastes in websites.
I don't see how this "screws over" the forums, powergamer. These benefits apply to you too - the new PM system especially. As we grow the site and continue to build a big, happy, integrated community feature set, the forums are going to feel the benefits. You may not see the big picture yet, but you will in time, young grasshopper.
A. It is Wednesday, but it's only been Wednesday for 9 hours (on the West Coast of the US, at least). It's going to take some time to complete the update, but it will be done today, unless something catastrophic happens.
It is for the entire site, but a minor hiccup has delayed the deployment by a few hours - as of now, we are projected to have it live later this afternoon (Pacific time).