First it was the baggage fees, and charging for legroom. Then it was denying us our Words with Friends. Now, the New York Times reports, it’s bringing Facebook and LinkedIn to the seat-selection process, so you can gather more information on customers … I mean, pair up fliers with similar interests.

Soon enough, we’ll hear people’s no-longer-serendipitous tales of purposely meeting their soul mate, or maybe selling their company to the passenger in seat 24E.

I’ve got one word for you, airlines, or really, one word that’s used twice to create another single word: GoGo. Wasn’t it just a few years ago that Internet broadband access became an in-flight possibility, allowing us to bury our heads in laptop screens, plow through work while 30,000 feet above the ground, and effectively avoid human interaction? Even the subject at the top of the Times story, Jeff Jarvis, grumbles that he usually has work to do.

And now, you want us to talk to people while we fly? (How does one do that, anyway?)

In case you missed the story, KLM Airlines and others have recently integrated aspects of social media with customer profiles, allowing prospective passengers to share personal information and choose seat buddies based on their profiles.

Sharing the social info is completely optional, and if a customer is uncomfortable with the person who has chosen to sit next to him or her, the seat can be changed up until two days before the flight.

As the story points out, this is likely to appeal to business travelers who are interested in real-life networking, not just social networking.

On one hand, providing more personal info to airlines could help them tailor the flight experience to suit fliers’ preferences, going beyond just the standard meal selection.

And one of the services mentioned, Hong Kong-based Satisfly, lets fliers indicate their preferred level of chattiness during a flight. So the tired mom might not get the talk-shop guy, and maybe the fearful flier won’t get paired with another white-knuckler. (In the videogaming world, I’m told, multiplayer gamers find this kind of feature to be invaluable when they create profiles, so jabberers and silent Halo-ers can peacefully coexist.)

But allowing fliers to handpick their seatmates based on social profiling could also have its pitfalls. As Jarvis aptly says, “Pity the poor venture capitalist who gets seated with the start-up guy who talks his ear off for four hours.”

Which might present another opportunity for airlines: Charge extra for high-tech noise-canceling headphones …

Readers, what do you think? Would you use a social networks to choose a seatmate on a flight, or opt not to share your profile?

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

And let’s be clear: Getting the band’s stuff on Apple’s store won’t fundamentally change anything.

• The band members will see more money. But they have plenty already.
• It’s possible that the Beatles’ label, EMI Music Group, may get enough short-term cash to keep it out of Citigroup’s hands. But there are very few of you reading this who care about that.
• Apple will see a spike in iTunes music sales. But Apple moved on from iTunes music sales a long time ago: ITunes is all about apps these days, and Steve Jobs would like it to be more about TV and movies, too. Meanwhile digital music sales flattened out this year, and even the Fab Four will have a hard time changing that.
• It does mean that bloggy types can stop making random guesses about when the Beatles will come to iTunes. So that’s pretty great, really.

And look. It’s cool that the band will be on iTunes. It’s embarrassing that it hasn’t been, but now that we’re past this, we can just consider the-better-late-than-never move a “pivot,” right? Fundamentally: More good music, available more places, is a good thing.

The thing I’m most interested to learn this morning (or whenever we do find out) is whether you’ll be able to buy the band’s output on a song-by-song basis. [UPDATE: Answered.]

If the band is trying to maximize revenue, it would try to force Jobs to break from store policy and sell their music in only album format. But that would be hypocritical, since the Beatles, like most other bands of their era, were about singles for a very long time.

And wouldn’t it be cool if you’d never heard “Flying” before, and then someone played you the trippy instrumental track from “Magical Mystery Tour,” and then, $1.29 later, you could be walking around with the tune in your iPod? Right?

What’s that? You’ve never heard “Flying” before? No problem: You can hear it on YouTube, of course:

And if you’re looking for other Beatles songs, Google’s video site is happy to oblige. They’ve even made a 41-song mix for you. No credit card required.

Provided by Aircell, the service will cost laptop users $9.95 for flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Travelers using Internet-ready handsets will pay $7.95 regardless of the length of their flight. And make no mistake, the data show they will pay. Apparently, $10 is a pittance for distraction when you’re trapped in a center seat on a packed flight with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” as your only in-flight entertainment.

“[People are] working, they’re doing their e-mail, they’re going into their corporate networks, they’re going to their Facebook page, they’re Twittering, they’re doing YouTube and other video sites, but they’re in fact doing more of it,” Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein told the Dallas Morning News. “The data shows that people use almost twice as much of data during the course of a session and stay on almost twice as long as when they’re at a hotel or a hotspot on the ground. People clearly are engaged by it when they’re flying.”

[Image credit: Flickr/Bekathwia]

Provided by Aircell, the service will cost laptop users $9.95 for flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for longer flights. Travelers using Internet-ready handsets will pay $7.95 regardless of the length of their flight. And make no mistake, the data show they will pay. Apparently, $10 is a pittance for distraction when you’re trapped in a center seat on a packed flight with “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” as your only in-flight entertainment.

“[People are] working, they’re doing their e-mail, they’re going into their corporate networks, they’re going to their Facebook page, they’re Twittering, they’re doing YouTube and other video sites, but they’re in fact doing more of it,” Aircell CEO Jack Blumenstein told the Dallas Morning News. “The data shows that people use almost twice as much of data during the course of a session and stay on almost twice as long as when they’re at a hotel or a hotspot on the ground. People clearly are engaged by it when they’re flying.”

[Image credit: Flickr/Bekathwia]