While most brand marketers today are intensely focused on their social media efforts, many express frustration at the inability to quantify its value or incorporate it into their marketing mix. comScore Social Essentials is a breakthrough social measurement product that helps marketers do just that.

Have a look at the presentation below of the in-depth analysis of how social media brand impressions reach Fans and Friends throughout Facebook, as opposed to just on brand Fan pages. The study profiles three major brands – Starbucks, Southwest Airlines, and Microsoft Bing – to show the impact of these impressions on Fans and Friends and help illustrate how brands today need to be thinking about their social marketing initiatives.

A new Facebook page offers businesses a how-to guide to marketing and advertising on the social network.

Facebook for Business is a basic subsite that outlines a step-by-step process for launching a marketing plan, and includes both paid and earned media opportunities that businesses can leverage.  Facebook breaks down the process along these lines:

1. Build a presence
2. Engage your community
3. Get the word out

Familiar tools such as pages, ads, sponsored stories, deals, places and social plug-ins are all mentioned as resources businesses can incorporate into their Facebook presence to boost their image and drive traffic.

The Facebook page further breaks down each of these tools into easily digestible steps, making it easier for a reader to understand how to get each tool up and running.

The Facebook for Business site follows another initiative launched in the spring, Facebook Studio, that also helped explain advertising on Facebook.

The reason for this is unclear, then again with all the hype about Google Plus it is not surprising

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook all compete for top talent. In doing so, they lure and acqui-hire the brightest minds in tech — who, unfortunately for them, later go on to trade these cushy jobs for the rough-and-tumble life of a startup founder.

Which of these four mega powers in tech (at one point or another) has produced, and hence pushed out, the top talent in the industry? A little analysis of the startups that have come from the former employees of these tech heavy-hitters, and a look at the funding these startups have raised, might shed some light on the answer.

Article first published in Masahable Image courtesy of Flickr, satanslaundromat

Did you know that Facebook is the largest photo sharing site in the world. Each day more than 3,000.000.000 photos are uploaded to the site each month. Check out this interesting infographic below that explains how they do it.

See full image below.

Worried about all the time you’re spending on Facebook? Well, what if your wasted time was actually making money for St. Jude’s Research Hospital or another charity?

That’s the idea behind GamesThatGive, a San Francisco-based startup founded by former Apple software engineer Adam Archer and web developer Kris Goss. Facebook software company Vitrue just closed a deal to buy the company, and will integrate its capabilities so brands will be able to create charitable games on their Facebook pages. The deal price was undisclosed by GamesThatGive has just six employees in San Francisco.

Vitrue made news a few months ago after grabbing $17 million in a third round of funding and getting an A-list adviser: Mike Murphy, former global ad sales chief of Facebook and current senior adviser to casual games giant Zynga, which recently filed a billion-dollar IPO. Vitrue tools are being used by brands such as Procter & Gamble, AT&T, Nascar and Coors as well as agencies such as Wieden & Kennedy, Y&R and Edelman. Original post via adage.com

Naughty Facebook, trying to stop Google + from allowing you to export your friends list. Well here’s a quick video that show’s you how you can do it.  Guy Kawasaki originally shared this post:

The Nominet Trust is a UK-based charity with the mission to “support initiatives that contribute to a safe and accessible Internet, used to improve lives and communities.” Recently, they published a report entitled, “The Impact of Digital Technologies on Human Wellbeing.”  It makes for interesting reading about the impact of digital technologies on human wellbeing.

Facebook yesterday 06/07/2011 announced that they were launching video chat with skype.  Watch the presentation again. See below.

Everyone talks about which social / business platform they prefer and why.  What we find more interesting is what people are actually doing on these platforms.

In wanting to find out the answers we came across this nice  infographic from Jason Falls showing actual insights into the usage of social media. Full size image can be found here

For all those who love to share across all social media platforms —This is for you. Happy Friday

Mobile Marketing Watch reports that a new study published by the researchers at Pew reveals that social networking has truly made the world a more interconnected place – particularly among people who have never met.

Based on the findings published by Pew, the typical Facebook user has never actually met at least 7% of their Facebook “friends.” For most users, that means about sixteen of their Facebook friends are practically complete strangers.

Another 3% of our collection of Facebook friends are individuals we’ve met in real life only once.

In this Pew Internet sample, 79% of American adults said they used the internet and nearly half of adults (47%), or 59% of internet users, say they use at least one social network. This is close to double the 26% of adults (34% of internet users) who used a social network in 2008.

Pew finds that 52% of Facebook users and 33% of Twitter users engage with the platform daily, while only 7% of MySpace and 6% of LinkedIn users do the same.

On Facebook on an average day:

• 15% of Facebook users update their own status.
• 22% comment on another’s post or status.
• 20% comment on another user’s photos.
• 26% “Like” another user’s content.
• 10% send another user a private message

To read the full report from Pew, click here.

1. Seo Providers
2. Games
3. Internet Marketers
4. Food Providers / Retailers
5. Creative companies like 99 Designs etc..

Facebook and BrightEdge say they have co-authored a white paper on how to optimize pages for better placement in search results.  While the two are billing the white paper as a co-authorship, the document looks an awful lot like the one BrightEdge released on its own a couple of months ago, only with the official Facebook logo stamped at the top.

Regardless, Facebook page administrators clearly need advice on how to get noticed by search engines, since 70 percent of pages don’t practice any form of SEO, according to BrightEdge.

Below you can read the white paper, “Facebook For Social SEO: Best Practices To Drive Organic Search Performance With Facebook.” Let us know what you think about it in the comments section beneath this post.

First publised by All Facebook

1. Twitter tightens the screw further on its ecosystem: it’s about to announce its own photo-sharing service.

2. eBay-for-vacation-rentals Airbnb is reportedly raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation.

3. We learned a bunch of incredible things about Google over the week-end.

4. Facebook is about to hit 700 million members.

5. Amazon is now a full-fledged book publisher, competing with its most important suppliers.

6. “Completely revamped notifications and widgets” are coming to iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

7. Asus comes out with a “Padfone“, a tablet that docks with a smartphone. It looks like a dud.

8. Match.com makes a buyout offer for Meetic. Meetic is publicly traded and the biggest dating site in Europe.

9. Larry Ellison is suing a neighbor for blocking his view.

10. BONUS: Meet the sexiest programmers alive.

Via SAI: Silicon Alley Insider

Just days after the INQ Cloud Touch, once called the first official Facebook phone, launched in the U.K., the device passes its first United States debut hurdle: the FCC. Rumors are swirling of a United States launch as soon as late summer, 2011.

While no official carrier has been announced, the Android Community speculates AT&T will carry the phone with a purchase price of around $500 without a contract, and $30 with a contract. AT&T has neither confirmed nor denied the speculation, but considering testing included GSM 850 and 1900 bands, as well as WCDMA Bands II and V, AT&T seems the logical carrier.

U.K. customers are reporting specs for the phone, which include the Android 2.2 Froyo operating system, with a  Qualcomm MSM7227 800MHz processor, 3.5” touch screen, 512MB of internal storage, GPS, WiFi, bluetooth,  5 MP camera and a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

While these are good specs for any smartphone, Facebook integration is at the heart of the phone’s marketing plan. As the pictures attest, the phone’s homepage is designed for easy Facebook tracking, and the QWERTY keyboard is ideal for quick status updates.

The phone is sure to be well received among American Facebook users, which is a broad market that encompasses a wide age range. But, the question remains: Will AT&T help or hurt the phone’s popularity? first posted via allfacebook.com

ow much is a brand fan worth? It’s a question some social media marketers have been asking for a while, but research suggests many are moving on from the search for a hard number.

According to a July 2010 survey of social media marketers by Millward Brown and Dynamic Logic, the most valuable aspects of social media brand fans go beyond anything with an immediate monetary value. Increased short-term and long-term spend on the brand were the bottom two results.

At the top of the list were the fan’s value as a source of insight and increased loyalty overall. Advocacy and engagement were also important to at least three-quarters of respondents.

This suggests that, despite the real need for return on social media marketing investments, marketers are largely not worrying aboutputting an exact dollar value on each Facebook fan or Twitter follower—as if such an amount could be accurate. And they are keeping in mind some of the less-obvious qualities of brand fans, like as a source of market research.

Still, these soft metrics can leave marketers unsure about their returns. Half of respondents to the Millward Brown/Dynamic Logic survey were uncertain about how much they were getting out of their investment in a social media fan base.

First published on emarketer.com

Facebook appears to be testing a new format for friend request notifications sent to people’s email addresses

I got a friend request today and it looked like the image above. Some users whose settings enable the site to email notifications about friend requests will now receive messages with a new layout. New additions include information about the person requesting the friendship, photos, wall posts, plus a link to view all pending friend requests.

Have you had this yet? What do you think.

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