I just celebrated my birthday about a month ago, and received the obligatory birthday wishes on my Facebook wall. It makes me happy to see all those birthday wishes. I’m a bit of a ham when it comes to my own birthday celebrations. But for Vikki Ortiz Healy over at the Chicago Tribune, such Facebook wishes are a plight of insincerity in the digital era.

I completely understand where she’s coming from. E-cards only count for so much, depending on who sent them. And Facebook wall greetings seem even less sincere because Facebook alerts you to every upcoming and current…

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Muggmaker is a new Facebook application that allows you to create animated avatars. The avatars can then be used as your profile photo on Facebook, or other social media sites. Unlike the trend for animating an existing photo of yourself, Muggmaker doesn’t convert existing photos but enables you to create an avatar entirely from scratch.

To get started, you’ll need Flash installed on your computer. From there, you can create a fully custom avatar, starting with a blank face. Add facial features such as eyes, nose, mouth, ears. Top things off with a funky hair style. Everything is customizable, from…

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All the brands are doing it–finding a way to integrate somehow with social networking platforms, namely Facebook. And while many brands are going so far as to create an application of their own, Bombay Sapphire has teamed up with Real Drinks in order to take advantage of its gifting application on Facebook. The Real Drinks app lets users purchase real drinks for friends, by sending them redeemable gift cards of sorts that can be taken to any bar or restaurant in the U.S.

For this particular partnership Bombay Sapphire has created a special drink that can actually be gifted and…

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Zoosk, the online dating community that launched in 2007 as a Facebook application, has raised an additional $6 million in funding. This is the third round of funding for Zoosk, and was led by existing investor Canaan Partners. The funding will go towards pushing Zoosk’s market share on a global scale, as well as adding to its team and roll out new products.

As we noted in an interview with Zook’s co-CEO Shayan Zadeh, the Zoosk application on Facebook witnessed rapid growth as a result of its aggressive user acquisition model. Having now reached a reported 30 million users as…

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MyChurch, the winner of the most recent fbFund incubator program, has undergone a lot of changes this year. A relaunch of its application a few weeks back and the participation in fbFund ‘09 has provided a wealth of opportunity for the MyChurch team, as they find useful ways in which to create an application around existing faith-based organizations that need additional social networking tools. I had an opportunity to interview Joe Suh, CEO of MyChurch, who speaks on the relaunch of the application, as well as being a winner of the fbFund.

Kristen Nicole: What is your MyChurch application all…

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Nintendo has announced that it will integrate its DSi system with Facebook photos, at the E# Expo in Los Angeles today. The announcement comes a day after Microsoft Xbox Live announced its own integration with Facebook Connect, enabling the ability to share gaming updates through your Facebook news feed.
For Nintendo, photo integration means that photos taken with the system’s built in camera and interactive lenses will load directly to Facebook. The integration leverages Facebook Connect, and will be launched later on this summer with the Nintendo DSi system update.

For gamers, the ability to share their game history creates…

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Omniture, the marketing optimization company, has added Facebook application demographics to its suite of solutions. What the new Facebook integration does is offer insight into Facebook marketing by offering data rendered from user behavior surrounding Facebook applications. The purpose of this new product is to offer Omniture clients a set of tools regarding Facebook marketing in order to help them make more informed decisions, specifically when it comes to Facebook apps.

If a marketer is sitting on the fence about whether or not they should create a Facebook app, looking at the data offered by Omniture could help them make…

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Social media company Sprout is launching a new bundle package for its strategies and campaigns services, which centers around building an online presence specifically on Facebook in just two weeks. For $50,000 Sprout’s new tool set is a bundle package that includes a Facebook application, Facebook Connect integration with their client’s site, and a Facebook Fan Page for engagement purposes with Facebook users.

The bundle package is customized to each individual client, with provisions for design, campaign management and tracking. Other features include quality assurance testing, consulting, campaign launch support and other key analytics for measuring purposes.

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