Over the past day or so Facebook has begun heavily promoting their mobile services through ads on the site which all link to a new Facebook mobile landing page. They are trying to alert users to the robust set of mobile features that they currently have available including the ability to send messages directly to users, something Twitter has offered since early on. Whether or not users are actually substituting one service for the other (Twitter for Facebook), Facebook is clearly stepping up their communications campaign against the rapidly growing startup.

In addition to stepping up their communications campaign, Facebook…

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This morning I got an email from the owner of the “Cristiano Ronaldo” public profile stating that he had been disable after attracting over 2.85 million fans. The reason? Most likely because the public profile wasn’t an official public profile and despite the owner having semi-approval from the soccer player’s agency, Facebook proceeded to shut it down. It’s not the first time we’ve seen large “unofficial” public profiles shut down.

Months ago Facebook disabled the “Homer J Simpson” public profile which had become one of the top 5 most popular profiles at the time. Facebook never told us why the…

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Earlier today Facebook turned on a feature to let users receive text updates from public profiles, the same way that Twitter users can receive mobile updates from specified profiles. It’s a small change but for brands it adds a lot of potential. Mobile broadcasting is a huge feature for companies that are looking to reach out to fans directly.

While Facebook hasn’t added a subscription count to a public profile’s insights yet, I would imagine that to be a new measurement within public profile insights in the near future. At this point, there’s little else functionality provided by Twitter that…

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While Facebook applications are known for flashy ads that will use dirty tricks to get users to click on them, Facebook public profiles have been able to avoid having advertisements placed on them. According to AdAge article yesterday, public profiles are no longer virgin territory for sponsors. Us Weekly has successy sold sponsorship to State Farm on their public profile.
So is the beginning of a greater trend? Probably, but as one anonymous reader pointed out to us, selling advertising on public profiles is technically a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Specifically, “Application tabs cannot contain advertising of any…

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Over the past few days there has been increasing buzz about a market for Facebook public profiles. I’ve even received a few emails on the topic, one individual who was asking me about reasonable rates for purchasing public profiles. While I haven’t heard of any finalized transactions yet I’d expect this to become increasingly regular. Just last week Jason Kincaid posted about CNN acquiring the extremely popular CNNbrk Twitter account from another Twitter user who had been personally managing it.

On Facebook however, brands regularly contact Facebook to have fake versions of their public profiles shut down. At one point,…

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Big news for developers today: public profile status updates can now be accessed through the developer API. Andy Young, the developer behind Selective Twitter Status, was the first developer that we’ve seen to figure out a way to update public profile statuses via Twitter. Earlier today his application added a feature which now enables any Twitter user to update their public profile directly. This also means that applications can now effectively update public profile statuses, something that many developers were waiting for.

Interestingly enough, it doesn’t appear that Facebook has technically added any new functionality in regards to updating a…

Over the past few weeks I have been getting countless emails from users that have been increasingly prompted to fill out captcha forms when submitting wall posts and updating statuses. The reason for the increase is most likely because Facebook is trying to contain spammers. Unfortunately it’s making it more challenging for users to interact with the site.

When Facebook released their upgraded public profiles product, I had the same issue and reached out to Facebook about it. I heard back and was informed that it was a bug on my account and the issue was quickly resolved. If this…

Last weekend marked the beginning of the baseball season and with it came a surge in popularity of baseball teams’ public profiles on Facebook. In under a week the Boston Red Sox have grown from 1,173 fans to over 46,000 as of the last time I checked. The New York Yankees grew an enormous amount as well, making them the fastest growing. The largest baseball team I could find on Facebook was the Minnesota Twins with just under 72,000 fans.

As Facebook public profiles become a more integral part of the Facebook experience, they will become a better indicator of…