Last week we finished up the 30 Days to 3,000 Fans program and while some people may or may not have reached the 3,000 fan target, the real question is: does the number of fans really matter? Last night I was watching a video of Seth Godin where he says “it’s worthless to have lots and lots of friends on Facebook.” With so many people selling the importance of having fans, followers, and friends though, how could Seth Godin, a thought leader in marketing, make such an assertion?

It’s Relationship Marketing
Seth has a valid point. If you don’t build…

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Sheryl Sandberg is speaking today at 11:00 AM EDT. We’ve embedded the stream of the keynote live below. We’re expecting Sheryl to announce “Brand Lift” the company’s new partnership with Nielsen to measure the effectiveness of various advertising campaigns. We actually have some screenshots of Brand Lift in action that we’ll be updating this post with shortly. In the meantime you can watch the stream live below.

[11:06 AM EDT] – We’re still waiting for Sheryl to come on stage. The stream just temporarily posted a shot of the stage however we’re still on stand by.
[11:13] – We’re still…

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Facebook posted their updated advertising terms last night and ultimately nothing was really that surprising. As far as I can tell, the only addition to the terms was around data and privacy. As previously was the case, developers cannot give any data received from Facebook to any third party. Additionally advertisements that include user data “such as users’ names or profile pictures” will require explicit authorization from Facebook.

So what does that mean? It could mean that many of the ad networks that currently exist on the platform and have good relationships with Facebook could continue to display user information.…

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Over the past two weeks I’ve been going through the process of simplifying and organizing my life so that it’s more manageable. While the “work/life balance” (or whatever you’d like to call it) issue always arises, I personally believe it’s important to keep yourself organized. One area where many people are disorganized is there Facebook contacts. I’ve personally boiled down my personal organization to a few items: email, calendar, tasks, documents, and contacts. Facebook should be efficient at effectively managing my contacts/relationships (something I expounded on earlier this week).

Our Diverse Network Of Contacts
I was in college when Facebook…

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Skype is the next phenomenon from the people who brought you KaZaA Just like KaZaA Skype uses P2P peer to peer technology to connect you to other users ndash not to share files this time but to talk and chat with your friends The technology is extremely advanced ndash but super simple to use You rsquo ll be making free phone calls to your friends in no time Skype was founded in 2003 by Niklas Zennstr ouml m and Janus Friis Skype created a little piece of software that makes communicating with people around the world easy and fun With…

Apparently Hulu launched their implementation of Facebook Connect early last month but few people actually noticed. The Connect implementation enables users to view what videos their friends are watching. One thing that doesn’t appear to be an integral part of the Connect support is the ability to publish stories about what videos you’ve watched to your feed. Hulu has been receiving a lot of traffic which will also help Facebook expand the reach of Connect.

If you didn’t notice that Hulu had implemented Connect, it’s not surprising. To sync your Facebook account with Hulu, you need to login to the…

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The Facebook data team has published an interesting note about some research they’ve conducted which explores whether or not Facebook is in fact increasing the size of our networks. While Facebook has become an extremely efficient communication tool, does it help us stay in contact better with our existing contacts or is it more efficient at expanding our networks? The results are interesting. According to Facebook, “while the average Facebook user communicates with a small subset of their entire friend network, they maintain relationships with a group two times the size of this core.”

The report details a number of…

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If the primary service your web startup is providing to users is short profile URLs (a.k.a. vanity URLs), you might as well file for bankruptcy. Perhaps that’s a bit excessive since many entrepreneurs figure out a way to survive even after being shot in the leg (metaphorically speaking of course). Last week Techcrunch reported that Facebook would soon be providing users with free vanity URLs in a land grab that would begin later this week. That means services like Profile.to (which is a relatively popular Facebook application) will essentially be rendered useless.

Short URLs have become all the rage with…

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