In my last article Digg Sponsored Ads – Are Businesses and Brands Going to Ruin Their Potential I wrote about how brands are ruining their long term chances of successful marketing on social networking platforms by pushing their product on networks rather than offering something of value and contributing to the conversation.

It seems that the developers at Facebook are noticing the same thing and are considering implementing drastic changes to their platform to keep marketers from taking advantage of what is currently a very cheap and easy way to promote. AllFacebook reports that Facebook may kill all viral channels by removing application notifications, relocate the “requests” notifications to a lesser viewed part of the site. A few other minor tweaks are being considered as well that would lower overall activity on fan pages and applications as well as lower virality.

But with social network changing so rapidly, I think that businesses and brands can get creative and find new ways to exploit the system. Change is the catalyst for innovation, and these new limitations on Facebook are sure to be no exception. I’m looking forward to seeing how developers will react and watch as they find new ways to exploit the system.

I just discovered a great site for slicing and dicing Facebook page rankings.  Check it out at Facebook Page Statistics.  It’s sub-site of AllFacebook The Unofficial Facebook Resource.

You can choose between rankings by number of fans, daily growth rate and weekly growth rate.  Those rankings are available for all pages or within 61 sub-categories — from  actors, bands and consumer products to TV shows, visual artists and writers.

Top three sites by fans overall?  Barack Obama, Coca-Cola and Nutella.

Now, I know Nutella is very popular in Germany and across Europe.  But I wouldn’t have expected it to be the third most popular Facebook page on the planet.  Would you?  (Do you even know what Nutella is?)  It has 3.2 million fans.

Some of the data seems a bit off.  Skittles appears twice, ranked number 4 and 6 under consumer products.  And the Bible also appears under consumer products.  Well, I guess it is one, strictly speaking.  But maybe the “Non-Profit” category might have been more appropriate.  Or perhaps “Other Public Figure.”  After all, it is the word of God.

People’s propensity to actually become a fan on a brand’s Facebook page seems like a nice, if somewhat imperfect, measure of their love of  the brand.  Imperfect, because variables of content and entertainment value will influence the number of fans on the page.  And not all brand lovers are on Facebook — yet.

But the fact that Coke is the number one ranked page for consumer goods would support a correlation to Facebook fans and love.  (Remember the revolt of Coca-Cola enthusiasts against New Coke back in the 80’s?  This is brand that is loved, despite its age and the proliferation of competitive offerings in the soft drink category.)  Nutella’s high ranking would confirm that too.  I know people who would take to the streets if “their” Nutella were ever taken off the market or even changed in the slightest way.  At Saatchi & Saatchi, my employer, we call brands like these Lovemarks.  We all have our personal Lovemarks.  Brands to which we are loyal beyond reason.

There are many ways to understand if a brand has moved beyond respect into the lofty realm of love.  The number of fans it has on Facebook is a new one worth keeping an eye on.

Skittles

This week twitter took over the Skittles home page and anytime you wrote a tweet it went straight to the home page – suddenly messages like “Skittles shown to cause cancer” appeared on the home page – it takes a gutsy brand but once the fuss has died down it points to the end of the web and the rise and rise of the social web. The customer is once again king.

Skittles changed their web site to go 100% social

Twitter Clients

I have been experimenting with various twitter clients such as Twhirl, Twitter mobile and Twitter on Facebook – but it looks like the emerging winner is TweetDeck which sits very nicely on my second monitor. I love the quick URL crunching tool – which makes tweeting that bit easier.

Tweetdeck is the most usable twitter client

Profile waste of time

In the old days we used spend our downtime changing the screen colours on our Windows settings – this has been replaced by the ultimate vanity of changing the profile photos.  Read this enjoyable post from All Facebook to see all the different types of Photo styles people have come up with.

Number one of the profile photo styles

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my personal blog, which is a shame, I know.  But nevertheless, here we are. A lot has changed in the past few months.  I have parted ways with Mashable.com, and have gone on to freelance for other great publications like VentureBeat.  Now I’m working with Nick ONeill over at allfacebook.com and socialtimes.com.

After taking some personal and health time for myself, I’m gearing up for a great year in 2009, despite all the changes that have taken place in my life and with the overall state of affairs, namely the economy which has undoubtedly effected the blogosphere.  There are a couple of other project I’m working on, which you’ll be hearing more about in the coming months.

One project in particular is Soceeo.com, which has been doing extremely well this year.  I’m glad to have been able to have a small part in working with founder Emile Cambry on Soceeo.com when I had the chance, and if you’d like to hear more about this service, please head over to the founder’s blog, which can be found here. I thank everyone for the support they’ve shown me during my time of transition, and recognize the true blessings that have found their way into my life.  And, I’ll try to update my blog more often!  Smooches,

Today Nick O’Neill over at AllFacebook announced the speaker lineup for his upcoming Social Ad Summit, and we’re honored to be included. Looks like our Founder and CEO, Anu Shukla, will be among pretty good company.

The Social Ad Summit is a full day, invite-only, conference held in NYC focused on strategic issues driving the growth of advertising in social networks. The event will be held on September 15, 2008.

Nick and his team just recently began sending out invitations to the event, so if you haven’t received one yet, don’t worry. They’ll be sending them out over the coming week. Also, if you are not sure whether or not you have received one, fill out your information on the Social Ad Summit homepage.

Hope to see you there!

Check out this link from Nick of Allfacebook. If you want to know about using Facebook for organizing, check out Nicks video here. This event was sponsored by the folks at the New Organizing Insitute.

Two key points arose in relation to cultivating a community on social networking sites like Facebook:

• Using badges for Facebook posted on your main website.

• How do our constituents, users, and connect? (essentially what need do I fulfill their needs and wants with my Facebook group?)

Very simple, but seemingly very effective.

Washington DC’s very own Nick O’Neill has launched another blog called Social Times.  He’ll cover all aspects of social media and social networking.  His blog also has an offline component where he’ll help to promote social networking related events. Nick also writes for All Facebook and his personal blog The Webpreneur.

It’s exciting to see more activity in the DC Web scene.  I look forward to tracking Nick’s success with this blog and many others.