Recently AllFacebook heard from sources close to Facebook that the company was in conversations with Foursquare about a potential acquisition and/or some form of partnership. Unfortunately the details have been slim but Kara Swisher is also hearing things as well. The most apparent thing about these conversations is that Facebook has yet to finalize their plans for location.
Told you. Start positioning your business in foursquare, right now.
Open Message to Mark Zuckerberg from Jason Calacanis.
Jason’s message is spot on. Zuckerberg is creating the perfect environment for someone to come in, provide better coding, a better sharing platform, and a more trustworthy user experience.
There’s a new phenomena of people declaring themselves social media experts. We’ve actually heard from firms who pushed someone to become their resident social media expert because the person was on Facebook. There is no endorsement or accreditation to set apart legitimate industry leaders from bandwagon opportunists.
Social media is a hot topic. We get it. And we don’t want to see people getting scammed by self-touting experts ready to make a quick buck.
There are very few people who could, or should in all honesty, be called social media experts. We’re sharing this list with our networks, including those not yet involved in the social media world to give them a helpful guide.
Peter offers a number of ways to tell your social media “expert” might not be an “expert” after all, including my favorite:
3. They “discovered” social media in the last six to 16 months, and there’s nothing online from them in the social media space prior to that.
and:
22. The strategy they provide you primarily includes a Twitter profile and a Facebook fan page.
Last week, Facebook added a suite of new features that let websites like Pandora and Docs.com access some of your personal information and use it to instantly personalize your experience. Pandora, for example, will recommend streaming music stations built around artists you’ve Liked on Facebook in the past.
Most of the time this information is harmless and you shouldn’t worry too much about it being used for nefarious purposes, but if you want to err on the side of caution, you can actually opt out of the program for privacy reasons — the option is called “Instant Personalization” and it’s sitting deep inside of Facebook’s privacy settings pages.
WhatApp.org – a Stanford project dedicated to measuring security – recently found that Facebook users had significantly less privacy than Twitter and the iPhone. The site uses experts’ analysis to rate different applications, and on the whole, Facebook scored 2 out of 5 while Twitter and the iPhone scored 3 out of 5.
The site’s co-founder, Ryan Calo, is a Stanford University Law Fellow and feels that the results of his site are accurate and match people’s frustration over using Facebook Applications:
“I think people are upset because when you download an app, you don’t have any control over what the app developer sees on your profile,” says Calo. “There’s the perception among users that they don’t need to give away so much information to have the apps do the same thing as they are currently doing.”
For those of you that follow me, you know I’m not a huge fan of Twitter.
Its a fad. Period.
I’ve said it for about a year now.
HA! Now Facebook is, again, ready to seize the opportunity and kick another one of Twitter’s legs out from under them.
Twitter recently changed the rules as to how developers can access the platform. There are two faults with this change; first, it violates one of my business principles: don’t rely on what someone else controls. Secondly, Twitter did bad by upsetting the developers, who, without them, Twitter would be nothing.
Developers made Twitter, by filling in holes that Twitter never got around to filling. In the end, developers made Twitter better. And Twitter has them to thank.
But that is not what they did.
Now, Twitter is dealing with an army of upset developers and Facebook is ready to sweep in and swoon them. With Facebook’s annual f8 conference coming up, we can bet that, by next week, Facebook will launch an open API, location-based services, public stream, improved Facebook Connect services, and breakdown the walls around their garden. In all, Facebook stands to be a major player in information aggregation.
Another nail in Twitter’s coffin; and Twitter handed it to them.
Infographics always serve as great eye-candy and the latest Facebook infographic produced by website-monitoring.com is no exception. The chart breaks down Facebook’s history as well as some of the most important facts and figures from the company. Included in the chart is information about the site’s user base as well as the impressive engagement levels that Facebook is able to maintain.
In general, this patent would allow Apple to play in the location-based social networking space with their own application. Or they might expose the social networking methods in the form of a public API for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad mobile devices, to allow third party developers to build their own social applications. Here are some possible uses, though it should be noted that these all assume that participants have iPhones or any other devices that Apple would give access to iGroups.
Crowdsourcing ideas or moods. Want to know what fans at a sporting event are thinking? Alert them to prize offers for joining an ad hoc network and particpating in an on-the-spot poll.
Event networking and socializing. E.g., at conferences and tradeshows. Organizers and exhibitors could potentially alert opt-in group members, create a persistent social network, then forward information or prizes after the event, or alert people to parties and followup events.
Enhanced nightclubbing and partying. Build out the in-person social networking features of existing mobile apps such as Foursquare, MyTown, Gowalla, and Loopt. Could be used to enhance the dating scene at bars, nightclubs, eateries or wherever singles go to socialize. E.g., initiate a pub crawl or similar event.
A study by Chadwick Martin Bailey uncovered perceptions among consumers that those brands not engaging in social media are out of touch. When asked the question “What does it say about a brand if they are not involved with sites like Facebook or Twitter?” they said the following:
“It’s EXPECTED that a company have some digital face – whether it’s on FB or Twitter I don’t know – but they need a strong electronic presence or you doubt their relevance in today’s marketplace.” Female 50-54
“Either they are not interested in the demographic that frequents Facebook and Twitter or they are unaware of the opportunity to get more exposure in a more interactive method.” Male 35-39
“It shows they are not really with it or in tune with the new ways to communicate with customers.” Female 18-24.
“If they’re not on Facebook or Twitter, then they aren’t in touch with the “electronic” people.” Female 55-59
Recent statistics from Facebook show they have 400 million active users and more than 20 million people become fans each day. Twitter users post over 50 million tweets per day—that’s an average of 600 tweets per second.
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Recently AllFacebook heard from sources close to Facebook that the company was in conversations with Foursquare about a potential acquisition and/or some form of partnership. Unfortunately the details have been slim but Kara Swisher is also hearing things as well. The most apparent thing about these conversations is that Facebook has yet to finalize their plans for location.
Via 
