Personette also revealed a few other country specific numbers—France has 22 million active users, with 65 percent returning daily; the UK has 29 million active users, and Canada has 19 million active users. We contacted Facebook for confirmation and were issued this response “we’re not offering guidance on the matter.” Odd, considering that Personette presented the data to the public at the event.

While we’ve heard some of the numbers regarding active users (Facebook says its has over 500 active users), these appear to be new. Generally, 50% of the networks active users log on to Facebook daily, but in these major countries mentioned, it appears that the rate is much higher. And Socialbakers reveals country-specific data via Facebook’s advertising tool.

Facebook

Website: facebook.com
Location: Palo Alto, California, United States
Founded: February 1, 2004
Funding: $2.34B

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid says this

Back in February we wrote about Facebook’s secret Project Titan — a web-based email client that we hear is unofficially referred to internally as its “Gmail killer”. Now we’ve heard from sources that this is indeed what’s coming on Monday during Facebook’s special event, alongside personal @facebook.com email addresses for users.

This isn’t a big surprise — the event invites Facebook sent out hinted strongly that the news would have something to do with its Inbox, sparking plenty of speculation that the event could be related to Titan. Our understanding is that this is more than just a UI refresh for Facebook’s existing messaging service with POP access tacked on. Rather, Facebook is building a full-fledged webmail client, and while it may only be in early stages come its launch Monday, there’s a huge amount of potential here.

About the List Not a easy pick

Ultimately it came down to creating a mix of books that was targeted to small business owners and that will help us build our brands  and grow our businesses.  These books run the gamut from those that strive to give you an overview and strategic context for the social media trend — to more detailed how-to books that will help you apply social media in your everyday marketing tactics.

Overall, the intention of this list is to provide a spectrum of information that will leave you feeling better, smarter and faster when it comes to social media.

The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg

Let’s say you are now “sold” on the idea that using social media as part of your marketing strategy is probably a good thing.  Yet, despite all the books out there, you’re still not sure exactly what to do or where to do it or how to do it – beyond establishing a basic profile or a presence.  

The New Community Rules is your next step.  This book will give you the specifics you’re looking for.  It covers a number of niche social sites you may not be as familiar with, and includes short success case studies.

The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick

If you’re a business history buff who enjoyed the “Pirates of Silicon Valley” movie about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates – then you will also enjoy The Facebook Effect.  It was written by a journalist who has interwoven his interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and the key players who turned a school hobby/project into the realization of Zuckerberg’s vision to change the world by connecting people.

This isn’t necessarily a book about how to use social media, but it will take you behind the scenes of several social networking sites and how they succeeded and failed.  It’s great business reading in general.

Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Whenever a CEO or small business owner comes to me and says “I’m not sure I understand the business value of social media,”  I tell them to read this book first.  Groundswell is written by a team of researchers from Forrester Research.  These people have done more research on social media for this book (and continue to empirically study social media and document it) than you or I will do in a lifetime.

Because this book was written in 2008 when social media was still “new” to even the professionals, it explains social media in a way that all of us can understand and relate to.  Groundswell will give you a framework and a context within which to place new learning.  It is well written, easy to read and full of research data that you can trust.

The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media by Paul Chaney

If you’re fed up because the time and money you’ve already invested in traditional marketing like advertising or direct mail isn’t paying off, or you’re frustrated because you see the world of marketing changing and you’re not sure how to maximize the technology for business objectives, then this book is for you.

While it won’t show you detailed nuts and bolts of how to start a blog or how to use Twitter, it will help you to start plotting your next move.

The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success by Lon Safko and David K. Brake

When a book has the word “Bible” attached to the subject and in the title, you automatically assume that it has everything you’ll need to get through life as it concerns that topic.  And that’s exactly what you’ll find here.

This book covers some history and background, as well as tools and strategies that you can use to grow your business with social media.

Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

By now you’ve noticed that the social media revolution requires a new and different way of thinking.  This makes Trust Agents the perfect book to read next.  It’s written by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and endorsed by Seth Godin — all trusted marketing minds whose work has stood the test of time.

This is an easy read and will get you squarely in the social media mind-set.  One warning: You may not agree with what you read.  You may not like it.  But understand this:  It’s how the technology is impacting people and small business.  Embrace it.

* * * * *

So there you have it — a mix of social media books that every small business owner should have on the shelf. If you’re wondering what social media strategies and tactics you should put in your marketing plan this year, you’re guaranteed to find them here.

From Small Business Trends

The change was announced back in October 2009 but was delayed, presumably to let administrators prepare for the reduced tab width. Still, many popular Pages still use 760 pixel wide elements, which will look broken once Facebook  implements the change. A good example is this tab on the official Victoria’s Secret Facebook Page or Smashfit Fan Page here.

If your Page contains elements that are over 520 pixels wide, you should reduce them to that width as soon as possible.

[via Inside Facebook]

Here were the main finding of the survey:

■71% of users looked at adverts on their Profile pages, 31% of users looked at adverts on the News Feed page (homepage).
Users pay more attention (53% vs. 31%) to page updates in their News Feed Wall rather than adverts to the right-hand side of the Wall.
■30 out of the 40 users log on to Facebook once a day or more.
■The average number of pages these users are fans of is 28 pages.
■Games were mentioned as a popular Facebook activity in pre-test questionnaire. When questioned directly if they play any games on Facebook, only 11 out of 40 indicated that they do, the most popular game is Farmville.
■Just over half of these users currently share videos via Facebook. Younger rather than older users are more likely to share videos. Posting a URL link to their own status update in Facebook or commenting on a friend’s status was their preferred way to share video.
If you want to view the full study, you can find it here.

Article by Allfacebook

Facebook’s very existence rests on information sharing, with a public mission that gives people “the power to share in order to make the world more open,” (according to founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg at F8 2008). The company blog touted the addition of plugins on third party sites as a further means of ensuring a personalized experience on Facebook and the web: 

Using social plugins, websites everywhere can give you more ways to experience the web with your friends… Rather than seeing popular stories, products or reviews from people you don’t know, you’ll now see content that matters to you the most—from your friends—prominently displayed.

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.

To control this privacy setting follow the steps below or to see a great article with images about  these settings you can visit Mashable website.

Under your Account tab (top right), go to Privacy Settings.

-Choose Applications and Websites (this is the spot to manage all third-party  access  to information).

-Choose to edit the Instant Personalization Pilot Program 

-Unselect the box allowing for select partners to instantly personalize their features. This solicits a  prompt box, telling you that this setting allows for a richer experience).

-Go back to the Applications and Websites tab from Privacy Settings

-Choose What Your Friends Can Share About You.

-Manage what friends can share to third party sites by checking (allowing) or unchecking (not  allowing) what is disclosed..

The episode, titled “You Have 0 Friends,” captured perfectly how obsessive Facebook  can be. Stan, the lone child not yet on FB, is forced to join at the behest of his friends, which leads his girlfriend to jealously pour over his profile (we’ve all been there) and his father to insist that he add every one of his relatives — and to “poke” his grandma.

When he deletes his profile out of frustration… well… let’s just say he probably should have opened an Entrustet account. Meanwhile, Kyle friends a FB loser, which leads to a steady stream of unfriending and a breakdown of sorts.

Still, the best part of the episode, predictability, is Cartman, who offered these gems of advice:

“Chick friends are worth almost triple what dude friends are.” (Yeah, man, no one likes a sausage party.)

… and, with regard to Chatroulette: “If you want to find some quality friends, you have to wade through all the dicks first.”

For the full episode click here (after commerical )

Article From Mashable.com

Webtrends

ToolLast week, Webtrends announced the release of an analytics packages that helps users track activity on their Facebook Page. The tool, found here, enables developers to track interactions on their custom tabs. Unfortunately, Facebook does not enabled third-party services to track any interactions on the main Facebook Page. Today, Webtrends also announced the expansion of their Facebook product in order to monitor Flash applications within Pages or as stand alone applications.

Facebook Insights

As I previously stated, Facebook limits what information third-party developers can monitor. That’s why the company’s Insights product continues to serve as an important tool for all Page administrators. We previously wrote about the most important things to monitor within your Facebook page insights. Ultimately, you can track demographic data, interactions by media type, and more, all of which are only accessible through the Facebook Insights product.

Core Metrics

Core Metrics, one of the larger enterprise analytics services, recently announced the launch of new services integrated into many of their existing products that enable marketers to measure their ROI from Facebook. The aim of the Facebook integration is to determine “the role Facebook plays in influencing subsequent website visits, behaviors, and conversions.”

Essentially, Facebook clicks are tracked and then can be connected to actual on-site business objectives, such as new subscriptions and sales conversions. This appears to be a more robust solution than many of the other products, but it may be data overload for the average Facebook Page administrator.
Core Metrics -

Google Analytics

While Google analytics is targeted at website owners, the analytics service can be used by Facebook Page administrators as well. Unfortunately Facebook has not enabled their FBML tag within Facebook Pages, so a London-based web development company decided to create their own solution. By using images, there is a workaround which enables Page administrators to track everything within the custom tabs.

Source:AllFacebook

Unfortunately we have no way of knowing how accurate this report is. The primary reason is that no information was shared about the sampling data. How were articles selected when testing sharing volume? Was an arbitrary data set selected for testing against Facebook’s share analytics tools? Whatever the model is, it’s definitely interesting.

I also would imagine that many Facebook users turn to their mobile devices to monitor content while on the go during the weekend. Then again, the same users who are blocked from accessing Facebook at work may be visiting their friends’ activity while in transit to and from work each day. Unfortunately this basic glimpse in to Facebook user behavior is nothing more than that: a basic glimpse.

I’d be interested to see other statistics on Facebook sharing. Do notice that your friends share more information on the weekends or is there more activity during the weekdays?

Source: AllFacebook

We think the beta rollout to all English searchers is more significant than the initial labs feature, as it exposes the contextual search results to a mainstream search audience. While it’s officially a beta product today, the Google Social Search rollout will occur over the next few days. If you don’t have Social Search already, you can expect to start seeing the social results fairly soon.

For a demonstration of Google Social Search check out the video below: