OpenDNS, the world’s largest provider of Internet navigation and security services, has just released some interesting statistics about the websites that are commonly blocked, and the websites that network administrators give access to their users in 2010. The report also ventures into detailing the sites that endured the most online scams in 2010.

“Overall, 2010 was all about social, and this trend is reflected in the data we’re seeing at OpenDNS. Facebook is both one of the most blocked and the most allowed websites, reflecting the push/pull of allowing social sites in schools and the workplace,” said OpenDNS Founder and CEO David Ulevitch. “This trend was also apparent in the phishing data we analyzed, where Facebook and other websites focusing on social gaming were frequently the targets of online scammers.”

Facebook was the top most blocked website in 2010, and the second most frequently whitelisted website, with more than 14 percent of all admins who block websites on their networks choose to block Facebook. The top three most frequently blocked websites included Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, with pornography being the top most blocked category.

Paypal topped the list of site, that endured the most phishing attacks, with 45 percent of all phishing attempts made in 2010 were targeting PayPal. Paypal receives such astounding number of phishing attacks that Facebook, which came at no. 2 on the list, receives 9 times less attacks as were targeted towards Paypal. But with Paypal being the world’s top financial service, this is hardly a surprise to anyone.

Social networks and Social games are the most phished brands on internet, with five out of top ten phished sites, belonging to this category. These five sites include, Facebook, World of Warcraft, Sulake Corporation (makers of Habbo), Steam and Tibia (online games).

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Recession or no Recession, Social Media sites are proving to be hot cake.LinkedIn shares are being sold for $30 a piece on the secondary stock exchange SharesPost, giving the social networking site a valuation of around $3 billion.

The auction is being kept private, but people close to the matter have started speaking. According to documents obtained by Bloomberg, LinkedIn employees and share holders would have to commit to SharesPost by the end of this week, and both buyers and sellers would be informed about the results of the auction on 28th of Jan.

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Web browsers have changed considerablyover the past 15 years. From Internet Explorer to the upstart Mozilla stealing their thunder and most recently Google rearing its head with an ultra-fast browser, Chrome, the field of play is starting to get crowded.

Obviously, that means it’s time for a new name to join the fray—and with a social twist.

The RockMelt browser window.

While IE, Firefox and Chrome are all talking about how fast they are; RockMelt makes a big splash by showing how social it is.

RockMelt is one of the first browsers to fully integrate the social experience into the browser itself. Claiming to evolve browsers the same way the web has evolved, there’s a lot of promise in these new features. For starters, here’s a walkthrough I made for you… because I love you all so much.

Elijah’s Video Review

Watch the above video tutorial: Caution: Watch for a surprise at the end!

How RockMelt WINS!

RockMelt has a number of innovations.

Real-Time RSS

OK, I’ll admit it. I hate RSS feeds. I don’t feel like going to an RSS reader to get updates to a website. I wish there was a little button that just pinged when there was new content and I didn’t have to stop what I’m doing to go see what it is.

RockMelt does that.

RockMelt lets you add any RSS feeds directly into the browser, and they immediately send you a visual signal when there’s new content for you to digest. The best part is that you can read a synopsis of the content without leaving the page you’re on. Evaluate content without disrupting your current browsing session, and open in a new window if you want to read more.

People-Centric Sharing

Sharing with your entire community is a great thing, but I’ve found that sharing an article to add value to one specific person builds more of a relationship.

RockMelt makes that happen easily.

If you populate your “friends bar” with people you’d like to network with, you can shoot great content their way with a couple of button clicks. It may take a while to get your list perfected, but stick with it.

Installing on a new computer? Don’t worry. RockMelt will update all of your preferences as soon as you sign in!

Dual Search Boxes

Sometimes you need to search for something, and you don’t want to leave the page you’re on, right? What do you do? Open a new tab and search there. That works fine, but what if you could type a search term in the search bar, and browse all of the listings in a drop-down menu, automatically opening only the results that you want in separate tabs?

RockMelt does that.

When one search box job won’t do…

The convenience of queuing your browsing so that it doesn’t become a disruption—but a natural progression—of your journey through content is an excellent win for the browser.

That being said, it isn’t all candy corn and rainbows over here…

RockMelt #Fail

Here are the browser’s shortcomings.

No scheduling now, but I see room for an extra button…

Can’t schedule updates

This is a big negative for social industry professionals. While I love and applaud the real-time functionality of RockMelt, I don’t want to be bound to it 100% of the time. Sometimes I’ll have meetings or be connecting with my social media contacts in real life, and won’t be able to tweet for a number of hours.

I need to be able to queue content for distribution later and unfortunately, that’s not in the bag yet.

Redundant alerts

So you’ve just finished a great tweet, and you send it off to the world. One second later, RockMelt sends you an alert: “You have a new Tweet!” Excitedly, you hurry to open your Twitter panel to see… that you’ve just tweeted.

Really?

If you’re going to condition me to respond to your sidebar alerts, they’d better be valuable alerts. As soon as those alerts become white noise, the entire browser starts to lose value.

Gotta clean that up.

Still Buggy

I can’t really fault RockMelt for this one; these are the growing pains of any software. This is more of a warning to those who will be helping with the beta testing.

This is new, so sometimes it won’t work perfectly, sometimes it won’t log in, and sometimes screens will be blank for no reason whatsoever. It’s the cost of having the shiny new thing. Ask people who bought the first generation of the i-anything (sorry Apple).

The plus side is that these guys fix things quickly and their customer service is right where it needs to be.

The RockMelt team understands that this time is crucial for the survival of their browser; it feels good to be appreciated.

All in all, my decision to use RockMelt has two splits. First of all, on its own, I think RockMelt is one of the most valuable browsers for social media professionals to use for their own brand/community management. I can’t say the same for social media managers because each browser is tied to a single Facebook account. But when you get your hands on it, you’ll see how it makes everything a bit easier, especially if you’re a big Facebook chatterer, which I’m not.

On the other hand, I’ve grown so close to some of my Chrome extensions that I can’t realistically think about switching over until there’s an alternative. So for now, RockMelt, you’ll have to share my desktop with Chrome, at least until Wisestampmakes a RockMelt extension…

Are you considering switching to RockMelt? Let us know about it.

If you build a Facebook Page, will fans come? This is the great hope for many businesses. However, fans do not magically appear from the Facebook mist.

People must be lured to your fan page. And there are some good and bad ways to go about doing this. In this article, I’ll share a big myth and 21 ways to drive more fans to your Facebook fan page. (Though Facebook recently changed the “Become A Fan” button to the new, omnipresent “Like” button – and a fan page is called a “Business Page” or “Facebook Page” – we can still call them fan pages and people who join are fans!)

The Big Myth

There’s a great myth that once you create a Facebook fan page for your business, the first thing you should do to get fans is invite ALL your friendsfrom your personal profile using the “Suggest to Friends” feature.

Unfortunately, this strategy may not be that effective and can, in fact, often backfire. I have seen many industry gurus complain that when they decline a fan page request, it’s frustrating to continue to be asked again and again.

There are several reasons not to use the Suggest to Friends feature:

• Facebook users can only like up to 500 pages and may wish to be selective. (Though I have seen it’s possible to go over this limit).
• Fan page suggestions may often build up, unnoticed. (At last count, I have 593 overlooked fan page suggestions and am already a fan of 500!)
• To aggressively pursue all your friends to join your fan page – for no apparent incentive – is counterintuitive to the nature of social media.

So, the good news is there are many ways to promote your fan page and proactively increase your fan base without bugging all your current Facebook friends, and also by thinking wider than just Facebook.

Here are 21 ways to get more fans for your Facebook fan page:

#1: Embed Widgets on Your Website

Select from a number of the new Facebook Social Plugins and place them on your website and blog. The Fan Box widget is now the Like Box and it works well to display your current fan page stream and a selection of fans - see screenshot below with Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box. I would recommend adding a title above the box encouraging visitors to your site/blog to click the “Like” button (which makes them a Facebook fan).

Whole Foods Market Facebook Like Box.

You might also consider the Live Stream widget for more advanced uses, particularly on an FBML custom tab of your fan page itself. The Live Stream widget allows Facebook users to add their comments to a live event, for example, and that activity pushes out into their stream.

#2: Invite Your Email and Ezine Subscribers

Assuming you have an opt-in email list, definitely send out an invitation to your subscribers via email (several times, over time) letting them know about your fan page and encouraging them to join. Ideally, provide them with a description of the page and an incentive to join.

Be sure to have the Facebook logo/badge appear in your HTML newsletters. Instead of the usual “Join our Fan Page,” say something creative like “Write on our Facebook wall,” or “Join our Facebook community,” or “Come add your photo to our Facebook group” (where “group” is actually your fan page). Users have to be a fan in order to interact with your fan page in this way.

#3: Add to Your Email Signature Block

Instead of promoting your Facebook personal profile (if you do), include a link to your fan page in every email you send out. If you use web-based email, check out the Wisestamp signature addon.

#4: Make a Compelling Welcome Video

Create an attractive landing tab (canvas page) with a video that explains exactly a) what your fan page is about, b) who it’s for and c) why they should become members.  The result: you’ll increase your conversion rate from visitors to fans. One ofmy favorite fan page welcome videos is by Steve Spangler, the Science Guy! After watching his video, you can’t help but want to join!

(By the way, with the new Facebook changes, if your custom welcome tab and video talk about clicking the “Become A Fan” button, you may want to change the wording to “click the Like button” now).

#5: Use Facebook Apps

I recently tested a new live video-streaming app called Vpype. The app adds a tab to your fan page called “Shows” and when you broadcast as your fan page, everyone can view by default. (You can also broadcast as your personal profile and selectively invite friends/friend lists). I wrote up a review of this app here. By announcing via Twitter, your personal Facebook profile, your blog and your email list,you can broadcast regular live Internet TV shows from your fan page and create much buzz.

Another example of app integration is Target’s “Bullseye Gives” campaign. Target had their fans vote on which of ten charities they most wanted to see the company donate to. By voting, a post goes out onto your Facebook wall and into the News Feeds of all your friends, thus providing Target with valuable exposure. (For custom apps, see companies like Buddy Media, FanAppz, Wildfire Apps, Involver,Virtue, Context Optional.) [UPDATE: Thank you to Context Optional, the creators ofTarget’s “Bullseye Gives” campaign!]

#6: Integrate the Facebook Comment Feature

My favorite example of this is the t-shirt company Threadless. On their landing tab (canvas page), you can view and purchase t-shirts as well as Like and comment on any item and choose to have that comment posted to your Facebook profile, as shown in this screenshot:

(Screenshot of Threadless Facebook Fan Page landing tab)

Threadless actually has their landing tab set up so visitors don’t have to become a fan to purchase/comment/interact. Yet they have organically built well over 100,000 fans.

As users comment on items, that activity is pushed out into their stream (profile wall and their friends’ News Feeds), which creates valuable viral visibility for your fan page.

For further information on adding the comment box to your FBML page/app, see thesepages.

#7: Get Fans to Tag Photos

If you host live events, be sure to take plenty of photos (or even hire a professional photographer), load the photos to your fan page and encourage fans to tag themselves. This, again, pushes out into their wall and friends’ News Feeds, providing valuable (free!) exposure. And, a picture says a thousand words – we notice the thumbnails in our feed more than text. (Props to Nick O’Neil for this tip.)

#8: Load Videos and Embed on Your Site

Facebook’s Video feature is extremely powerful. You can load video content to your Facebook fan page, then take the source code and embed on your blog/website. There is a “Become a Fan” button right in the video itself. For an excellent tutorial, see Nick O’Neil’s post: How To Get Thousands of Facebook Fans With a Single Video.

[UPDATE: Since Facebook changed the Become a Fan button to the Like button,embedded Facebook videos now display a white watermark hotlink of the Facebook name in the upper left corner of the video player - see first screenshot below. This is a clickable link that goes to the original video page on your fan page. If the visitor to your site clicks through to Facebook from your video, and they are logged into Facebook at the time, they will see a Like button at the top left corner of the video player - see second screenshot below.]

(Screenshot shows example of an embedded Facebook video on an external site)

(Screenshot shows the same video on the original page of the fan page with the Like button)

#9: Place Facebook Ads

Even with a nominal weekly/monthly budget, you should be able to boost your fan count using Facebook’s own social ad feature. It’s the most targeted traffic your money can buy. To buy an ad, scroll to the foot of any page inside Facebook and click the link at the very bottom that says “Advertising.” From there, you can walk through the wizard and get an excellent sense of how many Facebook users are in your exacttarget market.

Then, when you advertise your fan page, Facebook users can become a fan (click the Like button) right from the ad as shown in the screenshot below. Additionally, Facebook displays several of your friends who have already liked you, thus creating social proof.

My book with Chris Treadaway, Facebook Marketing: An Hour a Day (Sybex) contains comprehensive instructions on maximizing your marketing through Facebook social ads.

#10: Run a Contest

This is somewhat of a gray area because Facebook changed theirPromotional Guidelines last year. Essentially, you need prior written permission from Facebook and need to be spending a significant amount on ads per month. However, you CAN require Facebook users to become a fan of your fan page in order to enter a contest, sweepstakes, drawing or competition. See these two postsfor further explanation. PLUS, good news: you CAN run contests and sweepstakes with the use of the apps created by Wildfire App.

#11: Link to Twitter

Link your Twitter account to your Facebook fan page and automatically post your Facebook content to Twitter. You can edit what gets posted, choosing from Status Updates, Photos, Links, Notes and Events.

You have 420 characters on the Facebook publisher and 140 on Twitter. In the tweet that goes out, Facebook truncates your post past a certain character count and inserts a bit.ly link back to your fan page. To track click-through stats on that link, just paste the bit.ly link that Facebook created for you in your browser’s address bar and add a “+” sign to the end. This works for any bit.ly link!

I also recommend you promote your Facebook fan page on your Twitter background and possibly in your Twitter bio/URL field too.

#12: Get Fans to Join Via SMS

Your fans can join your fan page via text message! You’ll need to get your first 25 fans and secure your username. Then, to join your fan page, Facebook users just send a text message to 32665 (FBOOK) with the words “fan yourusername” OR “like yourusername” (without the quotes).

This feature is ideal when you’re addressing a live audience, say. Have everyone pull out their mobile phones and join your fan page on the spot! This would also work well for radio or TV. (Note that this only works for Facebook users with a verified mobile device in his or her account.)

#13: Use Print Media

Look at every piece of print media you use in your business. Your Facebook fan page (as well as Twitter and any other social sites you’re active on), should be clearly displayed. Put your Facebook fan page link (and the logo) on your business cards, letterhead, brochure, print newsletter, magazine ads, products, etc.

#14: Display at Your Store/Business

If your business is run from physical premises, put a placard on the front deskletting your customers know you’re on Facebook. Ideally, you have a simple, memorable username. Incentivize customers to join right away via their mobile device and show you/your staff the confirmation for some kind of instant reward!

You might give out physical coupons promoting your fan page. For restaurants, put the Facebook logo, your username and a call to action on your menus.

I was at a hotel in San Francisco last fall and they had a placard in the elevators promoting their presence on Facebook and Twitter. The sign was very noticeable because of those ubiquitous Facebook and Twitter logos/colors!

#15. Add a Link on Your Personal Profile

If you’d like to promote your fan page to your Facebook friends, just under your photo on your personal profile there is a section to write something about yourself. I call this the “mini bio” field and strongly suggest adding a link to your fan page like so:

Be sure to format the URL with http:// otherwise it will not be clickable with just the www’s. You have a limited amount of characters, so keep it succinct and leave out the www’s. You can put in hard line breaks though to make the content easier to read.

#16: Add a Badge/Button to Your Profile

Using an app like Profile HTML or Extended Info, you can create your own custom HTML, including a Facebook badge and/or graphic embedded, as shown in the screenshot below:

#17: Use the Share Button

The Share button is all over Facebook and is a very handy feature. It only works for sharing on your personal profile. So periodically go to your fan page, scroll toward the bottom left column and click the “Share+” button. Add a compelling comment along the lines of exciting news, recent changes, special incentives, etc., happening on your fan page and invite your friends to join if they haven’t already. I find the Share button far more effective than the Suggest to Friends approach. (And, if you’d like to Share content from the web on to your fan page vs. profile, I highly recommend using theHootlet bookmarklet tool at HootSuite.com).

#18: Use the @ Tag

As long as you’re a fan of your own fan page, you can “@ tag” it on your own personal profile wall. From time to time, you can let your friends know about something happening on your fan page by writing a personal status update that includes tagging your fan page with an @ tag. Simply start typing the “@” symbol and the first few letters of your fan page name (this works whether you have your username registered or not), and it will appear from a drop-down menu to select. This then makes it a nice, subtle hyperlink that your friends can choose to click on.

#19: Autograph Posts on Other Walls

A subtle way to gain more visibility for your fan page is to add an @ tag for your fan page when writing on your friends’ walls as a way to sign off.

I would use this one sparingly and, again, monitor the response from your friends. I have never been a fan of adding a signature block on Facebook wall posts because our name and profile picture thumbnail are always hyperlinked right back to our profile anyway. But the simple @ tag could be effective.

#20: Autograph Other Fan Pages

As with adding your fan page @ tag to posts you make on your friends’ walls, you could equally use the same technique when posting on other fan pages. Thisneeds to be used with discretion and I would advise against doing this on any potentially competing fan page!

#21: Maybe Use “Suggest To Friends”

I won’t rule this one out completely as it does depend on how many friends you have, your relationship with your friends, how often you suggest fan pages/friends to your friends, etc (see ‘The Big Myth’ above). But I do recommend monitoring the response to this technique – perhaps simply by asking for feedback in your status update.

So, these are just 21 ways to create strategic visibility and promote your Facebook fan page.

Let’s hear from you.  Which ones have you implemented with success? Plus, do feel free to add any of your own creative promotional ideas in the comments box below!

Remember how we were all freaking out on New Year’s Eve, 1999, convinced that the world as we know it would end — at the hands of machines, of course? Well, we weathered that storm and then some. Still, as we shamble forward into the next decade, it might be prudent to take pause and take stock of the years behind us. Translation: Back up your stuff.

Think of it as stockpiling food and building a fallout shelter for the 21st century. We have a ton of information, photos and memories scattered around the web that we would be loathe to lose, and while it’s unlikely that the entire Internet is going to come crashing down in the next week or so, it still might be wise to put some of that stuff in an iron box for safe keeping.

Read on, and Christina Warren and I will show you how to…

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… Back Up Your Facebook

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We’re coming pretty close to living our lives on Facebook — it’s our photo album, diary and mailbox, all in one — so why leave all that info up to the whims of the all-mighty servers? This October, the social network got hip to data portability after it started allowing users to download their profiles — photos, statues, updates, videos and all.

The process is really too simple to forgo. Here’s how you can stow away your social life for safekeeping: 1). Go to Account Settings, 2). Click on “Download Your Information” and allow Facebook to download your info, 3). Wait for an e-mail that will let you know your info is ready (it takes a while, what with all the stuff you probably have on Facebook), 4). Go through the security test that allows you to download your info (kudos on that one, Facebook), and, voila, your profile is ported to your desktop in a nifty folder. Do this before you go through with that New Year’s resolution to make your profile less scandalous — you know, for when you’re old and gray and full of sleep and nodding by the fire.

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… Back Up Your Tweets

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Yes, the Library of Congress is now hoarding tweets, but that doesn’t do much for the casual user looking to keep a log of his own mundane musings, now does it?

Thankfully, you’re got some options. There’s TweetStream, which lets you back up your data as well as mine it for information and statistics. (Be warned, this service takes a looooong time to gather your info).

And if TweetStream doesn’t strike your fancy, TweetScan, a site we covered back in 2009, will track your data back to 2007, and, using OAuth, will even grab your timeline, tweets from friends and direct messages.

Pinboard, a paid, Delicious-like (RIP) tool, also lets you store your tweets — you can also back up or archive tweets from other usernames or from hashtags, as well as add favorites from a username and turn links embedded in tweets into bookmarks.

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… Back Up Your Blog

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After Tumblr’s epic outage the other week, we showed you all how to back up your blogs. Well, we’re just going to reiterate that right now, along with some solutions for WordPress as well. Remember how you felt when your mom threw away all your old journals, crammed to the margins with angsty poetry? Well, that’s not a feeling one would like to replicate later in life (unless it was relief — in which case, disregard).

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Tumblr

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Last year, Tumblr launched a backup app that allows users to save their blogs so that they can be viewed on any computer, burned to a CD or hosted as an archive of static HTML files. The app is super easy to use: Simply download, enter your Tumblr sign-in info and save your blog to your desktop (it looks like the below screenshot). You can launch the app and backup more info every time you post as well.

Note, this app is only for Mac OS X (10.5 or higher), but there are other options for those who use different operating systems.

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WordPress

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If your blog or website uses WordPress, grabbing a backup file of all your posts, pages and comments is easy. In the WordPress dashboard, just go to Tools, Export and choose what types of posts you want to export.

If you want a backup of your entire WordPress database, the excellent WP-DB-Backup plugin can make scheduled database backups for your WordPress site at intervals you choose and even e-mail you the backup file.

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… Back Up Your Photos

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If you’re like millions of Internet users, you probably upload most of your photos to a photo-sharing site likeFlickr or Facebook. While you’re backing up your blog entries, tweets and Facebook messages, it might be a good idea to go ahead and archive all of your photos, too. If nothing else, this is a great way to destroy the evidence from that sorority beer bong tournament in college.

Flickr is a great service and in terms of reliability, it’s consistently solid. What’s less consistent is the whims of its parent company, Yahoo. If the Delicious debacle has taught us anything, it’s that Yahoo isn’t afraid to sell off or shut down a service with millions of daily users.

Lots of apps and tools let you back up your Flickr photo stream, but a quick, fuss-free way to unload years of photo uploads is the Adobe Air app Flump. The app works on Mac, Windows and Linux and downloads a copy of each photo in your stream to a folder of your choice.

Be aware that while this will grab each and every photo, tags, titles and photo sets are not preserved. There a few other alternatives if you’re willing to invest more time in the process, but Flump gets the job done.

1.Brands and blogging don’t enjoy a marriage made in heaven

Most of the brand Managers believe that web 2.0 means blogging about everything that there product posses, but is that the end of the story, unfortunately not. We all love going through blogs but we do not buy anything just because some corporate blog is talking about that, however instead of that if a human is talking about that then we certainly think about it. We are all human and we do posses doubting nature. Honestly speaking i never go through any corporate blog.

2.Blogging changes the writer’s behaviour more than it changes the readers’ behavior.

Truly I believe in this statement as i personally started thinking in a different way since i started writing. I had been an avid internet user since 1996 and i have seen internet growing very closely but till the time i did not decide to write my own my perspectives were different from what they are today. I started believing on my product since i started writing on my own however i never thought similar before.

3.If your brand is going to blog you need to understand what you want to change about it.

Blogging means truth, why does corporate sites started  implementing corporate blogs? The answer is simple the Gyan which companies were not able to deliver to prospects directly they started delivering via blogs. Most of the sites have there company’s CEO writing on the blog about how the company took shape and blah blah. they all boast about it but they still never take any heed to pay attention in improving what they are offering in the market. “After all our is baby is the best”

4.This is uncomfortable because brands usually like changing consumer behaviour not the other way round

Consumer loyalty, well that’s a word which in now found in museums, If any of the brand manager believes that his market is fixed or his consumers are loyal and never going to ditch his product , then i am sorry to say that they are at fault. Try a mistake in product and face the heat, Consumers are nothing but sex workers with choices, they have huge list of choices available in every category and thus they can kick your brand any given day out of there lives, Wait for your competition to offer them a better deal and you will realize this instantly.

5.There are no ‘old’ or ‘new’ media – there are communications media and social media

Media was media since inception , however now it has come up is a new incarnation, “Social Media”, we never this social since ages and then comes facebook and twitter era, and the world is now a small place. I still remember the days of Pen pal and then email friends and now we all know twitter followers.

6.Communications media are the natural habitat of brands

7.Their use of social media is problematic

This is the biggest problem area for brands, the in-efficiency of brand teams not because of there mechanism but because of the system in which they are programmed, where they are not allowed to think beyond boundaries. Most of the brands believe there presence on social media is mandate but still they are handicap to understand the way they should be present there. They are there just for the heck of it.

This is my favorite topic to talk , however i would discuss about this in my other post.

8.Social media demand that you trade control for influence

This is the gold mine if brand managers will understand this. Coke did it in the most remarkable way that any brand would have ever did it in the past , they ran a year long social activity , made there fans to come up with amazing videos about there love for coke, and what they did finally , they gave voice to all of them, They actually traded control for influence, and no wonder today they are number one fan page on facebook.

9.Unless brands are happy with this they should stay out of social media

Take this as advice as social media is dangerous, it can hamper your brand value if not done properly, there are so many hotels which ran out of business because of  Trip-Advisor.

10.Just use it to listen to the conversation

Never try to govern the community, its social and let it be social.

11.Social media is all about conversation

people love people, we still do not give preference to non living over living, recent survey shows that more than 70% people on facebook do what there friends do. make them talk about you by not bribing them but loving them.

12.Brands only have a role if they can make the conversation more interesting

Gratifications works best for brands, we all have seen the sales shooting up with every possible freebie associated with the product. No matter if its worth is few cents only.

Twitpic is now letting users organize their images by event, including description information and tags for each photo in the group.

Similar to a Flickr set, Twitpic’s Events feature lets users organize, define and showcase their snaps quickly and easily, all while making the discovery process easier for both humans and web crawlers. It’s a perfect way to group images for a service that’s tailor-made for on-the-go, event-focused users.

If you’re ready to start playing with this new feature, simply go to your timeline, choose a photo from an event and go to that photo’s page. On the lower right side of the screen, you’ll see two links, one for tags and one for events. When you click on the “events” link, you’ll see a drop-down box where you can create a new event or add the photo to an existing event.

When creating a new event, you can give it any name or description you like. Once you’ve added a photo or two to the event, your event will have a link you can use to share that entire group of images with the world.

This is a great feature for those of us who go to conferences or parties, on vacations, outdoors or anywhere else for our photogenic adventures.

What do you think: Is this feature useful to you? Does it make the product more robust? Will it help Twitpic compete in the increasingly crowded space of social media photo sharing? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Many people have never heard of myYearbook, a social network that skews pretty young (half of its members are teenagers). But it’s got a substantial audience, with around 55.7 million visits  and 4.3 million uniques a month, according to comScore. And recently, it’s been growing very quickly —  according to comScore, unique visits are up 23% since last November, and page views are up a whopping 83% over the same time frame, to 998 million. Earlier this week, I sat down with CEO Geoff Cook to talk about what’s driving the growth.

The key, Cook says, is a feature that launched in November called Chatter (which has no relation to the Salesforce feature by the same name). Chatter is a lot like Facebook’s News Feed — it’s a stream of content recently posted by other users on the network. But unlike Facebook, which populates your feed with items from your friends, Chatter is geared more towards meeting and interacting with people you don’t know. Cook says one contributor to the feature’s popularity is the fact that you can filter what type of items you’re seeing — for example, I could elect to see only content posted by women aged 20-30 (for this reason, the site has a more flirty nature than what you’ll find on Facebook). That’s helped the feature catch on, and Chatter is now seeing 1 million user updates a day.

To help boost engagement, myYearbook has borrowed features popular on other sites and incorporated them into Chatter. First, the site added Ask Me, which is a Q&A feature very similar to Formspring.me. It then added ‘Rate Me’, which lets you post a photo and have it rated by strangers (which sounds like a recipe for low self esteem, but Cook claims that people receive quite a few ’10’s). The site also plans to add a feature called ‘2 Truths & A Lie’, which is an online version of the classic game.

Some of the site’s growth — the boost in unique users, in particular — is likely due to the fact that myYearbook now syndicates Chatter updates to Twitter, which direct users back to the site. But he says the rise in engagement (page views have jumped from 544 million in November to 998 million in March) is primarily from users interacting more with the site, and it’s driven by Chatter, along with the site’s redesign. Cook also points out that according to comScore, myYearbook has more page views than Twitter.com does in the United States (though he concedes that much of Twitter’s traffic comes from third party clients, and Twitter has a large international audience).

Looking forward, Cook says that the company will soon be launching applications for both the iPhone and Android.

Here’s a video the site is using to promote its recent growth;