This is a very interesting screen I almost never check out that Facebook is willing to show you — I have invited 181 people to explore Facebook for the first time.

I find it enlessly amusing that I am number two under my high school friend Emy Louie, who has me beat — she is, indeed, a superior networker than I.

This is pretty interesting and I cannot tell you how interesting a page like this is.

Be sure to check out your “Impact” by clicking over to www.facebook.com/#!/impact and tell me what you discover — how many people have you introduced to Facebook? What was your impact on that?

Summer intern, Leslie Quiros, must be a pretty popular young woman — she is appalled by the huge volume of birthday wishes she gets every day-of-her-birth.

OK, I joke, I get quite a few as well, but I roll around in them. However, I am shamelessly hungry for love and approval and the endless birthday wishes makes me titter like a pothead on nitrous!

Anyway, please go take a look at her awesome article:  Alleluya!… Facebook fixes another problem

Alleluya!… Facebook fixes another problem

If you are like me and get annoyed by news feeds from people congratulating a friend who is celebrating his or her big day, you might find this post interesting.

If you are the type of person that checks Facebook every 30 minutes or so—like me— you might have noticed a few changes taking place. As the Facebook creators try to improve the social networking experience, they are now testing a new design that “organizes birthday-related messages in a much cleaner, simpler way that’s consistent with other recent user-interface changes (CNN.com).”

According to this article, you will no longer have to worry about opening your home page and seeing post after post of “happy birthday____, hope you have a good one!” from 50 different people. Instead, Facebook will summarize all birthday-related posts into a single news feed on your home page. As a result, your wall won’t be spammed with these posts and you won’t miss more important events going on in Facebook.

As Mashable points out, hopefully with this new design Facebook will find a way to also summarize all Birthday-related posts on the person’s wall so that more important messages don’t get lost or to avoid having 4 wall pages of “Happy Birthday.” I don’t mean to sound like the Brithday Grinch, but when you have more “friends” than you can count, it can get a tad irritating.

So readers who are like me… don’t be scared to jump up and down screaming Alleluya- for I already did!

Here’s yet another example of why one needs to pay attention to social media as well as be on social media — from the boss’ point of view for sure — and why your character is the sum of what you do and say every day.

Yes, even when you’ve just arrived home from the job you hate, get into your bunny slippers, make a cup of tea, and decide to open your heart and your venom onto Facebook.

Stupid is as stupid does and this woman was not long for that job anyway and the Universe was being merciful and helping her along towards her next opportunity, though I wouldn’t hire her!  Social Media and Facebook just allowed her to be easily stupid and simply careless.

Via Caveman Circus via Marketing Conversation

Here’s the full text of An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg that all members of Facebook just received tonight.  Very interesting.  The cessation of “regional networks” is going to suck but this has been a long time coming.  We’ll see how it works.  I hope we can keep our Abraham Harrison Facebook network because we at AHLLC love it:

An Open Letter from Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg

It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.

Mark Zuckerberg

Well, I don’t know. I think it is always BAD to take what you give. I heard someone mention how she’s allowed to ADD to her Thanksgiving dinner by her family but she’s not allowed to remove any.

I think that Facebook should be willing to add to the tools offered but I daresay that there are a lot of people who don’t have college and don’t have clubs and don’t have things they’re connected to (anymore) and their region/city (hey, Brooklyn) is all they care about.

Other than that, I have not cared about regions in forever.

Before we start, please vote now. OK, now that that’s done… Bryan Person reached out to me to ask if I would like to be a member of a panel he was organizing and I threw my hat in for a number of reasons, foremost of which is that I am still a SXSW virgin, never having, as-of-yet, made my Interactive pilgrimage. Secondly, I love sharing what I know. Thirdly, I have quite a lot of very strong opinions about Facebook, ageism, and social networks.  Here’s the recent post by Bryan, My proposed SXSW 2010 panel: ‘My Mom Just Joined Facebook–Now What?’

Pimping for votes isn’t exactly my style.

But when it comes to getting a proposed SXSW Interactive 2010 panel through to the next round of consideration in a very crowded field–there are more than 2,000 potential panels (gulp) up for votes–I don’t know that I have any other choice.

And so it is that I shamelessly ask you to consider casting a “thumbs-up” vote this entry: “My Mom Just Joined Facebook–Now What?” Here’s the abstract:

Social networking sites like Facebook are changing our conversational relationships. The lines we once drew between our separate social groups–family members, friends, workmates, etc.–have been obliterated online. Now, your drinking buddies, old boss, and mother all see the very same status update. Disconcerting…or the new normal?

So who’s on the panel?

I’ve tried to assemble a well-rounded, thoughtful foursome to join me for the discussion (I’ll be sitting in the moderator’s chair).

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, VP and lead blogger at ReadWriteWeb. Marshall delivers the best Facebook coverage of any tech writer that I follow, including posts on user privacy options.
• Dan York is a technologist and director of conversations at Voxeo. It was Dan’s audio commentaries for the FIR podcast earlier this year that actually helped crystallize my thoughts around “The Facebook Effect.”
• Chris Abraham is president and COO of Abraham Harrison LLC. He first caught my attention with a clever campaign targeting the Power Age 150 bloggers.
• Annie Boccio, a web-presence designer and consultant at PixelCurrents.com. Annie rightly called me out for only having dudes on the panel (though she was very nice about it!). Annie’s in the middle of a research project on Facebook, so she’s the perfect choice to round out our group.

Just two more things: 1) Public voting makes up 30% of the decision-making process according to SXSW, so your selections do matter. 2) The public vote closes this Friday, September 4.

Here’s where you can cast your vote: “My Mom Just Joined Facebook–Now What?”

Thanks.

I just finished reading FT reporter David Gelles‘ article about Facebook, What friends are for, and I was really taken by one particular paragraph, which pits Google and Facebook in the war of “if you had to choose one, which would you choose:”

Certainly, those seeking to profit from Facebook are convinced of its prospects. “If you asked a 20-year-old today to give up Google or Facebook, they would give up Google,” maintains Mark Pincus, chief executive of Zynga, which makes applications that run on Facebook, and the founder of Tribe Networks, an early social network. “The social web is more personal and is more relevant to you.”

Which one would you choose?  If you had to?  I know that I spend a lot of time on Facebook and it has reconnected me very powerfully to all the people I have know since before high school; however, Google is become as important to me as as plumbing, tap water, electricity, or dial-tone.

What do you think?

I heart Facebook. This morning I awoke to Yet Another Facebook Innovation (YAFI). Facebook amazes me because they are driven to make things easier for me — or at least give it a go. Facebook is willing to suffer constant backlash in order to improve usability and efficiency. Case-in-point below:

New Friends Facebook Check Boxes

In this particular case, the innovation is what I call a “Twitterish” innovation — stealing something directly from Twitter. A couple weeks ago, I stayed up until 12:01AM to secure another hype-drenched Twitterish innovation: vanity URLS: facebook.com/chrisabraham — I am such a sucker!

However, Facebook is an equal-opportunity thief and also quite creative as well. Next innovation inspired by Utterli, FriendFeed, or LinkedIn?  Who knows!

I hate to admit it but I am used to lazy web applications.  I am used to apps like Flickr, Delicious, Craigslist, Ebay, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube — sites that are pretty much the same as they were when they were born. Facebook, on the other hand, innovates almost constantly. In fact, Facebook tends to innovate so aggressively that there are millions of members who constantly picket Facebook to revert itself to the way it was when it was a college-only service. The reason why most apps don’t innovate is because of this vocal minority — the change-averse.

Another thing I love about Facebook is that they’re not wed to their innovations.  When Facebook Beacon pissed off the world, they scaled it back. The developers at Facebook are smart — land grab with ten new innovations, throw them agains the Wall, and then see what people adopt and then, over time, remove the fails.

Facebook is willing to spitball, Facebook is willing to steal ideas shamelessly from other platforms, and Facebook is willing to fail fast and move on.  That’s what you’re supposed to do!  That’s why I love Facebook.

Tom Raftery is a gentleman.  He popped me an email to let me know that he defriended me on Facebook and wrote a blog post about me, Funny FaceBook spam! That’s what I call professional courtesy!  Here’s my response to him as sent to him via email, although I also posted it onto his blog as a post as well.

I am always happy to receive email from you and blog posts.  I have almost 4,000 friends on Facebook, so inviting my friends to my events doesn’t seem like spam at all to me. In Facebook, you cannot actually invite anyone who is not explicitly connected to you.  So, this month, I am offering a series of 3 free webinars — for free, mind you — that I would love my friends to attend.  Am I being aggressive?  Well, yes; however, over 340 folks registered to attend my last Tw itter for Business webinar, so I don’t think it is much of a problem.  I am sorry to have lost you as a friend, but I am happy to be blogged about, even in this situation, because I know for a fact that when y ou’re connected via Facebook, it is surely a double-opt-in situation where I am surely allowed to message my Facebook friends, especially if it is to invite them to something for free that could actually save them a lot of money and a lot of trouble. Thanks for emailing me and giving me a heads-up for this article — I appreciate it!

In the past, there were many methods for promoting on Facebook; however, Facebook is clamping down on Terms of Service (TOS) violations.  As a result of — and in response to — people creating profiles that do not reflect authentic peoeple but brands, products, services, or fictional entities, Facebook has replaced business profiles and business groups with Facebook Pages.  Pages are entitities not unlike profiles, and are becoming more and more like profiles. Like profiles, Pages have walls, updates, videos, events, and all the rest. Additionally, they interact with peoples’ statuses in much the same way that Facebook Profiles do.

When creating a Facebook Page or Group or Cause, it is important to remember that these Facebook Apps are community-oriented and need to be fed and watered and Abraham Harrison offers products and services in support of your Facebook brand, including Facebook Page creation, Facebook Page Management, and Facebook Page Community Development.

The tools support community, conversation, and collaboration and many people develop these Facebook Pages as if they were a published brochure instead of a dynamic, developing, conversational community.

These communities are needy, more like a blog or like Twitter than anything like a page. A MySpace profile can be deceloped more like a proper web page, but Pages offer the opportunity to share Events, Conversation, Links, Discussion, Photos, Videos, etc. While they don’t have to be completely open and interactive, they do need to be responsive and there needs to be a certain level of maintenance and content creation committed to the Facebook Page.

There is a lot to know about the Pages, however, and there are many 3rd party tools and services that can be used to expand brand, including doing Facebook Ads and the like, to help promote the brand.

In order to best promote “fan” membership of a Facebook Page, one needs to be creative as to the reason why being a fan is worthwhile.  Some easy “gifts” can include exclusive content, Facebook-only offers, “live” interviews, access to celebrities or notables, etc.  When an online brand reputation

One of the things that makes Facebook Pages better than either Facebook Profiles or Facebook Groups is that the content is not hidden behind the Facebook Authentication Membership Wall. More like MySpace profiles and groups, which are completely visible and partially accessible when not yet a registered member of the site, Facebook Pages are one of the few “rooms” in the mostly “gated community” of Facebook proper.

Facebook Pages can be indexed by search engines like a normal web page and found using simple keywords through Google, Live.com, Ask.com, and Yahoo!

One of the beautiful things about Facebook Pages is that Google loves Facebook more than just about any other web site (Google loves Twitter more) so brands that have a Facebook Page are often surprised by how quickly the Page turns up on the first page of search.

There are other ways of promoting brand on Facebook, which can include cross promotions with other Social Networks (have all of the networks aimed at the Page), organic SEO strategies, Facebook Ads, as well as incorporating a strong blogger outreach campaign aimed at brand promotion.

However, that said, it is hard to start a Facebook Page and we generally recommend starting with a Facebook Group.  It is much easier to prospect new memberships, invite new members, and get everything started from zero, so we often start with a Group, build that up to over 1,000 members, and then have the Group converted into becoming a Facebook Page, which is what we have the connections to do.  We call it the one-two sling-shot punch!

The advantage of a Facebook Page is that you can use it as a proxy web page for marketing and a proxy online community in support of your brand instead of developing or hosting your own; however, aside from being a “fan” of your company, brand, product, or service, there is little incentive, or “gift,” associated with ever returning to your Facebook Page unless you spend some time and resources developing unique content for the Page — Facebook Pages support photos, events, videos, message boards, a wall, etc –  as well as for responding to questions, queries, comments, and the like.

One of the strong advantages of smartly-but-aggressively developing messages, updates, photos, videos, and exclusive content is that the New Facebook Pages have evolved into me a lot more like the Original Facebook Profile, which includes status updates that scroll down each fan’s status update stream in exactly the same way their friends and family’s statuses update.

This is a very powerful method for brand messaging and distrobution.  One of the past lacks of Facebook Groups and Facebook Pages is that it was too easy to join and forget, becoming a Group member or a Page fan and then never seeing hide nor hair of it until there was an explicit admin message to all members — a member update.

Even so, with Facebook Groups in the past, one was penalized by success because when a Facebook Group grow above 1,000-1,200 members, the ability to send a message to all members was revoked.

With the new Facebook Pages, it is easy to keep “fans” engaged and updates, through the regular status update stream that all users; unfortunately, as I mentioned above in the section about Facebook Groups, it is easier to proespect and collect new members on a Facebook Group and a Facebook Cause because it is very possible to easily invite personal Facebook “friends” to Groups and Causes.  When creating a brand profile on Facebook, it behooves one to develop all three: Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Facebook Cause.

In Difference Between a Page and Profile on Facebook, Shailesh Ghimire of Social Media Wiz explains the distinction between a Facebook Page and what we all have by default, a Facebook Profile, and how businesses need to be careful to correctly use the right one — or else!  Give the article some attention and check out the excerpt below:

Facebook is evolving to accommodate business pages vs. individual profiles. In its latest re-design, Facebook has made a clear distinction between profiles and pages. The bottom line is profiles are now only for individuals and pages are for business. Profiles and pages have different features. In fact there are certain features which are no longer permitted for business pages but are indeed available to individual profiles. Here are the major changes that I found from my research:

• Businesses are only allowed to open pages NOT profile. A business which opens a profile page is in direct violation of TOS.
• Business pages allow other users to become fans, but access to the individual profile pages are limited.
• Business pages do not allow the ability to invite friends – in fact business pages cannot maintain a friends list – they can only maintain a fan list. In fact this feature is disabled on business pages.
• Business pages do allow updating your status (which gets shared with your fans)
• Business pages allow: pictures, videos, discussion board, application, wall posts, groups and other interactive elements.

Well, news of Facebook‘s death is greatly exaggerated. Today, according to the best mathematicians, Facebook busted 200 million members today (according to Facebook’s Rapid Growth Continues with 200 Million Members):

Facebook says it expects to welcome its 200 millionth member today. It was just January when Facebook announced 150 million members. Founder Mark Zuckerberg sees Facebook as more than just social networking, he sees it as a force for social action.

To be honest, when I was in Berlin, every Euro and every Brit I met didn’t care about my card or my Twitter handle or anything besides the email that would get them connected to me on Facebook.

So, people wanted cja@well.com not because they ever intended to email me but in order to plug it into Facebook in order to make the connection.

What do I think about Facebook short- and long-term?

Well, I think Facebook will be just fine. Probably even better off than Friendster, if they play their cards right.

What we geeks talk about post-economic collapse when we’re not talking about our own challenges is how stupid Facebook was for not accepting either Microsoft’s or Yahoo!’s offer to buy them. Patricio Robles believes that Facebook might be having some financial challenges. Who knows what the outcome may be.  Well, either way, the question is Is Facebook in trouble?:

As I see it, Facebook is walking a very fine line. It has built an incredible service that so many people love but financially it may be pushing the limits, putting its future in jeopardy. I hope that it manages to pull it off and that all of the talk is overblown but I remember what took place at a lot of companies as the first boom started to bust and some of the same warning signs are starting to appear.

I don’t read TIME magazine (do you?) but Jay Denhart from Leo Burnett did and shares an article he read,  10 reasons Facebook is for ‘old fogies’, What is Facebook for?

In an article for TIME, Lev Grossman talks about how Facebook is really best designed for the middle-aged, not the young. He lists 10 reasons Facebook is for ‘old fogies’ such as:  it’s for finding people you’ve lost track of, we don’t get drunk and post bad pictures, people use it for business contact, we don’t want to ‘do’ anything, but just sit back read and judge, we want to share pictures of our children etc. (Via Cultural Fuel Blog)

MySpace is running out of surveys that still place it as the #1 social network in the US. After yielding the position to Facebook earlier this month in stats released by Compete, today, the social network slips to second place in the latest numbers from Nielsen Online.

According to data from January, Facebook saw 62.4 million unique visitors, besting MySpace and its 60.6 million uniques for the first time in the survey. At the end of 2008, MySpace still held a narrow lead, with 58.4 million unique visitors in December compared to Facebook’s 55.2 million.

As for those engagement numbers that MySpace likes to cling to? It can no longer claim a lead there either – engagement fell to one hour, 35 minutes per user in January, down 32 percent from last year and barely more than half of Facebook’s two hours, 50 minutes per user.

We’ve been documenting the ascent of Facebook versus MySpace on a monthly (if not more frequent) basis, but for some longer-term perspective, check out this post from mid-2007 to see just how big a shift this represents. Back then, MySpace claimed 3x more traffic, 3x more engagement, and claimed to not only be America’s most popular social network, but its most popular website.

As I said yesterday, All Your Data is Belong to Us, Says Facebook, Facebook was bound to renig on its Terms of Service; however, I was wrong, believing that Facebook would take three hills and then return two — it looks like Facebook decided, rightfully, that when the New York Times and CNN jump all over you on MSM, you had better return all three of the hills:

Over the past few days, we have received a lot of feedback about the new terms we posted two weeks ago. Because of this response, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

If you want to share your thoughts on what should be in the new terms, check out our group Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.

I received a call from CNN news this morning asking for my sage insight into the issue that Facebook has changed its Terms of Service (ToS) to expand its ownership of data to include your first born.  Well, I didn’t have any time this morning to know much about it so I was no good to Amanda over at Turner.  Well, I am finally back to my desk and I did all of my reading.  If you want to learn more, read Mashable,  Consumerist and the New York Times for more information.  Here’s the evil excerpt of the new Facebook ToS for your appalled amusement — hurts so good!:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

I know how Facebook works.  What Facebook does, historically, is make an assault on three privacy hills fully expecting to have to return one or two.  This was illustrated by the initially over-aggressive privacy invasion posed by Facebook Beacon, Here’s Why Facebook Beacon is Uncool for User Privacy, which ended up being mellowed in response to outrage (see, they took three hills and really only gave back one — this is their strategy).

This is what Facebook is doing again.  They’re demanding Copyright of all of your consumer-generated content and media through their new ToS; however, I bet you they’re going to do a little Mea Maxima Culpa “the lawyers made us do it” bullshit before loosening it all up.

Mark my words, this is how it is going to work from now on.  And, based on how addicted all of the student I met today at UMD are, I daresay that Facebook might very well be able to keep possession of all three hills this time.  We’re all addicted.  We’ll do anything for our Facebook!

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I just spent some time setting up my own CokeTag for my Facebook Profile after hearing about it from CC Chapman.

What I like about it is that it isn’t nefarious. One just sets it up to reflect one’s interested, passions, properties, and there you go! There’s a lot of fun there because you can set up the CokeTag to reflect who you are, instead of just biting everyone and sucking their blood. So, I chose to reflect myself through my favorite TV shows, movies, sites I own, sports I do, and my favorite foodie sites. Then, after you install the CokeTag application, set it up, and so forth, you can start grabbing other people’s CokeTag or you can even check out who is checking you out via the Click Tracker. At the end of the day, I don’t have the vision for the CokeTag application; however, CC does and so here’s what his vision is,

“Trying to make people realize how kick ass this would be for musicians to create a CokeTag and then fans can take it and share it on their sites. or a brand could.”

Here’s the Social Media News Release for the campaign…

Coca-Cola Launches CokeTag Facebook Application With Olympic Tie-In

 

CokeTag Application Empowers Anyone to Promote Themselves and Their Interests With a Do-It-Yourself, Portable Application.

June 6, 2008

Facts

What is a CokeTag?

• A CokeTag is a personal, customizable widget for individuals, bands, bloggers, artists, and companies to share links to content they want to promote and drive traffic to anywhere on the Web.
• Empowers users to bundle links to on- and off-Facebook content in an attractive convenient package, which is associated with and accessible from their Profile or Fan Pages and shared via Facebook private messages or Wall posts.
• Coca-Cola released CokeTag to provide an engaging and relevant online experience for consumers. The useful application is another way that Coca-Cola is leveraging innovative technology and social media to reach consumers where they are increasingly spending time online.
• One of the first uses of a CokeTag will be to promote the we8 recording artists. we8 is an artistic and cultural exchange, uniting eight of China’s most exciting artists and design firms with eight of the West’s most progressive musicians to design a vision and soundtrack that celebrates the infinite possibilities that await when the doors are flung open from East to West. The we8 program is being launched as part of The Coca-Cola Company’s 2008 Bejing Olympic Games marketing activities.
• The CokeTag application is being launched as a beta. Among others, the goal is to watch, listen and learn from consumers to determine how the community wishes to use the application and to gather suggestions on how to improve it as it expands outside of Facebook.
• The Coca-Cola Company aligns itself with delivering the promise of a cross-platform web experience, consistent with Coke’s brand value of bringing people together for social connections across cultures.
• CokeTag is the result of a partnership between The Coca-Cola Company and Linkstorm, which is an advertising technology company that is pioneering a new approach to social networking, online marketing and publishing.

Benefits and Features

• Includes a self-service editor that puts the creator in control of the CokeTag content and skin.
• Every CokeTag packs several levels of easily navigated, expandable menus in a stylized, compact design that allow visitors to instantly navigate to specific content that they are interested in and want to see more about.
• The built-in click tracker lets creators know every time someone looks at their CokeTag and which links they visited. This data is only viewable to the creator of the CokeTag.
• Sharing and posting features facilitate viral distribution via highly targeted personal networks for friends and fans.

Distribution

• Initially built for Facebook, the plan is to allow for a CokeTag to live beyond those walls and will soon be available across OpenSocial sites (i.e. MySpace, Bebo, etc.) and eventually to the greater Internet on Blogging platforms and elsewhere. The goal is to empower users with ubiquitous Web distribution for sharing the information that matters to them and maintaining it one place.
• Facebook users can add a CokeTag to both their personal profile as well as to any Facebook Fan Page. This opens it up so that a company, band or special event can build a CokeTag full of links about them and then fans can take that CokeTag and add it to their own profiles.
• Current Facebook distribution options includes:
  • Create and post your CokeTag on your personal profile page
  • Create and post a CokeTag to any Facebook Fan Page you administer
  • Grab and post any CokeTag that you discover on to your own personal profile
  • Send a CokeTag as Facebook e-mail attachment
  • Post a CokeTag as a Facebook Wall post

Quotes

Attributed to Michael Donnelly, Director, Worldwide Interactive Marketing, The Coca-Cola Company :

“The Coca-Cola Company’s social networking approach has been one of very sincere respect for the communities we participate in. We prefer to politely enter and let the already existing ecosystem help guide us in the right direction as we continue to learn what works best for our brands.”

“I’m excited about the CokeTag program, because while we are starting small and simple, we look forward to quickly growing it beyond Facebook with feedback, advice and counsel from consumers.”

“While Facebook may be the starting point for CokeTag, it is only the beginning. We are excited to be working towards the potential of expanding the use of the CokeTag application throughout the web and we are now working on the best way to leverage the OpenSocial platform. We are looking forward to the day when anyone could potentially create a CokeTag and have it on all of their social network profiles and their blog and only have to worry about updating it in one place. That excites me.”

“We made a distinct decision not to overly brand this application.  We want this to be a helpful utility that connects consumers in a way that is all about them, not us.”

Attributed to David Sidman, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Linkstorm:

“Coke is the inaugural partner of our Portable Universal Profile (PUP™) platform for social media. Their vision and commitment have brought the platform to life in the form of a CokeTag. The platform is a unique way for brand marketers and advertisers to add great value to social media users’ experiences with a fun, unobtrusive and useful tool.”

“Unlike many other social media marketing programs which force themselves between the users and what they really want to be doing, the PUP enables the brand to become a conduit for user communications.  The brand message can be as subtle as the sponsor and its community may wish, but the application is designed to enhance the user experience of connecting and sharing with friends without intruding”

Multimedia

In addition to the website, www.coketags.com ,we have assembled the following links and multimedia that will assist you in informing others about the application.
IMAGES

• Musician / Band CokeTag
• Sci Fi Fan CokeTag
• Causes CokeTag
• Triple CokeTag Shot

• CokeTag Logo
• Coca-Cola Banner
• The Coca-Cola Company Logo

• Linkstorm Logo

• CokeTag Facebook Application Page
• we8 Fan Page

• http://del.icio.us/coketags

About

About Coca-Cola
The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company, refreshing consumers with more than 450 sparkling and still brands. Along with Coca-Cola, recognized as the world’s most valuable brand, the Company’s portfolio includes 12 other billion-dollar brands, including Diet Coke, Fanta, Sprite, Coca-Cola Zero, vitaminwater, Powerade, Minute Maid and Georgia Coffee. Globally, we are the No. 1 provider of sparkling beverages, juices and juice drinks and ready-to-drink teas and coffees. Through the world’s largest beverage distribution system, consumers in more than 200 countries enjoy the Company’s beverages at a rate of 1.5 billion servings a day. With an enduring commitment to building sustainable communities, our Company is focused on initiatives that protect the environment, conserve resources and enhance the economic development of the communities where we operate. For more information about our Company, please visit our Web site at www.thecoca-colacompany.com.

About Linkstorm
Linkstorm is an advertising technology company that is pioneering a new approach to online marketing, e-commerce, publishing and social networking. The company’s unique ad enhancement technology significantly improves performance of all online advertising and improves user engagement by overlaying cascading menus onto any ad format and quickly connecting customers to the information they want. Clients include national and global advertisers, agencies and publishers such as Cisco, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Chevrolet, HP, Ogilvy, MRM and Hachette Filipacchi. Linkstorm is headquartered in New York City and is funded by visionary investors such as Esther Dyson and Jim Rutt.  For more information, please visit www.linkstorms.com

Contact Info

Contact:	C.C. Chapman
Phone:	508-241-1062
Email:	cc@theadvanceguard.com
Website:	http://www.theadvanceguard.com

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Coca-Cola | Coke | CokeTag | CokeTags | Facebook | Facebook Application | Widgets | Social Media | we8 | Linkstorm

Congratulations to Marcus Baskerville of Sacramento, California, who has won the first prize awarded by the Life Changing Box — a 32″ Full HD LCD Sharp Aquos TV!

There are still a ton more prizes to be awarded. Prizes include 52? flat screen televisions, exclusive tickets to sporting events, international trips, home theater systems — 20 prizes in all — with values ranging from $400 to $14,000. Here’s a direct link to the Life Changing Box app page, the Life Changing Box game, and the Life Changing Box Facebook Group.

Hello. This is the Life Changing Box. A box that holds the potential to change things for the better. A game that has the potential to give out some really cool stuff. What does the box hold for you? Click to find out. Play the Life Changing Box! Prizes include 52″ flat screen televisions, exclusive tickets to sporting events, international trips, home theater systems — 20 prizes in all — with values ranging from $400 to $14,000. There are two of everything so everyone who wins a prize wins its twin for the person who invited him or her.

What is this “Life Changing Box” you speak of?

Life Changing Box is a game where you win big fancy prizes.

How do I win a big fancy prize?

First, install the Life Changing Box game. Then touch one (or all) of the Life Changing Boxes to get in the game.

Then what?

Then you wait. YES, you wait and you watch. This game is based on timed rounds where a Box either opens and gives it’s holder a prize or it randomly jumps to someone else. If you are one of the people who touched the Box, then this person could be you.

Then do I win a prize?!

You might! But you’ve got to be on the ball, or more correctly you’ve got to be on the Box. If at the end a round the box hasn’t opened for you, it’s outta there and on to someone else.

I want a prize!! Do I keep touching?

You are clever! That is exactly what you do! After each round the game resets and you have to touch again so the box knows to jump to you.

Can I cheat?

A little bit. If you invite a friend to play and they win, you win the exact same prize!

What!?!?

You heard right. You don’t even have to win to get a prize. If the friend you invited wins YOU ALSO WIN THE EXACT SAME PRIZE!! Invite as many friends as you like, every time they win you win.

This game is awesome!

Yes it is.

Sooner or later these Boxes are going to open and if I keep touching I’m going to get the Box and the prize!

That’s the spirit! Now let’s play