Marie* was expecting a typical day when she arrived at her advertising job one January day earlier this year. By the end, she was among the 15 percent of her company who had been laid off as part of a downsizing at the New York company. She was so devastated that she didn’t have time to say goodbye to co-workers with whom she had shared so many memories.

Like millions of people, Marie faced the harsh reality of the current economic recession that has led to double-digit unemployment in the United States and many other countries. She looked to support from her friends, family and former co-workers — and she found it by logging onto Facebook.

Facebook allowed her to reconnect with many of her former colleagues who had similarly lost their jobs, and they were able to support each other through a difficult time. Marie expected her first day without a job to be filled with sadness and isolation. Instead, she said she was greeted with well wishes and even job leads from previous co-workers and others who had been in similar situations.

“This gave me a great sense of support and connection,” Marie said, “As I gladly received wonderful messages and followed up on leads, I realized that this would not be possible without Facebook.”

One of those leads was for a marketing position, and Marie diligently followed up. Months later, on another day she thought would be typical, she received a job offer. Now she’s working full-time and grateful for the support and advice of her friends. As Marie said, “Facebook really helped me stay connected, receive kind words, and indirectly secure employment.”

Nikki, a specialist on Facebook’s user operations team, is grateful to have found her job through Facebook, too.

*Marie is a pseudonym we used at the request of the Facebook user to protect her identity.

Official facebook news!

Source: Facebook Blog

Hugh de Loayza, Zynga

• 50% of US women play online games, but when interviewed for a panel, don’t consider themselves on-line gamers. 41% of these ladies have used virtual currency
• Of those that play games with virtual currency, only 9% chose offers based on the points being awarded.
• They even stock up on virtual currency more often than they hit the ATM.

What explains this behavior? Q Interactive and The Social Media World Forum conducted a study of 2,100 women to study how US females interact with games. And they are not the typical teenage boys playing first person shooters.

Bob Girolamo of Q Interactive presented the study last week in San Jose at the conference.  Some interesting tidbits:

• Women are using few games—50% are using 2 or less games. 85% of these ladies are at 5 or less.  So there’s lots of trial, but only a couple stick.
• They earn and spend virtual currency daily—the game dynamics draw them in.  And it’s not just FarmVille, though that is the most popular of virtual currency apps with over 60 million users. 56.8% of women visit social networking sites at least a few times per week.
• When asked, “What made you want to play certain games?” 53% said that a friend or family member recommended it.
• When asked, “Why do you use virtual currency” 38% want to advance in the game, while 17% to acquire gifts.  Peer pressure works.
• Have you used real money to purchase virtual currency? 10% said yes.
• So why not spending “real” money?  38% can’t afford it. Yet 88% of the women are controlling the household finances—60% completely. Many don’t understand how to use PayPal, plus privacy issues.
• Do you give more virtually or in real life? 53% give as many real world gifts as virtually.

Now how about the offers themselves? The current wisdom is that incentivized ads are of low quality because users complete the offers solely to get points:

• 67% of women say that the offers are useful—but the glass is half full.
• Women pick offers based on content, not on the amount of virtual currency awarded. Only 9% choose offers based on the reward.
• Surveys were the most popular method to earn currency at 34%. In second place at 22% are hard goods (toys, electronics). Mobile is surprisingly not in this mix, which argues for a different demographic converting on mobile offers.

So how do we interpret these results? Some hypotheses:

• Female games are a completely different demographic than overall Facebook users—true, in that certain apps skew by gender and that this is a distinctly non college age user base.
• Sample bias in the study: This is something that can be leveled at any study, especially in how they selected these women and the small sample size. It may be that there are working professional women who are playing almost as much, but doing so in stealth and are harder to contact than stay-at-home moms. However, I’d rule out sample bias. Matt Wise, President of Q Interactive, noted that “Women seek a partner to support their entertainment, which is exceptionally important given their busy lives.” Thus, games provide interaction among groups of women who stay at home.
• Winning is fun: The fact that 97% of women prefer to earn their way through the game versus paying for currency says that the process of earning coins is likely enjoyable and that “cheating” by buying currency is taboo. The study did not comment on how much of this was influenced by the lack of purchase power.
• Users want to engage with brands: It’s not that the games built by players such as Zynga are bad or that the ad networks themselves are locked into an evil cycle. Rather, the right offers from trusted advertisers might allow users to enjoy free games, advertisers to get decent ROI, and game developers to be able to support their applications via games.

Overall, I found these results surprising, but intuitive in hindsight. What do you think?

Source: All Facebook

Those big name implementations of Facebook Connect however keeps the company’s identity platform in the press day after day, while Google Friend Connect gets brief spurts of attention. One can understand why Google feels so strongly about competing in the online identity wars. The primary reason is of course that the company doesn’t have an effective system of determining who our friends are (aside from their email services of course).

While it’s difficult to dismiss Google Friend Connect given their wide reach, the service doesn’t appear to be as strong of a competitor given their loosely structured data. While I’m sure there are plenty of people who would say Google Friend Connect is a formidable competitor, I would argue that they are running a distant second to Facebook.

For those who think that a distributed web could win, I’d say “Fat chance!” The main reason being that Facebook has the largest representation of the social graph and the more people they have, the greater the incentive is to join. This snowballs at a rapid pace, and right now there’s nobody close to matching Facebook’s image of the social graph.

Rather than ramble on about why Facebook will win the identity war, I’d simply emphasize how this is clearly a last ditch effort by Google despite the millions of people that have implemented the Friend Connect service. While implementing Twitter as another identity service is a useful feature, Google is essentially attempting to piece together a group of widgets to take on Facebook.

Do you think my dismissal of Google Friend Connect is an unfair assessment?

Source: All Facebook

I really like Facebook Emoticons but not so much as children. Children always be happy and good, and must use Facebook Emoticons every day, or as soon as you wake up until bedtime. Animal forms, unfortunately, do not use Facebook Emoticons because they do not know and did not tell people.

A Croatian program is a public survey showed that children are dependent on the Facebook Emoticons. Companies and public and celebrities were a bit shocked, and I just did not. I am and thought it would be such results. I really like Facebook Emoticons and I know that children expect Facebook Emoticons when they can see and use.

Source: Facebook Emoticons

So how long does it take for Viralee to turnaround fan orders? The company’s founder, Dominic Holland, has provided us with the following numbers:

For 1-100 fans – same day
For 1,000 fans – inside of 5 days
For 10,000 fans – inside of 14 days

And one plan for the corporate guys is 1,000,000 fans which we guarantee within a month

The only other public competitor that we know of currently, USocial, has already received a Cease And Desist letter after reportedly spamming users and gaining unauthorized access to user accounts. Dominic Holland, founder of Viralee, tells us that “We do not take control of any users account at any time. We create a page for the user and market it within and externally to facebook.”

Pricing for fans through Viralee depends on how many you purchase. For 10 fans it’s 50 cents per fans, whereas for 10,000 fans it’s $0.099 cents per fan. It’s unknown whether or not Facebook will try to crack down on pay per fan services as most fans will be untargeted. Facebook in contrast provides homepage engagement ads which can drive a large number of targeted fans. As I wrote yesterday morning, Verizon was able to attract over 100,000 fans in a day from a single homepage advertisement.

While engagement ads are sold on a CPM basis, we’re hearing that the effective cost per fan for homepage engagement ads is anywhere between $5 and $10. Facebook appears to be experiencing growth in brand ad spend though which is why they may allow untargeted marketing services to peacefully coexist. Oh and if you were wondering who Dominic Holland is, he’s the guy that Orabrush acquired the “Kisses” page from in a bidding war with Hershey.

Source: All Facebook

So how long does it take for Viralee to turnaround fan orders? The company’s founder, Dominic Holland, has provided us with the following numbers:

For 1-100 fans – same day
For 1,000 fans – inside of 5 days
For 10,000 fans – inside of 14 days

And one plan for the corporate guys is 1,000,000 fans which we guarantee within a month

The only other public competitor that we know of currently, USocial, has already received a Cease And Desist letter after reportedly spamming users and gaining unauthorized access to user accounts. Dominic Holland, founder of Viralee, tells us that “We do not take control of any users account at any time. We create a page for the user and market it within and externally to facebook.”

Pricing for fans through Viralee depends on how many you purchase. For 10 fans it’s 50 cents per fans, whereas for 10,000 fans it’s $0.099 cents per fan. It’s unknown whether or not Facebook will try to crack down on pay per fan services as most fans will be untargeted. Facebook in contrast provides homepage engagement ads which can drive a large number of targeted fans. As I wrote yesterday morning, Verizon was able to attract over 100,000 fans in a day from a single homepage advertisement.

While engagement ads are sold on a CPM basis, we’re hearing that the effective cost per fan for homepage engagement ads is anywhere between $5 and $10. Facebook appears to be experiencing growth in brand ad spend though which is why they may allow untargeted marketing services to peacefully coexist. Oh and if you were wondering who Dominic Holland is, he’s the guy that Orabrush acquired the “Kisses” page from in a bidding war with Hershey.

Source: All Facebook

The echoes of the victory of the Barcelona on Real Madrid take facebook, with hundreds the groups where the happiness is evident for the victory of the azulgranas.

The anecdotes about the party have served like inspiration to many culés that have demonstrated his imagination.

Groups of ‘Facebook‘ have been created like of“ The day that Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9”

The day in which Andrés Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9. The native of La Mancha fell down in the area and the Portuguese complained because he thought that it was a piscinazo. The crack azulgrana ran through one: “You be quiet!” that explained after the party: "He said to me that I should not throw myself and I said to him that it should keep silent, because he is not most indicated to speak about that”.

In Facebook, the group ‘The day in which Andrés Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9 ′ is having a big aftereffect with more than 80.000 followers. Other groups like ‘How have I laughed on having seen Iniesta ordering to keep silent about Christian’ or ‘ordering to keep silent about the Poligonero (Cristiano Ronaldo)’ also Iniesta is having aftereffect.

Route

Cristiano Ronaldo, Soccer Spain, Groups Facebook

Source: News on Facebook

The echoes of the victory of the Barcelona on Real Madrid take facebook, with hundreds the groups where the happiness is evident for the victory of the azulgranas.

The anecdotes about the party have served like inspiration to many culés that have demonstrated his imagination.

Groups of ‘Facebook‘ have been created like of“ The day that Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9”

The day in which Andrés Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9. The native of La Mancha fell down in the area and the Portuguese complained because he thought that it was a piscinazo. The crack azulgrana ran through one: “You be quiet!” that explained after the party: "He said to me that I should not throw myself and I said to him that it should keep silent, because he is not most indicated to speak about that”.

In Facebook, the group ‘The day in which Andrés Iniesta ordered to be quiet to CR9 ′ is having a big aftereffect with more than 80.000 followers. Other groups like ‘How have I laughed on having seen Iniesta ordering to keep silent about Christian’ or ‘ordering to keep silent about the Poligonero (Cristiano Ronaldo)’ also Iniesta is having aftereffect.

Route

Cristiano Ronaldo, Soccer Spain, Groups Facebook

Source: News on Facebook

Here’s my younger sister went to school today and saw that her teacher uses Facebook Emoticons, it’s incredible, everyone uses Facebook Emoticons. It is really amazing to see animals on the tree to use Facebook Emoticons, it’s very nice.

Yesterday I saw on my Facebook Emoticons laptop, there is nothing better than that. I really like Facebook Emoticons, as soon as you wake up immediately by using the Facebook chat. I really like it, I can not describe. I bought the PS3, which in itself had a built-in Facebook Emoticons, that I could not believe it. My PS3 has worked almost day and nic, I almost went crazy when the older brother and me mum are not hot water per capita.

Source: Facebook Emoticons