CEOs take on Social Media

Posted by: Nanette Byrnes on November 14

Many CEOs use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter personally, but few use them to communicate with stakeholders. And while 29% say social media can be a very or extremely effective way for companies to communicate, just as many find it ineffective. These are some of the findings of a September survey of 200 chief executives by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and PRWeek.

So while CEOs are on these sites a lot (43% of the CEOs said they are on them often, including 19% who visit daily) it’s not for business. Only 18% say they use them to communicate with customers and other stakeholders.

Why not? 48% say they lack relevance to the target stakeholder groups 37% voice concern about loosing control of their message 28% worry about return on the investment and  23% blame a lack of knowledge and capability within the company

Another reason may be that they’re not convinced of the payoff. While 62% see social media as having an impact on a company’s reputation, only 48% say it can change sales.

They seem much more convinced of the power of Word of Mouth and viral campaigns. 60% say those have more influence today than they did three years ago. Also rising in influence: trade media, blogs covering their industry, and traditional media including the Wall Street Journal (44% say its sway has grown) and BusinessWeek (24%). 67% of those surveyed will increase their spending on digital marketing in 2009.

Facebook’s the site most often used for public relations, but 71% of CEOs said their company web site is the best way to communicate with consumers during a crisis.

Burson-Marsteller thinks CEOs should be more social. In the press release on the findings, Mark J. Penn President & CEO says “CEOs should understand that many of their stakeholders are active users of social media and that it can be an extremely effective means for communicating a message. I would argue that companies that are not engaging in social media are taking a bigger risk than the companies that are.”

He’s on Facebook. 

Gannett Buys Social Media Firm

Nov 14, 2008

NEW YORK Expanding its digital business, Gannett has acquired Ripple6, a provider of social media services. Ripple6 will become a wholly owned subsidiary, providing its social media technology and analytics to Gannett as well as to marketers and Web publishers. As part of the transaction, the 10 percent stake of Ripple6 owned by Chris Saridakis, svp and chief digital officer of Gannett, was bought out by Gannett. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ripple6 powers a number of...More

AdNet Weekend

Travel Ad Network Takes Over Top Spot in comScore's Travel ... MarketWatch - Nov 10, 2008 "Furthermore, Travel Ad Network audiences do not overlap with those of its top 10 competitors. Some 95% of its global reach is exclusive to TAN as is 93% in ...

Grocery Shopping Network Announces the Addition of Bill Blaney as ... MarketWatch - Nov 12, 2008 The GSN Ad Network(TM) is an extremely efficient and effective online advertising channel for CPGs as relevant offers are presented to grocery shoppers at ...

BMW of North America Selects Grey as US Regional Agency-of-Record MarketWatch - 15 hours ago Grey is the advertising network of Grey Group. Grey Group ranks among the largest global communications companies. Its parent company is WPP (WPPGY:

New Web 2.0 Ad Platform From Motive Interactive Delights Affiliate ... MarketWatch - Nov 11, 2008 In developing Advent 2.0(TM), Motive Interactive targeted two areas critical to Internetadvertising: a publisher-centric advertising network and a direct ...

Travel Ad Network Launches "Mapvertising" in Partnership With Lat49 MarketWatch - Nov 5, 2008 "We are very pleased by our partnership with Travel Ad Network," says Keith Ippel, President and COO of Lat49. "It is a great step toward extending our ...

eNewsChannels

BETA Records Site Gives Its Musician Users the Ability to Earn Ad ... eNewsChannels, CA - 15 hours ago ... launch of the first known peer-to-peer community advertising technology internally tagged by the team as “DAAN” - Dynamic Affinity Advertising Network. ...

Mad as Hell? Get Vidsense MarketWatch - Nov 12, 2008 Fortunately, however, quality still has a home in Vidsense, the Web's largest video ad network. With Vidsense, the more things change, the more they remain ...

Blip.tv Raises $5.2 Million Private Equity Hub, MA - 26 minutes ago The company matches top shows with sponsors and operates a video advertising networkof networks to monetize emerging shows. All advertising revenue is ...

Travelzoo Network Becomes Largest Network of Travel Deals ... MarketWatch - 23 hours ago ... Manager of Interactive Advertising for Continental Airlines. "We're very pleased with the ROI we've received with our Travelzoo Network campaigns. ...TZOO

HealthCentral Announces New Condition-Specific Ad Service to Offer ... MarketWatch - Nov 13, 2008 "We are changing the industry ad network model," said Christopher M. Schroeder, CEO of The HealthCentral Network. "Scale is important, but qualified scale ...OTC:HCENQ -OTC:CMTX

Social Media Weekend

Gannett Buys Social Media Firm Adweek, NY - 20 hours ago NEW YORK Expanding its digital business, Gannett has acquired Ripple6, a provider ofsocial media services. Ripple6 will become a wholly owned subsidiary, ... Gannett buys social media company Bizjournals.com Gannett acquires social media provider Ripple6 WELT ONLINE Gannett Acquires Social Media Firm Ripple6 Digital Media Wire CNNMoney.com - BtoB Magazine

Social media club to present hands-on, ‘Social Media 101’ event Bizjournals.com, NC - 16 hours ago Until now, Social Media Club Louisville has been of, by and for cutting-edge Internet types. But on Tuesday, Nov. 18, members will reach out to the ... Business gets on board with social media sites Milwaukee Business Journal

Pluck Helps Customers Declare Victory in Social Media Coverage ... MarketWatch - Nov 14, 2008 AUSTIN, Texas, Nov 14, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Pluck(R) Corporation, a subsidiary of Demand Media and the leading provider of social media capabilities to ...

Meebo Enables Real-Time Social Interaction for Hearst Magazines ... MarketWatch - Nov 13, 2008 "This partnership with Hearst Magazines Digital Media is unique in that it seamlessly links traditional media and social media with cutting-edge community ...

Siebert Upgrades, and Social Media Expands Barron's - 3 hours ago By Theresa W. Carey SIEBERTNET, AN ONLINE BROKERAGE THAT typically finishes near the top of Barron's annual review, rolled out updates on Nov. ...SIEB

Social media will not kill PR, but it does expose industry weakness ZDNet - 17 hours ago However, after attending a Horn Group panel on Wednesday on the topic of “Is Social MediaKilling PR?”, I’ma little afraid for the future of the PR industry ...

CEOs take on Social Media BusinessWeek - 15 hours ago Many CEOs use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter personally, but few use them to communicate with stakeholders. ...

Scate Seeks Strategic Investors for Web 2.0 Social Media Product Line MarketWatch - Nov 13, 2008 Scate Ignite 4 and its companion social media site IgniteCAST.com compete in the red hot web 2.0 social media market. Scate Ignite is currently used by ... Key Challenges and Issues Facing the Enterprise Web 2.0:Building ... MarketWatch all 26 news articles »

Discover Magazine

Social Media for the Military InternetNews.com - Nov 13, 2008 The launch of TroopTube comes nearly a year and a half after the Defense Department blocked access to YouTube and other popular social-media sites, ... Military Members, Families Can Share Video On TroopTube InformationWeek Pentagon unveils TroopTube as ‘approved’ YouTube replacement The Tech Herald

Wikis: The black sheep of social media Computerworld, MA - 20 hours ago I'm listening in to Nora Ganim Barnes University of Massachusetts Dartmouth talk about a survey of Inc. 500 and social media. The survey results, shown at ...

CEOs take on Social Media

Posted by: Nanette Byrnes on November 14

Many CEOs use social media sites like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube and Twitter personally, but few use them to communicate with stakeholders. And while 29% say social media can be a very or extremely effective way for companies to communicate, just as many find it ineffective. These are some of the findings of a September survey of 200 chief executives by public relations firm Burson-Marsteller and PRWeek.

So while CEOs are on these sites a lot (43% of the CEOs said they are on them often, including 19% who visit daily) it’s not for business. Only 18% say they use them to communicate with customers and other stakeholders.

Why not?
48% say they lack relevance to the target stakeholder groups
37% voice concern about loosing control of their message
28% worry about return on the investment
and 
23% blame a lack of knowledge and capability within the company

Another reason may be that they’re not convinced of the payoff. While 62% see social media as having an impact on a company’s reputation, only 48% say it can change sales.

They seem much more convinced of the power of Word of Mouth and viral campaigns. 60% say those have more influence today than they did three years ago. Also rising in influence: trade media, blogs covering their industry, and traditional media including the Wall Street Journal (44% say its sway has grown) and BusinessWeek (24%). 67% of those surveyed will increase their spending on digital marketing in 2009.

Facebook’s the site most often used for public relations, but 71% of CEOs said their company web site is the best way to communicate with consumers during a crisis.

Burson-Marsteller thinks CEOs should be more social. In the press release on the findings, Mark J. Penn President & CEO says “CEOs should understand that many of their stakeholders are active users of social media and that it can be an extremely effective means for communicating a message. I would argue that companies that are not engaging in social media are taking a bigger risk than the companies that are.”

He’s on Facebook. 

Gannett Buys Social Media Firm

Nov 14, 2008

NEW YORK Expanding its digital business, Gannett has acquired Ripple6, a provider of social media services. Ripple6 will become a wholly owned subsidiary, providing its social media technology and analytics to Gannett as well as to marketers and Web publishers. As part of the transaction, the 10 percent stake of Ripple6 owned by Chris Saridakis, svp and chief digital officer of Gannett, was bought out by Gannett. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ripple6 powers a number of...More

Gannett Buys Ripple6 

By E&P Staff 
Published: November 13, 2008 2:26 PM ET 

NEW YORK Gannett announced today it has acquired Ripple6, a social media provider that currently powers Gannett's MomsLikeMe sites. The New York-based company will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Gannett.

"From the moment we began working with Ripple6, we realized we had found a company that is richly innovative and can change the way social media is offered and monetized online," Craig Dubow, Gannett's chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. "Ripple6 will join our other enterprises in fueling the rapid growth of our digital business, which seeks to apply innovative technology and content solutions to the needs of our customers."

Ripple6 provides sites the ability to enable social marketing, generate consumer insights, and measure word of mouth. Other clients include Procter & Gamble, Meredith Corp., and General Mills.

"We've had a highly productive two-year relationship with Ripple6 to create new communities for our brands, and we look forward to continuing it in their new structure," Pat Gentile, head of P&G Productions, said in a statement. 

Gannett disclosed that bought out the 10% share of Ripple6 owned by Chris Saridakis, Gannett's senior vice president and chief digital officer. Saridakis was not part of the sale negotiations.

Google Shifts Toward Fee-Based Services like Enterprise Search Services at Economics of Advertising

Google Site Search gets more demanding

11/13/2008 07:59:00 AM

Customers today demand speed. Waiting around is so, well, yesterday -- as so many of the things we used to have to wait for are now at our fingertips online. We can read up to the minute news, get directions, and find the answers to our most pressing questions simply by entering them into a search box.

For a business running their own website, this means that visitors who turn to search expect to have access to the newest products, pages and announcements a site has to offer.

That's why today we're excited to bring you On-Demand Indexing for Google Site Search. On-Demand Indexing is like a turbocharger for Google Site Search, ensuring that your newest pages appear in search results on your website fast. Whether you're promoting a new line of products, sharing breaking news or reports, or updating your site in time for the holiday season, On-Demand Indexing puts businesses in control with an "Index Now" button, giving them the flexibility to quickly update search results whenever they have new content to update or add.

Google Site Search builds on the Google Custom Search Engine by adding business integration features, the option to turn off ads, a more customized look and feel, as well as email and phone support. Check out this video to learn more:



Anyone with a website can take advantage of On-Demand Indexing today by signing up for Google Site Search. For more information about On-Demand Indexing, and how Google Site Search can help your online business or website, check out the Google Enterprise Blog or visit www.google.com/sitesearch.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Enterprise Search, and Tom Duerig, Software Engineer

News at Seven Website replaces anchors, reporters with virtual technology

US: Website replaces anchors, reporters with virtual technology

from editorsweblog

A new website designed by the Intelligent Information Laboratory at Northwestern University is removing the need for humans in the news broadcasting and reporting process, according toNowToronto.

News at Seven "collects news stories from the web, edits them automatically and formats the content for artificial anchors," creating a complete editorial package, pulling relevant images and blogs from the web to "complement" the story.

Google Search Is Taking Questions (Spoken, via iPhone)

Businesses warming up to the iPhone

from CNET News.com | Tech news blog

The original iPhone was not welcome in corporate America. While the BlackBerry still rules the boardroom, the second-generation iPhone is getting a fresh look

.

Google's iPhone app gets a voice: Yours

from Webware.com by Josh Lowensohn

Google on Friday is expected to release version two of its mobile search application for the iPhone. The new version works much like the old one, letting users query Google outside of the mobile Safari Web browser, as well as search through contacts and narrow down results by their current location. The big change is the addition of search-by-voice, which lets you skip the keyboard entirely.

Google has found a really neat way to distinguish between voice and keyboard input. Using the phone's accelerometer and proximity sensors, it can tell when you're lifting the phone up to your face. Once you do, all that's left to do is speak, and your voice will get processed then turned into a query similar to what's been done with Google's GOOG-411 service--including suggestions of what it thought you said. This works for both Web searches and contacts, which makes the application double as a voice-powered contact search. You cannot, however, dial a result without clicking on it.

It's worth noting a few companies have already beat Google to the punch with voice-activated search tools. Excuse Me Services has two applications: Say Who and Say Where, which let you dial contacts and search for local Web services using nothing more than your voice. Say Where in particular is the more interesting of the two since it can use voice queries to find directions, gas stations, restaurants and traffic maps.

Also, early Monday rival Yahoo launched voice support for its OneSearch product, however instead of using internally-built technology it uses Vlingo for the the voice recognition and processing.

The updated, voice-ready version of Google's application will be available on Android and Blackberry devices in the coming months. iPhone users with the application already installed will find the updated version in the updates tab of the app store.

Google Is Taking Questions (Spoken, via iPhone)

from NYT > Technology

Users of the voice technology can ask any question, ranging from “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” to “How tall is Mount Everest?”

Sweeping Changes At Microsoft Live.com: It’s A Social Network like Facebook, Myspace!

Microsoft Releases Major Update to Windows Live: New Applications and Third-Party Integration

from ReadWriteWeb by Frederic Lardinois

Microsoft just announced the availability of a number of new and updated online applications in itsWindows Live suite: Windows Live Photos, Profiles, People, and Groups. In addition, Microsoft also announced that it will allow its users to integrate content from a large number third-party services, including Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, and Yelp. Microsoft will begin rolling out these new services to U.S. customers in the coming weeks and expects them to be available globally in 54 countries by early 2009.

New Services

Windows Live Photos: This is one of the most interesting new applications, and we will publish a more in-depth review of it a little bit later tonight. Basically, this is Microsoft's answer to Yahoo's Flickr and Google's Picasa Web Albums.

Live Photos allows you to share your pictures with granular privacy controls, and thanks to the "What's New" feed, the new Live Photos service will also allow you to monitor the photos of your friends on Windows Live.

Windows Live Profiles: The new Live Profile aggregates and displays your activity on Windows Live and third-party services. Somewhat similar to FriendFeed, users can choose to aggregate their activities on other services like Yelp or Twitter on this profile page as well. In the next few months, Microsoft will also integrate a large number of other third-party services, including LiveJournal, Digg, Last.fm, iLike, Seesmic, and SlideShare...

Sweeping Changes At Live.com: It’s A Social Network!

from TechCrunch by Michael Arrington

Microsoft’s Live.com portal will change significantly this evening. No longer will it be a simple search engine with a few other services bolted on. It’s now a social network, too, pulling in activity information and content from around the web. They’re also launching Windows Live Photos and Windows Live People, and other services. Check it out at Home.Live.com.

A lot of what they’ve done is exactly what Yahoo has been talking about for over a year now - leveraging social connections that already exist (Yahoo is using email, Microsoft is using Messenger) and doing a lot more with it.

Users are automatically connected with any friends they have on Windows Live Messenger, which is by far the most popular instant messaging service worldwide (Comscore: Microsoft Messenger has 268 million worldwide users, compared to 116 million for Yahoo and 6 million for Google Talk).

Users are asked to build out their profile, and can also bring in content they create on blogs (or any RSS feeds, Flickr, LinkedIn, Pandora, Photobucket, iLike, Twitter, Wordpress and Yelp. When you do something new on those sites, the information flows into Live.com for your friends to see (in a very similar way as FriendFeed, Plaxo and others do today). Eventually, says Microsoft, more than 50 partners will be supported. When users add photos, write reviews, and update their profiles directly on Live.com, that content will be put into the activity stream as well.

The hope, of course, is to get people to hang out a lot more at Live.com. At least those people who use Messenger, since they already have their contacts established. Like Yahoo, Microsoft is going with its strengths, which in their case is instant messaging.

Online, Multi-Player Gaming Comes To The iPhone (AAPL), XBOX Responds

Microsoft launches new version of Games for Windows Live

from VentureBeat by Dean Takahashi

Microsoft is launching a new version of Games for Windows Live, the online gaming service for gamers who prefer to play on personal computers.

It’s the first major update since the service was introduced 18 months ago. This version has features such as a new user-interface that is accessible from inside a game, a marketplace for both free and purchased game extras.

Eventually, the marketplace will be a way for gamers to buy new games via digital downloading, said Chris Early, general manager of Games for Windows Live at Microsoft. That means that Microsoft anticipates competing with Valve’s Steam game-downloading service. The marketplace feature will kick off in December with game extras such as demos, but new game sales will come later.

The Live version on the PC is a counterpart to Microsoft’s Xbox Live online gaming service on the Xbox 360 console. It shows that Microsoft still has a vested interest in keeping the PC as a major gaming platform in spite of its heavy investment in the Xbox 360, said Early. Players can get access to their own gamertag, or single identity, and data such as game achievements. They can also use the system for voice and text chat and finding other players to play in online multiplayer games.

In contrast to multiplayer play on Xbox Live (which requires a $50 a year subscription), the Games for Windows Live service is entirely free, including multiplayer play. Microsoft also said that there are a few more PC games coming under the Games For Windows brand, including Fallout 3, Grand Theft Auto IV and James Bond 007: Quantum of Solace.

Online, Multi-Player Gaming Comes To The iPhone (AAPL)

from Silicon Alley Insider by Dan Frommer

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone's gaming platform is already a huge hit. And it's starting to get more fun: Companies are starting to roll out games that take advantage of the phone's Internet features for live, multi-player gaming. The latest:

• SF-based game publisher Zynga is launching "Live Poker," which lets you play free Texas Hold'em (no gambling) against 1.4 million daily players on their Web game, or against your real friends from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, or Hi5. The game uses Facebook's newish "Facebook Connect" feature so you can sign in with your Facebook login and password without leaving "Live Poker." It's free for the iPhone and iPod touch; a $9.99 version offers a "larger chip package" and access to tournaments.
  
  
• Palo Alto-based iPhone software publisher Tapulous has issued an update to its popularGuitar Hero-for-the-iPhone game "Tap Tap Revenge," which includes online gameplay. The game advertises it as a work-in-progress feature, but it worked well in our test. (Our tapping skills, however, aren't nearly as good as this pigeon's.) "Tap Tap Revenge" has been downloaded more than 2.5 million times, so there's a good chance you'll always have people to play against. (And hey, look... ads!)
  

A good start, and something that could give the iPhone another advantage over consumer-focused rivals like the Google (GOOG) G1 and BlackBerry Storm (RIMM). But we're still waiting for something that looks as fun as this wacky video, which leaked several weeks before the iPhone 3G was announced.

Popout

YouTube to Sell Advertising on Pages of Search Results

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: November 12, 2008

Google announced on Wednesday that it would begin selling space onYouTube search-results pages to advertisers, part of its effort to turn its expensive acquisition into a major revenue producer.

The feature allows anyone who has a video on YouTube to promote it on a search-results page. An advertiser — or a video maker who wants to promote a work — can bid on keywords like “silly cats,” “financial crisis,” “James Bond,” or anything that strikes one’s fancy.

The promoted videos are featured on the right-hand side of the YouTube search-results page with a small image and some text.

Advertisers are charged when a viewer clicks on the ad, and can set a maximum price per click that they want to pay. Google determines which ads will be shown based on what price the advertisers bid, along with factors like relevance to the keyword, which is similar to the way it selects ads shown on Google’s regular search results.

A search product for YouTube makes sense — it had the third-highest number of search queries of any Web property in September, after Google and Yahoo, according tocomScore, the online measurement firm.

Advertisers said that they had been waiting for a way to promote their clients’ videos on the site.

“I’ve always liked YouTube, but as an advertising mode, it’s difficult,” said Ashley Vinson, executive producer of integrated creative at the advertising agency DDB Chicago, adding that “I can get my videos to show up when people are doing searches, versus me sending my videos to 20 friends and hoping someone finds it.”

This is one of several efforts that Google has made to increase revenue at YouTube, for which Google paid $1.65 billion two years ago. It has started showing ads within videos and running contests sponsored by marketers. Last month, it added “click to buy” icons to ads that took viewers from YouTube videos to iTunes or Amazon.com.

Google executives have said that the company has not quite perfected its model for the site.

“I personally do not believe that the perfect ad product for YouTube has been invented yet,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a conference call with analysts in July.

Some advertisers remain nervous about the site, as even Google executives acknowledge.

“There’s the assumption that on YouTube, it’s 17-year-old boys watching dogs’ skateboarding videos,” said Tracy Chan, a Google product manager, at the press conference introducing the feature...

Apple's Greg Joswiak touts iPod touch as the future of handheld gaming

Apple's Greg Joswiak touts iPod touch as the future of handheld gaming

from Engadget by Joshua Topolsky

We speculated in our review of the new iPod touch that Apple had designs on more than just consumption of music and video, and now an interview with company VP of iPod and iPhone product marketing Greg Joswiak all but confirms that sights are set on the gaming market. In a conversation with T3, Joswiak boasts that the devices are breaking through as a viable alternative to established handhelds (such as the PSP or DS) due mostly in part to competitive software pricing and the company's content delivery system. While much of the interview focuses on iPod sales figures, it does delve into more detailed comparisons of platforms, with Joswiak stating, "The 3D graphic power here [iPod touch] is significantly greater than what you have here [picks up Nintendo DS]. So this allows people to do significantly higher quality games." While it's not unusual to hear Apple's honchos hyping their products like they just skipped across some water to heal a few lepers, it is a new trend to see the company aggressively going after gaming platform mainstays so directly. With Sony and Nintendo just getting up to speed on non-traditional content delivery, Apple may find an edge come holiday season with casual gamers -- the real question is whether the hardcore will bite.

iPhone 2.2 update due in a week and a half?

November 21 is the day the 2.2 software update for the iPhone (and iPod touch) is expected to be released, according to the blog iPhone Hellas.

Gadget blog Gizmodo, which calls the Greek site “consistently reliable,” says the feature list is expected to be largely the same as what has been seen by developers in the second beta version of the software.

This means in 10 days we should all see the additions of: Google Street View, Google Maps transit directions (including walking directions), the ability to download podcasts to the iPhone, a new proactive rating system for apps and a new, slightly reconfigured version of the Safari web broswer, among other smaller changes.

There is still no word on if highly sought-after features like cut & paste and the Push Notification system will be included in the update, but seeing as Apple has given no indication that they would be, it’s probably unlikely.

Is Facebook the mobile web’s killer app? Is sharing the future of the web?

Is Facebook the mobile web’s killer app?

Posted by Steve O'Hear @ 8:29 am

Active users of Facebook’s various mobile products has grown from 5 million to 15 million since the beginning of the year, says the company. In particular, the ability for users to not only update their ’status’ while on the go but also to comment on their friends’ updates, has spurred mobile use of the site.

“When we recently added the ability to comment on your friends’ status updates to the Facebook mobile site, we didn’t expect that we would receive nearly a million status comments in the first 24 hours”, writes Facebook’s Wayne Chang on the company’s official blog.

While that particular tidbit is interesting, it should be no surprise that mobile versions of Facebook are proving popular. Not when you take into account that Facebook offers two browser-based mobile versions of the site — one for low-end feature phones and another for ’smart phones’ — as well as native Facebook clients for Blackberry, Palm and iPhone. Notably, the Palm version runs on the smartphone maker’s entry level consumeroffering, the popular and affordable Centro. While television ad campaigns that aim to push the Blackberry beyond its business roots and into the hands of consumers pitch Facebook access as a major selling point. Ditto some of the most recent ad campaigns for Apple’s iPhone.

See also: BlueWhaleMail: Facebook messages “pushed” to your cellphone

And it’s not just high end smartphones that are getting their own Facebook client application.  As I wrote over at last100, a new low cost cellphone that puts Facebook and other social applications at its center will debut this week on Hutchinson-owned 3 in the UK and Australia. The new handset has been designed by another Hutchinson subsidiary, INQ Mobile, and is the first of a number of “low cost social mobile” offerings in the pipeline. INQ has been working directly with Facebook in order to offer better integration than is available on existing low end handsets.

Handset makers clearly see Facebook as a way to sell more phones but what’s in it for the carriers? Aside from picking up or retaining subscribers, the telcos hope to get more people using the mobile web in order to sell more data.

“For 85 percent of our customers, we can’t really sell more than voice and text,” INQ Mobile’s CEO, Frank Meehan, told Unstrung. “You need to drive data usage higher right across all the handset segments. You want the majority of customers, not the top-end of the community that rules strategy at the moment.”

See also: Snap2Face: Facebook lands on Windows Mobile

Facebook Mobile Sees 3X Growth to 15 Million Users This Year

Facebook announced last night that the company has seen users of its mobile site, m.facebook.com, jump from 5 million to 15 million this year. The most recent change made to the site, allowing comments to be posted on status messages from your phone, resulted in more than 1 million mobile posts in the first 24 hours.

While these numbers are still relatively small compared to the total number of Facebook users (under 10%), it's huge for mobile social networking. Facebook has a really good mobile site and it looks like it's only getting better.

Context

Facebook Mobile is now probably bigger than the entire userbase of Mixi, Japan's leading social network and a site that is very frequently accessed by mobile. Last week 6 leading Japanese social networks, including Mixi, MySpace Japan, Yahoo and others, announced that the companies are forming a mysterious alliance that could include content and widget sharing across their mobile sites.

We're curious how that kind of strategy will work compared to Facebook's strategy of building up a huge siloed web based social network and then creating a simple but extremely usable mobile version.

Zuckerberg’s Law of Information Sharing

By SAUL HANSELL

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook. (Credit: Craig Ruttle/AP)

On stage at the Web 2.0 Summit on Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Facebook, was cheerfully unruffled.

Mr. Zuckerberg pinned his optimism on a change in behavior among Internet users: that they are ever more willing to tell others what they are doing, who their friends are, and even what they look like as they crawl home from the fraternity party.

“I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before,” he said. “That means that people are using Facebook, and the applications and the ecosystem, more and more.”

Call it Zuckerberg’s Law.

Mr. Zuckerberg is too low-key to compare his observation to the law first articulated by Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors on a chip doubles every two years.

But if it turns out to be accurate, Mr. Zuckerberg’s prediction may turn out to be just as important to society.

And if Facebook is even half as good at exploiting Zuckerberg’s Law as Intel was at exploiting Moore’s Law, Mr. Zuckerberg will be a very happy man indeed.