Now most people won’t argue that Zuckerberg has been extremely influential in the world of technology and the Internet, but I would argue he’s made much more of an impact this year to everyone.

Facebook, this year, has seen an influx of everyone and their Grandmother signing up on the service to connect with each other. The “Social Network”  has become no just a social networking site but an ecosystem for interaction and, dare I say it, trade.

Yes, trade. Facebook users, all 500+ million of them, have made the service an economic marketplace where advertisers and merchants alike advertising to the users in mass.

Facebook has an amazing pay-per-click system that allows a company to drill down their ads to appear to a specific demographic. This is unlike any other system, due mainly to the sheer number of users who share their vital statistics with Facebook.

When most people think advertisements they cringe. Ads are often the scourge of any area that they’re in. But honestly, I think the ads on Facebook aren’t bad at all. This is because of the advanced targeting that can be done of the 500+ million users on the service. The ads served are much more relevant to the user who is seeing them, making them more acceptable and even useful to the individual user.

If you’re a company that relies on a specific user base for revenue and growth, ignoring this giant is a fatal mistake. Facebook is a great place for not only B2C companies but B2B as well. It doesn’t need to be all that expensive. There are many strategies that can be employed to get the most out of Facebook, without breaking the bank.

If you see the writing on the wall, but are unsure of how to get your company started on Facebook, give us a call, (215) 352-5216, or fill out the form. We can help.

These are my links for December 23rd through December 24th:

• Why B2B companies should be using social media | Socialmedia.biz – Many B2B com­pa­nies ask me whether social media is right for them. This post is all about why social media and B2B go hand in hand.
• Social media & startups: It’s a different ballgame | Socialmedia.biz – I get asked a lot: “How do I make money off social media?” Uhmm, well, you use the magic wand of online web awe­some­ness, obvi­ously. Or maybe not. We have all read a mil­lion arti­cles point­ing us toward tools we should be using, things we should be con­sid­er­ing, and the best prac­tices we shouldn’t ignore. We get it: Social media is valu­able. I think by now we all under­stand the impor­tance of social media as a vis­i­bil­ity engine and viral mes­sage maker. It can be used to enable con­ver­sa­tions, announce infor­ma­tion, put out fires, and so on.

  It can do a lot. But it has lim­its. Ohhh buzz kill.

• 7 tips to increase your online media literacy | Socialmedia.biz – t’s become a tru­ism that we’re all media cre­ators now, from blog­gers and pod­cast­ers to the most wet-behind-the-feathers Twitterer.
• 5 ways to increase the reach of your blog or RSS feed | Socialmedia.biz – You may be los­ing out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve the reach of your RSS feed or blo
• DDoS Attack Takes Down Amazon, Wal-Mart – If you’ve been doing some last-minute Amazon holiday shopping on Wednesday evening, you’ve probably noticed that Amazon’s website was sluggish and, at times, completely down. The same fate greeted Wal-Mart, Expedia and a number of smaller sites. The reason? A severe DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on the servers of Neustar, the company that offers DNS services to many major companies under the name UltraDNS.
• The Pirate Bay Goes Retro for Christmas – Remember how one of the most popular torrent sharing sites, The Pirate Bay, looked back in 2003? Today, you have a chance to refresh your memory, because the pirates have gone retro, changing the layout of the site to the way it looked back then, when the Internet was innocent and there was no pile of lawsuits on The Pirate Bay’s desk.
• Fun Stats: 28% Of Sites Use Google Analytics; 5% Have Facebook Or Twitter Links – # 28% of sites have Google Analytics on them
  # 12% of sites have AdSense
  # 5% of sites have EITHER a Twitter or Facebook link but…
  # 2% of sites have BOTH a Twitter or Facebook link
• Disney Wants Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg On Its Board – GigaOM – Disney’s board today nominated Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg to be its thirteenth member. It’ll be put to shareholder vote at the next Disney annual meeting, scheduled to be held March 10, 2010.
• Add Clickable Links In YouTube Videos Without Using Annotations – While it is possible to add hyperlinks on YouTube videos via the built-in annotations feature, the only problem is that you cannot link to external websites from YouTube videos – that links should either point to a video hosted on YouTube or to a video search page that’s again on YouTube.
• 2010: Year of digital distraction? – CNN.com – The "real-time Web" is booming. From Twitter to Facebook to new search engines that discover information posted just seconds ago, it seems the 2010 Web will be fueled by our desire for instant gratification.
• Mall of America Tweets Holiday Parking Updates – It may not be rocket science, but it is pretty cool: The Mall of America is using Twitter to tweet parking info for last-minute holiday shoppers hoping to avoid the ever-annoying quest for a space.
• Marketing in 2010: It’s All About the Data –
• Digg’s Top 10 Most Popular Stories of 2009 – It’s the end of the year, traditionally a time for self-reflection. While many of us are making our New Year’s resolutions and looking back on what we accomplished, a lot of social media companies are sifting through their data and sharing what was hot in 2009.
• FTC Inquiry Hinders Google’s Acquisition of AdMob – When Google formally announced their plans to acquire mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million, they didn’t expect any regulatory interference to impede upon the processing of the deal. Unfortunately they were wrong.
• 3 Powerful Social Good Trends in 2010 – 2009 saw a proliferation of online charity events, competitions, and “friendraisers” that spilled across Twitter and Facebook and filled email inboxes everywhere with more requests for money than any Nigerian prince could ever hope to make. And while it’s hard to argue that this is a bad thing — anytime someone gives money to feed the hungry instead of buying another digital potato seed in Farmville, global karma rises, if even just by a little — this focus on using the web as an ever-more elaborate means of getting people to fork over cash misses the much bigger opportunities just over the horizon.
• BREAKING: Twitter Buys Mixer Labs to Boost Location Features – Twitter co-founder and CEO Evan Williams has just announced on the company’s blog that they have acquired Mixer Labs, creator of the GeoAPI.
• Is Hiring a Ghostblogger a Bad Thing? – At any given time, there is usually an ongoing debate in some blogging circle about whether ghostblogging is a good or bad thing. I say it depends on how you’re using the term, and how you are using your ghostblogger.
• Google News Will Not Accept Single Author Blogs – I put in an application to submit our blog to Google news, but it seems Google news will not include sites that are written and maintained by one individual!

This is the Daily Link Report for September 9th

Please feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section below

To see all of our links please visit our Delicious page at Delicious.com/goldsteinmedia

• Social Media for B2B – Search Engine Watch (SEW) – Many business-to-business (B2B) companies are struggling with what their social media strategy should be, or if they should even have one. Unfortunately, many executives incorrectly believe that social media isn't applicable for their B2B company. Rather, they think it's something reserved for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies.
• Social Media and the Impact on Network Security | Search Engine Journal – There are many pros for social media. You can use social media to augment traditional public relations and communications strategies. You can build a profile and a brand and reach a wider audience. You are more engaging and can communicate directly with customers and the public. Your employees can provide value well beyond the 9 to 5 work hours. Social media has become necessary to fill the void as the media/newspapers have closed down or cut reporting staff recently. You can supplement existing partnership capabilities with tools such as podcasts, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to accelerate the sharing of knowledge, increase teamwork and enhance communication between co-workers.
• Did @PhilBaumann Just Save Follow Friday? – A better way to utilize #followfriday's power
• Google Preps To Turn On Chrome Extensions – Good news for those Firefox users who really want to switch to Chrome but fear living a day without extensions, that day is here. Or, at least, near. Google today announced that it was turning on extension support in Chrome by default in all the new developer builds (in Windows) from now on.
• In other news, we got to see the Palm Pixi today. It’s not too bad (but, really, no Wi-Fi?) – You get the feeling that Palm had something to hide today. On the surface that makes no sense, considering it officially announced the Pixi, the company’s second webOS-based phone, this morning. (The company’s first webOS phone, the Pre, launched to much fanfare last June, owing to an almost Bill Goldberg winning streak-like level of hype.) But as you’re already aware, Apple had an announcement or two of its own today, including the inclusion of a digital camera on the iPod nano. It’s unfortunate, but Apple events are really the black holes of this industry: on Apple event days, no other tech news can escape out into the wild. That is to say, unless your company name is Apple, Inc., you’d be better served laying low for the day, and make any announcements later in the week.
• Google Books Investigation: Congress is Now Involved – The entire Google Books affair has turned into one complicated mess.

  Here’s a recap of what’s been happening: In late 2008, Google (Google), The Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers came to an agreement over Google Books, which lets you search and read millions of scanned manuscripts. The agreement settled copyright issues and gave publishers and authors a cut of the revenue Google generated. For a long time, we thought that was the end of the matter.

• Google Proposes Micropayment System To Rescue Newspapers – Despite their frosty relationship, Google is proposing a micropayment system that could give the newspaper industry a way to charge for its online content. According to the Nieman Journalism Lab, the micropayment system will be based on Google Checkout and be available within a year “to both Google and non-Google properties.”
• Google Says Domain Registrations Don’t Affect SEO, Or Do They? – Over at Search Engine Roundtable today, Barry Schwartz writes about the latest comments from Google about domain registration and its impact on SEO/search rankings. In this case, it’s Google employee John Mueller suggesting in a Google Webmaster Help forum thread that Google doesn’t look at the length of a domain registration.
• 5 Ways to Pimp Your FireFox Address Bar | Search Engine Journal – The address bar is where you see the full URL of the current page. This is the only bar in FireFox I always have in front of my eyes (I may have some of the bars hidden when I need more space but this one is always active).
• Yahoo Launches New Contacts API | WebProNews – Yahoo has launched a new Contacts API, which uses OAuth. With the API, applications can allow users to read, write, and sync access to their Yahoo Address Book, which is one of the biggest address books on the web.