Technology Effect

  Facebook page creator Vitrue reported record-level revenues during the fourth quarter of 2010. The company added 100 new clients during the fourth quarter, including Yahoo, YouTube, Intel, Frito Lay and Planet Hollywood. During that same time period, Vitrue increased staffing by more than 25 percent. The company plans to add more than 200 additional employees and open ten new offices this year. On a yearly basis, revenues during 2010 amounted to three times thopse of the prior year. All of this builds on Vitrue’s recent funding of $17 million, plus the appointment of former Facebook sales executive Mike Murphy to the newly created position of Special Advisor to the CEO. Vitrue’s software-as-a-service platform now tracks 487 million fans of 2,500 Facebook and Twitter pages in 47 countries. The company also claims it has generated 147 million clicks and moderated almost: 3 million posts 26.5 million likes 13 million comments 11.7 m...

This Saturday some 150 architects got together with Menlo Park residents to brainstorm redesigning the neighborhood surrounding Facebook’s future home. Facebook already has the design company Gensler working on internally improving the 11 interconnected buildings on the 57-acre campus formerly occupied by Sun Microsystems. The so-called design charette organized by the city of Menlo Park and hosted on the Facebook campus this Saturday focused on external improvements to the area. Fast Company’s design blog described the current layout and location of the campus as an “isolated” and “inward-looking little tech colony,” summing up the before-and-after as: A ring of 11 interconnected buildings creates an inward-looking little tech colony bordered by acres of parking on all sides. While there may not be an actual moat ringing the complex, marshland on two sides and four lanes of cross-if-you-dare Bayshore Expressway on the other provide the same defensive fe...

Social networking allows the world to keep going in a massive conversation, but you might find that your company is having a bit of problem staying in touch with its fan base. So, here are seven customer service applications that allow you to quickly respond, stay in touch, and continue to enhance your brand’s presence on Facebook. Take a look at these products below.   Assistly Announced last month, Assistly has enhanced and improved its ability to offer customer service support for businesses’ Facebook pages. Control and monitor the conversation — as well many other digital services — directly your desktop with their product. The desktop application works in real time, providing the opportunity to interact and be more available for their customers. Any member of a company can connect to offer assistance on a particular question. With prices ranging $39 to $99, Assistly serves as a customer relationship management product that helps your fan base b...

Watch Warner Brothers’ The Dark Knight for $3, or 30 Credits, without leaving Facebook. The movie studio has leapfrogged competitors like Netflix in debuting rentals on Facebook. Warner Brothers is offering the Batman film as the first rental directly on the social network, accessible on a page devoted to the flick . To see the movie, you have to click like on the page. Then, clicking on the wall post about the flick on WB’s wall fires up a permission window for an application called Watch The Dark Knight . Paying the $3 or 30 credits entitles you to watch the film as many times as you want over a 48-hour period. I actually haven’t seen that movie yet, and the idea of staying on the social network while viewing seems cool because I could interact with friends who’ve already seen the flick. Since I’d let my Netflix account lapse, the Warner Brothers offering seems like an ideal alternative. And since I haven’t yet used the 25 free Credits give...

This morning, Facebook announced the release of a new version of Insights for Websites, providing webmasters with more information about how people are interacting with their site.s The new analytics provides five enhanced features: Like button analytic s – Here are real-time analytics about like button performance. You can track the volume of impressions as well as actual clicks on the buttons. The service will also show the total volume of referral traffic coming from Facebook. The real-time data lets publishers check how modifications to like button placement impact overall performance instantly, rather than having to wait a day to make changes based on the results found in other analytics packages. Comments box analytics – For the new comments plugin that Facebook rolled out last week, the social network is providing data about the number of on-site and in-feed impressions. While this stat provides interesting data, I’m not quite sure how a pub...

    If you’ve been noticing your friend count decreasing lately, you might not be imagining things. If you’re like me, you’re watching your numbers decreasing and wanting to know who is pulling the trigger. Enter the new application  Defriend Alert . Click the “Connect with Facebook” button in the app and you’ll receive an email whenever someone defriends you. The app requests permission to access your basic information, your email address and access to your data at any time, which is understandable since it contacts you whenever a defriending takes place. Once you sign up, you get a simple note that says “Thanks! You’ll receive your first email as soon as someone defriends you.” And that’s it. So now when your friends are dropping like flies, at least you’ll know who’s doing it. Then again, does it even matter? I have friends on Facebook that I met once at a party in college four years ago. If they deleted me, I wouldn’t be too up...

    Yesterday Josh Constine revealed that there is currently active code within the new Facebook comments which can enable users to log in with Google and Twitter to publish comments. Facebook has turned off the feature since the launch though, but will that eventually change? While interesting, we think it’s highly unlikely that Facebook will implement either service. The main issue is that Facebook rarely goes above and beyond to support competitors despite having the upper hand. At this point users are limited to logging in with Facebook and Yahoo!, most likely a result of the partnership forged over a year ago. Facebook also doesn’t consider Yahoo! to be much of a competitor, especially with Carol Bartz at the helm. While we could walk through the process of hacking up the javascript, that’s besides the point of this article. What’s more important is that Facebook has launched a serious commenting platform in an effort to extend t...

  Facebook profiles can become virtual gravesites once we die. Now you can plan the message that your surviving loved ones might see on the social network, with an application that could also act as a low-cost alternative to a living will. A service called If I Die allows you to leave a message to your dear ones once you’ve left this earthly plane.  The set-up is simple:  Install the application.  Record your message as a video, and appoint three trustees who will be called upon to confirm your death, at which point the message will appear on your profile page for all your friends to see. You can leave a message, tell a secret, share your life story.  Whatever it is you choose to leave behind, Facebook will surely be the venue where your last message to the world will be seen, particularly if you die while Facebook is still the most popular social media website on earth. But while it seems certain that your profile does offer you a cha...