This post is provided by our partner Headstream, the social brand agency behind the Social Brands 100.

So it’s finally happened; Facebook has filed for ‘the largest technology IPO in Wall Street history’. Everything about Facebook is immense; almost 850 million users and 2.7 billion likes and comments every day. As recently as the summer of 2008, Mark Zuckerberg was celebrating the 100 millionth user, that means 750 million people signed up in 3.5 years alone. Then there’s Twitter, hitting 500 million users any day now, not to mention Linkedin, who reported 135 million members in November 2011. Read More »

Days after fresh details emerged about the deaths of two teenage girls on a rail crossing, and the death of another girl was reported, Kellogg’s Krave cereal has endorsed dangerous railway stunts on its Facebook page.

The post showed a link to a YouTube video where a man appears to be standing on a railway track facing an on coming train. Read More »

When growth in demand for a medium begins to surpass growth in users of that medium it begins to mature. As television advertising matured in the 1960’s, ads went from being radio style testimonials with visuals to the entertaining sketch styled ads that are still commonly used – this is the best way to advertise on that medium since the purpose of the medium is to entertain.

When ads are entertaining, viewers react better to them. As print as a medium matured, ads became more visually enticing. When radio matured, ads became more informative. More recently, as search matured the landing pages of ads became more relevant to the users search terms. Read More »

Facebook has chosen Morgan Stanley as the lead investment bank on its initial public offering and will file plans with the US Securities and Exchange Commission today. It is being reported that Facebook intends to raise around $5bn although that could rise to $10bn, which will value it at between $75bn and $100bn.

The appointment of Morgan Stanley means a considerably payday for the bank in what will be the biggest and most talked about IPO since Google in 2004. Read More »

Identity is a funny thing. So many things govern who we are as individuals, but outward, visible identity often drives our actions. There are the perceptions others have of us from our outward appearance, how we choose to live, what we choose to say and all the various queues from body language to political affiliation. Read More »

Pssssst…raising awareness about breast cancer is back on Facebook, with a new viral campaign that women are sharing. Girlfriends have told me not to let onto the boys what’s going on, and we’ll see if this one reaches the success that we’ve seen from previous campaigns.

Last year, women around the world updated their status on Facebook to reveal what colour bra they were wearing. Red, white, beige, black, and leopard print was showing up all across Facebook, catching the attention of men. The phenomenon captured news headlines, and reports said that no one was sure exactly where it all started. Read More »

Looking for a huge numbers of fans? Can’t wait a second longer? Then read on, this blog post is for you…

1. 1. Buy your fans
   This is definitely the easiest way to guarantee a following fast; decide how many ‘fans’ you want then simply go to any dodgy-looking site (probably via a Facebook ad) take your wallet out (remember to stick your head in the sand) et voila, success! But wait a second; by definition once you directly pay for a relationship what does that relationship become? What does it really mean? There’s a very obvious analogy here, one that doesn’t involve any love at all… Read More »

UPDATE – According to an email from a Twitter account executive obtained by Ad Age, the roll-out of enhanced brand pages will only be available to those firms committing to spend in excess of $25,000 a year in advertising.

The initial group of 21 brands which got the original versions of brand pages in December were all higher-spending media partners and were said to be spending around $2m a piece. Read More »

What is influence? It’s a massive question in the world of social media. Thousands of man hours are being pumped into companies who are trying to solve the problem in the hope that one day, you’ll be able to search a category and an application will spit out exactly the 5 top influencers you need to be communicating with to push your product.
Read More »

Interesting move here from Facebook which is hiring more journalists. It has has just gone out and hired a managing editor in the form of Bloomberg journalist Dan Fletcher to be the company’s managing editor leading some to speculate the social network has increasingly larger plans for online news. Read More »