Thanks to Thanksgiving and the yearly mad rush for Black Friday we’ve got some catching up to do with the Friday Link List. We’ve got a diverse selection for your perusal this week. Or if you don’t feel like reading, just click through to Free Rice to see a simple yet powerful concept executed with aplomb online.

Coming Soon: A Small Move By Facebook With Big Implications

it’ll be interesting to see how this develops.  if applications start appearing in the indices, you better believe that EVERY programmer, marketer, and trend-follower will jump on the bandwagon, and start releasing new apps with fervor.

Attention? I Don’t Want Your Freakin’ Attention!

This imaginary conversation between consumer & ‘consumer relations’ cuts to the very core of why Converseon exists and what we’re trying to achieve each and every day.

I’m a Faux Social Media Expert: Hear Me Roar!

Canadian Colin McKay’s post highlights the roadblocks social media evangelists will face. To truly succeed with social media it is essential for companies (which really means the people within them) to embrace change and innovation. Say “Yes, how?” not “No, too hard.”

Digg: Hilarious ‘Don’t Give Up On Vista’ Ad From Apple

3,663 Diggs for an Apple commercial indicates how consumer evangelists can spread your message widely online - if you provide them with compelling content.

As per the headline, we’re extremely proud to have been selected by the Word Of Mouth Marketing Association as one of their four WOMMIE Award winners for 2007.

The art of Word of Mouth Marketing online is continually evolving and we’re having a great time working at the coalface. Rob Key will be presenting our case study at the WOMMA Summit on November 14-15 in Las Vegas - but in the mean time you can learn from the great case studies hosted at the WOMMA site. In the meantime, we’re happy to be recognized like this:

“I was thrilled to see the caliber of work considered this year for the Wommie Awards, particularly when comparing them against last year’s submissions,” said Amanda Van Nuys, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Organic, Inc. and Wommie Awards judge. “Collectively, the case studies clearly demonstrate how word of mouth marketing has grown up over the last few years as it transitions from its adolescence and into a more evolved and disciplined marketing practice.”

On To The Friday Links!

This week the Converseon team have had a mix of social networking and smart technology catch our eye. The content below has already sparked some deep thinking and conversation amongst our team, please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Photosynth Demonstration (RSS Readers, click through for video)

This technology is mind blowing. As they say: “Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images”Consumer 3.0: New Trends in CGM

Pete Blackshaw gives a general overview of the current state of CGM marketing, including some links to good examples.

Facebook Facts that will blow your marketing mind

Mitch Joel shares some stats on Facebook from the Canadian Marketing Association conference:

1. The average Facebook user spends about twenty-one minutes plus per day at the online social network.
2. The average Facebook user visits four times per day.
3. Facebook is adding about three hundred and fifty thousand new users every day.
4. Just this morning Facebook surpassed fifty million worldwide community members.
5. Facebook’s size doubles every six months.

Can Facebook feed its ad brains?

Facebook is expected to tap artificial intelligence to deliver ads to its 49 million members. This is a good real world example of the challenges that companies face in serving the right ads to the right people in real time.

A Series of Podcasts with Lee Odden and Mike Moran

Some great discussion here about Mike Moran’s new book “Do It Wrong Quickly: How The Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules”

Explaining OpenSocial to your Executives

A good analysis of what Google’s new OpenSocial can allow you to do to help share great content with your key audiences.

Information R/evolution Video
Social media is transforming not only how we communicate – it is also shifting the way information is stored, categorized and contained. Liberating it and opening up new possibilities.

Google, Apple and the Future of Personal Computing
The future of computing (not surprisingly) could be a partnership between two of the industry’s biggest brands. Some predict a Google-Apple Cloud computer, with all of the aesthetic appeal and intuitive usability of a Mac and all the power of a Google supercomputer. Maybe it won’t change the world, but it may change personal computing as we know it.

Dell Hell: The End?
This is an amazing story of the power of social media. Jeff Jarvis was largely responsible for Dell’s online reputation problems. Thanks to social media engagement – in particular listening to their customers, Dell has moved sentiment from 50% negative to 23% negative in just one year. Catch our very own Paull Young’s interview with the Dell social media team on Forward Podcast.

Study: ‘Conversational Marketing’ to Beat Traditional by 2012
Good news for the social media savvy: According to a recent study conducted by TWI Surveys, Inc, spending on social media and conversational marketing will overtake spending on traditional marketing efforts by the end of 2012. Don’t miss the Cluetrain; there’s no time like the present to join the conversation!

New Flickr UI With GeoTagging Is Very Impressive
Flickr’s simplistic user interface may soon be evolving into a ‘visually delightful destination’ for photo sharing buffs. Stewart Butterfield (cofounder of Yahoo-owned Flickr) boasts about geotagging, with ‘discovery’ and ’serendipity’ through a new map-like UI.

Are You Suffering From Socialnetworkitis ?
It’s not a real disease, but it is spreading. Social network fatigue has begun to set in for the ultra-connected. People want value and personalized experiences but lack the enthusiasm (and time) to keep up with of all the different social networks out there. How will new plans and social media strategies evolve in response to this?

And finally, just to for fun…

Ten Ways to Geek Out This Halloween
Here’s a list of expertly planned Halloween costume ideas for ‘07 that will make you the center of attention (or at least ridicule) among any tech-savvy crowd.

The third Friday Link List touches on search, passionate consumers, social networks and music online.

‘Passionista’ Consumers Help Brands Harness Digital Media

For every one minute that a typical internet user spends online with content associated with a passionista’s passion, Passionistas spend six minutes with that content.

Passionistas will visit a website related to their passion three times more than the typical user.

Passionistas search online for information about their passion 184 percent more than typical users and conduct more than 100 related searches having to do with their passion per year.

From “To Do” to “Done” in One Search and Yahoo Makes the Assist, Web 2.0-ifies Results

Yahoo announce ‘Search Assist’ to integrate audio, video, photos, shortcuts, consumer reviews, and local information directly into the search results with a special emphasis on social media properties. The rise of social search is only going to expand the power of social media.

In Facebook, Investing in a Theory

This NY Times article looks at the flood of startups trying to capitalize on Facebook opening up its API. It’s also becoming de riguer for marketers to succumb to the lure of generating a Facebook App no matter what the situation. Are Facebook Apps the future? Or will they be seen as the moment when the site jumped the shark?

Radiohead’s bid to Revive Music Industry: Pay what you like to download albums

Hopefully for Radiohead the ‘passionistas’ referenced above have deep pockets to match their time investment.

Smaller Retailers Reliance on Search Engines

Smaller niche merchants in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide are more dependent on search engines to drive traffic and sales than their larger competitors, according to new data from web measurement company Hitwise Inc.

Social Networking Helps Drive Server Sales

Even though virtualization can make efficient use of servers, social-networking Web sites demand a lot of storage space.

A selection of some of this weeks best from our diverse team. Please leave a comment after you’ve read an article and feel free to leave a link yourself.

Conversational Marketing

Recap of the Federated Media’s conference discussing Conversational Marketing. This post discusses the various aspects of conversational marketing and how it stands to change the future of brand management.

Dark blogs: a bad idea for crisis communication

Shel Holtz on why “dark blogs” (ready to be activated during a crisis) are not such a good idea.

Semantic Web: Difficulties with the classical approach

This article considers why the semantic web has remained as an academic property instead of transforming the way we use the web and considers how the concept can be moved forward.

Unfamiliar with the semantic web?

“The semantic web is a vision pioneered by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in which information is expressed in a language understood by computers. In essence, it is a layer on top of the current web that describes concepts and relationships, following strict rules of logic.

The purpose of the semantic web is to enable computers to “understand” semantics the way humans do. Equipped with this “understanding,” computers will theoretically be able solve problems that are out of reach today.”

Web 2.0: Big App on Campus

Universities are seeing Web 2.0 as a way to engage students and maybe even get them to choose one school over another. In theory, a social-networking environment will get students comfortable with a school well before they start and keep them engaged in their education, while the application of social media tools can extend their education.

50-Kanye Web Marketing

Did the Web Help Kanye Outsell 50 Cent? You have to love the online buzz (drama) around which rappers will outsell the other. When news got out that 50 Cent said he’d stop recording if Kanye West outsold him, fans took their love of music, not to the streets, but to the computer. (PS: Go Kanye)

Every Friday we’ll be posting a list of links that the Converseon team have found to be the most insightful from the past week. Enjoy!

What Evolutionary Psychology Says About Social Networking

This column sparked a lot of deep thinking and discussion in the office. The author analyzes some evolutionary psychology research that looks at how early humans communicated and interacted with each other for clues about how we communicate today.

Dunbar begins with the premise that back when our Paleolithic ancestors were still more monkey than human, understanding one’s place in the group hierarchy was exceedingly important. Compared to other creatures, primates are unusually social animals. And thus knowledge about relationships — who’s mating with whom, who became allies, who just had a fight — was crucial for primates to maintain or advance their place in the pack. It was, Dunbar suggests, the birth of gossip.

Show Series To Originate on MySpace

An interesting article about how TV producers are launching a series to be shown on MySpace. Producers are looking to generate story lines and even find actors online. Working online also allows them to take advantage of union agreements that allow actors and writers to work on terms more favorable to producers than those governing network programs.

Fifty Most Influential Bloggers

A new list of the 50 ‘most influential’ bloggers. This could possibly be more valuable than many of the ranking formats out there because of its qualitative focus. The ‘who’ and ‘what’ behind the blog are more important than the numbers.

Deconstructing the Incredibly Weak Mobile Web Experience

This year 115 million smartphones will be shipped and that number is expected to rise to 410 million by 2012. This article looks towards the future of mobile web browsing.

Crowdsourcing Site

It’s likely we’ll see more of these sites popping up, it is important to keep track of them and monitor them for your brand. Brands should also consider setting up their own open forums for discussion about their products and services, of course, rather than let third parties control the platform.

Selling Postcards from the Hanging: Reflections on CJU

A look at the changes occurring in affiliate marketing, especially how smaller affiliates will find it harder to continue in the affiliate space.