It tells the story of the company from its almost accidental beginnings to where it is now with over 800 million users and also explores what may be for the future of the company.

I also like the way that is explores the story from very diverse points of views. In other words, you get to hear directly from Mark Zuckerberg but also from users, VCs, his dorm buddy, advertising companies and even a lady who does Facebook marketing as a consulting business for other businesses.

All in all, it s great piece to give you a inside look into Facebook. After all, when Facebook goes public on its planned IPO next year, there will be a lot more changes that will impact us either directly as one of the 800 million users or indirectly.

On Sept 29, Facebook will release a new interface for your profile page called “timeline”. As the name suggests, this will display your entire life as a timeline. It will show updates, checkins, photos, videos and almost everything you have posted on Facebook all the way to your…well, birth!

Here’s a video to show what it’s all about:

Why Facebook Timeline?

First Facebook succeeded in letting you connect with friends…lots of them. Next, they allowed you to like objects like sites, news stories, pictures, videos and so on. Now Facebook is adding a new dimension where you can add any “verb” to anything on the web!

This allows many web 2.0 apps that a lot of people are using to become more “social”. Here’s an intro to the “new” social apps on Facebook:

Finally, if you want to get familiar with your timeline before the official launch, I made a quick video to show you how to get it right now:

Here’s what my timeline looks like at the moment. I do think this is a great feature because:

1. The design is clean and quite stylish (like a personal blog)
2. It allows you full control over of what is published
3. It allows you full control over who gets to see what you publish
4. There are new tools to share significant life events
5. Many apps that I use like Nike+ apps and music or movie apps can be integrated directly and passively

Anyway, check it out for yourself and see if you like it. :)

Facebook is awesome. Its hard to deny that. I use it (like most people) to connect with friends and family near and far. But I also use it for my business connections and for networking. Its a good idea to keep these two groups separate. Here’s a blog post I wrote some time back about why to keep your personal and business Facebook activity separate.

So if you’re going to create a fan page, how do you make a Facebook Page that your fans will like (literally)? Here are 5 essential “best-practice” tips I can offer to you to make a Facebook fan page that actually works:

Tip #1: The Facebook Page Profile Picture

• Include a profile picture that gives your visitors information about what you are about. Tell your visitors what they will get by connecting with your page.
• The largest size possible for a profile picture is 200 pixels wide and 600 pixels tall. So make full use of that space.
• You could also use a QR Code in your profile picture so your fans can add you to their contact list easily. Here’s a blog post about how to make use of QR codes.
• Finally, you can crop your larger profile picture so that the thumbnail that appears in your status updates appears like a normal head shot. This option automatically appears after you upload a new profile picture. But if you need to access it, just go to “edit page” then click on the “profile picture” option then click on “Edit Thumbnai”

Tip #2: The Facebook Landing Page (Static HTML Version)

• By default, you landing page is your fan page wall. But in the “Manage Permissions” section, you can select a page to use as a welcome page for your visitors. You can use this page to tell them why they should join your page.

• You could also add free apps like: Static HTML: iframe tabs app to your page. With this app, you can show non-fans a different page and send them to another HTML page after they click on the like button. This tool allows you to create incentives like give away free reports, or have your fans sign up to an autoresponder newsletter.

• For my own fan page – I kept it simple by creating a cheeky graphic asking “are you awesome?” and if you click on the “like” button, the next graphic shows “Yes, you are awesome!” page. You can check out my fan page here: http://facebook.com/brianwong.tv

Tip #3: Use Facebook as Your Fan Page (Instead of Your Profile Page)

• When you log in as the admin of your page, you can click on the option on the right sidebar to use Facebook as your fan page. This allows you to tag photos, leave wall posts, likes and other Facebook actions on other pages that lead back to your page.
• So use this option to tag photos you have with other people who already have a lot of friends or famous people with a lot of fans. You can also interact by adding valuable content on wall posts or useful links and videos on other Facebook pages. This will show a little bit about what you are about, and lead traffic back to your fan page.
• Don’t worry – you can switch back and forth between using FB as your fan page and as your own personal profile anytime and as often as you wish.

Tip #4: Use the Facebook Page Photo Wall to You Advantage

• Facebook displays your 5 most recent photos on the front page of your fan page. Instead of randomly allowing Facebook to select the photos, you could upload and select photos that best reflect what your page is about. You do this by putting your mouse over the top right of any photo you want removed and click on the “x” to remove it. Repeat this until you are left with just the photos that you want to display. If you make a mistake, then go to “edit page” and click on the “profile picture” option. Below it, you will see an option to “unhide” all those photos you removed earlier.
• How to use the photo wall? For example, you could include product images, photos of your facilities and any other photos that would tell your fans what your page is about. On the description of each of those photos, you should add a link or marketing information.
• You could also create separate fan pages for each of your key products and tag them from your main page.

Tip #5: Make Use of the Left Sidebar Elements

• On the left sidebar of your page, you can add a short paragraph to describe what your fan page is about. Don’t leave that blank.
• Also you could add apps that link to your other social media sites like YouTube, Twitter of your blog if you have one (you should have one).
• You could add other useful apps like slideshare app that allows you to include your presentation slides from Slideshare.net for example.
• In any case, the goal here is to show that your fan page is content rich so your visitor will be happy to become a fan.

Tip #6: Grab Your Preferred Facebook Page Name

• I know I said 5 tips but I left out the most important one – grab a nickname for your page URL.
• Facebook requires your page to have at least 25 fans before you can do this.
• So as soon as you reach 25 fans (get your buddies to fan it) – go to http://facebook.com/username and select a name for your page.

Infographic by computer school.org

Take a look at this great infographic created by Pingdom:

With the growth of social networking, I am finding it increasingly difficult to separate business connections and personal connections. As social networking continues to grow, I’m sure many of you are facing (or has already faced) the same dilemma.

Initially, I used to get many “friend” requests from old friends and lost contacts. However, as I’ve been increasing my online presence through blogging and “Twittering”, I’ve been seeing more and more friend requests from people I don’t know personally.

For the record – I think this is a GREAT thing as I really like connecting with new people. I’ve created great friendships and found great business partners with people I have never met physically. But at the same time, I’m now finding it difficult to see the feeds and updates of my “real” friends as opposed to my virtual friends on Facebook.

You see, I used to add all Facebook friend requests (except for the obvious spammers) but I would use the “Limited Profile” feature for people that I have not met in person. But now, as I am approaching 1,000 friends on Facebook, this method is no longer feasible.

This has led me to the “Great UnFriend” exercise for 2010. I need to set some guidelines for who I add as a friend and how to manage other virtual connections. I also need to remove contacts that were previously added that do not meet these guidelines.

I apologize if this affects you. Its nothing personal, I still want to connect with you but in way that is more practical. I’m sure many people can relate to this exercise as quite a necessity.

Here’s what I’ve come up with…

Connect Rules for Facebook and LinkedIn – I will only add people with whom:

1. I have met personally
2. I have communicated with on Skype or email
3. I have been introduced to or is recommended by an existing friend

For all other requests, we can still connect:

1. On Twitter – http://twitter.com/brianwong
2. On Facebook Public Page – http://facebook.brianwong.com
3. On my Blog by subscribing and commenting at http://brianwong.com/blog

Do you have rules and guidelines for who you add as friends on Facebook?

Technorati Tags: facebook, linkedin, twitter, unfriend

Twitter has finally released official “follow me” buttons to add to your blog, Facebook or MySpace page. Go ahead, check it out.

I love blogging. But, I don’t want to spend time updating all my social media sites every time I write on my blog. I just want to focus on my blog and create awesome content. But what’s the point of great content if people don’t find my blog? Argh! The dilemma. What can I do?

Enter HootSuite and Ping.FM to the Rescue.

Ping.FM allows you to notify up to 42 social media sites about your status updates, micro blog updates or blog posts. See my previous post about how to use Ping.FM like a social media ninja!

Now, with Hootsuite integration, you can have more control over your content updates AND you can track click statistics with Hootsuite’s built in analytics.

Setting It All Up

First, log into your Ping.FM account. Then go to www.Ping.FM/key and get your Ping.FM API Key.

Now, log in to your Hootsuite account. Add a new network and select Ping.FM. Enter your Ping.FM username and API key as below:

Your Hootsuite is now linked to all the social media sites you’ve setup in Ping.FM.

Tip: I purposely do not add Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and Facebook Pages in Ping.FM because I want to update these main sites directly from Hootsuite and/or Seesmic Desktop. I use both these applications interchangeably.

Connect Your Blog’s RSS Feed

Next, you want Hootsuite to send your blog posts to Ping.FM automatically every time you post. To do this, click on the RSS/Atom tab in Hootsuite.

Just add your blog’s RSS feed and select the services you want it to automatically post to. In this case, make sure you include Ping.FM.

Using Hootsuite and Ping.FM

Now you can post to Ping.FM by typing in a Tweet into Hootsuite and selecting Ping.FM or just create a blog post and let the RSS feed from your blog post update all your social networks.

Either way, this is a very convenient and very powerful way of getting your content syndicated once you’ve set it all up.

But the big question is, does it work the way its deigned to work? I’ve searched high and low and nobody seems to have actually put up actual results.

So I decided to put it to the test on my social media sites. Here are the results:

Social Media Sites Updated via Hootsuite and Ping.FM

Brian Wong on Bebo: YES!

Brian Wong on Blogger: YES!

Brian Wong on BrightKite: YES!

Brian Wong on Diigo: YES!

Brian Wong on Facebook Pages: YES! But this is a direct posting from HootSuite and not part of Ping.FMs update.

Brian Wong on Friendster: YES!

Brian Wong on FriendFeed: YES! But this not from Ping.FM. It is updated indirectly as FriendFeed picks up my feeds from Twitter and from my blog directly. There is a delay of an hour or so for the feed to get updated.

Brian Wong on HI5: YES!

Brian Wong on identi.ca: YES!

Brian Wong on Jaiku: NO!

After several tests, I found that Ping.FM was not updating my Jaiku account for all the type of status updates. I’m still not sure why.

Brian Wong on Koornk: YES!

Brian Wong on LiveJournal: YES! (But posts show up with no subjects)

Brian Wong on Multiply: YES! (all posts show up under “Notes”)

Brian Wong on MySpace: YES!

Brian Wong on MyYearBook: YES! But I am thinking of removing myself from this network. Just like Tagged, I get a lot of unsavory requests and the site looks like its for horny teenagers. I basically just turn off all email communications in my settings.

Brian Wong on Ning.com: YES!

Brian Wong on Plaxo Pulse: YES! But updated via a direct connection between Plaxo and Twitter

Brian Wong on Plurk: YES!

Brian Wong on Posterous: YES!

Brian Wong on Presently: YES!

Brian Wong on Shout’em: YES!

Brian Wong on StreetMavens.com: YES!

Brian Wong on Tagged: NO! (I suspect this site is a cest pool for perverts and adult services. Since signing up, I get a lot of unsavory requests. Am going to leave this account dormant or remove myself)

Brian Wong on Tumblr: YES!

Brian Wong on Twitter: YES! This is a direct update from Hootsuite and not from Ping.FM

Brian Wong on TypePad: YES!

Brian Wong on Utterli: YES!

Brian Wong on VOX: YES!

Brian Wong on Xanga: YES! Updates appear under the “Pulse” section.

Brian Wong on Yahoo Meme: YES!

Brian Wong on Yahoo Profiles: YES!

Brian Wong on Yammer: YES!

Brian Wong on YouAre.com: YES!

Conclusion

As you can see from my little experiment, the success rate of posting to multiple social media sites at once is pretty impressive. I definitely think that Ping.FM and Hootsuite makes a very powerful combination. I especially like the added advantage of being able to view the results of each post via the analytics provided by Hootsuite. So go ahead and register for Hootsuite and Ping.fm

Want more test results? Subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter and Facebook for updates.

Please ReTweet this post. I’ve made it easy with a one click-button below. The Tweet and URL links will all be inserted for you. Your followers will appreciate your willingness to share. :)

Technorati Tags: hootsuite, ping.fm, social media sites

Chances are you have more than 1 social media presence and that number will keep growing. Twitter and Facebook are most likely. You may also have a blog or Tumblr site. Perhaps you’re into photography and have a Flickr or PhotoBucket account. If you’re a social media Ninja like me, then you may have well over a hundred social media sites under your name.

Ok, before you say that I’m crazy to maintain so many social media sites, and that I have too much time on my hands – the truth is, its not as hard as you think.

There are many social media services that help you manage multiple accounts easily. I want to share one such site with you – Ping.FM. The idea behind Ping.FM is to turn a single social media update (like a status update) to multiple social media sites at once.

Getting Started

Signing up for Ping.FM is simple. Just create a free account here:
https://ping.fm/signup/

Ping.FM classifies your updates into 3 categories: Status Updates, Micro-Blogging and Blogging. Depending on what you post, Ping.FM can automatically submit these updates to 46 other social media sites.

Adding Social Media Sites

Now comes the tedious part. You need to start adding accounts that you want linked to Ping.FM. The good news is, you only need to do this once.

Adding each account is mostly adding your username and password for each of your social media services. Some services require additional info like API keys.

When you add these sites, some of them will allow you to specify whether to include them in the 3 categories of updates mentioned earlier. For example, in MySpace, you can specify whether you wish to include updates categorized as “Status updates”, “Micro-blogs” and even if you want to allow “Photos” to be posted to your MySpace page.

I just check every option because I want EVERYTHING to be updated. But that’s totally up to you.

Using Ping.FM

Ok now that you’ve linked Ping.FM to all your social media sites, its time to create a post. You can choose the type of post you want to add. For example, If you select “Micro-blogs”, then only those services that you have checked to allow “Micro-blogs” will update. As mentioned earlier, I selected all the options so I can leave my Ping.FM update as “default”.

Additionally, you can select to post the update to a single service by using the drop down menu. For example, you can select “@be” to ONLY post to your Bebo account and not the others.

Lastly, you could click “create a group” to create groups of social sites to update at once instead of all.

These posting options gives you a great deal of flexibility in how you wish to update your social media sites.

So posting is quite simple. Select what you are posting (or leave it on “default”), type your update and hit “Ping it!”. Your post will be updated to up to 46 different social media sites at once.

Posting by Email

When you register at Ping.FM, you will be given a “secret” email address that allows you to post updates via email. When you send an email to update your sites, you can again use the preset commands like “@be” to only update one service or use the “#” commands for groups you’ve created.

Advanced Ping.FM Usage

Now I don’t actually use the Ping.FM interface to manage my accounts. I use several other software services that integrates with the Ping.FM API and this makes managing all these social media sites even easier.

In fact, I have my blog automated to be syndicated to all these social media sites (see the icons on my Ping.FM site below) without having me to do anything. If you’d like to learn more about how to do this, let me know. Leave a comment,subscribe to this blog, follow me on Twitter or Facebook.

Technorati Tags: ping.fm

I do wonder if it helped Sony sell any more laptops or if it had the opposite effect? What do you think?