Technology

Lunchtime Links: 1 Billion Active Users Now on Facebook

Mark Zuckerberg announced the news this morning. Also: How the FTC's online endorsement rules could affect your next event.

We all know that Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla of social media, but a new milestone makes us feel a little small. That and more in today’s Lunchtime Links:

That’s a lot of friends: Earlier this morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a staggering number — 1 billion active users. “If you’re reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you,” he wrote on his Facebook wall. “Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling, and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.” The site has also managed some other staggering numbers — including 1.13 trillion likes, 219 billion photos, and 17 billion location check-ins. How many of those are your members responsible for?

Not a fan: Maggie McGary of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association is no Facebook fan, but she still uses it for her job. In a recent post on her Mizz Information blog, she relates her frustration with posting an ad on the site. “I would think that a company that generates 100 percent of its revenue from ads would make it easy to place those ads,” she explains. But not so much: “Want to spend money but have problems trying to create an ad? Good luck getting help with that.”

Know the rules: Writing for Engage365, Velvet Chainsaw’s Jeff Hurt reminds us that the Federal Trade Commission’s rules on endorsements also apply to events. “In short, if you as a conference organizer require your speakers to promote your conference and their session in social media, and you give them some type of compensation for speaking and promotion, then the relationship must be disclosed,” he writes. Has the issue come up for you?

Think pricing: The Event Manager Blog’s Julius Solaris points out a great Quora thread regarding the pricing of after-work business networking events — free, paid, or freemium? While noting there are challenges with each model, his take goes something like this: “If you are starting now, picking free or paid will give you the clarity to be strategically aligned with what you do,” he says.

Have you tried going the freemium route with these kinds of events? If so, how has it worked out? Let us know in the comments.

(photo by TechCrunch on Flickr)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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