Upon reaching 10 million Facebook likes, BBC automotive show “Top Gear” did what any other brand achieving such a milestone would do: It blew up a caravan.

As the “Top Gear” Facebook page approached 10 million likes, fans were asked what the hosts and crew should do to celebrate.

After sorting through 7,832 suggestions received in a little more than six hours, this is what they decided upon:

First, there was Take This Lollipop. Then came Facebook´s own Timeline Movie Maker. Now, the latest application to make movies out of users´ Facebook content has arrived from down under.

Australian athletic and leisure clothing retailer Lorna Jane joined the social network´s movie-making fray with The Year of You, which casts users as runners, and taps into Facebook photos, friends, and status updates to showcase their greatest achievements of 2011 and motivate them to push even harder in 2012.

All three Facebook movie-making apps we´ve profiled have completely different purposes: Take This Lollipop is aimed at scaring Facebook users into rethinking how much of their information is available publicly; Timeline Movie Maker pushes the social network´s new profile design; and The Year of You is geared toward self-betterment.

Lorna Jane Founder and Creative Director Lorna Jane Clarkson said:

With the start of a new year comes an opportunity to create a new you, and the application is designed to be a fun way to motivate our customers to think about this. The new year is the best time to think about you and what you want from the year ahead, and this video application allows you to enjoy the highlights of your past year and plan for the next.

Readers: Have you used any of the three Facebook movie-making apps we´ve profiled, or any others?

How can you tell if a Facebook account is fake? Barracuda Labs is on the case.

Barracuda Labs analyzed 2,884 active Facebook accounts to determine the differences between authentic ones and fake pages created by scammers and spammers.

Among the findings are:

• 97 percent of fake profiles are created using women´s names, and 58 percent claim to be interested in both men and women.


• The fake profiles averaged 726 friends, while the authentic ones averaged just 130.


• 15 percent of the actual profiles had no status updates, while that figure soared to 43 percent for the fakes.

Barracuda Networks Chief Research Officer Paul Judge said:

Likes, newsfeeds, and apps have helped lead Facebook to its social network dominance, and now attackers are harnessing those same features to efficiently scale their efforts. These fake profiles and apps give attackers a long-lived path to continuously present malicious links to innocent users.

Also, researchers have shown how friending malicious accounts can lead to account takeover using Facebook´s trusted friend account recovery (http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-privacy-improves-2011-10). We have analyzed thousands of fake accounts to determine features and patterns that distinguish them from real users, and created a feature-based heuristic engine to distinguish real users from fake profiles.

A prevailing theme in much of the reaction to Facebook´s initial public offering announcement was uncertainty over how the social network´s advertising business actually works.

Several stories about Facebook´s registration to go public focused on the lack of details on how the company earns revenues from advertising, and how to project what those totals could be going forward.

The Wall Street Journal shared a concept that seems to be gaining legs: Facebook charging advertisers, rather than allowing them to set up pages free-of-charge, as has been the case since brand pages launched on the social network.

We’re curious to know what you think of this idea. Share your opinion in our poll, including an explanation of your rationale in the comments section. Then check back later to see how others voted.

A new study claims that Facebook users take more than they give to their friends through the number of friend requests received, the use of the like button, the number of messages sent, or tagging people in photos.

The phenomenon, identified in a report from the Pew Research Center, is driven by about 20 percent to 30 percent of Facebookers called power users.

They’re who send friend requests, add content, or like the content of their friends on a daily or more than weekly basis.

As a result of these power users, the average Facebook user receives friend requests, receives personal messages, is tagged in photos. and receives feedback in terms of likes at a higher rate than they contribute.

Pew says the study is a first, because it combines server logs of Facebook activity with survey data to explore the structure of Facebook friendship networks and measures of social well-being. The survey size was small — only about 269 people. who were studied over one month.

The study has a great chart measuring the frequency of regular Facebook activities. Following are some of they key findings.

Making Friends

Some 40 percent of the sample of Facebook users made a friend request in the month of our observation, but 63 percent received a friend request. The 19 percent of Fscebook power users initiated a request once per week, and 80 percent of friend requests were not accepted.

Men Rule

On average, men were more likely to send friend requests, and women were more likely to receive them.

We Like, A Lot

Use of the like button is among the most popular activities on Facebook. One-third of the sample, about 33 percent, used the like button at least once per week, and 37 percent had content they contributed liked by a friend at least once per week. However, the majority of Facebook users neither liked content, nor was their content liked by others, in Pew’s month of observation.

Send More Than Receive

More than half of Facebook users in the study, 54 percent, did not send a private message in the month, but 59 percent did receive a message. A subset of 27 percent of Facebook power users sent a personal message at least once per week.

Despite the small sample, the complete Pew report includes some notable details and is worth taking a look at.

Facebook shares have surged to their highest closing price ever on SharesPost, to $40 apiece, after the social network already filed its registration to go public.

If we assume that the company still has 2.35 billion outstanding shares, as was the case for the last couple of auctions, that makes the company worth $94 billion.

If you go with the 2.5 billion outstanding share figure that the company had up until a few auctions ago, that makes Facebook worth $100 billion. That’s the high end of the range in value that analysts had been putting the company at,

Either way, this latest closing price comes in about $6 per share higher than the last auction, a much bigger run-up in price than we’ve previously seen between auctions.

SharesPost auctions take about a week but this one was underway amid rumors that Facebook was going to submit initial public offer registration documents Wednesday afternoon. Once that filing occurred, the bidding must have surged.

Nothing about this transaction broke any U.S. securities laws, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the timing of events motivated lawmakers to resume debate on whether to impose regulations on private trading venues like SharesPost and SecondMarket.

Yet it’s hard not to wonder why the SharesPost website is currently down for maintenance, even though the site says the work is “scheduled.”

That said, a copy of the email that SharesPost sent about the auction follows below:

SharesPost Financial Corporation completed its auction of 100,000 shares of the Class B Common Stock of Facebook, Inc. on February 2, 2012. A clearing price of $40.00 per share was established at the auction.

Members submitting qualifying bids at or above the clearing price will be contacted shortly with instructions on next steps for completing this transaction.

Successful auction bidders will hold an indirect interest in the shares of Facebook, Inc. through their ownership of units of an investment vehicle designated to hold the shares. The administrator of the investment vehicle, SP Investments Management, LLC, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SharesPost, Inc.

SharesPost members who wish to be informed of and be eligible to participate in future auctions of private company securities must first be qualified by our affiliated broker-dealer as an accredited investor under the U.S. securities laws and regulations by SharesPost Financial Corporation, Member FINRA and SIPC. To get qualified, please click on the green button below. We look forward to serving you at SharesPost in the future.

Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) is not affiliated with SharesPost Financial Corporation or any of its affiliates. Facebook has not participated in the offering of interests in connection with the auction.

This email is intended only for the SharesPost member to whom it is addressed and its contents are confidential and propriety. Redistribution of this email is prohibited.

The private placement referenced in this email communication is solely an invitation by SharesPost to view certain materials on the SharesPost website. None of SharesPost Financial Corporation or its affiliates are acting as an investment adviser of any investment vehicle, although one or more of its affiliates may, as manager, administer this investment opportunity.

None of the information displayed is a public offer to buy or sell any securities. SharesPost provides a forum for the interaction of sellers of securities to interact with buyers who have been qualified as accredited investors pursuant to U.S. securities laws and regulations by SharesPost Financial Corporation, Member FINRA and SIPC.

SharesPost does not (i) advise its users on the merits of a particular investment or transaction, (ii) assist in the negotiation, transaction or financial dealings between the parties or with the issuer, (iii) provide legal, tax, financial or transactional advisory services to its users, or (iv) participate or invest in any way or allow its employees to invest in or participate in any way in buy-sell transactions between its members. None of SharesPost Financial Corporation or its affiliates assume any liability whatsoever for any decision by a buyer or seller to invest or divest or undertake any transaction pursuant to information contained on the SharesPost website. All information and materials included in or accessible via this email are qualified by these disclaimers .

If you would like us to not send emails like this one to you in the future, please click here to begin the unsubscribe process.

© 2012 SharesPost, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Facebook continued to dominate the social media advertising sector in the fourth quarter,with 89 percent of agencies planning to incorporate the social network into their clients´ campaigns, unchanged from the third quarter.

That’s according to Strata, in whose statistics Facebook was followed (and not very closely) by:

• Twitter, 39 percent;


• YouTube, 36 percent;


• LinkedIn, 21 percent; and


• Google Plus, 18 percent.

The researchers also found that mobile advertising rose 39 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, with 83 percent of agencies targeting the iPhone, but Android beginning to close the gap.

Strata President and Chief Executive Officer John Shelton said:

The key word for advertisers in 2012 is growth. Agencies started to reap the benefits of balance sheets turned in their favor during the fourth quarter of 2011, brokering a bright early 2012.

The Strata survey shows that many advertisers are confident that their business and the economy will return to a strong period by midyear. That sentiment, coupled with strong numbers from the political race, provides an overall positive barometer for advertising in 2012.

Readers: Do you foresee any of the other social networks carving into Facebook´s dominance in the sector?

In the extremely unlikely event that you haven´t heard, Super Bowl XLVI kicks off at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday from Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots.

Games are often decided by individual match-ups, so social network statistics provider ZoomSphere looked at the head-to-head pairings, by position, in terms of Facebook fans and Twitter followers.

Among the interesting findings in the infographic below from ZoomSphere:

• Despite hailing from the media capital of the universe, the Giants are dwarfed by the Patriots in terms of Facebook fans, with New England totaling more than three million and New York/New Jersey at more than 1.6 million.


• It was no surprise that hugely popular Patriots quarterback Tom Brady has three times as many Facebook fans as his Giants counterpart, Eli Manning, but this was a surprise: Patriots backup quarterback Ryan Mallett, who did not play a single down this season, is approaching 60,000 Facebook fans.


• Positions where each team has a clear advantage reflected those advantages in total Facebook fans, as well — the Patriots´ tight ends, and the Giants´ defensive ends dominated their opponents.

Valentine´s Day, the joint venture between Hallmark and Satan, is fast approaching, bringing with it a flurry of Facebook applications.

Here are a handful of the Valentine´s Day apps we´ve discovered. We listed them in alphabetical order to make sure we didn´t break any hearts, so please don´t stalk us.

Cupid´s Fondue Forks

Fondue restaurant chain The Melting Pot is dipping its skewer into Facebook´s Valentine´s Day chocolate with its Cupid´s Fondue Forks app, which allows potential lovebirds to hit each other with Cupid´s Fondue Forks (arrows are frowned upon at The Melting Pot), for a chance at one of ten $100 gift cards to the chain.

As Cindy Haynes, senior vice president of marketing for Front Burner Brands, which manages The Melting Pot, said, "There´s just something about the fondue dining experience that invites romance."

Facebook Love Button

OK, so it´s not really an app. It´s more of a concept. But we still thought it was worth including.

A gentleman named Aky, who hails from India, proposed that, in honor of Valentine´s Day, Facebook change the like button to a love button, and change the main color of its user interface from blue to red.

Aky claims to be "obsessed" with how Google often changes its doodle logo on its main search page, and claims the ideas for modifications to Facebook came to him in a dream. Aky needs help.

The Mural

The Mural, a virtual gift app we wrote about last month, is perfect for Valentine´s Day, as users can send virtual gifts to their friends, ranging from free-of-charge to 100 Facebook Credits, or they can create dedications, all of which appear on the Mural of Love. However, the Mural of Love is not made of chocolate.

Play Cupid

Drug chain Walgreens is marking Valentine´s Day by encouraging its Facebook fans to play matchmaker with its Play Cupid app.

Users can pick two people whom they believe belong together, and then place their photos into one of nine customized images ("from formalwear to lederhosen"), and post the images to their Facebook pages.

The app will suggest Valentine´s Day gift ideas, and the matchmaker will receive a coupon. The matchmaker will likely receive other things if the match doesn´t work out.

Spank A Friend

Get your minds out of the gutter: Spank a Friend has nothing to do with rough sex.

The app uses open graph action items to provide alternatives to Facebook´s poke feature, with "spank" being the main one.

However, "kiss" is also an option, and it helps users to "express your feelings to your spouse, significant other, crush, date, or random friend."

We have to admit, when we started thinking of alternatives to "like," "spank" was not the first one that came to mind.

Why I Need To Break Up With My Ex — In 10 Words Or Less

"Wait a minute," you say, "why would I need to break up with my ex if he/she is already my ex?"

Relationship advice site YourTango is encouraging people to "detach from their exes digitally, physically, and emotionally," by February 13, the day before Valentine´s Day.

By digitally, YourTango referred to reminders on Facebook, as well as Twitter, foursquare, and on cell phones.

The Why I Need to Break Up with My Ex — in 10 Words or Less contest will grant prizes to the 10 best answers, which can be submitted a variety of ways, including via the YourTango Facebook wall. Now, about those photos ...

As Facebook filed for its initial public offer, it’s the perfect time to examine the website´s performance online and how its audience compares with that of other social networks.

Given the expected $75 billion to $100 billion initial valuation of Facebook, we´re all already aware of the magnitude of the business. Below we reveal how much of a behemoth the website itself is in the U.S. and other markets.

Facebook captures one in every eleven Internet visits in the U.S.

One in every five page views online occurs on Facebook.

The average visit time on Facebook is 20 minutes.

Facebook.com´s audience skews slightly more female than the online population as a whole.

The ages of Facebook ovisitors are indicative of the website´s strength in the marketplace, with relative parity in distribution of its visit share by age versus the overall online population.

Facebook under-indexes in visit share from the most affluent income group. With that said, Facebook´s size more than makes up the difference; the site wins 499,949,430 visits from the most affluent income group versus YouTube´s 223,732,591 visits and Twitter´s 15,166,795 visits.

Facebook became the number one ranked website in the U.S. on March 9, 2010.

"Facebook" is the most searched-for term in the U.S. and Facebook-related terms account for 14 percent of the top search clicks.

Facebook users are highly loyal to the website; 96 percent were returning visitors in January 2012.

Internationally, Facebook.com ranks in the top two websites in every market except China, where Sina Weibo, Baidu Zhidao and Renren are the dominant social networks.Facebook.com´s largest footprint is in Canada, capturing almost 12 percent of all visits in that market. It also recently surpassed Orkut, placing it behind only Google Brazil in market share.

Facebook is the largest website in the U.S. and a top performer in numerous international markets.

The fan base of the site is loyal and spends a significant portion of their time online on the social network. Facebook´s influence is seen in the presidential elections, digital shopping habits and beyond.

Guest writer Heather Dougherty is research director at Hitwise North America.