We all know that social media, and Facebook in particular, are increasingly important marketing channels. The travel industry, which I take a close interest in, has been one of the early adopters for social media marketing. Travel tech website Tnooz recently had a story about how the top 10 airlines worldwide used Facebook.



The Tnooz list was dominated by European and Asian airlines since it was based on IATA data on the scheduled international passengers in 2009 and U.S. airlines derive the bulk of their traffic from domestic flights. (In fact, American Airlines was the only U.S. entry on the list). This got me wondering about the massive U.S. market, so I did some research of my own.

My list is of the top 10 U.S. airlines, based on 2009 data from the Air Transport Association. They ranked the airlines by the industry-standard measure of “available seat mile” or ASMs - one seat transported one mile. (For example, an aircraft with 100 passenger seats, flown a distance of 100 miles, produces 10,000 ASMs).

There were certainly some interesting results. Delta Air, the biggest airline when including Northwest, is also the only one with ticketing functionality built into its Facebook page. (Some others would let you search on the page but the actual results would open in a new window on the corporate website).

Size of the airline doesn’t always translate into ‘likes’ - Southwest was ranked fourth in terms of ASMs but it was the biggest airline on Facebook by far, with over 900,000 ‘likes’ - 22 times more fans than Delta. The second biggest was JetBlue with just over 300,00 ‘likes’, even though the airline was only ranked seventh over all. (Facebook figures were correct at the time of publication).

Please let us know in the comments about your experiences with airlines on Facebook. Which airlines are getting it right? How important should Facebook be in airlines’ overall marketing strategy?

1. Delta Air + Northwest

ASMs: 196.5 million

Facebook likes: 40,869

Seemingly alone among all major U.S. airlines, Delta Airlines has integrated ticketing functions into its Facebook page. You can book on Delta flights without leaving the Facebook page, under the Book A Trip tab. The Wall tab defaults to ‘Just Delta; and is currently being used to promote the launch of the Delta iPhone app and destinations such as Hong Kong. Delta’s Info tab advises that it cannot deal with all complaints on Facebook and feedback requiring a response should be sent via the website, by tweeting @DeltaAssist or sending a letter. I couldn’t find a separate company-run page for Northwest.

2. American Airlines

ASMs: 151.7 million

Facebook likes: 71,465

American Airlines’ Facebook page defaults to the Wall, with the ‘Just AA’ filter. It is used to convey information about the frequent flyer program and conduct promotions such as a ticket giveaway for the upcoming John Legend & the Roots concert in New York City. Separate tabs promote AA’s iPhone app, in-flight wifi service and Twitter and YouTube accounts. AA’s Info tab advises that it does not deal with complaints on Facebook and advises feedback to be sent via the website.

3. United Airlines

ASMs: 122.5 million ASMs (to increase after merger with Continental)

Facebook likes: 149,526

The United Airlines Facebook page has not been around long, making its following of nearly 150,000 especially impressive. One of the main factors is likely to be the round-trip ticket giveaway sweepstakes for people who ‘like’ the page, which started on July 27 to celebrate the launch of the page. Currently the page defaults to a ‘Win A Flight’ tab with details of the promotion, which runs until September 22. The Wall has United Airlines + Others set as the default filter, and has a lot of travelers exchanging information and asking questions. The page’s Info tab says the airline welcomes honest feedback, though it reserves the right to correct factual errors. In the left-hand sidebar, visitors are told that if they need a response they should contact customer relations via the website or by mail.

4. Southwest Airlines

ASMs: 98.0 million

Facebook likes: 913,816

Southwest Airlines has been using social media for a while and it shows - the airline is well on its way to reaching a million ‘likes’ on its Facebook page. Currently the page opens at a tab labeled More LUV, with an Orlando vacation package giveaway and streams pulled in from Twitter and YouTube. The Wall defaults to Southwest + Others and shows active engagement from fans; currently there is quite a bit of discussion about Hurricane Earl plus people asking Southwest to start serving their city. Playing off its selling point of no fees for checked bags, Southwest also has a ‘Bags Fly Free’ tab. This provides another forum for people to post short messages, which they can post on their own Facebook profiles via a tick box, and also has fun quizzes about what airlines might charge for next, with possible answers such as toilet paper or seat belts. A sidebar on the left advises customers are to direct complaints or specific issues to the customer service team.

5. Continental Airlines

ASMs: 94.3 million (to increase after merger with United)

Facebook likes: 28,187

I’m not sure who got there first but Continental Airlines has its Facebook page at facebook.com/continentalairlines, while facebook.com/continental leads to a German company that makes tires, brake systems and other automotive parts. The page opens to a Travel Advice tab where you can ask advice, give advice or read advice, with recent posts including questions about traveling on a soon-to-expire passport. The Wall defaults to the Just Continental Airlines filter and recent updates include information about rerouting for Hurricane Earl and announcements about competition winners. The ‘More…’ tab includes a Twitter stream and flight info search, with results opening in a new page on Continental.com. A notice in the left-hand sidebar advises customers to direct complaints to the customer service team via the website or mail, if they require a response.

6. US Airways

ASMs: 70.7 million

Facebook likes: 7,420

The US Airways page has a single post dated August 19, which says: “We plan to build out this Facebook page more in the near future. In the meantime, we encourage you to follow us on Twitter where you can get our latest news and updates.” I found the page only because they had the simple URL facebook.com/USAirways; a search for US Airways turned up mostly community pages with Wikipedia content.

7. JetBlue Airways

ASMs: 32.6 million

Facebook likes: 316,033

Unusually, the JetBlue Facebook page defaults to the Info tab, which includes selling points such as extra leg room and the availability of free DIRECTTV. Like its close competitor Southwest, the airline is very active on social media and this has resulted in an impressive 316,033 ‘likes’ on its page - the second highest of any major U.S. airline. The Wall defaults to Just JetBlue Airways, with posts updating

As we continue to expand our coverage of ways marketers can leverage Facebook, we wanted to make sure that there was a central resource that people could reference for terms used while discussing Facebook marketing. As such, we’ve decided to create the following Facebook marketing dictionary, which is our attempt at creating a comprehensive list of all the terms that are used by professional Facebook marketers.



This is our first attempt at developing the resource, however we will continuously update the page so that you can have the most up to date information necessary as a Facebook marketer. If you are looking to stay up to date all of the latest Facebook marketing strategies, make sure to register for our Facebook marketing weekly newsletter. In the meantime, make sure that you’re up to date on all the latest Facebook terms by visiting our Facebook marketing dictionary.

A quick reminder for those of you who are based in San Francisco. There will be a free screening of Catfish for all readers of AllFacebook today at 7 PM at the Metreon. If you are around and have a chance to make it, I couldn’t recommend the movie more highly. It’s really a fun film and best of all, the filmmakers behind this movie will be answering questions during a panel immediately following the screening.



You can register for free if you haven’t already by clicking this link and filling in your information. I hope to see you there!!

Facebook is in the process of testing a new feature which lets you subscribe to all the actions of a specific user. In other words, you can receive notifications anytime a specific user takes an action on Facebook. It also appears to be Facebook’s answer to Twitter’s follow feature. As a Facebook user who has seen the feature explained to us, “By subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.”



This could also serve as a new engagement opportunity for Pages if Facebook enabled users to subscribe to their activities as well. The result would be a fan count and a “subscriber” count, which is the number of people who are guaranteed to get all of your updates. For the time being it appears to just be a test, however this would definitely change the communications flow within Facebook. It’s also the ultimate stalking tool!

While I’m not quite sure how advanced this feature will be, you could imagine a system in which you get a mobile notification every time one of your friends that you’ve subscribed to makes an update. I think that stalker aspect of the feature could also result in some backlash. Previously, it was chance if a friend’s information was displayed in your feed, however this will remove chance from the process.

As the image below illustrates, you’ll be able to subscribe to the user and then a notification (like the one pictured in the second image) will alert you whenever the person updates their status, posts a photo, or shares a link. However I’m not sure if a notification will also show up if they like things or check in places. We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information about the feature, however we’re not sure if they’ll provide any details as the product is currently in testing.

Update

Facebook gave us the following statement: “This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they´ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).”

Facebook is in the process of testing a new gallery display from within the feed by popping up a black lightbox and enabling users to view the album right there without leaving the page. It’s an interesting test as it could emphasize a large move toward enabling more interaction directly from the feed page, an area which already attracts a large percentage of the attention on Facebook.



The feature, which was first pointed out to us by Harsh Agarwal of CallingAllGeeks, is a significant change for Facebook. Then again, Facebook is the king of lightbox interfaces yet has refrained from large interfaces for products directly within those lightboxes. The latest version of lightbox interaction that I can recall is the ability to view a homepage video ad within a lightbox.

However this is a full-screen lightbox, something that Facebook has never implemented before. Whether or not this change will be pushed out to all users is unknown, however it’s definitely interesting to see Facebook teaching such a significant interface adjustment. Do you think this form of album interface would be useful?

See the full size screenshot here.

We’ve compiled some stats on death on Facebook and thought we’d share them with you in our first of many infographics. While we typically try not to be morbid, there are some interesting findings, especially when comparing the Facebook death rate (extremely low) in comparison to the world death rate (much greater). Check out the facts below!

Yesterday Apple announced Ping, a network which many have suggested will replace MySpace and present a new competitor to Facebook. However Apple’s first shot at building a social network has many flaws. As such, there are many areas that the company needs to improve before it can be considered a legitimate competitor to Facebook. With a physical platform of distribution however, if Apple can fix the product’s flaws, there’s no doubt they could rise to become the most legitimate Facebook competitor.

You Can’t Import Friends

Right now, while there is ongoing debate about whether or not Ping was previously enabling the ability to import friend from Facebook, the reality is that at this point, you can’t import friends from anywhere. There isn’t even an email import functionality, which was the key tool that made most social networks go viral in the first place.

Ping Isn’t Global

Right now it isn’t possible to connect to Ping in the majority of countries. Instead, the service is currently limite to 23 countries. Given that most of my friends are in the U.S., it’s not a deal breaker for me personally, however it’s definitely going to be an issue if Apple wants global domination. Additionally, Ping only functions on Apple products! If Apple doesn’t open up their product to other companies, there’s no chance they’ll be able to kill Facebook.

Yes, iTunes doesn’t just run on Apple computers, however there are no other mobile devices that have iTunes or Ping available to them. Apple will need a more open strategy if they were to compete with Facebook in the long-term.

Uploading Photos Has Issues

I couldn’t get my profile photo uploading, and more significant is that photos must go through an approval process! That’s like an online dating site or something. Facebook thankfully has automated filtering systems. With all the software engineers over at Apple, you’d imagine the company would be able to come up with a more efficient system which doesn’t require the manual approval of all images.

Certain Areas Freeze

After trying to watch one of Lady Gaga’s videos within the service, I couldn’t figure out how to exit out of watching the video. This wasn’t the only area where I ran into minor user experience bugs that should have been resolved before pushing out the product. Then again, perhaps Apple has accepted the model in which products that don’t work are rolled out first and then the bugs are fixed afterwards.

Did I Mention No Friend Import?

This is seriously a deal breaker for any social network. It blows my mind that Apple would release a product that is missing some of the core features that are necessary for any successful social network. Then again, they released a phone that doesn’t work as a phone, so that’s not too surprising I guess.

Managing Another Social Network Is Annoying

I think Facebook may have been the social network which survived to the point where people aren’t willing to switch to another social network. Additionally, there is a large number of people who don’t use iTunes and they won’t install the software just to find out what music their family and friends are listening to. While many of us grew up on music, there are plenty of people for who music and computers don’t go together (GASP! Yes, those people exist).

I Need To Live In Apple’s World

Do you want to live under the control of Steve Jobs? Many have chosen to let Steve Jobs make their technology consumer decisions on behalf of them, however many people hate this. Just read yesterday’s comments on our Ping blog post if you had any question about whether or not people would make the shift. Even more significant was the numerous comments from our Page fans who said they had no interest in making the jump.

Outlandish Statements

Remember when Apple claimed that the iPad was a magical and revolutionary device? Try to find 100 people who own the device and say they love it. I own it but the only thing I use it for is reading books, and if that’s all I wanted to do on it in the first place, I should have just used my Amazon Kindle. While there are new forms of applications like Flipboard and Pulse, I’m not quite sure what’s magical about the device. Similarly, Apple claims that “Everyone who loves music is on Ping.” That’s a flat out lie. How are they able to make a statement like that?

The fact that Apple makes statements like this frustrates the hell out of me.

Nobody Is On Ping

Most of my friends aren’t on Ping as of right now. While I’ve found about 10 people to follow, every name I search for shows up with nobody, or some random person who I don’t know. Apple has a huge market potential, but just one day after the product launched, a very small percentage of that market has used the service.

Apple Manipulates Consumers

The last thing I hate about Apple has nothing to do with their social network. It’s that they don’t roll out features in certain products for fear of cannibalizing other product lines. For example, right now I have a Mac Mini running my home entertainment center. Yesterday’s Apple TV launched without the ability to browse the internet, simply because they don’t want to stop people from buying Mac Minis.

They clearly have the ability to add a DVD player and internet browsing functionality but they just chose not to. It’s a model that values exploiting the consumer over accelerating the pace of technology.

In Apple’s Favor

While there are plenty of reasons that Apple Ping won’t be as successful as Facebook, there are a few things that Apple has to its advantage. The first is that Apple has access to the largest set of digital savvy consumers. These individuals are likely to make online purchases, and more importantly, they make many of those purchases directly within iTunes. While a large percentage of the world is cut off from Apple, the company has access to the most influential consumers (those who spend the most on digital goods).

There are plenty of factors working against Apple’s social network right now, however the company has a lot of things that make it a competitive threat to Facebook: their payments platform, their large device-based distribution network, and a number of other things. Additionally, the battle to be the leading mobile social network has not been won yet. Facebook is clearly in the lead, however Apple just made their service compatible with the more than 150 million iOS compatible devices worldwide.

The bottom line is this: the battle to become the reigning social network is not over yet.

Developers are wasting no time building applications on top of the newly released API for Facebook Places. Earlier this week mobile game SCVNGR announced its integration and today it’s PlacePop.



The stated purpose of the PlacePop app is to let people begin to organize, visualize and make use of the stream of "check-in" data on Facebook. The benefits for users include the ability to see what places are trending among your friends, track statistics about your own check-ins, and see your entire location history, see what places are most popular in your friends´ network, and get a real-time feed of where your friends are.

Business owners would benefit as well because PlacePop would provide local recommendations, loyalty programs and ultimately rewards via the Facebook platform. Through both mobile and web-based applications, PlacePop would provide businesses with a marketing platform for reaching their customer base through Facebook Places.

PlacePop believes that local advertising through Facebook Places would represent an ever bigger opportunity for third party developers than social gaming. While the social gaming/virtual goods market is estimated to reach $1.6 billion in 2010, the company cites figures suggesting that the traditional local advertising market was valued at $141.3 billion in 2008. The digital side of local advertising is expected to grow from $14 billion in 2008 to $32.1 billion in 2013.

The only problem is that by packaging up data from the way people use Facebook Places, the service is doing nothing to alleviate the public’s privacy concerns over the service. Judging by the messages spreading on Facebook, people are very worked up by the idea that your friends can tag you when they check into places. Many of these concerns are simply unwarranted since the first time that someone tries to tag you, Facebook will ask you whether you want to authorize or deny the request, or defer the decision until later. Nonetheless, the backlash is spreading fueled by a dangerous mix of truths, half-truths and outright falsehoods.

Now it’s NOT true that Facebook will automatically track your location just for being logged into the site. But that doesn’t mean that all privacy concerns are unwarranted. Personally I would be unlikely to use PlacePop because it would mean giving the application access to my Places data for marketing purposes. I get enough advertising in my life and I’d like recommendations to be purely based on where my friends are going, without commercial messages mixed in. There would have to be some pretty serious benefits, such as hefty discounts at my favorite local businesses, to convince me otherwise.

I might also think twice about actually using Facebook Places knowing that friends could use PlacePop to gete a live feed of my real-time location. I have over 450 friends on Facebook and as much as I value my interactions with them, I don’t really want to make it quite that easy for them to track me. It’s also not clear to me whether a friend using PlacePop would be giving the application access to my data as well as their own.

PlacePop is probably on to something when it talks about the business opportunity in local advertising. But they need to think carefully about the privacy issues and genuine benefits for users.

Today, let us take a little break from work. The ’80s were a time, to many, filled with new wave music, Brat Pack movies, and bad haircuts. There is an even more simple side to the to the time period though, and that is what we aim to look at here. Let’s take a look through some awesome cartoons from the decade. Remember the time when Saturday mornings meant sugary cereal and awesome cartoons? Here are some cartoons that bring back childhood memories to quite a few people on Facebook.

Facebook appears to be testing out a new form of spam detection in which users who have no friends in common cannot friend each other. The main purpose of this system is to prevent the massive amount of fake accounts that sprouted up in recent weeks. In contrast to MySpace, who had this spam tactic destroy their system, Facebook appears to be implementing a robust system to automatically detect what relationships are not likely to occur.



In other words, Facebook knows how likely it is that you like someone even if you haven’t friended them yet. For those users who are using spammy tactics by adding random users as friends now receive the following message:

Do you know this user personally? To prevent misuse of Facebook, this request can’t be sent. To learn more, please visit the Help Center. If you believe you’re seeing this message in error, you can report the problem.

You can see the error below. Ironically, the person who reported this issue to us probably didn’t actually know the person, by their own admission. The bottom line is this: Facebook is aggressively pursuing those spammers who are using the new “friend adding” techniques. If you are using similar strategies you should stop now because you could end up caught in the crossfire. Then you’ll have to drive cross country, only to have Facebook reject your request to have your account reinstated, as this woman did.

Update

Some users already reached out to us saying they didn’t like the idea behind this. Keep in mind, this does not mean that all users who are not connected cannot friend each other. It’s simply a system to prevent those individuals who are adding large numbers of friends that they aren’t connected to from doing so.