The Android app for Facebook could be charitably described as less functional than the iPhone app. We’re sure there are good reasons for this, the greatest of which is likely market share. With iOS-running phones composing href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/22/android-iphone-os-stats/">more than half of all smartphones, according to recent research, it’s in Facebook’s best interest to focus on this segment first.

Still, for the ever-growing number of Android device users who also would like a little Facebook mobile action, the pared-down feature set of Facebook for Android makes us feel neglected — the redheaded stepchildren of Facebook mobile users. But now that “Zuck” is one of us, all that’s about to change… right?

Historically, Facebook has made fairly few gestures toward the Android platform. It launched its href="http://mashable.com/2009/09/08/facebook-android/">official Android app last fall and rolled out an href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/27/facebook-android-sdk/">SDK for Android devs just a couple months ago.

But Facebook’s iPhone work, which began with an official app launch in the summer of 2008, has been nothing short of fantastic. iPhone users can chat, href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/19/facebook-iphone-app-video/">watch videos and more all from within the app. Recent patents suggest href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/17/apple-patent-facebook-iphone/">even deeper app/hardware integration. And the app keeps up with href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/30/facebook-for-iphone/">Apple’s iOS updates, too.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/zuckerberg-android.jpg" alt="" title="zuckerberg-android" width="650" height="488" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-341414" />

For reference, we polled Twitter users on what they specifically would change or what they currently dislike about Facebook’s Android app.

The app’s notification system was by far the most-cited annoyance. Another common complaint was the app’s redirects to Facebook’s mobile touch site rather than having more in-app functionality. Users are having a hard time clicking and launching the links posted by their friends, let alone sharing links and items. One user said he’d like to have an easier way to view Pages, and several noted the lack of Facebook Chat features, which the iPhone app does have. Also, a few folks complained that the app is slow and prone to frequent crashes.

As a personal aside, and with my heartfelt apologies to the developer team working on Facebook’s mobile offerings, I have never found that the usefulness of the Facebook for Android app outweighed the frustration of trying to use it, and I’ve lately avoided using the app altogether.

So, returning to our original question: Will Mark Zuckerberg like the taste of his own dogfood? And if he doesn’t, will Android app users see fast-tracked changes and upgrades to the Facebook for Android application?

That’s really not a question we can answer, unfortunately. While we’d love to optimistically assume that Zuckerberg will find the current version of Facebook for Android as tedious and troublesome as some of its users clearly do, we can’t assume that he’ll demand immediate fixes and all Facebook’s other development will be sidetracked accordingly. But we are certain that Zuckerberg will continue to do what’s best for Facebook as a business, something he’s excelled at consistently.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment, but in the event that our questions aren’t answered, we’ll still be keeping an eye out for any releases to this particular application.

And hey, Mark, welcome to “the dark side,” and enjoy your new phone!

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Facebook Questions Officially Launches

Ben Parr | 2010-07-28T15:59:23-04:00 | 4/2

style="float:right;margin-bottom:10px;">target="_blank" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/&service=bit.ly">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/" align="right"/>target="_blank" class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/&title=Facebook Questions Officially Launches&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />target="_blank" share_url="http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/" type="box_count" name="fb_share" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/&src=sp" style="text-decoration: none;">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/fb.jpg" align="right" />href="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis/login?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/facebook-questions/&title=Facebook Questions Officially Launches&related=true&style=true">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/diggme.png" align="right" />

style="float:left;margin-bottom:10px;">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/fb-q-a21.jpg" class="alignright">

style="clear:both;">
Facebook has begun the rollout of a new feature, Facebook Questions, which will allow users to get answers to their queries from the entire Facebook community.

Similar in concept to href="http://answers.yahoo.com" target="_blank">Yahoo! Answers, href="http://quora.com" target="_blank">Quora and href="http://mashable.com/tag/mahalo">Mahalo, Facebook Questions gives users the opportunity to ask questions just by clicking the “Ask Question” button on the homepage. Questions is also available on friends’ profiles just as you would post on someone’s wall.

We first learned of href="http://mashable.com/2010/05/27/facebook-q-a/">Facebook’s Q&A feature two months ago, when the company started asking for volunteers to beta test the product. The world’s largest social network even went so far as to promise beta testers a trip to Facebook’s offices to meet with the Q&A team.

I had the chance earlier today to discuss the new feature with several Facebook employees. Questions has several defining features:

• Photo questions: For example, if you take a picture of a bird, but don’t know what species it is, you can post the picture on Facebook Questions and get your answer.
• Polling: If you’re simply looking for the answer to Which city is better: Chicago or Dallas?, you can get your answer by creating a poll.
• Tagging: The company seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on tagging questions based on category or topic. The goal seems to be to make Q&A discovery an easier and faster process by making it simple to look up questions on cooking, photography, San Francisco or a variety of other topics.
• Topic exploration: Facebook described this as a roulette-type feature that allows users to browse Facebook’s eventual mountain of Q&A. Under the “Questions about” drop-down menu, there’s a feature called “Everything” that allows users to browse the company’s catalog of questions.
• Following: You can follow specific questions for updates and new answers.

There was one more thing that href="http://mashable.com/category/facebook">Facebook made clear to me: Facebook Questions is not an advertising product. While brands with Facebook Pages will eventually be able to answer questions, it’s not meant to be a promotional platform; it’s meant to be a useful and insightful product for users.

Facebook Questions will roll out to a limited group of beta testers today, but the company promises to “bring this product to all of you as quickly as we can.” The entire feature is public, so we don’t suggest posting those awkward bedroom questions on Facebook.

Will Facebook Questions prove to be more useful than Quora or even href="http://mashable.com/tag/twitter">Twitter as a Q&A platform? We think so, if only because it the biggest advantage of them all: href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/facebook-500-million-2/">500 million users.

/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336651-Twitter" target="_blank">Twitter

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HOW TO: Help Employees Talk About Your Brand Online

Jolie O'Dell | 2010-07-28T11:21:47-04:00 | 2/1

style="float:right;margin-bottom:10px;">target="_blank" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/&service=bit.ly">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/" align="right"/>target="_blank" class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/&title=HOW TO: Help Employees Talk About Your Brand Online&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />target="_blank" share_url="http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/" type="box_count" name="fb_share" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/&src=sp" style="text-decoration: none;">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/fb.jpg" align="right" />href="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis/login?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/internal-brand-management-online/&title=HOW TO: Help Employees Talk About Your Brand Online&related=true&style=true">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/diggme.png" align="right" />

style="float:left;margin-bottom:10px;">src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/igloo-100x501.png" alt="" title="igloo 100x50" width="100" height="50" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-318038" />

style="clear:both;">
This href="http://mashable.com/tag/brand-management-series">series is supported by rel="nofollow" href="http://bit.ly/cZpDvo" target="_blank">IGLOO, a leader in helping organizations improve business processes, increase employee productivity and enhance stakeholder engagement inside and outside the organization using social technologies.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/internal-brand-management.jpg" alt="" title="internal-brand-management" width="260" height="190" class="alignright size-full wp-image-338072" />For many brand managers, employees’ actions online remain a daunting, untamed frontier. The brand’s consistent, controlled message to consumers melds with internal messaging and individuals’ stories when employees take to the social web.

The cautionary tales of the social web’s early days — stories of indiscretion, mixed signals and poor communication — have led to an increase in strict policies and careful monitoring of employee social media activities in many cases. But lately, a few savvy brands have changed their internal position about employees’ activities on the social web.

At many organizations, we’ve moved beyond firings over href="http://mashable.com/category/facebook">Facebook faux pas and are actively looking for even more ways for employees to use social media both personally and professionally. What was once a top-down litany of thou-shalt-nots has become an increasingly proactive encouragement to opine, express and evangelize on behalf of the brand. Here are a few pointers from managers and employees using the modern-day Internet in brand-friendly ways.

/>

Don’t Issue Too Many Orders

/>

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/internal-brand-management-1.jpg" alt="" title="internal-brand-management-1" width="640" height="380" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338062" />

One trend we’ve noted over the past couple years is a shift away from prohibitive internal codes of conduct and toward more encouraging, educational practices. In other words, managers are seeing less need to specifically tell employees to refrain from discussing client business and confidential internal decisions online. More now than ever before, they’re telling employees to be open and communicative about the brand when using social media.

But more than being told what not to do online, employees don’t want to be told they have to post or tweet about the company unless it’s a specific part of the job they perform. “That would be very strange and awkward and not nice at all,” said one typical employee.

We also received a few responses suggesting that modern employees have a pretty good idea of how to handle themselves online. One said he probably knew more about appropriate online behavior than his bosses did. Another noted that he knew the boundary between acceptable and unhinged.

Ultimately, letting employees know that tweeting about the company is encouraged and letting them make their own decisions is the best policy, say our respondents. “At [company name], we’re encouraged to tweet if we want to,” said one employee. “We dont have a formal policy; people tend to have decent judgement.”

/>

Give Employees Resources

/>

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/internal-brand-management-2.jpg" alt="" title="internal-brand-management-2" width="640" height="380" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338064" />

While rules and guidelines for employee social media use can be helpful and appreciated, and the employees we surveyed expressed a desire to have permission rather than ask forgiveness for their social media activities, it’s sometimes best to go the extra mile and give your internal community more resources for spreading the word about company activities, promotions and culture.

One user said, “My employer… doesn’t tell me what to tweet but does provide all managers with great Twitter resources (i.e. guidebooks) to educate people on how to benefit from tweeting, show that the company supports it and provide clarity on what is appropriate.

“The company prefers to give people a roadmap with helpful pointers rather than be heavy-handed. Works out for the best that way.”

Another social media director showed us a social media policy that went so far as to show employees the best way to be interesting, add value and build their own networks online. These internal documents give great advice for how to use href="http://mashable.com/category/twitter">Twitter, Facebook and other networks for everything from business development to thought leadership.

A good way to think about providing good tools for your employees is to ensure that you have as many proactive statements as prohibitive ones in any documents or guidelines you issue; the DOs and DON’Ts columns should be equal, with the DOs holding the advantage whenever possible.

/>

Give Your Internal “Fans” a Voice Online

/>

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/internal-brand-management-3.jpg" alt="" title="internal-brand-management-3" width="640" height="380" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338066" />

Every organization will have a certain number of employees who truly embody the brand and the company culture. When you find those individuals, recognize them by inviting them to be part of your company’s social media activity.

For these employees, contributing to the company’s blog or Twitter account or maintaining a separate but related social media presence can be beneficial for all parties involved. The employee builds a greater external network and strengthens his contribution internally; the company benefits by having a relatable, responsive, on-brand face as another facet of its social media presence.

One such employee told us, “I’m a Kool-Aid drinker at work, so it’s easy… We’re a very conservative organization. We’re never told what to tweet, but we’re always conscious of what our culture and voice is. When I tweet [for one of the company's Twitter accounts], I use [a] voice that is my take on embodying our culture.”

/>

Extra Credit: Let Your Employees Shape the Brand, Too

/>

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/internal-brand-management-4.jpg" alt="" title="internal-brand-management-4" width="640" height="380" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-338068" />

For some organizations, a proactive take on employee social media use is a given. What else can you do to improve your internal brand management?

It’s not enough to simply issue guidelines on social media use or communicate “on-brand” behavior expectations. Your employees are people “who see themselves as individuals and who are living a brand of their own making,” href="http://www.interbrand.com/paper.aspx?paperid=68&langid=1000" target="_blank">writes Interbrand’s Alexander Rauch.

“The question boils down to this: If a brand is supposed to give customers something to identify with and add meaning to their lives, shouldn’t helping employees express themselves as individuals help the brand as well?”

In allowing the brand-employee relationship to flow in both directions, you accomplish that most important objective: true engagement. And in doing so, you create advocates who understand and promote the brand in ways that you could never acheive through top-down directives alone. Moreover, the brand itself is invigorated by fresh perspectives in a trickle-up model. If your company is already experienced in social media matters, this approach can work particularly well.

If you have other pointers for how employees can use social media self-expression to bolster the brand, let us know your best practices in the comments below.

/>Series supported by IGLOO/>

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/igloo.png" alt="" title="igloo" width="200" height="100" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-318032" />

This href="http://mashable.com/tag/brand-management-series">series is supported by rel="nofollow" href="http://bit.ly/cZpDvo" target="_blank">IGLOO, a leader in helping organizations improve business processes, increase employee productivity and enhance stakeholder engagement inside and outside the organization using social technologies.

rel="nofollow" href="http://bit.ly/cZpDvo" target="_blank">IGLOO is a social software company that builds online communities for business. Uniting content management, collaboration and knowledge sharing tools, within one secure social networking platform, IGLOO enables organizations to overcome the barriers to communication and collaboration that emerge because of size. Whether the obstacles are organizational or geographic, a more open and connected business improves employee productivity (Workplace Communities) and helps to foster better relationships with customers, partners and suppliers (Marketplace Communities). Learn more about how IGLOO is socializing the workplace and helping organizations build successful online communities through the rel="nofollow" href="http://bit.ly/c0pfzQ" target="_blank">IGLOO Social Media Playbook.

/>

More Business Resources From Mashable:

/>

- href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/16/online-tools-small-business-questions/">5 Online Tools for Answering Your Small Business Questions/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/21/business-growth-tips-bliptv/">Growing Your Business: 5 Tips From the Founder of Blip.tv/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/16/customer-feedback/">Why Complaining Customers Can Be Good For Your Business/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/social-media-business-leads-fail/">Is Social Media Failing to Produce Business Leads?/> - href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/30/brands-social-web/">6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web

[img credit: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/rishibando" target="_blank">rishibando]

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Shocking Video Scams Spread Virally on Facebook [WARNING]

Stan Schroeder | 2010-07-28T06:28:21-04:00

style="float:right;margin-bottom:10px;">target="_blank" href="http://api.tweetmeme.com/share?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/&service=bit.ly">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" width="51" height="61" src="http://api.tweetmeme.com/imagebutton.gif?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/" align="right"/>target="_blank" class='feedflare' href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/&title=Shocking Video Scams Spread Virally on Facebook [WARNING]&srcTitle=Mashable&srcUrl=http://mashable.com">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/gbuzz-feed.png" align="right" />target="_blank" share_url="http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/" type="box_count" name="fb_share" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/&src=sp" style="text-decoration: none;">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/fb.jpg" align="right" />href="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis/login?url=http://mashable.com/2010/07/28/shocking-video-scam-facebook/&title=Shocking Video Scams Spread Virally on Facebook [WARNING]&related=true&style=true">style="border:none;margin-right:5px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-digg-this/i/diggme.png" align="right" />

style="float:left;margin-bottom:10px;">original="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/facebook-bug.jpg" class="alignright" style="margin: 10px;" src="http://mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/facebook-bug.jpg" alt="" height="190" width="260">

style="clear:both;">
Several new Facebook scams are making the rounds today, and although they follow the same pattern as many of the href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/15/coca-cola-scam-hits-facebook-warning/">recent scams we’ve seen, some users are still falling for them.

The scams work as follows: first, you’ll see an interesting link in other users’ status updates, but when you follow the link, you’ll be asked to fill up a number of surveys which are nothing more than ploys to extract your personal data.

Today, we’ve seen two very similar scams, both promising a “shocking video” to unsuspecting users. One message that appears in status updates reads “I am shocked!!! I’m NEVER texting AGAIN since I found this out. Video here: http://bit.ly/c4SDyh – Worldwide scandal!”

If you click on the link in the message, it’ll lead you to a rogue Facebook application, which will ask you to fill in a couple of surveys before you can actually see the promised content.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/shocking_video.jpg" alt="" title="shocking_video" width="640" height="158" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-340460" />

Another message promises a shocking video of a teacher that nearly killed a boy; clicking on the link in the status update will, once again, only force you to jump through hoops and hand over your personal data in the process. href="http://www.sophos.com/blogs/gc/g/2010/07/28/shocking-video-link-worms-facebook/" target="_blank">Graham Cluley from Sophos does a great job explaining the attack in the video below.

width="640" height="385">name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_uFa3P0sLA4&hl=en_US&fs=1">name="allowFullScreen" value="true">name="allowscriptaccess" value="always">wmode="opaque" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_uFa3P0sLA4&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385">

Our advice, as always, is not to click on suspicious links if you’re not absolutely sure they’re safe. Do not give away your personal info. If you’ve fallen for these (or similar) scams, remove the offending app(s) from your Facebook apps, and remove the related status message from your newsfeed.

More about : href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/scam/">scam, href="http://mashable.com/tag/social-networking/">social networking, href="http://mashable.com/tag/video/">video

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Amazon + Facebook = A Perfect Storm of Recommendations

Jolie O'Dell | 2010-07-27T19:04:53-04:00

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Amazon and Facebook are doing some technological partnering to bring you a new layer in product recommendations.

Now Amazon users will be able to link their Facebook account to their Amazon account. At the outset, this will allow Amazon to show you recommendations based on your Facebook interests and activity.

This integration will also help you figure out what kinds of gifts your friends might like by letting you better search for your Facebook friends’ Amazon Wish Lists and by pulling in information from your friends’ profiles. Of course, it will remind you of Facebook friends’ birthdays, too. It will show you interests you have in common with your friends, and it will show you which items are popular with all the people in your social graph.

When it comes to protecting your purchase information and privacy, Amazon says it will not share your Amazon account information with Facebook. It won’t reveal what items you’re buying, and it won’t contact your Facebook friends. And if you don’t share information publicly on Facebook, Amazon won’t be able to grab that information and broadcast it to others; this includes scraping your friends’ profiles for non-public information.

Since we tech writers are more on the exhibitionist side of online privacy concerns, we decided to test drive this feature and report back to you.

What we saw was both fascinating and useful.

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Amazon and Facebook: Our Test Drive

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To get started, I logged in to my Amazon account. On the right side of my account’s home screen, I saw a Facebook integration “beta” ad, which I clicked to turn the recommendations on.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/facebook-amazon-2.jpg" alt="" title="facebook-amazon-recommendations" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-340248" />

As expected, Amazon’s knowledge of my social graph was in line with my friends’ stated privacy settings. For example, I wasn’t able to see gift recommendations for Steven Walling, my former coworker, or my friend David Armano, because their profile and interests aren’t too public on Facebook. But my friend and Kissmetrics CEO Hiten Shah’s interests were available to Amazon, and I was able to get some great gift ideas from them:

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/facebook-amazon-3.jpg" alt="" title="facebook-amazon-recommendations" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-340248" />

I also got to see what the rest of my Facebook friends thought was cool (Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was the most-liked record from my social graph), and I got some cool recommendations based on music, movies and books I “liked” on Facebook or talked about in my profile.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/facebook-amazon-4.png" alt="" title="facebook-amazon-4" width="640" height="644" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-340252" />

You can change your Facebook/Amazon settings or disable the integration at any time.

For some people, we can see how one website’s knowledge of your activity on another site — and, because of Facebook’s reach, across the entire web — might come across as slightly creepy. However, when you boil it all down to ones and zeroes, it’s a great way for commercial entities to take advantage of this huge silo of information that Facebook has about you, your personality, your friends and much more. And because it helps you, the user, discover and interact more with the things you like, it’s one of those rare win-win scenarios wherein the consumer gets as much benefit as the corporation.

That’s our experience so far, at least. If you feel up to it, give the Amazon/Facebook integration a try, and let us know what you think about it in the comments.

/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook

More about : href="http://mashable.com/tag/amazon/">amazon, href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/marketing/">MARKETING, href="http://mashable.com/tag/recommendations/">Recommendations

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Disney Acquires Social Gaming Company Playdom for up to $763.2 Million

Ben Parr | 2010-07-27T16:33:00-04:00 | 4/3

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Disney has officially acquired href="http://playdom.com" target="_blank">Playdom, the makers of popular social games like Social City and Sorority Life, for $563.2 million, with an additional $200 million that could be paid out based on performance.

The company is one of the remaining big players in the social gaming space, competing against the likes of href="http://mashable.com/tag/zynga">Zynga and its wildly popular href="http://mashable.com/tag/farmville">FarmVille Facebook game. Playdom href="http://games.venturebeat.com/2010/06/22/playdom-raises-33m-in-funding-to-fuel-social-gaming-acquisition-spree/" target="_blank">raised $33 million in funding just last month to help it acquire smaller social gaming companies.

Playdom will keep its headquarters in Mountain View, California. Playdom CEO John Pleasants will become an Executive Vice President of Disney’s Interactive Media Group.

Clearly Disney is serious about the social gaming space; the acquisition comes less than a month after href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/01/tapulous-acquired-by-disney/">the media giant acquired iPhone app development firm Tapulous. The company sees a lot of synergies between its new social gaming properties and its highly visible brands. “We see strong growth potential in bringing together Playdom’s talented team and capabilities with our great creative properties, people and world-renowned brands like Disney, ABC, ESPN and Marvel,” said Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger in a statement.

More about : href="http://mashable.com/tag/busienss/">busienss, href="http://mashable.com/tag/disney/">disney, href="http://mashable.com/tag/farmville/">farmville, href="http://mashable.com/tag/playdom/">playdom, href="http://mashable.com/tag/trending/">trending, href="http://mashable.com/tag/zynga/">Zynga

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Seesmic Web Now Supports Facebook and LinkedIn

Christina Warren | 2010-07-27T14:23:15-04:00 | 3/1

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Seesmic has just updated its href="http://mashable.com/2009/07/10/seesmic-web/">Seesmic Web app to include support for href="http://mashable.com/category/facebook">Facebook and href="http://mashable.com/tag/linkedin">LinkedIn.

The href="http://blog.seesmic.com/2010/07/seesmic-web-now-with-facebook-and-linkedin-support-desktop-notifications-and-faster-than-ever.html" target="_blank">new version also includes a refined interface and a faster backend. Like href="http://mashable.com/2009/11/24/hootsuite-adds-support-for-facebook-linkedin-and-twitter-lists/">HootSuite and href="http://mashable.com/2009/11/06/brizzly-twitter-lists/">Brizzly, Seesmic Web is a tool you can use to manage and monitor your social networks all from within the web browser. The service already offers href="http://mashable.com/2009/11/06/seesmic-web-lists-geolocatio/">support for Foursquare, Google Buzz and Ping.fm./> id="more-339740">/> Just go to the Settings section of Seesmic Web and grant access to Facebook and LinkedIn. Now each of those networks can be viewed within their own columns in your Seesmic Web window.

When you create a status update, you can choose to publish it to any or all of your connected networks; just click on the network icon to select or deselect. You can also attach a photo, link and your location.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/seesmic-web-publish.jpg" alt="" title="seesmic-web-publish" width="619" height="118" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-339748" />

What’s nice about the Facebook integration is that you can directly Like an item from your News Feed and also reply in-line, just as you can with Twitter. The Twitter portion of Seesmic web now supports in-line retweets and easy reply access, as well.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/seesmic-web-640.jpg" alt="" title="seesmic-web-640" width="640" height="395" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-339750" />

The LinkedIn integration isn’t quite as robust, but you can still see your incoming stream from your LinkedIn lists and post messages directly to the network.

For Seesmic Web users who use Google Chrome, there is a new desktop notifications option that will show a pop-up on your screen every time you receive a mention or direct message on Twitter. That’s super handy and something that, coupled with Google Chrome as an SSB, could make Seesmic Web a viable replacement for stand-alone social networking clients.

We’re glad to see that Seesmic Web now encompasses more of the native functions of the services it supports. What do you think of the new features?

/>Reviews: href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336650-Facebook" target="_blank">Facebook, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/603048-Google-Buzz" target="_blank">Google Buzz, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/576843-Google-Chrome" target="_blank">Google Chrome, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/392550-HootSuite" target="_blank">HootSuite, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/337623-LinkedIn" target="_blank">LinkedIn, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/490170-Ping" target="_blank">Ping, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336894-Seesmic" target="_blank">Seesmic, href="http://www.blippr.com/apps/336651-Twitter" target="_blank">Twitter

More about : href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/linkedin/">linkedin, href="http://mashable.com/tag/seesmic/">seesmic, href="http://mashable.com/tag/seesmic-web/">seesmic web, href="http://mashable.com/tag/twitter/">twitter

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Vitrue Publisher 2.0 Makes Posting and Managing the Open Graph a Snap

Christina Warren | 2010-07-27T11:28:16-04:00 | 2/1

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style="clear:both;">
Social media management company href="http://mashable.com/tag/vitrue">Vitrue has announced the latest update to its enhanced and revamped Vitrue SRM (social relationship management) platform, Vitrue Publisher 2.0.

What makes href="http://vitrue.com/vitrue-publisher" target="_blank">Vitrue Publisher 2.0 unique is not only its ability to publish and manage multiple Facebook Pages, but that it fully supports the social network’s href="http://mashable.com/2010/04/21/facebook-open-graph/">Open Graph API. The interface has received an overhaul, and comment moderation has been made even more robust./> id="more-339446">/> We had a chance to take a look at what’s new in Vitrue Publisher 2.0, and to speak with CEO Reggie Bradford about the new features and how social web management is evolving.

/>

Open Graph Support

/>

For us, the real killer feature of Vitrue Publisher 2.0 is the robust support for Facebook’s Open Graph API. As we’ve reported in the past, the new Like button is href="http://mashable.com/2010/06/13/facebook-like-increases-blog-referral-traffic/">driving considerable traffic to publishers’ sites. Just yesterday, Facebook posted some results of its recent study into how social plugins are href="http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/398" target="_blank">impacting social engagement. It’s interesting to note, for example, that click-through rates are three to five times higher on sites with Like buttons that enable thumbnails of friends and allow users to add comments.

src="http://cdn.mashable.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/vitrue-publisher-2-640.jpg" alt="" title="vitrue-publisher-2-640" width="640" height="358" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-339452" />

On Friday, Facebook announced on its developer blog that publishers can now do more with the Like button, including href="http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/397" target="_blank">publishing to connected users directly from the Open Graph API. What this means is that if I click the Like button for a certain product on a company’s site or Facebook Page, that company can send me news on discounts or updates to that product in the News Feed. That sort of granularity and segmentation has enormous implications for marketers and brands who use social plugins on their sites.

Vitrue Publisher 2.0 supports this new feature and you can actually create streams and actions around Like buttons or other social objects. When you push out an update in the publisher, you can select which groups you want to publish to. So instead of sending out a huge blast to everyone’s News Feed, you can just target the users that are interested in your update.

All of the Open Graph objects are also trackable, meaning that you can monitor activity that takes place on a certain Page or around a certain post depending on what social plugin it is using.

/>

Simplified Multi-Stream Publishing

/>

The old version of the Vitrue Publisher allowed users to publish to multiple Pages or accounts, but the process wasn’t as streamlined as it could be. Now the process of creating, scheduling and distributing posts to specific streams on Twitter and Facebook is easy to do from the main post menu.

Users can even send different posts to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously. It’s also now easy to attach photos, videos, polls or other wall app items directly from the publishing interface.

In addition, Vitrue now stores all previously used assets — like uploaded photos or videos, pools, coupons, etc. — and makes it easy to access them when creating a new post.

/>

Better Comment Moderation

/>

One of the most difficult aspects of managing a Facebook Page is comment moderation. The built-in tools really don’t do anything and there are very few third-party solutions that address comment moderation. Viture has always had the ability to moderate comments from its dashboard, but the newest version of Viture Publisher has enhanced moderation abilities.

The best way I can describe the setup is to say that it’s like creating rules for your e-mail application. You can choose to flag words that contain a certain phrase, URL or hashtag — which can be useful if you want to follow up or track a certain topic — or you can choose to automatically delete any comment that contains profanity, certain words or URL patterns that you know are associated with spam.

Having an auto-delete feature is great, but we think that the ability to color-code and flag comments for non-spam tracking is equally useful.

/>

Social Management is Exploding

/>

The social management space is really starting to take off. As more and more brands invest in Facebook and other social networks, more robust tools are needed to keep things working and running smoothly. As we mentioned with href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/involver-amp/">Involver’s AMP platform earlier this month, the capabilities of the tools being built on top of Facebook are quickly improving.

With the expanding opportunities of the Open Graph — its use href="http://mashable.com/2010/07/14/facebook-open-graph-like-mobile/">in mobile, for instance — Facebook truly is becoming, as Reggie Bradford said to me, “the operating system of the web.” As with any OS, applications and tools are needed to make it as good as it can be.

What do you think about the advances in the social media management space? What types of tools would you like to see to help with your own management tasks?

More about : href="http://mashable.com/tag/facebook/">facebook, href="http://mashable.com/tag/open-graph/">Open Graph, href="http://mashable.com/tag/social-media-management/">social media management, href="http://mashable.com/tag/vitrue/">vitrue

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