Starbucks

We all know the five-second reaction to seeing a friend’s birthday on Facebook — a basic greeting posted to their timeline. What if you want to do more? Several companies are filling the gap and making a statement with social gifting, allowing people to give real-life presents to their friends. While entities such as Wrapp and Gifties are getting a foothold in the market, Facebook announced Thursday the launch of Gifts, a native program where users can give things such as Gund teddy bears, Starbucks gift cards, and Star Wars flash drives.

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Remember SuperPoke!, when you could virtually bake a cake for a friend or throw a sheep at them? A new Facebook game, Gifties, revives the spirit of SuperPoke!, but with real-life payoffs. Now, when you give someone cookies, you might actually give them cookies, which would be delivered to their door. You could even end up giving the gift of a gift cards, flights, or a hotel stay.

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Only 30 of the top 500 online retailers, or just 6 percent, have added the option of logging in with Facebook to their account-creation process, and of those 30, 30 percent are shooting themselves in the foot by requiring users to create separate password for their sites, according to the results of a new study from Sociable Labs.

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As summer turns to fall, it’s time for one of Starbucks’ most popular drinks — the pumpkin spice latte. The coffee shop has turned to Facebook for a contest to figure out which city will be the first to sip the sweet java. This contest’s application was so popular that it crashed within one hour of its launch Monday morning. Not to worry, it’s now up and running again. As of Tuesday morning, the town of Clarkesville, Ga. (population 1,742), located 85 miles northeast of Atlanta, is the leader.

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A large banner ad for Citi appearing prominently under the cover photo on the timeline page for Starbucks: Is Facebook testing yet another advertising unit? No: It’s probably just adware.

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Want to tell a company its product would be great if it just did one little thing differently? Just tell the company on its Facebook page. It’s listening.

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Facebook’s initial public offering is a milestone in the evolution of not only social media, but media itself. Fairly or unfairly, Facebook is the lightning rod, the proxy, for the broader discussion about how fast consumer behavior is changing through our increasingly frictionless ability to share and socialize.

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There’s more to Facebook marketing besides racking up a bunch of “likes.” ComScore Tuesday released “The Power of Like 2,” which illustrates how companies should focus on engaging fans and sharing content for social marketing success.

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Facebook analytics provider Socialbakers examined efforts by brands on the social network to target the 83 percent of its users outside of the United States.

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Engagement is social media’s new hot-button metric. But much remains unknown as to how to most actively engage whatever fan base there is and how to split resources between furthering engagement and expanding the network.

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