The guys at Nexum sent me over the link to a bunch of interesting applications they developed for Sony to celebrate Xmas inside Facebook. "Sony Christmas Suite" allows Facebook users to create personalized cards, snowflakes and snowglobes, and to frame pictures in their photo albums.

Again, as I said the other day, it's very interesting for me to discover branded applications within Facebook that try to make some sense, either being consistent with the brand or with the campaign message.

To be honest, in the case of the Sony Christmas Suite, the only application in line with the product/brand is the photo frame one, but I think it's still very interesting to look at them all, as they are very well developed (check the snowglobes in particular) and definitely richer than the usual text based applications that dominate Facebook at the moment.

What value can Facebook provide to brands? What can brands do with Facebook? I'm sure a lot of questions like these have been buzzing in your mind in the last couple of months. I must say that until now I've been paying attention to Facebook only as a user, not even asking myself the marketing potential of the hottest social network of the moment. My fault, of course... so now it's time to "wake-up" and start thinking about ideas and applications to get the most out of it as a brand...

A good starting point is the application recently launched in France by Virgin Mobile to promote its "parlez dooble" offer. It's called Dooblebook (if the direct link doesn't work look for it using the Facebook internal search engine), and it's nothing else than a branded match making quiz.

I recently received a review copy of Contagious' report on Social Networking and User Generated Content, and I'd like to share the reading with you.

SN and UCG are definitely among the most debated topics of the moment, both online and offline. As usual, when there's a lot of buzz about something, you can hear/read a lot of good insights and relevant opinions but also a lot of bullshit (pardon my French...). When I received the report I read it with great interest and curiosity, because I love consumer studies (I like the idea of feeling predator and prey at the same time) and because I feel there is (and I have) still so much to learn about the fascinating Internet world. Contagious is a great magazine, therefore my expectations on the report were high. And I must say that I haven't been disappointed.

What I liked most it's the editorial approach they've taken, building a report that mixes sites overviews, consumer studies, case studies as well as opinions and insights from people who work and manage the SN industry. In my opinion, very often when you read industry or trends reports you're flooded with stats and numbers, you look at them and then you ask yourself "and now what?". With Contagious' report this is not the case.

I enjoy Facebook and I love Slideshare. Enjoy a couple of presentations to understand Facebooks' marketing potentials.

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An article about Facebook published yesterday on Advertising Age made me smile (and think). It says that “half of the biz is jumping on Facebook fanwagon, for ‘research’ of course”… Ops. I feel slightly “touched” by this sentence, as I’ve been also discovering and professionally “studying” Facebook in the last couple of weeks.

As a first step in my "study" (slightly "me-too", I must admit) I've started the Adverblog's friends group (if the link doesn't work, just search "adverblog" amd you'll find us).

All regular (and irregular) readers are welcome to join. I'd like the Facebook group to share links and ideas in a fast and informal way with the international/multicultural touch Adverblog always tries to have.

As I'm still in the learning phase of Facebook's functionalities and behavioural rules any suggestion or recommendation you might have on how to exploit it at best will be more than welcome.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives