The first Facebook Marketer Conference will be held in NYC on February 29, 2012, but it is by invitation only. However, if your invite got lost in the mail, you can still catch some of the event real-time on the fMC website, including key presentations from Facebook’s global marketing solution team (i.e. Sheryl Sandberg, Chris Cox, and David Fischer).

One of the hot features to be unveiled at the conference is Facebook Timeline for Brands. Timeline for individuals was introduced at F8 in September as a new profile page format which generates scrapbook-like collages of status updates, photos, and videos spanning user’s entire history on Facebook (watch video below). For brands, it is an opportunity to create a more intimate relationship with the user by “seamlessly” integrating with their daily lives.

Timeline, along with Facebook’s other new feature Gestures, opens up the door to a more meaningful way for brands to interact with consumers. But just like the Photo Tagging Auto-Suggestion of last June it is a slippery slope, raising concerns over privacy and the perception that we are commercializing our most private moments. These things tend to be self-correcting though and can’t honestly fault companies for exploring new avenues of engagement. For now, it will be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

No real surprise. It was a close-matched game against two long-time East coast rivals. And the Giants win in the final quarter made for great TV.

According to Nielsen TV, the game set a record 111.3 million viewers.

But the bigger news are the record-breaking stats in the social media space with Bluefin Labs reporting over 12 million social media comments. In the final three minutes of the game Twitter reported an average of 10,000 tweets per second (peaking at 12,233). And, wow, no fail whale.

This year every major Super Bowl advertiser had a Social TV component, from Coke’s cartoon Polar Bears to Clint Eastwood’s spot for Chrysler. Some faired better than others. Some probably would have faired better had they not released their ads online before the big game.

Cory Bergman does an excellent rundown of all the worthy Social TV hooks over at Lost Remote. Check it out.

Christopher Golda, founder of BackType (the company behind BackTweet acquired by Twitter in July) and new tech exec for Twitter, announced today the impending launch of Twitter Web Analytics (not to be confused with Twitter Advertiser Analytics) which will help people measure exactly how much traffic their tweets drive to their websites, including how effective that Tweet Button really is. Twitter Web Analytics is currently in beta for a select few but expected to be made available for free in a few weeks. On the whole, a welcome (albeit surprisingly belated) addition to the Twitter platform which has been struggling to stay relevant in the ever escalating battle for social media influence.

For our clients (where we manage and monitor their social media channels) we have seen as much as 22% of site traffic come from Twitter. More impressive is that these visitors appeared to be of the desired demographic, spending more time engaged with content than the average visitor. Combine this with Facebook and StumbleUpon and you got a pretty hardy social media machine churning out qualified leads to your website. Of course, with social media it is all about content. Good original content. Twitter Web Analytics will be yet another tool in our tool chest for measuring social media ROI.

Location-based promotions have been around for years and it is no surprise that behemoth social network Facebook would make this technology an integral part of their platform. And brands like Coca-Cola have been taking full advantage of this in smart and engaging ways. The Recycling King campaign created by Israeli ad agency Publicis E-Dologic encourages people to “think green” by having them upload pictures of themselves recycling.

Coca-Cola registered over 10,000 recycling bins on Facebook Places and then challenged users to vie for the title of Recycling King by checking in to the most bins. Whether or not you feel revealing your whereabouts to virtual strangers raises huge privacy concerns (and Coca-Cola just duped thousands of Israelis to volunteer their purchasing habits), the campaign has proven to be quite successful; with over 26,000 pictures uploaded and more than 250,000 checkins. If you’re a marketer or an environmentalist, it is something to think about.

This is the complementary slideshow to my 10 minute presentation on Facebook basics I gave at a small business networking group (BNI) in Stamford. It is actually an “encore” presentation to one given earlier in the year about Facebook advertising ROI. Despite Facebook’s latest boast of having over 750 million active users worldwide, many small businesses are simply overwhelmed with all the social media hype. So this presentation focuses on just getting started with the current Facebook. Feel free to share and download.

I was going to write a Top 10 Best URL Shorteners like tinyurl, bit.ly, ow.ly and most recently goo.gl but after a quick Google search discovered that plenty of people have done this ad nauseam. According to the URLshortener.org there are over 1,100 URL shorteners currently online with new ones added everyday (they’ve compiled the biggest list to date). Quite frankly, I’m not sure what’s the point of creating yet another URL shortener but then again I feel the same way about Reality TV.

So, instead, a word of caution about overdoing it with URL shorteners. These services are good for use with microblogging sites like Twitter where every character counts but that’s it. Since a URL shortener replaces the original (long) URL domain name with that shortener’s own domain name you really don’t know where that link links too. Spammers and other shady types exploit this fact to trick people into clicking a link in a tweet or an email. Some URL shorteners like Twitter’s Link Service (http://t.co) do a decent job protecting users from malicious intent but it is not foolproof.

Use a reputable URL shortener (like the ones mentioned in this post) when you have to, not every time you write a link in a blog comment and certainly not on your own website or blog. That brings me to another point; domain names are part of your branding so why would you replace it with someone else’s domain if you don’t have too. From an SEO perspective, you should use your own URLs whenever you have the opportunity (this includes social networks).

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Social Media Market Share

According to StatCounter Global Stats, the real-time web analytics site by StatCounter, StumbleUpon surpassed Facebook for driving web traffic among all social networks in the US. StumbleUpon now drives 49% of traffic while Facebook dropped to 37% despite all the media stir around Facebook’s new features.

Since the original co-founders bought back the company from eBay in April 2009, StumbleUpon has been quietly reinventing itself as the social search engine where users discover sites they would not otherwise find through traditional channels. Given that Twitter continues to slides in retention (it only drives 3.8% of traffic), focusing on infrastructure changes that serve advertisers more than the community, it is time to give StumbleUpon a second look.

Facebook today announced Video Calling powered by Skype. Currently (free) one-to-one but group video chat may be in the near future according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This may be sooner than later given Google+ introduced video chat for up to 10 people.

Facebook Video Calling uses a Skype plug-in that allows users to launch a video chat session in two clicks. The plug-in is downloaded on-demand so a video call can be initiated without the need to have Skype software pre-installed.

Sarah Kessler over at Mashable put together a nice little How-To slideshow for getting started with Facebook Video Calling.

Aside: If you have been paying attention to your stock portfolio, you’ll recall that Microsoft received FTC approval to acquire Skype for $8.5 billion in May of this year. Skype has 145 million users. No doubt the video conferencing service will now get a nice bump from Facebook’s 750 million users.