Facebook Freaks

Not only are Facebook Pages - the network's competitive play against celebrity Twitter (Twitter reviews) users - revamped and more social, but their updates are taking up space on member's homepages, and in turn, as our data shows, driving lots of traffic and engagement for brands.

Meet the Pied Piper of the online world, Mari Smith, a veritable engine of personal branding and a relationship marketing whiz.

In my case, no. My Facebook friends are pretty much only my real life friends and closest coworkers. When it comes to some other services, such as Digg (Digg reviews), I've let pretty much anyone be my friend...but...Facebook is too valuable for me.

what elements help fan pages build up large followings and what can brands do to emulate the success of others? I've put together a list of specific elements that I believe have helped create fan pages with large, engaged, followings.

With over 200 million active users, Facebook has become a personal, product and corporate branding hub. The social graph is filled with CEOs, celebrities, entrepreneurs and people just like you who can be reached through Facebook's messaging system without any boundaries or restrictions. Facebook is also a talent search engine and part of the college admission and corporate recruiting criteria.

When compared to other social media sites, Facebook has a much larger potential reach for "memes" (ideas that people can't help sharing with their friends) but is quite restrictive on the ways in which these memes can spread. To identify the characteristics necessary for a meme to thrive on Facebook, we must look at what the restrictions demand from them.

As more and more marketers use Facebook (Facebook reviews) as a key conduit for brands online, it is important to note some of the new changes to their Business Pages. F