Looking for a Happy Place

Facing a complex maze of privacy options, Facebook users learned this week that they will soon be able to post a location based status update whenever they sneak into a participating McDonalds. Facebook's move into location based services (a la Foursquare) is inevitable; Techcrunch even spotted a new 'Places' tab in Facebook's JavaScript for touch enabled smartphones.

Many bloggers are pointing out that LBS is not a slam dunk for Facebook. Econsultancy looked at the McDonalds example and pointed out that the status update looked more like an ad than a friendly check-in. Facebook's demos (too old?) and its 'one size fits all' nature might be off target according to The Next Web.

The primary issue remains privacy. Facebook is a relentless volcano of privacy ashes. The New York Times published a detailed chart of all 170 Facebook privacy options and noted that Facebook's privacy policy is longer than the US Constitution. A group of students in New York found ready funding for Diaspora, hailed as a privacy respecting distributed alternative network. Facebook was in full crisis management mode by week's end, calling a top level Privacy Summit for Thursday, 4PM PDT.

• 10 Ways to Create a More Engaging Facebook Page [Online Marketing Blog]
• 5 Easy Ways to Drive Social Media Fans to Action [Social Media Examiner]
• 9 Ways to Enhance Your Facebook Fan Page [Social Media Examiner]
• A Fun Tool to Measure Your Facebook Page Value [10 Golden Rules]
• The Art of Creating a Social Media Press Release [Social Fish]

• How to Determine Your True Organic Google Ranking [SEOMoz]
• Top Search Queries is now Search Queries with Average Position and Stars [Google Webmaster Central]
• The SEO Tool That May Make You Switch to Google Chrome [Search Engine Journal]

• Human Photos Double your Conversion Rate [Think Vitamin]
• Tables in Web Design: Beautiful Examples and Best Practices [Web Expedition 18]
• The Pros and Cons of One-Page Checkout [Get Elastic]
• How To Test And Increase Page Load Speed [Aussie Internet Marketing]
• Rethinking Forms in HTML5 [Net Tuts]
• Don't Let Customers Abandon Your Cart So Easily [Future Now]
• Principles Of Minimalist Web Design, With Examples [Smashing Magazine]

• Top 5 Ways to Increase and Retain Opt-Ins [Blue Sky Factory]
• Triggered Emails: Low Volume, High Returns [Email Insider]
• The Key to Email Deliverability is Reputation [Marketo]
• 8 Steps to Optimize Your Retail Welcome Email [Exact Target]
• CSS Line-Height Property: Does it Work in Email? [Exact Target]
• How to stop Gmail from adding a margin to your [Campaign Monitor]

• Bing lets shoppers poll their Facebook friends before they buy [Venture Beat]
• Web Analytics: Waiting for the New Federal Government Cookie Policy [CMS Newswire]
• Facebook to Zynga: we're not in Farmville any more [Econsultancy]
• Firefox 4: fast, powerful, empowering [Boy Genius]
• After f8: Personalized Social Plugins Now on 100,000+ Sites [Facebook Developer Blog]
• Comcast to Make Your IPad a Giant Remote [PC World]