JibJab, makers of widely popular political satire videos and online greeting cards, is debuting its latest video, a satire on President Obama, for the President himself tonight at the 65th Annual Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner in Washington.

In addition, JibJab will be launching its Facebook Connect integration with the launch of the new video. All comments will run across the Facebook Platform, making it easy for fans to share the video with their friends by posting their comments to their profiles.

As a company, JibJab is not new to the Facebook Platform. The company released ElfYourself, a sponsored greeting card application, with OfficeMax last December. The app reached nearly 1 million people on Facebook, and many more on its own website.

Check back later tonight to see the video itself – it debuts around 9:00 p.m. ET.

Update: The video is now embedded below.

This morning, as the fbFund REV summer incubator is still just getting under way, we bring our attention to 2009 fbFund winner NutshellMail, a website that updates you on what’s going on within your social networks in simple email digest form that can be delivered however frequently you’d like. We recently spoke with co-founders (or, in their words Co-Chief Nuts), David Lyman and Mark Schmulen, who shared with us why they started NutshellMail and their plans for the summer and beyond.

Inside Facebook: What problem does NutshellMail solve?

We enable our users to stay engaged in conversation and online activity without being distracted. With Facebook, it’s easy to get annoyed of email notifications and most of them remain unread. By consolidating activity on Facebook – and even Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn – we deliver email digests to users when and how often they want them. As a consequence, our email open rates are high.

The focus of our service is taking information from Facebook and delivering it to people who don’t want to be logging onto Facebook.com all the time to check updates. These days, people use email clients not only to manage email messages, but also for calendaring, contacts, etc. Email has become the central hub for managing life, and we’re filling the hole of managing one’s social networks. The fact remains that email is still the killer app; and with NutshellMail, you can see friend requests, group invites, the News Feed stream, and even like or comment on content all through the context of email.

What types of Facebook users would find NutshellMail valuable?

We listened to users and friends and found that people want to be part of the Facebook conversation, but don’t want it to control their lives. NutshellMail allows you to manage communications on Facebook on your own terms, doesn’t create clutter, and delivers updates to you in a visual way. NutshellMail can also drive traffic back to Facebook’s site.

We’re bridging the gap between social networking activity and the email inbox. There are different types of users that NutshellMail appeals to, but it’s particularly useful for people who belong to multiple social networks, including Facebook, and have trouble staying on top of them. They want to stay highly engaged without getting flooded with too many email notifications. Over half of are users have Facebook linked to their NutshellMail accounts.

A NutshellMail email digest:

What is the process new users go through to get started on NutshellMail?

The first step is to select which social networks you want to integrate with. The second step is to determine how frequently you want to receive digests – from every hour to once a week. The last step is which enter the email address you would like the digest to be delivered to. You can integrate with Facebook directly through our Facebook app as well.

NutshellMail’s Facebook app:

Customizing how often you want email digests delivered to you:

What were you both doing prior to NutshellMail?

David: Mark and I went to UPenn together; and after graduating, I went to Houston to work for Accenture.

Mark: I worked in investment banking at JPMorgan. David and I went to middle school, high school, and college together, and our fathers grew up on the same street in Louisiana. Fast forward, and we’re still best friends and starting a company together. NutshellMail was conceived in college; and since then, we’ve put together a top-notch team.

What’s on the agenda for this summer’s incubator program?

This summer we’ll be working on making the NutshellMail experience more customizable and deciding which additional features to add. As of today, our Facebook implementation provides users with updates on new messages, friend requests, pokes, birthdays, group/event invitations (which you can then add to your calendar), the stream, and status updates.

Do you have plans to go mobile?

Facebook apps for iPhones and BlackBerries are limited in their capabilities, but we’re exploring the idea of using various mobile apps. Most financial institutions don’t permit their employees to access email or social networking sites at work; employees aren’t allowed to integrate personal email or third-party apps on their work phones, so many have purchased a second phone for this reason. This shows you how important it is for people to have access to personal email and social networks throughout the day.

For companies with strict Internet browsing rules, what has the reaction to your product been?

We’ve talked to companies and received positive feedback. One idea for a future revenue stream is building enterprise applications that give companies the means to maintain network security, while still giving employees the Facebook experience the want.

Thanks, David and Mark. Any final thoughts?

Not enough people know about us yet. We’re a free solution that makes life more productive, organized, and engaged.

Thanks to everyone who attended this morning’s Facebook Marketing Breakfast in San Francisco! It was great getting to meet many of you and to see several familiar faces.

The Facebook Marketing Breakfast is Inside Facebook’s half-day event series geared toward bringing together leading brands, Facebook’s own brand market solutions team, and experts from the space for an intimate conversation on best practices and realities of the Facebook marketing landscape.

Today’s event, hosted by Razorfish, included presentations by Trista Handisides, Manager of Brand Market Solutions at Facebook, Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst: Social Computing, Forrester, Michael Brito, Social Media Strategist, Intel, Kevin Barenblat, CEO, Context Optional, and Garrick Schmitt, Group Vice President of Experience Planning at Razorfish.

After the presentations, we concluded with a panel discussion including Betsy Burkett, Senior Manager of Digital Media at Mattel, Karl Long, Social Media Strategist at Nokia, Alyson Hyder, VP Digital Media, Razorfish, Keith Rabois, VP Strategy & Business Development, Slide, Katherine Bateman, VP Marketing, Buddy Media, and Justin Smith, Editor, Inside Facebook, followed by drinks on the Razorfish patio.

Below, check out some photos from this morning’s talks and great San Francisco weather (or view photos on Facebook). Video and presentations from this morning are also coming soon. You can also find tweets from the event at #fmbsf (thanks to @coryobrien for live tweeting many highlights from this morning). We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Facebook Marketing Breakfast San Francisco – June 18, 2009

Garrick Schmitt, Group Vice President, Razorfish

Trista Handisides, Manager of Brand Market Solutions, Facebook

Kevin Barenblat, CEO, Context Optional

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst: Social Computing, Forrester

Justin Smith, Editor, Inside Facebook
Keith Rabois, VP Business Development & Strategy, Slide
Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst: Social Computing, Forrester
Karl Long, Social Media Strategist, Nokia
Betsy Burkett, Senior Manager, Digital Media, Mattel
Alyson Hyder, VP Digital Media, Razorfish
Katherine Bateman, VP Marketing, Buddy Media

Right now, the Facebook Inbox is a catch-all for many different types of messages: personal messages from individual friends, message blasts sent to Groups, Events, and Friend Lists, and Facebook public profile “updates.” Because all of that can get unwieldy, Facebook is about to release new filters to make it easier to manage messages sent yo your Facebook Inbox. Here’s how it will look:

As you can see, Inbox filters have now been moved to the left side of the page to match the Facebook home page. Other notes:

• Notifications, currently a tab within the Facebook Inbox, have been removed.
• Updates from public profiles remain in a separate view from personal messages. Facebook engineer Scott Marlette, who’s been working on the new features, says blasts from Groups and Events will be moved into the “Updates” folder over time as well.
• Public profile update subscriptions will be able to be managed directly from the inbox.
• Entering any keywords into the search box will return all messages containing those keywords in real time.

Facebook hasn’t announced whether or not users will be able to send messages to each other using their Facebook username. For now, Facebook will be using the same UI for choosing friends to send messages to.

The new inbox is currently in testing, and will be rolled out to more users in the “coming weeks,” Facebook says.

In order to make it easier for Persian speakers to use Facebook, Facebook has turned on a “beta” version of the site translated into Persian (Farsi) tonight. Persian is the native language of Iran.

While Facebook users were already translating the site into Persian – as they are with dozens of other languages using the crowd-sourced Translation application which enables users to suggest and vote on translations – Facebook released the Persian version earlier than normal to make it easier for Persian speakers in Iran and around the world to use Facebook.

Facebook says thousands of Persian translations have been submitted by over 400 users so far. Those interested in contributing to the effort can help by using the Translations app. Users have fully translated Facebook into over 60 languages, with many more in process.

If your browser is set to Persian, Facebook should automatically now display the site in Persian instead of English. You can also change your language into Persian by clicking here (or clicking the “Settings” link in the upper-right corner of Facebook and then going to the “Language” tab).

We’re live at the Facebook Marketing Breakfast in San Francisco this morning, where many leading brands and online marketers have converged to discuss best practices and the future of marketing on Facebook. The event this morning is bringing together large brands who’ve been successful on Facebook, Facebook’s brand solutions team, and leaders from the industry, and is being hosted at the San Francisco offices of Razorfish. Here are our live notes from this morning’s discussions.

8:00 am – 9:00 am: As conference participants stroll in this morning, many are meeting and mingling with new people, both in and out of town, over coffee and breakfast. Brand representatives from Coca-Cola, Apple, Microsoft, Clorox, Visa, Bare Essentuals, and many others are here, as well as familiar faces like Zynga and RockYou.

9:00 am – 9:15 am: Justin Smith (Founder and Editor of Inside Facebook) and Garrick Schmitt (Group VP of Razorfish) kick off the conference with a few words. Schmitt sets the tone of the conference by reminding the audience that Facebook is a dramatically changing site, referencing Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comment in an interview that the future of Facebook may not even be in the form of a website. The only constant about Facebook is that it’s in a  state of change, so how does marketing work in the Facebook era?

9:15 am – 9:45 am: First up is Trista Handisides (Manager of Brand Market Solutions at Facebook) on How Brands Can Maximize ROI through Facebook. Handisides discusses how Facebook has made communication more efficient and effective and how this translates into opportunity for brands, and walks through how Papa John’s is successfully marketing on Facebook. Brands have at their disposal a variety of ways to engage in meaningful dialogues with their customers through engagement ads, public profile pages, etc. An impressive stat: 5,947 million minutes per month are spent on the Facebook homepage.

9:45 am – 10:00 am: Michael Brito (Social Media Strategist at Intel) shares the importance of starting a game-changing dialogue with consumers on Facebook. Using Intel’s mass animation campaign as a case study, the first collaborative effort to create an animated movie using story lines and 3D chracters, Brito focuses on the value of the “unmeasurable metric,” which “measures” how brands are initiating 1:1 conversations with their fans. Fortune 50 companies can adopt social marketing strategies that empower teams to go out and engage.

10:00 am – 10:15 am: Kevin Barenblat (CEO of Context Optional) talks about how Context Optional has helped brands such as Target, MTV, Clinique, the Travel Channel, and Palm on their social media strategies. The evolution of social marketing has transitioned from traditional brand marketing to direct marketing such that brands can now send direct messages to their customers. Social marketing is about viral sharing, advocacy, scale, and targeting. Barenblat ends with several best practices – the key words are: simple, appeal, social, addictive, conversational, advocacy, and consistency.

10:15 am – 10:30 am: Jeremiah Owyang (Senior Analyst at Forrester) begins by stating that power is shifting to communities over brands, resulting in communities becoming institutions. Owyang steps us through five eras of the social web: 1) The Era of Relationships, 2) The Era of Social Functionality, 3) The Era of Social Colonization, 4) The Era of Social Context, and 5) The Era of Social Commerce. The impact is that Web content will become increasingly personalized and customized as social data becomes more available. Imagine a world where communities define products … We’re about to get started on our panel discussion!

10:30 am – 11:30 am: Right now, we’re starting our final session, a panel discussion on: What’s Worked? On the panel are Katherine Bateman (VP Marketing of Buddy Media), Betsy Burkett (Senior Manager of Digital Media at Mattel), Alyson Hyder (VP of Digital Media at Razorfish), Karl Long (Social Media Strategist at Nokia), Jeremiah Owyang (Senior Analyst at Forrester), and Keith Rabois (VP of Business Development & Strategy at Slide). Moderating the panel is Justin Smith. A few highlights:

• To have a strong presence on Facebook, brands need to have internal solidarity on their social marketing efforts.
• In the end, it’s all about point of sale: digital marketing is having phenomenal impact on sales – aka using “social” to drive sales.
• So far, Facebook ads haven’t been successful: brands that rely on ads need to join the conversation on Facebook in more ways.
• Social media marketers need to participate in social networks to understand the culture.
• The open Internet always wins: Facebook is a layer on top of the Internet.
• A plethora of communities exist on Facebook: you just need to find them!

That concludes our agenda for the day, and now we’re inviting everyone to mingle some more over snacks and drinks. It’s a beautiful day in San Francisco, and we’re taking advantage of the good patio weather. Thanks to all our readers for tuning in, and photos and video of the event will follow soon.

The New York City Office of Emergency Management recently launched a Facebook Page to help keep the more than 2 million NYC Facebook users up to date on emergency information, community event listings and volunteer opportunities. Development of the page is the result of a preparedness poll in which more than 50% of people said they use Facebook to stay informed on events around the city.

“OEM’s use of technology to serve the citizens of New York City is an excellent example for other cities and emergency management organizations to follow,” said Chris Kelly, Chief Privacy Officer and Head of Global Public Policy at Facebook. “We’re very pleased that Facebook can play a role in keeping New Yorkers informed and safe.”

Around 450 users have already become fans of the OEM page, which features weekly tips about safety and health around the city. There is also a listing of upcoming events around NYC with the option for fans to confirm their participation in the various fairs, street festivals and forums.

During the press conference, the NYC OEM also announced their presence on Twitter and the “Ready New York” video series on YouTube. By using these various social tools, the OEM has a much greater chance of informing NYC residents should an emergency arise. Now, with so many users taking advantage of Facebook mobile applications, the OEM now has a way to reach people wherever they may be without having to use the NYC Alert program, which incurs higher costs and has incomplete coverage.

Government communication tools like these are great services that can be incorporated into the existing pages of cities and towns around the country, and may be especially useful in more rural areas where mass media isn’t as prevelant.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that they had updated the power of FQL (Facebook Query Lanugage) with respect to batching FQL API calls together. Developers already familiar with SQL languages will certainly appreciate this update, as the new query syntax is akin to the logic used in these other languages. Essentially, Facebook is now allowing developers to batch FQL calls together, and reference columns in earlier queries to mimic standard SQL “INNER JOIN” functionality.

Facebook has already provided examples of where this might be useful. The overarching theme of these examples are:

1. Build an initial query to get user IDs in a certain scenario
2. Utilize these user IDs to get information about those users

These two steps are required in almost every significant FQL application, and traditionally required two separate API calls to get the necessary user information. Now, however, Facebook is allowing developers to combine these steps (and as many more as you can think of) into a single API call. This significantly speeds up API calls, even more so than the existing best-practice of using batch.run. The new best practice is to utilize the fql.multiquery API call.

This is the first time that we’ve seen one API method gain more power than another. Traditionally, FQL offered the same amount of power and flexibility as simply using regular API calls such as stream.get and user.getinfo. Now that developers can combine FQL queries into one API transaction, developers would be wise to utilize FQL in their more complex API interactions.

Today fbFund REV officially kicked off. And we’re continuing our look into this year’s 2009 fbFund REV winners by turning our attention to Samasource, one of the two nonprofit organizations that were selected as finalists. Unlike the other 18 winners, nonprofits didn’t receive funding due to the way fbFund is structured, but will be participating in this summer’s incubator program. Based in San Francisco, Samasource is a 501c3 nonprofit that helps businesses in the developing world find clients in the U.S. to do work on a variety on tech-based projects, including Facebook application testing. We recently spoke with CEO Leila Chirayath Janah on the impact that Facebook application development is having in underdeveloped markets.

Inside Facebook: What’s the problem statement that Samasource is addressing?

Leila Chirayath Janah: In our target market, unemployment is 60 percent among university graduates. They were raised on farms; their parents scrimped and saved to send them to school. In Kenya, for example, families spend 277 percent of per capita income on tertiary education, which means families are borrowing and not seeing any financial return after their children graduate. Unemployed young men are the single biggest reason why violence is so prevalent where we work. With no skilled jobs, joining the militia and making money that way is the next best and easiest option. In the developing world, income comes first. It’s what allows people to make investments in health and education and pushes them out of extreme suffering.

How does Samasource create jobs and sustainable living in the developing world?

We work with 13 partners, the majority of which are in East Africa in low-income countries. The average income there is below $900 dollars a year. After going through a thorough Screen and Select process, we offer our partners training in eight highly marketable services (e.g., data entry, Facebook application testing, etc.) that we’ve seen a demand for in Silicon Valley. Because we’re based in the Valley and are connected to this market, we can connect the two ends of demand and supply together. So far we’ve contracted $150,000 dollars of work with both large nonprofit organizations and for-profit companies. One of our clients is Benetech, an amazing nonprofit that has engaged two Samasource partners in Nairobi to do proofreading work.

Where does Facebook come into the picture? How are you leveraging the Facebook Platform to further the Samasource mission?

The idea for our app is to build an interface for developers to get their apps tested, track results, and pay for testing services. There are 57,000 apps on Facebook, and they need to be tested on a regular basis for functionality. We can provide such testing with our network of partners on a regular basis at a low cost. We connect developers to reliable quality testers who understand the Facebook Platform.

What’s the transaction model here, and how do you remain financially sustainable?

Samasource acts as a payment intermediary. Our clients send checks to us and we pass most of it onto our partners. We charge a 10 percent fee just to cover costs.

What is your background in international development?

I spent the last 10 years in international development and management consulting. At Harvard, I studied Africa development and went on to work at the World Bank and other NGOs. I got pretty disillusioned because I couldn’t see the impact fast enough, and I wanted to get out there and get my hands dirty.

In connecting two very different worlds (Africa and Silicon Valley), what’s a myth you hope to dispel?

When people think of Africa, they think of people with their hands out; but really, they are just like us and want opportunities and a leg up. It’s a moral challenge for us to level the playing field of opportunity. Facebook application testing is considered prestigious work in the markets we work in. You’re lucky to get a job where you can work at an office, in front of a computer. If you make $2.50 a day, you’ve made it! 500 people work for Samasource partners; most of them come from low-income backgrounds and are supporting family members. Jobs are mission critical. Money is well leveraged at Samasource; what’s harder to quantify is the dignity we make possible.

How is Samasource different from traditional outsourcing?

It’s silly to use the word outsourcing because it has this connotation of large U.S. companies sending jobs overseas to China and India – and that’s not at all what Samasource does. We handle much smaller projects, between $70 and $100,000. We enable living wages, and that’s no more outsourcing than it is fair trade. There’s also no reason why we can’t work with poor communities in the U.S. I recently went to Mississippi to see if we could extend our model there, training local people to do remote work or bringing women who are stay-at-home mothers into local technology centers. The poor are globally distributed, and there’s a definite possibility to bring our work closer to home.

How did you find the fbFund process this year?

The process was democratic. I think it’s great the fbFund even chose nonprofits at all. By naming us, we get valuable visibility to our cause.

As a nonprofit, how do you feel about the fbFund’s policy toward nonprofit finalists?

fbFund isn’t giving seed capital to nonprofits, which is unfortunate because we need it just as much as anyone else. Dave McClure is committed to nonprofits, but in general it’s an indication of Silicon Valley’s attitude toward the nonprofit industry. Nonprofits can innovative just as much, but it’s for an audience that can’t afford to pay.

Thanks Leila! Any final thoughts?

The most powerful way to alleviate poverty is to give work, not aid. Now developers on Facebook have a way to do that.

Related Articles:

Samasource Brings Sociall Responsible Outsourcing to Facebook Application Development

In a legal battle that began almost a year ago, the latest development in the Facebook vs. StudiVZ case has gone in favor of the German social networking site. On Tuesday, the court in Cologne (in western Germany) wrote:

“Although there are overlaps and similarities between the two sites that are impossible to overlook, no dishonest copying could be established by the judge.”

However, the judgment “is not legally binding” and Facebook can appeal, according to the AFP.

In July 2008, Facebook sued German social networking site StudiVZ for copyright infringement. Facebook alleged that the German company developed a pure knock-off that merely replaced its blue color scheme with a red one, confusing social networking users in Germany.

Before Facebook filed suit, the two companies were apparently in discussions about a potential buyout of StudiVZ by Facebook, but that option didn’t materialize – with StudiVZ’s owner, the Holtzbrinck Grouppe, asking for a price above what Facebook was willing to accept. In November 2008, Facebook reopened its case against StudiVZ for copying its design and stealing its code, but the German court wasn’t convinced for a few reasons, saying StudiVZ launched in 2005 when Facebook was popular mainly in North America, and StudiVZ already had over 10 million users by the time Facebook translated its site into German in March 2008.

To date, Facebook has 2.9 million users in Germany compared to the reported 14.3 million subscribers StudiVZ has across three of its social networking sites: StudiVZ for university students, schuelerVZ for high school students, and meinVZ for the greater population.

The good news for Facebook is that many Germans are making the transition to Facebook anyways. We’ve heard from German users that StudiVZ is stagnating under its new corporate leadership, and as a result many Germans are moving to Facebook anyway.

Related Articles:

• Facebook Sues German Knock-off StudiVZ; Xiaonei Next?
• More Details on Facebook’s Battle With StudiVZ in Germany
• Facebook Audience in Germany Reaches 2 Million Users