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The Discovery Channel’s Shark Week is now one of the channel’s most popular TV series, and this year they’re promoting the fan favorite with a new Facebook Connect-enabled wesbite called Frenzied Waters.

The site gives you the point-of-view experience of shark attacks over the decades from Jersey in 1916 to the Coral Seas in WWII. The final installment is “My Story”, which creates a personalized video of your own shark attack by integrating data from your Facebook profile. It’s a little spooky, a little disturbing and potentially hilarious depending on the photos that get pulled into the video.

The use of Facebook Connect to give people a more personalized media experience is starting to become more prevalent. In addition to the Shark Week video, the recent Facebook Connect-enabled Doritos iD3 promotion pulls user information into an interactive multimedia game.

There’s no denying that Shark Week is already very popular, but if you aren’t a die-hard fan, you could easily miss it until you stumble across it by accident or hear about it from a friend. Discovery’s use of Facebook to keep Shark Week fresh in viewers’ minds and reinforce the intensity of the series is a good move. Shark Week begins Aug. 2 on the Discovery Channel.

This morning, leading Facebook sports application developer Watercooler is announcing the launch of FanSection Fantasy Football 2009. Fantasy sports games traditionally have offered their players a siloed experience with ten or so players creating leagues and drafting players. But with FanSection Fantasy Football, the fantasy sports experience will involve not only a core group of avid fantasy sports gamers, but their friends as well. Spectators can visit team pages, leave comments, and give out helmet stickers (the equivalent of Yelp compliments) in the new app.

Inside the application, players will be able to interact with all of their Facebook friends by inviting them to be “spectators” of their fantasy teams, posting scores to their own Wall or friends’ Walls to talk smack, answering trivia questions, and getting friends to take part in polls and discussions. In addition, users can track fantasy news from CBSSports.com to obtain updates on what is going on with teams and their players. Partnerships with RazorGator and TeamFanShop have made it possible for users to buy tickets, merchandise, and apparel directly within the app.

In addition to the free game, players can sign up for premium features for a $4.95 fee. The paid version includes Live Scoring, which gives users visibility to real-time stats minute by minute. The whole experience is being sponsored as well – for users 21 and over, the app will be sponsored by Coors Light, the official beer sponsor of the NFL.

With over 25 million users, Watercooler is known for being the leading sports community on Facebook and is now aiming to take the lead in fantasy sports on Facebook as well. The company will primarily be competing against rival Citizen Sports in the Facebook fantasy football market, though several smaller players have built fantasy and pick-em games as well.

“We’ve spent the past few years building up a strong user base that speaks to what fans want to see as part of their social experience with sports,” says Bryan Bennett, VP of marketing and GM of fantasy sports for Watercooler. “Now that we’ve established that relationship with fans, we feel we’re well-equipped with the feedback and backend tools to provide them with the best fantasy football game play possible.”

Fans are counting down to the start of the NFL regular season when Tennessee travels to Pittsburgh on September 10th.

During E3 in June, Nintendo and Microsoft announced that the DSi and Xbox Live would be integrating Facebook Connect this year. Well, in an apparent test before a full North America launch sometime this fall, Facebook Connect is now live in the DSi in Japan.

With version 1.4 of the DSi firmware, users can login to Facebook via the new “F” icon in the DSi’s camera software. From there, users can upload photos to their Facebook profile. Photos uploaded from the DSi appear in a new “Nintendo DSi Pictures” album, much like photos uploaded from mobile devices appear in a “Mobile Uploads” album.

This marks the first time a gaming device has officially launched native Facebook Connect support – something we’re very likely to see more of in the months and years ahead. As games go more social, players will increasingly use Facebook across devices to share content from their favorite games and recruit friends to play together.

Here’s a video of Facebook on the DSi in action:

[images via Joystiq]

Reports from Inside Facebook earlier this year have shown the growth in Facebook use amongst users over 35 and baby boomers especially. Now, a new study from Anderson Analytics shows how different generations are using social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

According to the numbers, the top reasons for joining a social network across all generations are to “keep in touch with friends” and “for fun.” However, as expected, older users are primarily using the site to keep in touch with family.

Generation Z users (13 to 14 years old) use MySpace and Facebook more than any other site in the study by a long shot, with Facebook slightly trailing behind MySpace at 61% to 65%. 9% of this group use Twitter, and none use LinkedIn.

75% of Generation Y users (15 to 29 years old) use MySpace compared to Facebook at 65%. Usage of Twitter (14%) and LinkedIn was up for this group. Respondents in the Generation X (30 to 44 years old), baby boomers (44 to 65 years old), and the WWII categories are more likely to use Facebook, followed by MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In other words, Facebook is becoming a popular site among the older generations – but the more telling stats here would be on growth and engagement.

Research conducted by Facebook’s “in-house sociologist” Cameron Marlow last year and presented in May at the International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media offers some interesting findings on what makes the pages of celebrities, bands or movies grow to large numbers in a such a short time period. The findings aren’t just relevant to the next garage band that’s looking to make it big — there’s a lot to be learned by big brands, as well.

Many brands are trying a little bit of everything these days to get more fans or visitors to their Facebook pages. Some of the approaches are new twists on reliable practices; it’s a no-brainer that everyone loves free stuff. Some are embracing newer approaches with viral videos and guerilla marketing. The one constant is that these brands want to be seen by as many people as possible to up their odds of consumers embracing their respective products.

So how does a page grow, and what influences the rate at which it grows? Should a brand pander to demographics that have been loyal in the past and respond well to their campaigns in other media? Or do brands market to a few key people that they feel are influential in social media and can spread their brand for them (I’m looking at you, Oprah)? The answer seems to be none of the above.

According to the research conducted by Facebook last year, the growth of wildly popular pages was never the result of one single person starting a trend, but rather a page gains followers as “closely connected groups of like-minded people contact one another.”

The findings state, “No single person is accountable for the popularity of a Page; instead, we consistently see that roughly 15% of all fans arrived independently and started their own chains (which merge together as the rest of the fan base takes shape).” That conclusion supports the value of using advertising to seed a Page’s audience.

The one constant throughout all popular pages, whether they have 5,000 or 100,000 fans, seems to be quality of content. Whether it’s a celebrity, band, television show or a major brand, the page must be engaging. There must be something there to make a person want to share that page in his or her Facebook news feed. And if the page is compelling enough, it won’t just appeal to one person or demographic, but will catch the eye of a few different people that share you or your brand as a common interest. And that’s how it all starts.

Fisher-Price has teamed up with AdNectar to launch a virtual gifting campaign on Facebook in anticipation of the Elmo’s Tickle Hands product launch next month. With the Send a Ticklegram application, users can send a “Ticklegram” featuring Elmo Tickle Hands to friends. Those on the receiving end of the gift get an image of the Elmo Tickle Hands accompanied by the unmistakable giggling of Elmo.

While other toy makers like Mattel have created virtual worlds like Barbiegirls.com that have seen positive results, this is one of the first times we’ve seen a toy company distributing virtual gifts targeting parents of the 18M-4Y demographic. The Elmo Tickle Hands are currently the only Facebook virtual gift offering from Fisher-Price, but it seems like a smart move that will definitely appeal to younger parents.

Since there are so few applications designed to promote toys for younger children, this one should get a lot of play, especially given the immense popularity of everyone’s favorite red resident of Sesame Street. It also gives parents a quick and fun opportunity to give their kids an Elmo fix (even though users under 13 technically aren’t allowed to have Facebook accounts).

“Fisher-Price wanted to let users get a sneak peek of the product,” said Nir Eyal, CEO of AdNectar, which focuses on integrating brands into virtual goods apps on Facebook and other social networks. The application went live yesterday, which is also being promoted on the product’s website.

Since Facebook launched its application Platform in 2007, over 350,000 applications have been developed on top of it. As the Platform has grown, so has all the code underlying it. As Facebook puts it, “What started out as a small collection of API methods … has evolved into a comprehensive set of tools and products that have enabled you to create hundreds of thousands of innovative, engaging experiences on Facebook and across the Web.” Anything as large as the Facebook Platform is bound to require maintenance from time to time, and that is exactly what the Platform team announced last night.

Facebook will be refactoring (or reorganizing) their Platform core over the next few weeks, to be completed mid-September. This will allow the company to deliver a more stable Platform, and accommodate future products and services better. Important to note is that these updates are purely back-end related. There are no required changed for applications, other than to keep an eye out for any possible bugs that may slip through the unit-testing cracks. Facebook looks to be updating a new batch of API methods each week, which you can keep track of on the Developer Wiki.

If you happen to spot a bug, you can drop a line to the Platform team in the Developers Forum.

Consumers have always identified with cars, even going so far as to give them their own names. As millions of people become fans of their favorite brands on Facebook, what is the auto industry up to?

According to PageData, auto brands are on Facebook, but with only one brand at over 500,000 fans – Porsche – there is significant potential for growth in this space. Here’s a glimpse of the top Facebook Pages in the auto category:

Facebook Page Leaderboard – Automotive

	Name	Fans
1.	Porsche	529,006
2.	Audi	312,020
3.	Ford Mustang	297,868
4.	VW	270,493
5.	MINI USA	166,348
6.	Chevrolet Corvette	64,562
7.	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution	63,628
8.	Maserati	44,831
9.	Honda Civic	43,382
10.	Volvo	33,936
11.	Toyota Prius	33,002
12.	Gila Motor	17,266
13.	GMC	11,688
14.	Toyota Yaris	10,131
15.	Bathurst 1000	9,555
16.	Subaru Impreza STI	9,080
17.	Mitsubishi Motors Fan Page	7,641
18.	BMW South Africa	7,349
19.	Guate Es Calida’	6,995
20.	Opel Corsa	4,143
21.	Megane	3,776
22.	Fiat	2,850
23.	Nissan Malaysia	2,662

Following Porsche at #1 is Audi at #2 and Ford Mustang at #3. With nearly 300,000 fans, the Mustang Page gained over 3,500 fans this week, growing about 1.2 percent. As you can see from the chart below, Ford Mustang’s following on Facebook is growing by about 500 fans a day. But Ford would be wise to follow our 8 Tips for Effectively Updating Your Facebook Page – the company has only posted two updates this month.

Following Ford Mustang in the Top 5 are: VW (#4), Mini USA (#5). The top 25 also includes Gila Motor (#12), Chevrolet Corvette (#6), Toyota Prius (#11), and Volvo (#10). These brands saw a growth rate ranging from 1.2 percent to 18.7 percent, the latter enjoyed by Gila Motor.

If you take a look at the top automotive Pages, you’ll notice that auto brands have been heavy on sharing videos (commercials) and photos (of their car models) with their friends, but updates to the Wall are sparse. In other words, auto brands are not touching and reaching their fans frequently enough, and Wall posts are not as social as they could be.

Auto brands: think back to BMW and Graffiti’s “What Drives You?” campaign. Or the Prius page is off to a good start with their use of social polls. Prius asks: “If Prius had a flavor, what would it be?”

Note: This post was updated to correct listings in the chart above.

Learn more about building your brand and growing your audience with our comprehensive guide to marketing on Facebook. The Facebook Marketing Bible is available at FacebookMarketingBible.com

Orbitz has launched a new Facebook Connect integration to help anyone making travel plans through the site share their flight and hotel details with friends and family on Facebook.

With the new Connect implementation, Facebook friends are able to see users’ complete travel plans in their News Feed when Orbitz users share those details on Facebook. By clicking on the feed story, they’ll be taken to the Orbitz site, where they can book a similar trip.

While there are plenty of other applications for sharing travel stories and information after a trip is over, this marks one of the few that allows users to make plans before hand. Orbitz has made it easier for groups to make plans together, but further integrations by airlines could make the travel booking experience even more truly social.

Nevertheless, it’s another good example of using Facebook Connect to make sharing easy and safe while still promoting a brand and driving customers to a site.

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