NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal is parlaying his success on Facebook and Twitter to peddle Enlyten’s line of diet strips through his Facebook Page. He originally began his sponsorship of the products in March with an announcement on Twitter, and is now using the buzz around his name to push the series of dissolvable strips to his 800,000 Facebook fans.

Shaq is no stranger to product endorsement, from brands like Icy Hot to Comcast, but his association with Enlyten has been almost exclusively driven through social media channels. The initial announcement of his sponsorship came after Shaq released picture of a promotional photo event through his Twitter account. What makes this a little different from Shaq’s other endorsement deals is that he’s not really promoting a particular product, but instead is recruiting people to join the Enlyten distributor network – without going through the process, it’s hard to tell if it’s a standard or multi-level affiliate program.

The Enlyten products are a series of dissolvable strips, with names like Calorie Burner, Electrolyte, Appetite Suppresant and Melatonin. Strips are sold exclusively through independent distributors, and the company is constantly recruiting more sellers. Similar in some ways to AmWay or Mary Kay, this business model is potentially very “social” its nature, so gravitating to social networking sites like Facebook seems like a natural fit. And since Shaq is a master of self-promotion, he’s a great match as well.

Promotion of the Enlyten strips on Shaq’s page has been subtle and well done. He’s worked references and links to the strips into his updates about working out and returning to game shape for the upcoming season following a renewed commitment to fitness after his trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers. Many of his recent updates have revolved around diet and his workout routine, and Enlyten strips have been featured prominantly, especially recently – a Las Vegas launch party for new affiliates is scheduled for August 1.

The case raises interesting questions for the future of celebrity endorsements on Facebook. Will Facebook ever limit the way prominent figures can promote products they endorse through the Facebook stream?

Face.com, the creators of Photo Finder, has just released Photo Tagger, a new application which allows Facebook users to easily tag their Facebook photos and those of friends as well. Photo Tagger uses facial recognition software to scan for photos of you and your friends and then apply appropriate tags to all photos in one step.

The application could be a helpful tool for users with large photo albums or backlogs of pictures without tags. Photo Tagger searches your albums and those of your Facebook friends, grouping individuals in batches. You can then apply any applicable tags to these pictures, and push all the tags onto Facebook at once.

Businesses that have taken large numbers of pictures for events or marketing purposes could also benefit. Adding tagging info to photos helps Facebook Pages’ SEO rankings, and promotes a good amount of traffic. It adds a personal touch to pictures on your page, and clients and employees will both appreciate that you’ve taken the time to note them as participants in your events.

While Facebook got its start on college campuses in the US, today it’s truly become a global phenomenon. Over 250 million people around the world use the site each month. Nevertheless, four years later, many university and college administrators are using Facebook to keep in touch with core constituencies: current students, prospective students, alumni, and fans. Those responsible for managing a university’s official Facebook efforts face a daunting task. Here, Inside Facebook takes a look at six key strategies all administrators should think about when building a Facebook presence.

1. Determine the institutional face and voice of the university on Facebook.

As a university that is looking to establish an identity on Facebook, the first question to contemplate is how to set the institutional tone and voice of your Facebook identity. Unlike other products and services that have a presence on Facebook, pushing promotions and sales don’t really apply. Rather, universities are concerned with upholding and creating their reputations as the leaders in research, innovation, sports, and more – and hoping that each year they will draw a brighter pool of students than the year before.

In addition, university communication programs are often decentralized. A university may operate several Facebook Pages, one for different schools (e.g., education, law, medicine) and different athletic departments (e.g., football, basketball, tennis). This makes it difficult for the official university Facebook Page to ensure that its tone is consistent. It’s important to develop a plan for how you will manage comments that are inappropriate and where you will draw the line between free discussion and making the decision to delete a comment.

2. Understand the power of the stream.

If you’re noticing that your page interactions (e.g. number of likes and comments) are greater than your page views, that’s telling of the fact that more of your Facebook Page fans are engaging with your Page through the stream and not directly within your Page itself. Know that the stream is dynamic, meaning that depending on how many friends or Facebook Pages a fan has, content may drop out of the stream quickly. Universities must be sure to generate content that appeals to a diverse fan base (e.g., prospective and current students, alumni, people from out of state and out of the country) at a frequency that doesn’t feel spammy. You can gauge this by analyzing your Page Insights.

3. Find ways of synchronizing online and offline communications via Facebook.

Universities are unique because some of their most important constituents are current students who live either on campus or in close proximity to it. This makes it possible for universities to take online communications offline and bring offline interactions online. As an example of the latter, Kansas University launched a new feature during its commencement ceremony in May. The university asked its graduates to take photos with their cell phones and email them for posting to its Facebook Page. The university received over 400 photos.

And in the case of online communications informing offline behavior, Ian Hsu, Director of Internet Media Outreach at Stanford, shared with us back in May:

“We’re incorporating Facebook (and Twitter) into our emergency communications plans. In the event of an earthquake or other emergency, we’ll be using Facebook as a key part of our communications mix. It may be the case that someday, a communication through the Stanford Facebook Page could help save someone’s life. In order for this to be effective, it’s essential for us to earn a trusted place in our Fans’ News Feeds today and over time.”

In other words, when you have thousands of students on a communication platform like Facebook, it can become an extremely effective means to spread and receive time-sensitive and critical information. Administrators of university Facebook Pages can award their fans by letting their Facebook communities find out about important announcements first. Kansas University did with the announcement of its new chancellor, Bernadette Gray-Little: fans of the Kansas University Facebook Page were the first of the public to find out.

4. Think about how to develop relationships with prospective students and maintain ties with alumni.

A university may find that many of its fans on Facebook have no official affiliation to the university, like prospective students. On the other end of the spectrum is the alumni community, which has a very strong connection with the university. This is a challenge for universities on Facebook with a diverse fan community: how to talk with fans who are connected to the university in varying degrees.

Similarly, while universities are based in certain locations, in some cases the majority of their audience can be elsewhere around the country or even around the world. Understanding how these individuals interact with your page (Do they like more than the comment? Do they ask questions more than they respond to stories?) will help inform how you can tailor content to their specific points of interest and curiosity.

5. Partner with existing Facebook applications to execute university campaigns.

While it may not make the most sense for universities to develop their own Facebook applications, there may be times when it’s appropriate to partner with existing apps to rally support for particular university campaigns. We’ve seen leading brands and advertisers do this successfully before – BMW and Graffiti, St. Martin’s Press and Visual Bookshelf, Ben & Jerry’s and Causes, etc. – and there’s no reason why universities shouldn’t be experimenting with and testing out application partnerships. CourseFeed, Teach the People, and Check My Campus come to mind.

Stanford University recently used the Causes app to recruit members of the Class of 2009 to donate money to the Stanford Fund. And while this isn’t an application sponsorship, it’s an example of how universities can tap into the user base of apps that are already out there to fulfill certain goals and objectives – in this case, fundraising.  While the results weren’t overwhelming, we see the potential in future such campaigns and are looking forward to seeing more universities getting involved the app landscape.

6. Take advantage of Facebook’s newest features, such as the Live Stream widget.

With universities being a huge generator of online lectures and talks, it’s appropriate to consider how to make these experiences more social. With the launch of Facebook’s Live Stream widget, you can allow your community to watch videos live and actively participate in the discussion with real-time status updates that are linked to Facebook. We’ve seen this done successfully, especially in the TV broadcasting industry – most recently, with Michael Jackson’s memorial service. Brainstorm what opportunities there may be to implement Facebook Connect.

Conclusion

While universities should be approaching their Facebook efforts in unique ways, in the end, the same underlying concepts carry the day: know the tone you are trying to achieve and know how to reach your audience in ways that encourage your fans to participate. Facebook is becoming an increasingly important tool for universities to release with multiple constituencies, and we expect tools supporting those relationships to only be further developed in the future.

Related Resources:

• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

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

If you’re searching for your Facebook friends on Twitter, check out fb140 from Twitter app developer Twables to make the job a little easier.

The service uses Facebook Connect to find and add your existing Facebook friends to your Twitter following list, so you won’t have to hunt through each person’s information to find their Twitter handle. This tool is especially beneficial for those with lots of Facebook friends.

How does fb140 know how to find Facebook friends on Twitter? It looks at the websites field of your Facebook friends’ profiles to find friends that have listed their Twitter URL. It’s a really simple service for now, but could be a helpful way sync contact lists between Facebook and Twitter for those who want to do so.

It’s been just over a month since Facebook launched its username registration process, allowing any user or Facebook Page to get its own unique “vanity” URL on Facebook. Let’s take a look at the latest stats:

1. Over 50 million Facebook usernames have been assigned overall. That’s over 20% of Facebook’s 250 million users – an impressive number since the feature was launched just over one month ago. Since the first weekend of the username landrush in which 6 million usernames were registered, Facebook users have been registering about 1.3 million usernames per day – or nearly 55,000 usernames per hour.

2. Just over 20,000 Facebook Pages have chosen their own vanity URLs. While Facebook did not break out this number, this is our estimate based on PageData stats. If that number seems low, it’s because Facebook still requires that Pages have over 100 fans before they can request a vanity URL. This is down to mitigate username squatting – otherwise, squatters might register thousands of Pages and usernames. However, we highly recommend all Page owners choose a Facebook vanity URL, as choosing the right Facebook username for your Page is an important step toward maximizing your Facebook Page’s SEO.

With Facebook planning to do over $500 million in total revenues this year, one advertising research firm says the bulk of the company’s advertising revenues are coming from local advertisers.

Borrell Associates says that of the $310 million it estimates in total advertising revenue for Facebook in 2009, nearly $230 million of that, or 74%, will come from local businesses targeting Facebook users based on their location. By comparison, Borrell estimates that only 27% of MySpace’s 2009 revenues will come from from local advertisers ($133 million out of total ad revenues of $502 million).

We spoke with Kip Cassino, Borrell’s VP of Research, this morning, and he said the firm reached these numbers by comparing known ad spending numbers by businesses it tracks, and comparing them to published estimated values for Facebook ad revenue.

Overall, Borrell estimates 20% of all social network ad spend will be local this year. That would mean Facebook is winning the local advertising battle amongst US social networks by a long shot. No other social network the company makes estimates for comes in about 15% of total ad revenues coming from local.

If true, that would obviously be a great sign for Facebook Ads. If Facebook can prove to local advertisers that it can generate leads (and demand) efficiently at the local level, it should continue to grow its share of the $150 billion local advertising market in the US as more advertisers come on board and compare Facebook to their existing local marketing channels.

Good news for business, brands, and artists who want to more easily update their Facebook Pages on the go: Facebook for iPhone 3.0, which should be released soon, will include Page updating, according to lead developer Joe Hewitt.

Currently, Facebook for iPhone doesn’t support Pages at all. But with version 3.0, Page administrators should be able to post status updates and photos to their Facebook Page directly from their iPhone.

In addition, Hewitt recently detailed the features that will be included in the Facebook for iPhone 3.0 release:

1. The “new” News Feed
2. Like
3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

Facebook for iPhone 3.0 will include video uploading for iPhone 3GS users.

Nearly 25% of all iPhone users have the Facebook for iPhone app. Page owners will be very happy that they’ll be able to post content on the go when the new version is ready – hopefully in the next few weeks.

Thousands of people across the globe have whole-heartedly embraced The Lying Down Game, a challenge for anyone to create the weirdest, most public, or largest group of people lying face down – and then snap a picture to be posted on Facebook.

The idea for the game originated with a pair of friends, Gary Clarkson and Christian Langdon, from Somerset, England. But, as the latest example of how much Facebook memes can spread, The Lying Down Game group on Facebook currently has close to 34,000 members from all over the world.

Rules for the game are few and simple: the subject must be lying straight, with palms against his or her sides and toes pointing towards the ground. The more public, the better. The stranger the place, the better. The more people involved, the better.

The photo gallery for the page is filled with nearly 7,500 photos of people playing the game. A lot of the entrants appear to be from England, but it’s obvious that submissions are starting to come in from other parts of the globe. There also seem to be a few parents taking advantage of the fact that little children are small enough to lie in some strange places. Place your children precariously on supermarket shelves at your own risk.

Though the group originally began as a competition amongst friends in Northwest England, it has caught on on Facebook like wild fire. After several copy-cat groups popped up, The Lying Down Game opened up to anyone that wanted to take a shot at lying down. It’s only taken a matter of weeks for the group to reach huge numbers, and a lot of the appeal comes from the fact that anyone can participate. There are no special skills needed, just a camera and a Facebook account. So get creative, eat some dirt, and join in the fun.

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, July 13

• Crazy Planets: A Detailed Look at The Latest Facebook Game From Playfish
• Outspark Raises $8.3 Million to Grow Virtual Goods Gaming Business
• Heyzap Building Casual Game Widget Platform (with Virtual Currency Payments, Too)

Tuesday, July 14

• Ngmoco’s Plus+ Platform Bringing Social Features to iPhone Games
• hi5 Expands with Downloadable Games from RealNetworks

Wednesday, July 15

• Chinese Game Stocks Drop Amidst Virtual Currency Legal Worries
• With FarmVille, Zynga Joins the Facebook Farming Fray

Thursday, July 16

• Moblyng Launches Cross Platform RPG for Facebook, iPhone, and Android
• Offerpal Launches New Virtual Currency Anti-fraud System

Friday, July 17

• Earthkeepers Hero: Mission Possible is an Eco-Friendly Facebook Trivia Game from Timberland
• Zynga Files Several More Trademark Infringement Lawsuits

Good news for those developers who’ve been waiting to use the announced stream publishing API: the method no longer requires acceptance to Facebook’s white list for use with the general Facebook public.

The stream.publish API call allows an application to publish updates directly into a given user’s stream automatically once given permission. Previously, while the API call was in beta, developers were required to apply to be accepted onto the white list if they wanted to use the call beyond developers of their application.

Facebook hasn’t officially announced that the feature is out of beta – however, the white list requirement has been removed from the Developer Wiki page, and we can confirm that applications in general are now able to publish to any user which has authorized the application to do so.