Inside Facebook

Ford is launching a new Facebook campaign surrounding its new 2010 Fusion and Fusion Hybrid, challenging select new Fusion owners and a team of their friends to a series of tasks. The car company’s Fusion 41 challenge will choose eight owners, who in turn will select four friends to help them compete in a “relay race” to display the features of the new Fusion. Everything will be chronicled on Facebook, as well as other social networks.

Fusion owners are encouraged to take a photo of themselves with their four chosen friends and upload the photo to their Facebook profiles, which they must then make public and tag with “Fusion 41.” The application also requests entrants list their accounts across a large number of social networks, like Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and others, to find out just how active the possible contestants are online.

Once the four owners and their teams are chosen, Ford will provide a new Ford Fusion which will rotate amongst the teams members every 41 hours for three weeks. Each time the car changes hands, there will be a new task to complete, including miles logged, number of passengers carried and more. Each challenge will be recorded through Facebook posts, photos and videos. Ford is including everything participants will need to chronicle the events, as well as all the needed gas. The winner will have his or her personal Fusion paid off by Ford, who will also give all the team members free gas for a year.

Ford has a well-established presence on Facebook. The Mustang fan page leading all pages for individual models, with 339,000 fans, according to our PageData service. The company has been committing more to its social media campaigns. See also: The ongoing Fiesta Movement, which is following the lucky recipients of a 2011 Ford Fiesta as they take part in challenges chronicled on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and in personal blogs.