Congratulations to the FM Authors who made PC Magazine's list of its 100 favorite blogs:

• The Bargainist: "A true lifesaver in these troubled economic times."
• Boing Boing: "It's all wonderful to us."
• Boy Genius Report: "Manages to stand out in this already crowded sphere."
• Dooce: "She turned that life lemon into Internet lemonade."
• Inhabitat: "The most sustainable -- and coolest -- trends in architecture, fashion, transportation and more."
• Make: "Do-it-yourself projects for the uber-geeky."
• MetaFilter: "From tech to pop culture to politics, sometimes two sentences say it all."
• The Pioneer Woman's Cooking Section: "Seriously intense recipes, with plenty of drool-inducing photos to match."
• Silicon Alley Insider: "The ins and outs of the business side of the tech world."
• TechCrunch: "You don't know what's new in Silicon Valley unless you read TechCrunch."
• Techdirt: "Quick and to the point. That's the kind of analysis Mike Masnick brings to the big news of the day in Silicon Valley."
• Technologizer: "We're just wild about Harry. ... He and his associates hit on everything a consumer or enthusiast cares about."
• Uncrate: "For the unabashedly hard-shopping dude ... coolness, high prices and a splash of testosterone."
• WiFi Net News: "The latest in wireless networking for planes, trains and automobiles (and houses, and offices, and outside)."
• Ask A Ninja: "Where America turns for its burning Ninja-centric questions."

But this one from Brian Morrissey at AdWeek seems particularly prescient to me, and it's exactly what we at FM are seeing in the field.

...old school methods like display ads and microsites will come under pressure. Social media looks set to remain on the top of advertisers' agendas, as they look to apply the lessons of their early missteps in the area while adding real measurement to what have been experimental forays to date. As the Internet becomes more social, there will likewise be an acceleration of a move from purely technical implementations to using the Web's emerging social infrastructure to connect on a more human level.

Here are two great pieces on a question that marketers must answer before getting involved in social apps. The main question is: Do I created a branded application? Or do I engage an existing application?

To answer that question, check out the case study below from FM partner, TVLoop, and an extended piece on the subject via another FM partner, VentureBeat.

TV Loop Blog: Case Study - Delivering Engaging Advertising via Custom Trivia

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the key to driving engaging advertising in social media is to integrate the brand into the product so that it becomes a beneficial part of the user experience. We accomplished that goal with the Scrubs campaign by utilizing a combination of sponsored trivia and fan contests, and the result was an engaged subscriber base and a happy client.

VentureBeat: The plight of branded apps and the future of social marketing

Advertisers need to wake up and realize that an optimal environment already exists on the social web just waiting to be monetized in subtler, more intuitive ways. Not only will these strategies extend their reach by orders of magnitude and save development costs, but will ultimately be more appreciated by their prospective customers.

Two of my esteemed colleagues have weighed in on a misconception that has been promulgating the marketing community: that social media marketing is somehow free. Well, it isn't. Both posts below make great reading. With many, many successful social media marketing executions for major brands under his belt, Pete knows what he's talking about.

Continuous Beta by Pete Spande: Social Media Marketing Isn’t Free but it is Terribly Efficient

The benefit of Social Media isn’t the initial cost it is the return. If you invest time, money, and energy into a conversation with your potential customers you build equity with prospects at a scale that becomes extremely meaningful. As you build these relationships, you gain the ability to get more out of that relationship. They will share their feelings with new prospects, they will defend your brand in place you can’t, and they will amplify your message.

Marketers, I share your frustration of many with the expectation that social marketing equates to (virtually) free marketing and the unrealistic expectations that come along with this. This commonly held perception does open the door to a very compelling discussion around efficiency and value and that is one we all must engage in. Let’s have that discussion.

John Battelle's Searchblog: On Marketing in Social Media, and Meals

Social media marketing is about brands acting, well, social. Which means they need to show up to the party with a nice bottle of wine, if that's what the party calls for. They need to come ready to have a dialog, and add value to the event.

Here's a summary of a great piece in BussinessWeek today with a grand-finale in the block quote below.

Why will online weather the recession better than other mediums? Well...

1. Online has come of age as a medium.
2. It is accountable and engaging.
3. It's an iron law of marketing that word of mouth is the most powerful medium that money can't buy.
4. Marketers are spending digital dollars to create "earned" rather than "paid" ad placements.
5. Online has the capacity to reach consumers with precision at specific points in the buying process.

In short, Madison Avenue won't come out of this ad recession the way it came in. Why would advertisers budget on faith when they could invest in measurable returns? Why would brands lavish dollars on mass media when they could target only those consumers who matter most? Why would marketers continue to allocate less than 10% of their budgets to interactive (in measured media), when consumers are spending more than 35% of their time with interactive platforms even today?

Before the holiday, the WSJ published a piece entitled "The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World." Written by a cadre of very astute academics in technology and marketing, this is a great high-level summary of many of the things we've been preaching here at FM for some time now - definitely worth a read. Below is a summary of the the "secrets" revealed. For more on conversational marketing, see The FM Guide to Conversational Marketing (pdf).

1. Don't just talk at consumers -- work with them throughout the marketing process.
2. Give consumers a reason to participate.
3. Listen to -- and join -- the conversation outside your site.
4. Resist the temptation to sell, sell, sell.
5. Don't control, let it go.
6. Find a 'marketing technopologist.'
7. Embrace experimentation.

Our merry band of Jeffries-tube crawling, server-engine-room-mucking Sysadmins, network architects and significant others dressed up (sort of!) and partied.. well.. like it's 2008, at the Harbour Sixty Steakhouse, mere blocks from that great fortress of glass, concrete, blood, sweat and tears we call the FM Toronto Datacenter. Complete with at-table S'more roasting for dessert.

Check out the video footage of the Need a Tech Makeover contest winners. HotHardware and Intel granted three deserving, cash-strapped winners (a sheep farm, a non-profit theater company and a cancer survivor) complete makeovers with laptops, desktops, video cameras, printers and more.

Click here for the press release with accompanying video footage. Each entry received thousands of votes with the lion's share going to Christine Aerhart with more than 21,000 votes in her favor.

Winning entries:
· Steps Off Broadway, a small non-profit theater company in Bellingham, MA
· MV Fiber Farm, a sheep farm and woolen products producer in Hopewell Junction, NY
· Christine Arehart - a stage 4 cancer survivor from Columbia, SC

Check out Graffiti here. From Time Magazine:

From web applications that enable you to see hundreds of your friends at once, to a way to communicate simultaneously with all your contacts, there are dozens of ways you can scream into cyberspace. These are 10 of the best.