Marcia Conner is a partner at Altimeter Group and the co-author of “The New Social Learning.” She blogs at http://learnativity.com/ and tweets as @marciamarcia.

The book is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about how companies can leverage social technologies and tools to become, well, better companies. I asked Marcia a few questions to go deeper into some of the topics on the book, and here’s what she kindly had to say.

1. If social learning is truly a competitive advantage, how can companies that are late to the game differentiate and compete?

The competitive advantage doesn’t come from the technologies themselves associated with social learning. It comes from the expertise and perspective your people have today that’s often never shared with anyone or put to use in the organization. Social media tools can provide venues for people to connect in ways they hadn’t before, differentiating an organization by the quality and brainpower of their people who now can build new approaches together that they couldn’t before.

2. In today’s culture of sharing, does it make sense for companies to publicly display real-time information about how they are performing and how consumers are talking about them on the social web?

Customer perception — heck, even employee perspective— has been posted on bulletin boards and user group meetings for years. If you don’t believe that, google your company then read 10 or even 20 pages into the search results to see all of the places where you’re talked about now. The trouble with many of those venues is that they are only from a narrow slice of your customers, often without additional insights from people within your organization who have additional information. By engaging with those people in those spaces… or better yet, creating venues for a healthy conversation about what you are doing right and what you need to improve upon, you are far more likely to learn from people’s experiences and correct misperceptions and give people with alternative (and possible more favorable) views a chance to weigh in too.

3. What is needed to inspire and create change at companies with an “anti-social” culture?

I’ve worked with many organizations who consider themselves anti-social because their work is either solitary or senior leadership is very button up… or because middle-management has instilled a sense of fear in the ranks that talking with one another is grounds for dismissal. Each of these needs to be addressed slightly differently.

In the first situation, find bright spots where people are working together and learning from one another despite their individual paths. Use these as exemplars to find more opportunities to cross-pollinate ideas and build relationships between shifts, in common areas, or across online communities where people can congregate in the little moments between other tasks.

If senior leaders are modeling behavior that doesn’t appear to be social, and yet they are interested in fostering a more socially oriented culture, ask them to demonstrate some of the relationship work they do behind the scenes. Perhaps they are active in a community organization where they show a different side of their personality. Encourage them to participate in online social networks where they can be their introverted selves but in a more open and engaging way. Find ways to help them show a side that is committed to working in different ways.

And in the last situation, where there is a fear-based culture because people in the middle feel social is contradictory to productivity, work with senior management to reiterate the disconnect with the larger vision of a more social culture. Actively eliminate roadblocks in people’s path to work together by publicly changing rules and policies that stymie collaboration—and adopting ways of working that more accurately support people’s natural tendencies to learn from one another. You might not, at first, get the buy in or support of people who have been silenced for a long time but you will get newer hires to work in engaging ways, and that alone has the power to shift culture in less time than forcing people to work in ways they don’t believe will be well received.

 I’ve conducted collaborative culture audits with dozens of organizations and almost all of them at first showed an inclination to distrust anyone overly social or relationship oriented. Over time, with specific steps and activities, often with the assistance of easy to use and mobile social technologies, they each became more mindful of what social really means (interacting to get work done) and saw it as an opportunity rather than something to avoid.

4. From SharePoint and LotusLive to SocialText and SocialCast, enterprise collaboration platforms within the firewall are getting quite advanced. What key elements are important when considering these and which do you think is the leading product today?

Each enterprise collaboration tools you mention has pros and cons, environments where they are better suited than one of their competitors, so it would be shortsighted to say one is the leading product today. Having said that, though, I believe it’s important for organizations to carefully consider their culture, their resources, their objectives, and the gaps they are trying to bridge when making a decision on the right tools for their environment. Are they looking for an on premise solution because they have the people to manage the systems? Would a SaaS implementation free people up to focus on business processes and making strides in workforce productivity? Do workers expect one interface where they can access every type of information flow or will they be comfortable using different tools for different activities? These are the types of questions organizations should consider when discerning what’s best for them.

5. What role do executives have in social learning? Do they only provide direction or should they lead by example?

Executives are learning today socially whether they recognize that or not. They learn from their management teams, from fellow executives in other companies, and from being active members of the world around them. While they provide direction to others, if they don’t demonstrate to those that work with them and for them that learning and relationship-building are important, they can undermine their guidance and miss a critical opportunity for people to learn from them too.

6. There are many monitoring tools out there, but they often lack in engagement, social CRM, and analytics capabilities. Do you think they will expand into these areas or will the industry remain fragmented for a while?

Organizations are often so trapped in their fear that relationship-building is anti-productive that they haven’t even begun to consider some analysis of the payoff from those engagements might prove otherwise. This becomes a chicken and the egg dilemma. Organizations are expecting analytics and useful measures of the gains made by working together… and because that level of monitoring isn’t yet widely available, leaders continue to focus on what they fear will happen. Until social technology vendors, on their own, deliver measurement capabilities (and ways to put those metrics into context that proves meaningful, not just numbers for counting’s sake) and up the conversation about the deep change these tools can create, the industry will remain fragmented and there will always be an err of mystery about the value of these tools.

7. In terms of Social Analytics, what should companies with social presences be measuring?

Organizations using social technology to connect people within their ecosystem should, at the least, measure four things:

1) Initiative (how many people logged in)

2) Persistence (how many people came back, presumably because they found value)

3) Connection (how the network expanded)

4) Technology Transition (fewer documents sent across email, for instance).

These four measures will demonstrate to those needing numbers to perceive value that change is underway. It will also begin to create conversations about the usefulness of legacy practices and the multiplier effects of expanding relationships.

The transparent nature of social media makes it easier to measure what’s going on because it can be observed and tracked. For instance, you can analyze what people are searching for and map what they find. You can analyze not only where people go with their social tools, but also how they get there, how long they stay, and what they do when they are there. Although this does not verify the transfer of knowledge or skills, it is a pretty good indication.

The next level of measurement look at functional outcomes rather than simply asking, “Did they engage?” There is little value to the organization if people don’t apply what they take in—put into practice what they learn and how their decisions have been informed. The best measures go the next step to connect using new skills and knowledge with how they affect measures such as the bottom line.

8. By 2014, aprox half of the workforce will be Millenials. Many such Millenials have grown up with video games like Halo, Counter Strike and World of Warcraft. How can companies introduce gaming mechanisms to encourage collaboration and learning?

Children and animals don’t play because they have free time. They play to move through developmental stages and to learn from one another how to interact and how to grow strong. With that knowledge, organizations can introduce more playful practices — be it pool tables in break rooms or races to see which team can come up with more novel ideas to vexing organizational problems. Video games can be introduced in leadership development, customer service training, and even program bug hunts to extend those practices and connect with young workers who enjoy games. Just don’t convince yourself that video games are required to engage a young workforce. Playful, interesting, meaningful work, where people can learn new things and connect with people around topics that matter to them will retain them for a long time.

9. It seems “immersive environments” like Second Life have lost some of the appeal from some years ago. Why is that?

Social tools these days are getting lighter and more mobile, being used to augment work, not as the activity itself. Many of the virtual immersive environments still require a great deal of processing power and big displays that don’t fit easily in a purse or a pocket. This means that the tools providers are either going to need to create an even more captivating and compelling reason to use their tools—or they are going to need to find ways to miniaturize the experience or find ways to take it with you through projection or augmented environments.

10. Should social learning be led by cross-division teams or should it be ”owned” by a specific division/group?

The idea any group or cross-division team can own social learning is like asking one department to be responsible for organizational health. The only people who can own social learning are the individuals who themselves are learning each day, from one another, based on their work and in the flow of work. One department can set strategy and review tools, and even document and advertise healthy social learning practices, but at the point when they give the impression it is their responsibility to manage the learning, they step back in time to an age when we thought training (or knowledge management, or human capital development, or..) was a discreet set of activities and events that could be turned on and off like a light switch. Rather, learning and collaboration are ongoing actions taken by individuals in concert with one another to produce something greater than anyone alone could create. And that is owned by (and directed by) every individual all of the time. Remove the obstacles in people’s paths to do what is hardwired into their DNA—to learn together to grow strong—and you’ll find it creates healthy organizations where social learning is their lifeblood.

Google Buzz has created some buzz in the past couple of days. A Twitter killer it is not, but it is definitely the most exciting social web service I’ve seen since FriendFeed. Tim O’Reilly has said that Google has “taken the social media lessons of Twitter,” and Jason Calacanis thinks “Google Buzz 1.0 is better than Facebook after six or seven years.”

Not only does Buzz combine some of the best aspects of Google Wave, FriendFeed, and Twitter, but it’s also built into GMail. By adding the mobile component (so we can take it anywhere), and integrating feeds from Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, and Blogger (so we can pull outside content), Google Buzz starts to sound like a very promising service of its own, and not just another GMail feature.

But the question that everyone is wondering about is:  Can Google really create a new social network that people will want to use?

It is true that Google has failed at many, if not all things social in the past, but this time it seems different. From day one, Buzz already makes great use of multimedia, is open to anyone, makes use of @ replies (ie. @socialnerdia@gmail.com), and allows us to have conversations in real-time.

So, with early adopters rushing to test, criticize, and/or embrace Google Buzz, should companies be creating accounts just as they have done on Twitter and Facebook?

Traditionally, companies have been slow to join social networks. The idea of unproven and confusing new social services creates unwillingness to jump in until other companies have. But with a rapidly changing and increasingly social online landscape, it is essential to understand the things that people are doing. In order to really “get it” companies could spend months researching, brainstorming, and strategizing. Or they could just do what regular people do: Jump in and experiment.

Earlier today (well, technically yesterday), I opened up an account on behalf of Samsung USA. If you have not read my blog before, I recently joined Samsung as Social Media Manager; exploring new technologies and services is part of what I do for a living now.

In the first two hours I posted a few thoughts and started commenting on other postings, similar to how I usually interact on Twitter, but mostly focused around how Google Buzz works. I started following some of the people I usually think of first on Twitter. I figured I could try to do a #followfriday, even though I know Google doesn’t support it in the way that Twitter does. So I “@ replied” some early adopter “buzzers” who were posting interesting things on Google Buzz and added a tag with meme potential: #BUZZwednesday.

After a couple of hours of playing with Buzz I decided to head out for a work out. On my way back, I received a “kudos” tweet with a link to a TechCrunch article. The title and link worried me at first, but it made sense once I started reading. Apparently MG Siegler, one of the “buzzers” I had written about had posted screenshots and thoughts about our Samsung buzzing. While the @ reply was what made MG aware of us, it was also what led him to think that “this” could “get annoying” because it so happens that when you @ reply someone on Google Buzz, it sends them an email that appears on Gmail’s Inbox.

And I agree, it could get annoying, but not because of brands or people commenting and @ replying, but simply because Google still has some work to do in regards to how it organizes and helps us filter data. LifeHacker has some tips on how to filter it yourself, but I believe Google could help us out a bit.

Google is probably actively paying attention to what people are saying and how they are using the service. From Kevin Rose and Chris Pirillo to Robert Scoble and Dan Schawbel, everyone has great ideas about what Google Buzz could or should be. We are all starting to wonder if we will see clients like Seesmic for Buzz, as well as opportunities for third party apps, integration with monitoring services like Sysomos, and all kinds of other things.

As for me, I intend to continue to explore Google Buzz. I really think everyone working in business, marketing, advertising, customer service, and anything related to the web, should start exploring as well.

Google Buzz is great for personal use, but it will also evolve to be a good place for companies to listen and engage with people. As cheesy as that may sound, “listening” and “engaging” with customers and potential customers could be more valuable than what we have typically come to know as marketing.

I’m very proud to work for a company that embraces the future of the web and is willing to explore areas that are still “unproven.” I’m also proud that Samsung was the first major brand to give Google Buzz a try. It was very cool to see that many of those already on Buzz were not only welcoming, but also highly encouraging of brands like Samsung joining in:

Disclaimer: I am a Social Media Manager for Samsung Electronics. While I am employed by Samsung, the views expressed on this blog are mine and do not necessarily reflect the views of Samsung.

Web 2.0 tools and technologies, things like blogs, wikis, podcasts and RSS, are changing the way companies communicate and collaborate, both internally and externally with customers, partners and suppliers. In last night’s The Social Nerdia Show! I was able to speak with Michael Chui about how companies can successfully leverage Web 2.0 and social media. Michael, a McKinsey & Company consultant serving technology and telecom clients, has been co-leading research on emerging long-term technology trends and their impact on clients and some of this research can be found on studies published by The McKinsey Quarterly, including “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work.”

Listen to the entire conversation with Michael on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to our shows on iTunes, stream from mobile phones on Stitcher, and listen LIVE on blogtalkradio.

For the past 3 years, Michael and his McKinsey team have been surveying over 2000 executives on their use of Web 2.0 in the enterprise. “There has been an evolution; the number one thing that has changed over the years is continuing adoption and usage,” Michael explained.

As more and more enterprises experiment and deploy the tools, it seems like more of them are starting to realize their real value. Michael explained that the results are impressive because “two thirds of respondents actually reported driving real business benefits from the use of Web 2.0 in the enterprise, which is quite a powerful result.”

Some of the benefits discovered include an “increase in speed to access knowledge and expertise, increase in cost-savings related to communication and travel, increase in employee satisfaction, and increase in the effectiveness of marketing and customer satisfaction.”

Regarding how companies should encourage participation, Michael described Web 2.0 technologies as “essentially a bottoms-up technology.” He continued to say that companies “need to make the technology available and need to recognize that leadership is important” while at the same time predicting that “some of the best uses are not ones that you can predict.” So, leaders need to support participation and listen to how the participation is occurring so that they can “follow where the supporters go” instead of forcing them to go in the wrong direction.

Some companies are quite prone to collaborate and it will be more difficult to balance between freedom and control. I asked Michael how a company that doesn’t have a Best Buy-ish culture, with a ‘Twelpforce’ Twitter-savvy organization full of passionate geeks (I mean that in a very good way), could approach social media. Michael responded that it’s true that “the most successful companies are ones which have cultures that are compatible with sharing and collaborating with each other and breaking down silos between organizations.” However, he also said that “it is possible for organizations to transform themselves” and “in order to be successful you might need to have a culture shift.”

That cultural shift will often include the unlocking of participation within the organization. Note that Michael said “unlocking participation,’ not ‘generating’ it. He has concludes “sometimes companies may be unlocking latent capabilities that were there already.”

Here are some steps that companies can take to become more participatory in nature based on Michael’s recommendations:

1. Make the tools available
2. Have real leadership that recognizes that a cultural shift must occur
3. Support that cultural change within the organization
4. Start small
5. Experiment
6. Scale
7. Allow employees to share, collaborate, and expose their thoughts

In addition to these steps, companies might understand what motivates their employees to participate. He explained that “you don’t (necessarily) have to pay people, it’s not the most powerful incentive… status and recognition is often much more powerful than filling someone’s wallet.” And once people are participating, you need to make it a part of your employees’ workflow. “That is the real key to getting critical mass,” Michael explained.

Regarding corporate blogs, Michael said that they continue to increase in use. “Corporations do have a need to make sure that their official messages are in fact their official messages.” More importantly, “if a blog is the CEO’s blog or another executive’s blog, it must be authentically theirs. It’s absolutely imperative.”

The world is paying attention and a company’s communications must not only be consistent, but they must be authentic, open, honest, and often transparent. With the advent of social media, authenticity is no longer an option. For a large multinational, social media is “a wake up call” because the message is no longer controlled by “the people that can buy air time on television.”

Michael said that companies need to understand that conversations are happening, and once they understand this, they need to figure out how they are going to be part of such conversations. He described the current state of the world wide web: “There really is a many-to-many world out there. There is a blogosphere. There are millions of people on Twitter and sharing things on Facebook.  That doesn’t mean that if you have 150,000 employees, you should let them all blog. That rarely is the right answer. Some companies have been very effective in enabling relatively small productive social media group to both have sensing function to know what’s going out there and engage in conversations.”

Michael mentioned that it is important for companies to not just experiment but also scale. “Figure out what’s working and then do a lot more of it. That’s a lesson that a lot of leading edge companies have been able to implement.”

As Web 2.0 and social media tools gain usage, it is easy to start thinking about what Web 3.0 will bring. Michael has concluded that we are still in the early stages of these technologies and only now “starting to figure out how to enhance collaboration and how to be more effective and productive.”

However, there are some elements that we can expect to be part of the Web 3.0 or Web Squared evolution will bring. “The combination of mobile and location information, augmented reality, all of these things can be social-enabled; different screens, from the laptop to the lean-back television becoming a lean-forward experience, the small mobile device to the more tablet-sized device and the Kindle form factor. All of those technologies can be social-enabled. Devices can be for sharing as much as they can be for creating content and consuming content.”

Technologies and devices can be social-enabled. The question is, are you social-enabled?

Everyone’s been talking about oneforty, a Twitter marketplace of sorts that was announced by Laura Fitton (“Twitter for Dummies” author) earlier today, and the buzz is well deserved. After a quick beta sign-up, a couple of emails and a long list of Terms of Service, the oneforty lets you into what may be the first decent Twitter app collection (or “outfitter“) out there.

oneforty is currently tracking about 1350 apps/services/shorteners/clients (and growing) with detailed info about each one, including press mentions, related tweets, and sometimes even screenshots. It even gives the ability to donate to the developers.

The site’s best feature is the easy-to-use reviewing system (1-5 star rating), which I’m assuming is what drives the “most popular” list that includes well-known services like Bit.ly, Tweetie and TwitPic. No surprises in the popularity list (same goes for the “essential”/recommended apps), but the idea of finding new services  is what will motivate users to check out a Twitter marketplace.

Here are 10 apps that I didn’t know about until I checked out oneforty:

TwitBlock (for Spam Blocking) helps you analyze a specific account to see if it is a “bot or not.” It also lets you find out if your followers are displaying signs of “spamminess.” This is useful since we all know that spammers are alive and well on Twitter. The coolest thing though is to try to see if any of your real friends are part-time spammers. My only problem with TwitBlock is that it is slow (too slow) and doesn’t let you easily block.

Who Should I Follow? (for finding new people) helps you identify people you might be interested in following. I was skeptic about this one, but the resuts were pretty good and seemed to combine people that had similar interests, followed the same people or lived nearby. Still, I’m not so sure the site deserves to have “should” as part of its name and it doesn’t help much with the following since I wasn’t able to do that without having to go to Twitter.

TwtPoll (for surveying) helps you create polls, along with a temporary short url like this one: http://twtpoll.com/3zvbti . The site lets you select different kinds of questions and determine vote allowances, and lets respondents retweet, comment and share elsewhere.

What’s Your Tweet Worth? (for net-present-valuing) helps you put a price to your Twitter account. Apparently, my account is worth a little over $150 a month. Unfortunately, the site has no way of valuing the brand itself so obviously they missed the real market value of my account.

unTweeps (for better unfollowing) helps you discover people who haven’t been tweeting lately and better manage streams. This one is really easy to use (simply uncheck results) and it seems to be good to find out how many of your real friends aren’t really into Twitter. Update: I really like this service, but they charge after you use it a few time $5 per month? They have to be kidding..

Peekr (for sneaking a peek) helps you see Twitter backgrounds in their entirety. It sounds silly at first, but the fact is that a simple drag to your tool barlets you see Twitter in a whole new way. I can imagine other great services inspired by this incredibly simple in-browser bookmarklet.

CouponTweet (for deal searching) helps you find coupons, discounts and offers that others are tweeting about. I like the look and feel of the site, which lets you search by keywords or browse by store, but I didn’t find a good deal for the particular restaurant I was thinking about so it has its limitations.

Favstar (for following crowds) helps you see the most favorited tweets across Twitter at any moment. It also lets you see how/if people are marking your tweets as favorites. The interesting about this one is that people don’t usually “favorite” a tweet for others to know so this one provides unique insight.

Open Brands (for brand sport-monitoring) helps you follow brand conversations in real time. While searching for brand mentions is not difficult, it’s not bad to have a site that has them all in one place, while providing some additional insight such as “brand metrics” and “top influencers.” I only wish you could also see results by category (I’d like to see how all competitors in one category are doing against each other at any given point).

MicroPlaza (for news finding) helps you see what your friends are considering buzz worthy. While slow, when the site works it does it quite nicely, showing you “titles” that your network is talking about. There’s also a bookmarklet that retweets whatever site you are in.

Facebook has finally done it. The company not only reached the 300 million user mark but it also achieved its positive cash-flow milestone last quarter (ahead of schedule), according to Mark Zuckerberg’s blog posting on Tuesday. Here’s a look at five smart things they did right  to get to where they are today.

1. Opening Up to Everyone

Facebook started as a social network for Harvard students in 2004. After signing up over half of the Harvard undergraduate population in one month, the site opened up to other Boston and Ivy League universities. The site continued to spread through schools around the nation (including my very own SMU) and opened up to High School students by 2005. Today, Facebook is not only open to anyone around the world, but it has also opened itself so that its users are searchable by nonmembers. More importantly, Facebook grew in both features and popularity by opening itself to others. Mobile web sites and apps are available on all major mobile OS platforms. Developers have created apps like iLike, Scrabulous and Fan Check. Companies like Apple and Microsoft have leveraged Facebook’s API to connect to the site through products like iTunes and the Xbox 360. Thousands of web sites like Hulu and blogs like Mashable have allowed users to leave comments using their Facebook accounts via the now multilingual log-in system that we’ve come to know as Facebook Connect. And let’s not forget that it was Facebook Connect that enabled the last push for Facebook to surpass MySpace’s traffic in the U.S.

2. Becoming the Anti-MySpace that Doesn’t Sell Itself Short

Michael Arrington once said that Facebook had become the “Anti-MySpace” by deciding to open itself up. Just as Facebook didn’t follow in MySpace’s paranoid footsteps (remember how MySpace was so threatened by PhotoBucket that it acquired it in 2007?), it also did not flirt with large corporation that would swallow it. With rumors of Friendster being interested to pay upwards of $10 million, the News Corp. acquisition of MySpace in 2005, and Yahoo!’s offer of up to $1 billion in 2006, Facebook must have felt a little tempted. Still, Facebook focused on its site and its users and Zuckerberg’s words on July 17, 2007 have been proven to be true: “We’re not really looking to sell the company… We’re not looking to IPO anytime soon. It’s just not the core focus of the company.” With 1000 employees and a predicted $500 million in revenue for 2009, it is clear that MySpace is history.

3. Learning from Twitter and Acquiring FriendFeed

Today, Twitter is Facebook’s biggest threat. Sure, Twitter has a much smaller user base and very different functionality, but Facebook has had to learn much from the so-called microblogging site that has taken the world by storm since SXSW in 2007. For example, Facebook’s addition of vanity URLs and the recent launch of a Lite version that is simpler, cleaner, and speedier (kind of like Twitter without the Fail Whale). The announcement of “@ Mentions” is a straight up copy of Twitter’s “@ Replies” and an expected move since Twitter users on Facebook have been entering non-functional “@” symbols for a while now. But perhaps the most strategic move has been the acquisition of FriendFeed. Facebook had been copying some of FriendFeed’s coolest functionalities (comments and liking are FriendFeed-inspired), so it made sense to acquire the company for its talented group of engineers. Facebook’s chase after real-time (which was a popular topic at TechCrunch50) is not new but it is now aggressively pursuing it; starting with the announcement of Tornado, an open-source framework created by the FriendFeed team that allows for thousands of simultaneous transactions and powers real-time functionality.

4. Making Social Media Marketing a Reality

Today, everyone claims to be a “social media expert” and Facebook is partly guilty of this flooding of gurus. Anyone with a few dollars is able to place targeted text and image banner ad on Facebook, and anyone with a couple of minutes can create a Page that others can “fan”. The word itself was a brilliant move on Facebook’s part because marketers love the idea of “fans” that spread positive messages and experiences virally. Brand pages have become so integrated with marketing campaigns that they have become the center call to action of campaign’s like TGI Friday’s recent push of its Jack Burger. Facebook users can also create Groups for pretty much anything, including love for companies and products. And, if that wasn’t enough, Facebook is experimenting to allow users to buy products from 3rd parties (imagine full catalogs and check out options on a retailer brand page), as well as new payment options for virtual currency and virtual gifts (imagine revenue-sharing agreements with cell phone companies and the ability to use Facebook currency outside the social network).

5. Removing “The” from “The Facebook” and Moving to Palo Alto

One of the least known facts about Facebook is that it actually started as “The Facebook“. You might not even know that www.facebook.com was previously owned by a company called AboutFace. AboutFace, a company that sells HR solutions, including an “Employee Facebook,” first obtained the domain in 1998 and held it until the middle of 2005. The company still offers their original ”Employee Facebook” on their web site. You can see screenshots from back in 2002 here and here. AboutFace has barely done any changes to its company web site, but I’m sure they wonder if they could have sold the domain to Facebook for a whole lot of money (or more money if they did sell it) before Facebook finally took over the domain in August of 2005. This decision to go with the name “Facebook” instead of “The Facebook” might seem like a simple branding choice, but I believe it was the beginning of Facebook’s wise decision-making. And moving to Palo Alto? Well, that was just common sense.

Conclusion

Facebook is not done growing and enhancing itself. The company just announced that it will extend its chat functionalities to enable voice chats over a browser plug-in from Vivox (which will certainly create a clear alternative to Skype and even phone calls) and that it is letting us get a glimpse of what is to come through the launch of Facebook Prototypes, including a “Recent Comments Filter”.

Whether they will be able to become a profitable company in the long-term (whether they IPO or not) and expand in Google-like ways is still to be seen, but Facebook’s focus on users has taken it where other social networks can only dreamed of. It is no coincidence that despite privacy concerns, Facebook is today one of the top 10 most trusted web sites, according to a study by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe.

Facebook might some day become yet another failed social network, but if 300 million users and a positive cash flow are indications of its future, I am willing to bet that skeptics and critics are going to be quite surprised with where Facebook goes in the next 5 years.

Netvibes is releasing “Drag and Follow” widgets today, July 16th at 9am PST.

I recorded my phone conversation with Freddy Mini (Netvibes CEO) so you could hear the news (and details) directly from him.

Press play below to listen:

[audio:http://socialnerdia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/netvibes_dragandfollow_social_nerdia.mp3]

I gave it a test drive and I must agree with Freddy that it is very easy to use. A simple drag and drop from a hashtag or avatar on Twitter opens up a brand new widget so you can follow that topic or user.

Along with that, Netvibes is releasing a new version of the Facebook widget that has the real-time news feed, is “drag and follow” capable, and is “totally integrated with Facebook Connect“. The “drag and follow” widgets also work for MySpace if that’s your kind of thing.

Freddy told me that “if people love it, we can make it work on anything,” and he gave me an example of what that could be. Listen to the conversation for an example of potential uses around news and search.

By the way, the new feature will be automatically added to your account so you won’t have to do anything to try it out. New users will also find it available immediately. You can check out our Social Nerdia Netvibes page to get started.

Netvibes is trying to learn a few moves from the Amazon playbook by analyzing the widgets you already have and comparing them to others you might also appreciate. The company is calling it “Talk to Me” and it is basically a new feature that recommends widgets:

“Netvibes Talk to Me is the first widget recommendation and distribution engine that performs on-going, intelligent analyses of users’ widget behavior and the context in which widgets are used to deliver individually personalized and perfectly relevant widget recommendations.”

If you are on Netvibes and are yet to receive recommendations, you should be getting them by the end of the week. Keep in mind that all recommendation engines have their faults. So, if you don’t like one of the recommendations simply close it and kiss it good-bye. The good news is that Netvibes recommendations get better as you accept or reject them.

But what if you have so many widgets that you feel like it’s all getting cluttered? Netvibes Labs has a project called Spring Cleaning, which displays widgets you might not need anymore. You can then archive them and/or delete them. The Spring Cleaning page says the following:

“The application will analyze all your feeds and sort them in four categories: feeds you have never read, feeds that are older than 30 days, feeds that are older than 6 months and feeds that are older than one year. Once the analysis done, it lets you decide which feeds you want to remove.”

So, now you can get rid of your old widgets and replace them with new ones based on recommendations. “Talk to Me” plus “Spring Cleaning” is a nice little combo.