Over the weekend I wrote an article about Facebook’s mobile plans, particularly that they are working on a branded mobile phone. Facebook said the story was innacurate, despite CNET, Alley Insider and others writing independent stories confirming that Facebook was working on a phone. We responded aggressively. Facebook reached out to us on Monday to clear the air, and invited us to Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California to speak to CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly about Facebook’s mobile plans. Jason Kincaid and I spoke with Mark for about half an hour. 

There are some really fascinating things in this interview though.

Say “F**ck You” to Cancer via Facebook or Twitter with New Campaign

If you or a loved one is suffering from or has suffered from cancer, instilling you with an overwhelming urge to curse the disease out, you’re in luck. F**ck Cancer, a non-profit foundation, has launched a month-long campaign called F-tember during which it plans to raise awareness by asking folks to donate their Facebook and Twitter statuses to the cause.

F**ck Cancer has teamed up with Invoke, an interactive agency, to create a Facebook () app to educate folks about cancer.

“Invoke loves getting involved with feisty causes and F**ck Cancer’s approach is fresh, attention-grabbing, and lends itself to a plethora of creative social campaigns. Working with Yael and the organization allows us to innovate with a lot of the technologies we’ve developed that other causes may view as too forward-thinking or potentially controversial,” Dario Meli, a partner at Invoke, said.

Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network. Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn't been the technology itself but how we've used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade. Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We've decentralized media production and distribution. We're doing the same for energy. And we'll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce. The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us---namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

via thesocialcustomer.com

Microsoft has integrated Facebook and Windows Live Messenger into Outlook, bringing the newsfeeds of millions of Facebook users into inboxes across the world. 

Last year, Microsoft launched Outlook Social Connector, a plugin that syncs social networking feeds with your Outlook contacts, giving you immediate data on what they are doing and thinking. It started last year with LinkedIn integration, followed by promises that MySpace and Facebook were coming. 

 

Updated: Google, according to a much-retweeted message posted by Digg co-founder Kevin Rose over the weekend — which he attributed to a “very credible source” — is working on a Facebook competitor to be called Google Me. There’s been much debate since about what such a service might look like, with some theorizing it could be a blend of Google Buzz and Orkut, the often-forgotten Google social network. Others are expecting it to be an evolution of Google Profiles, in which users could add Facebook-like features to their profile pages. But one thing is almost certain: the odds are overwhelmingly stacked against the search engine company. Despite its size and market clout, Google hasn’t shown that it has any real understanding of how social networking actually works, or any idea what to do with it.

Nelson and Facebook released their insights on brand advertising on social networks and it looks like Facebook ads are doing well