One November 6th, Facebook announced their new advertising platform and included details regarding how Facebook Pages would work for brand partners. A few days later (yes I’m a little slow) I began an experiment with a handful of other interactive strategists from around the country to gauge the effectiveness and understand the implications behind this new system.

Our competition was simple: create Facebook Pages and see who gets the most users based purely on the power of the brand - we weren’t to promote the page outside the Facebook system. The winning strategist would have won based on their ability to predict which brand would have the most active brand evangelists in the Facebook system who are willing to become their fans (I’m currently losing!).

While I was hoping for a bit more time to collect data and then come public with my findings, Fred Wilson’s post on A VC added a very interesting variable to the mix and a fellow interactive strategist has already posted their findings here: Sam Huleatt’s Leveraging Ideas.

So without further delay some insight into the Sequoia Page and some others I created:

Snapshot of my initial pages and fans as of 12/27/2007

You can visit each page here: Corona, iStrategyLabs, Nintendo Wii (Removed by Facebook), Sequoia Capital, Under Armour

If you’re a brand manager for any of the above, just drop me a line and I’ll coordinate with Facebook to hand you over control of the page. This exercise was not built in order to squat on these pages permanently and it would be silly to delete them at the end of this as the fan base would be disbanded by that action doing more harm than good in my opinion.

So, I’ll start with Sequoia Capital, because it’s the reason why I’m prematurely posting these findings:

Sequoia Capital Fan Growth and Demographics

At the end of the first 6 days Sequoia Capital had a whopping 13 fans. Then Fred Wilson’s post on A VC tipped his readership to the fact that the page existed, and the fan base leapt to 237 in two days. The funny part is, I found the source of the bump because I had integrated Tolga Orhon’s Simply RSS Facebook application into the page as an easy way to populate dynamic content in the page and I saw Fred’s post in the page’s feed reader itself

I used the Technorati RSS feed for “Sequoia Capital” with ‘a lot of authority’. Quick side note: is ‘a lot of authority’ the best filtering you can provide Technorati? I mean really…it seems logical that I should be able to set an authority minimum (i.e. feed me posts from blogs about Sequoia Capital that have at least 400 authority)!

So, I’ve only got about 3 days of good data at this point, but look at the demographic breakout above. 93% of fans are male and 74% are greater than 24 years of age. That’s not surprising really based on the fact that this is a VC that folks are becoming fans of. As if Fred didn’t know the composition of his audience already, now he’s got a great look at a selection of people who read his blog! All the data above I attribute to A VC readers except 13 folks who were already fans (whose data was not visible yet as the sample size was too small and Facebook is attempting to…eh hem…protect user privacy).

The more interesting data is yet to come. I’m going to be looking at whether or not there is drop off in fans based on the fact that this is not an official Sequoia Capital page. And by the way folks….99% of the pages in Facebook (my guess) are not ‘official’ brand pages.

As of this moment I won’t be recommending that my clients spend anytime whatsoever creating Facebook Pages. There’s much lower hanging fruit out there at the moment - namely…actually having an overarching social media strategy for example. If you have a good case study on the use of Facebook Pages for a major brand, however, please let me know because folks are curious to see one..especially me.

I have to say though…it’s a lot of fun to play with Facebook Pages. Go ahead and make one yourself! Facebook will probably take the pages back from you at some point if the brand wants them, but in the mean time you’ll learn a little about interactive marketing in the process.

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As of the time of this post, iStrategyLabs is just over 3 months old. During this period of time we’ve had the opportunity to work on a number of interesting projects, sponsor a few events and meet a lot of very interesting people.

One community that is very closely aligned with our iStrategists, both in terms of mentality and market focus, is the venture capital community. We’ve had the fortune of consulting with a few DC area VCs lately regarding the status of their portfolio companies, and with view towards what they’re looking for in terms of new ventures. For the most part, we’re being utilized to help vet new opportunities and to augment the current interactive strategies of existing ones.

It seems only natural then that iStrategyLabs would begin to actively offer a suite of services geared towards our colleagues in the venture capital space. The following services are available to those who may need them:

• Sourcing and Screening: iStrategyLabs works with VCs to attract talent and ideas worth funding in the sectors of interest to their specific firm. We also plug into the screening process, adding an additional filter for vetting new ideas, helping ensure only the most digitally progressive get through.
• Due Diligence Acceleration: We’re adept at looking at a business plan and understanding how a market will shift in the next year, two years and beyond. Because our iStrategists are constantly keeping abreast of the latest and greatest online, they know what threats currently exist, or may exist shortly, that can affect a business that is being considered for funding.
• Portfolio Company Augmentation: Some companies just need a little extra push (some need a lot). The management team can be solid, the strategy may be dead on, but sales/adoption is slow and profits aren’t flowing as quickly as forecast. At this point, iStrategyLabs’ full capabilities can be brought to bear in the form of good old fashion great ideas. We’ll work with your team to develop interactive and experiential marketing strategies that can deliver users, sales and a passionate community for the businesses you’ve spent time and money investing in.
• Event Programming and Production: The core ethos of iStrategyLabs is to share knowledge, so one of our favorite things to do is to program workshops and devcamps that benefit all those in attendance. If you need to reach specific niche audiences (who doesn’t?), we’ll work with you to create events that people will thank you for producing. Your end goal is a lot more than mere branding here. You’ll find the right talent and ideas for the businesses you’re looking to fund. We’ll handle all ideation, logistics and promotion from start to finish.

Lastly, while the following element isn’t a ‘paid’ service we offer, it’s incredibly valuable to our venture capital clients. Simply, we help find the talent you’re looking for. Just ask us who we’d recommend in the form of a web design studio, public relations agency/consultant, PHP Ninja or whatever and we’ll be happy to make a connection for you to a trusted resource. Just give us a call (202-683-9980), or email Peter Corbett here.

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In partnership with StudentCity and MySpace, iStrategyLabs is proud to present The MySpace Spring Break 2008 Concert series.

This first of its kind experience combines massive online media exposure ($2mil+), access to top talent (Ludacris, Soulja Boy, and more), and the ability to use photos, video and audio from the concerts to promote your brand in all media.

There are 9 concerts on the docket this year, 3 each taking place in Cancun, Acapulco and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

The concert series one sheet can be found here:

StudentCity’s full capabilities can be found here:

If you’re an agency exec. or brand manager who needs to connect with the youth culture, contact Peter to discuss these and other opportunities.

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