A few WordPress superstars have teamed up to create WPEngine, a new and very exciting platform that promises to do all of the above and more.

WordPress has become the killer platform for many bloggers, small businesses and developers/consultants with multiple clients.

However, there's a middle ground between a WordPress.com blog and a hosted WordPress site that a few apps are attempting to cover. This middle ground includes people who don't have the technical skills of a WordPress developer or even a website administrator but who still want to take advantage of a greater part of the WordPress ecosystem of plugins and other benefits.

About the Product

WPEngine offers a WordPress VIP-type experience for smaller-scale websites, and it includes top-notch support, one-click backups, optimization for speed and scalability, and security features that include automatic software upgrades. Also, you'll be able to use any WordPress plugins, themes, custom CSS or JavaScript you like.

The platform gives users a set of specially curated plugins that have been vetted for security and have the WP Engine team's absolute recommendation. If there is a plugin that isn't in our list, reads the site, you should feel empowered to use it anyway.

Most of all, WPEngine promises its users simplicity and a seamless transition and integration experience.

The platform seems like it will work for bloggers, for businesses, and also for small dev shops that need to keep an eye on several WordPress-based sites.

About the Team

While the product sounds fabulous and, indeed, just what the WordPress ecosystem needs, product is only part of what makes a good startup; the company also needs to have a great team. WPEngine was developed by Aaron Brazell, a well-known figure in the WordPress universe who authored The WordPress Bible; blogger and developer Jason Cohen; and Cullen Wilson, an Austin-based developer. The startup is also under the wing of Ben Metcalfe, who has made a habit of picking good bets in the startup world. His last pick, NutShell Mail, experienced the Silicon Valley version of a Cinderella story and was acquired recently by Constant Contact. Altogether, it's a bit of a dream team for a WordPress product.

Finally, the platform got the following 140-character thumbs-up from WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg this afternoon: I think it's a nice complement to first-party solutions, especially for businesses that use [WordPress] as a CMS.

About Signup and Migration

We talked a bit with some of the WP Engine team today about migrating blogs including themes, customized TypeKit fonts, comments and more over to the WP Engine platform, and it's a process we're eager to test. We'll be trying it out soon, and we will report back on the results.

In the meantime, if you're interested in learning more, sign up for WPEngine's beta program. The platform will be open to the public very soon. You can test the platform for 15 days free of charge, and it costs $50 per month thereafter. There are no contracts, and you're free to move your blog elsewhere at any time.

What do you think so far? Is this something you'd be interested in trying? Do you think it will be useful for businesses and WordPress developers? Let us know in the comments.

More About: aaron brazell, ben metcalfe, Wordpress, wpengine

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Facebook's in-house business incubator and mini financier, fbFund, appears to be mothballed. After two years of funding companies building on Facebook's developer platform, the program's success has been dwarfed by the massive new social gaming market, and by the growing ecosystem of marketing service companies around its performance advertising and Page products.

After noticing that the company has been completely quiet about fbFund plans so far this year, we asked it about its plans. At this time we have no plans for future iterations of the program, a company spokesperson tells us, but we will keep you posted as soon as we have anything new to share. The company also says that it will continue to support innovation from the startup community through initiatives like the developer garage program.

The fbFund, administered by Facebook venture investors Accel Partners and Founders Fund, gave small amounts of grants (in year one) and investments (in year two) to chosen companies, along with mentoring help. It backed a number of companies that have been acquired, or are still around today, including Wildfire, NutshellMail, and Kontagent.

But now, everyone is moving on notably, Dave McClure, the Founders Fund angel investor who ran the fbFund program last year, has just raised his own new fund, called 500 Startups. I'm iterating on the concept, he said, referring to the large number of smaller investments, plus mentoring, that he'll provide companies.

My latest Guardian column, "Curated computing is no substitute for the personal and handmade," looks at how a curated computing experiences (like the hand-picked apps in the Apple App Store and the Google Android Marketplace) offer undeniable value, but can be configured to be coercive traps or helpful starting points:

Two categories in particular won't ever be fulfilled by a curator: first, the personal. No curator is likely to post pictures of my family, videos of my daughter, notes from my wife, stories I wrote in my adolescence that my mum's recovered from a carton in the basement.

My own mediascape includes lots of this stuff, and it is every bit as compelling and fulfilling as the slickest, most artistic works that show up in the professional streams. I don't care that the images are overexposed or badly framed, that the audio is poor quality, that I can barely read my 14-year-old self's handwriting. The things I made with my own hands and the things that represent my relationships with my community and loved ones are critical to my identity, and I won't trade them for anything.

Second, the tailored. I have loads of little scripts, programs, systems, files and such that make perfect sense to me, even though they're far from elegant or perfect. There's the script I use for resizing and uploading images to Boing Boing, the shelf I use to organise my to-be-read pile, the carefully-built mail rules that filter out spam and trolls and make sure I see the important stuff. I am a market of one: no one wants to make a commercial proposition out of filling my needs, and if they did, your average curator would be nuts to put something so tightly optimised for my needs into the public sphere, where it would be so much clutter. But again, these are the nuts and bolts that hold my life together and I can't live without them.

Curated computing is no substitute for the personal and handmade

About two weeks ago, I ranked the top 50 branded Facebook pages as of June 30, analyzing how their positions had changed over the last six months.

As with the first time I completed that ranking, a valid question was raised:

Does having the largest fan page mean you're page is worth the most? No.

Biggest does not mean best

There's a big difference between building a fan base and leveraging a fan base. So in this post, I've ranked the same top 50 branded Facebook pages by their value, at least as determined by Vitrue's social page evaluator.

While I don't necessarily believe in the value of the page calculated by this tool per se, it is a handy way to put a number to a page based on that page's activitylooking at both post volume and the reaction to those posts. When you analyze the data this way, only three of the largest pages stay in the top 50. (Actually, it's 51, as I inadvertently left Starburst off the Top 50 list. They are included here.) Here's the list.

Key findings

As you can see, the list reorders dramatically. Some key findings:

• Passion products (like Oreos, Slurpees and Converse) may be able to grow fan bases quickly, but that does not automatically translate into page value;
• The pages with the highest value posted the most. While this isn't surprising, it shows the effort required;
• All 5 of the top 5 most valuable pages had posts on Sunday and each one has custom tabs;
• While each of the top 5 have custom tabs, only 3 of the top 5 have set a tab other than the wall as the landing tab. This surprised me a bit.
• Each of the bottom 5 posted quite infrequently, except McDonalds.
• McDonalds (in the bottom 5) had seemingly random posts, each of which links to a different burger.

Value by fan

When you sort by dollar value per fan, the top 50 turns practically upside down. Here are the top 10 by that metric, with their rank by fan count in parenthesis:

1. Xbox, $7.08 (51)
2. Dr. Pepper, $7.04 (30)
3. Monster Energy, $5.30 (43)
4. adidas Originals, $4.57 (14)
5. Walt Disney World, $4.50, (46)
6. Breast Cancer Awareness, $4.28 (48)
7. iTunes, $3.31 (10)
8. YouTube, $3.27 (4)
9. H&M, $3.27 (24)
10. Playstation, $2.98, (49)

Xbox barely made the list in terms of size, coming in at 50th 51st, but they're motivating their base better than anyone else. Dr. Pepper shares a strange collection of very product-centric updates with their fans, but the fans love them. And adidas Originals has both a partnership with Snoop Dog on their page and exclusive product announcementsa good mix of celebrity and insider info.

Real winners

The real winners on this list, then, are the pages that combine both high fan count and high value, as they are doing the best job of converting those fans into action. (Of course, we don't have insight into the impact this is having on their business objectives, but if you can consistently motivate your fans, I have to think your opportunity to impact your business is enhanced.)

From that angle, the pages that have impressed me so far are:

• YouTube (#4 in size, #1 in value, #8 in value/fan)
• Skittles (#5 in size, #6 in value, #14 in value/fan)
• iTunes (#10 in size, #4 in value, #7 in value/fan)
• Facebook (#1 in size, #2 in value, #19 in value/fan)
• Victoria's Secret (#9 in size, #11 in value, #18 in value/fan)

Of all of these, I'm most impressed with Skittles. YouTube, iTunes and Facebook have the advantage of a near limitless supply of content. Victoria's Secret has, well, other advantages. But Skittles does not.

Little blobs of coated sugar, they got heckled a bit for their Skittles.com social takeover in early 2009. But it's clear from this that they have not taken those fans for granted. They've found a way to keep them entertained.

Not the 50 most valuable

Keep in mind, this is a rank of the 50 largest branded Facebook pages, by value. It's not the 50 most valuable branded Facebook pages. If it were, it would look a lot different, but it would require analyzing hundreds more pages individually.

For example, one of our clients, Windows, has 626,197 fans (as of Sunday, 7/11) and a value of $2,296,080. That would rank it 7th in value per fan ($3.67) and 28th in total value. But since it's not big enough to be on the current Top 50 list, it's also not on the value list. (But I think we'll let them know nevertheless.)

What surprised you when you saw how the Top 50 re-ranked by value? Let me know in the comments.

Shared by phillip
Right on.

To be fair, the Times admits that forcing Google to get approval every time it tweaks its search algorithm -- as it does constantly -- would be impractical and stifling.

But, that aside, the Times thinks "it is worth exploring ways to ensure that the editorial policy guiding Google's tweaks is solely intended to improve the quality of the results and not to help Google's other businesses."

No, it really isn't.

A few reasons why that is a terrible idea:

• Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. It currently has two serious competitors in Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing, or perhaps one and a half, since Bing will be powering Yahoo searches from now on. Google's search share is around 63%, well under the standard thresholds for antitrust concerns.

• More importantly, there is no barrier to switching search engines. Dozens of search engines are always a click away. (Google doesn't even make the front page when you Google 'search engine'.) As the Times points out, Google is the default within many browsers and on third-party sites, but that can change incredibly quickly too (see the iPhone). If Google also dominated the browser market (and forced users into Google search), there would perhaps be a case here. But Chrome's market share is still tiny compared to IE and Firefox.

• Regulators wouldn't be qualified to evaluate Google's algorithm. Search is really hard.

• Google should be using search to help its other businesses, because search is free. It's crazy that we even have to write this, but apparently a refresher is in order: Google's search product is one of the biggest things going on the Internet, and, like most successful Internet products (but unlike the New York Times) it's 100% free. That means Google has to come up with indirect means of making money off search. The most obvious is advertising, which has always been Google's core business. But there's no reason the company shouldn't experiment with other options.

If Google thinks promoting its own products can help it make money, while maintaining a search product that people want to use, and that third-parties want to promote in their browsers, sites, and apps, that isn't an antitrust problem, it's a great business model.

Want to add like buttons into your email marketing campaigns? MailChimp, one of the fastest growing email newsletter platforms is preparing to release support for Facebook's Like button as well as detailed analytics which tell you who's clicking on likes, how many people clicked it, and how many people were referred from the like button. This form of detailed analytics will surely help any active email marketer.

While adding a like button is not much of a story in itself, this is the first service provider that we've seen add detailed analytics on like button activity. The company is also including integration with Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Flickr through the company's Social Pro add-on. One of the more impressive features is the ability to group users by their level of influence (which we're assuming is determined by number of friends).

Also included is demographic targeting. This is a huge step forward for email newsletters as social integration has long been missing from email. While there are services like NutshellMail (recently acquired by ConstantContact) which lets you receive a daily digest of your social activity elsewhere around the web, this is the first robust social media marketing suite that we've seen implemented by any of the leading email newsletter services.

Director James Cameron was bang on the money when he declared his revolutionary sci-fi epic Avatar would be a game-changer.

Moviegoers queued round the block to get a glimpse of Pandora in glorious 3D, propelling the movie to a record-pulverising box-office take of almost $3 billion.

The reason, Cameron reckons, was quite simple: "Where they had a choice the audience was selecting the best possible way to see the movie, and they saw 3D as the premium viewing experience."

Producer Jon Landau claimed that the movie had "restored belief that cinema can be a magical experience," and other studios were falling over themselves to capture some three-dimensional lightning in a bottle.

CLOUDY: The world's first stand-alone 3D Blu-ray, which is also bundled with Sony kit

Warner Bros. trotted out a conversion job on Louis Letterier's Clash Of The Titans remake, while Disney can thank Alice In Wonderland for it's second $1 billion box-office haul.

3D on the big screen has been an enormous hit, but will we get the benefits of that third dimension in our front rooms? This year has seen the arrival of a raft of 3D home entertainment gear from the likes of Panasonic, Sony and Samsung and a recent survey commissioned by the British Video Association (BVA) 63 per cent of 3D cinema goers would be interested in recreating the experience at home. The problem is, the 3D Blu-ray shelf is a little bare.

Increasing choice

Right now, if you want to watch a 3D Blu-ray movie at home your choice is Dreamworks' Monsters vs Aliens, which is only available as part of Samsung's 3D starter kit, or Sony Pictures' Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, which arrived earlier this month and comes bundled with Sony's new range of 3D TVs and Blu-ray players.

Dreamworks is, however, hoping to release the Shrek films later this year, which will also be part of Samsung's year-long exclusive deal with the studio. Although this essentially means that only Samsung customers can get their hands on Dreamworks titles, CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is positive about the format's progress.

"It is an incredibly exciting time for the industry at large," he said at a recent 3D launch event in New York. "Thanks to Samsung's innovation leading the charge," Katzenberg declared, there was now "the capability to deliver a truly premium 3D experience for consumers in their homes."

Lexine Wong, Senior Executive Vice President, Worldwide Marketing for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, is equally effusive about 3D Blu-ray's future. "Beginning this year Sony Pictures Home Entertainment plans to release all of our studio's 3D theatrical films to Blu-ray 3D" she revealed, announcing some big titles in the pipeline.

"Our initial slate will draw from our catalogue of 'native' 3D content Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Open Season, Monster House as well as upcoming 3D theatrical releases like Resident Evil: Afterlife, Green Hornet and Men In Black III."

So it seems that a stunning 3D Blu-ray collection isn't too far off, after all. Crucially, though, animation is emerging as the key element to the 3D Blu-ray release schedules. For one particular studio this comes as no surprise.

Disney in the lead

"Disney has produced and released more 3D content than any other major studio to date," says Bob Chapek, President of Distribution for The Walt Disney Studios. According to Chapek Disney plans to "offer consumers an incredible line-up of true three-dimensional films and footage that will revolutionise the in-home entertainment experience."

So far that line-up consists of Robert Zemekis' A Christmas Carol, which has been confirmed for the end of 2010, and a 3D showcase disc featuring classic 1953 short Working For Peanuts. It will also show off trailers for Alice In Wonderland and Toy Story 3, suggesting they are not too far from getting an official release date of their own.

While it makes financial sense for studios to concentrate on existing 3D material, which is principally animation, Yves Caillaud, Chairman of the Board of Directors for The Digital Entertainment Group Europe believes we'll be seeing a lot more than just digital characters.

"Our view is titles which have a spectacular visual element will be the most greatly enhanced by 3D so yes animation, but also movies that feature action packed sequences such as Clash Of The Titans, and stunning natural surroundings such as nature documentaries. There are many film genres which would be great viewed in the 3D format."

GAME CHANGER: Avatar, the film that kick started the 3D revolution, could change the fortunes of Blu-ray 3D

For this revolutionary visual spectacle, home entertainment fans will be expected to pay more. However, according to Sony this shouldn't come as a big shock, as we are already are paying more.

"At theatres, consumers are now used to the idea of paying a modest up-charge to see a movie in 3D, and we do feel that that expectation will carry over to Blu-ray 3D" Says Lexine Wong, while Simon Heller from the BVA agrees that all entertainment innovations carry a premium.

"As with all new technologies, the first players and discs will be higher priced on launch to off-set the investment. However, as 3D becomes more mass market, then we will see prices fall as we have seen with BD and DVD."

Sony has also confirmed 2D and 3D DVD/BD combi-packs, and they are currently exploring options for 3D special features and bonus content in a bid to add value to the package.

How big will Blu-ray 3D be?

Simon Heller also believes it will be a bit of a slow start for 3D BD. "If the launch of DVD is replicated, there will be only tens of titles released initially as replication costs are high to start with," although he does predict growth within the sector. More importantly, though, how big is the sector?

Blu-ray only accounted for 8 million disc sales in 2009 in the UK (compared to DVD's 235 million), and although it is growing at a faster rate than DVD did at launch one could easily deride 3D as a niche within a niche.

There's also the fact that industry forecasts for 3D TV sales over the next few years are conservative at best. "All markets have to start somewhere," Heller concludes.

And what of the movie that started it all? Arguably Avatar could have the 'Matrix' effect on 3D Blu-ray, but according to 20th Century Fox it remains in the "conceptual" stage. They're also being pretty tight-lipped about their 3D plans, with only Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs confirmed on the slate, arriving as part of a Panasonic bundle.

As for Cameron, well, he's certain that great releases are vital to the success of 3D. "If you play all the 3D movies in existence on your fancy new 3D TV, it will keep you entertained for about three days," he says.

"This content gap is the biggest hurdle for the rapid adoption of 3D TV." We are not playing an entirely different game just yet, then.

This week we've been exploring the emergence of the Semantic Web among companies like Best Buy and Google. It's all thanks to RDFa, code that is inserted into the HTML of web pages to add extra meaning. The increasing usage of RDFa was one of the main themes at the recent Semantic Technology conference in San Francisco.

There is perhaps no better example than Facebook's use of RDFa. We chatted to Facebook open source evangelist David Recordon to find out more.

Sponsor

In April this year, Facebook announced a large-scale new platform called the Open Graph. The stated goal of the Open Graph protocol was to enable publishers to "integrate [their] Web pages into the social graph." Essentially, each web page can now become an 'object' in Facebook's social graph. This enables data from web pages to be more widely used across the Web - for example in social network user profiles, blog posts, search results and Facebook's News Feed.

The Open Graph in a Nutshell

The Open Graph is a wide-ranging platform which includes features such as 'Like' buttons and publisher plug-ins. It also includes a simple, RDF-based markup. This requires publishers to include at least 4 meta data properties in each object: title, type, image, URL. There are a few additional properties which may be optionally added, such as site_name and description.

When the Open Graph was announced, ReadWriteWeb feature writer Alex Iskold wrote a comprehensive guide to the Open Graph for publishers, users and competitors. Here's how he described the markup:

"...the markup enables publishers to say what object is on the page - a movie, a book, a recording artist, an event, a sports team, etc. This automatically enables semantics, that is, an understanding that the user is not just interacting with a web page, but that he or she is liking a specific kind of thing. Semantics then leads to bucketing of the objects into categories like books, movies, music, etc., and gives rise to all sort of applications, including personalized recommendations. Perhaps even more importantly, the markup helps Facebook connect the users across common interests across different web sites."

The syntax that Facebook uses is fairly similar to RDFa, without being an exact match. Sandro Hawke from the W3C (the Web's official standards body), told ReadWriteWeb last week that Facebook is using RDFa "in an abbreviated, not really good modeling way."

Facebook's KISS (Keep it Simple Semantics)

The reason that Facebook is using an abbreviated version of RDFa is that they want to make it as simple as possible for publishers to deploy it. And the W3C is fine with this, because it has a rules standard called RIF that can convert Open Graph code into proper RDFa if needed. Also the W3C and Semantic Web community seem to be having fruitful discussions with Facebook.

We asked Facebook open source evangelist David Recordon why the company chose not to use exact RDFa syntax. He replied that simplicity was paramount, so they wanted to use as few properties as possible.

However, Recordon said that Facebook's code will actually help the adoption of RDFa. He thinks that RDFa will become a more interesting technology when more people are consuming it (via Facebook's variation of RDFa).

Facebook did not set out to support the Semantic Web, added Recordon, it just wanted simple code that was as close as possible to open standards. He told us that Facebook found the "sweet spot" between the complexity of existing Semantic Web standards and the simplicity required for tens of thousands of developers to place 'objects' inside their web pages.

Open Graph Issues

Facebook's Open Graph protocol has its issues, which Alex Iskold outlined in a follow-up analysis in May (it should be noted that Iskold's startup, GetGlue, has been mining web page meta data for a while now - so it's partly competitive with Facebook, although it also provides support for the Open Graph). Some of Facebook's issues were due to poor implementation of the markup by Facebook partners, but Recordon told us that much of this has been fixed now.

Perhaps a bigger problem is that currently only one object can be specified per web page, which prevents multiple topics or people on a single web page from being semantically marked up. Also, Iskold pointed out that there is no way to disambiguate objects - so if two objects have the same name, they are considered the same thing by Facebook. For example, 'Paris' could refer to the city in France or the city in the USA (also it could be the name of an infamous socialite).

Kick Starting the Semantic Web

These issues ideally should be ironed out, but for now it's clear that Facebook wants Open Graph to be very simple so that as many publishers as possible implement it. That's a sensible business decision, although it means that we're only getting a limited version of the Semantic Web for now. However, the support of Semantic technologies by big companies like Facebook, Google and Best Buy will be enough to kick start this new era of a smarter and more structured Web of data.

What do you think, is Facebook doing enough to support Semantic Web standards? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

At the end of 2009, we ranked the Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages for the first time, ignoring all the music and celebrity pages and ranking the largest brand-run Facebook pages. Today, exactly 6 months later, we rank them again. This time, we're able to see who is growing, who is slipping, and just how fast you have to keep moving to make this list.

Just as we did last year, there's a clear methodology, explained at the end as to which types of pages made the list and which type did not. But let's get right to the findings, and then share the entire list.

Top Five Are Unchanged

• The Top 5 from December 2009 (Facebook, Starbucks, Coca Cola, YouTube and Skittles) remain in the top 5, all in the same order.
• It was no easy task to stay in the Top 5, as they grew, on average, 65.05% over the last 6 months to defend their positions. The list overall grew at an average rate of 47.81%.
• Each of the Top 5 grew by at least 100,000 fans this past weekend alone.
• Newcomers to the top ten include Red Bull, Windows Live Messenger and Victoria's Secret. They replace Disney, Pringles and Big Prize Giveways, which fell to 11th, 13th and 18th respectively.

Biggest Climbers

• The biggest percentage gainers were Disney Pixar (143.23%), Red Bull (118.31%), MTV (113.46%), Chase Community Giving (100.61%) and Dr. Pepper (94.16%). Not bad activity for 6 months.
• The biggest climbers in terms of places were Converse All Stars, Converse, Disney Pixar, IHateBeingBored.net and Google Chrome. Several of these, notably the Converse pages, started out as organic fan pages, meaning they were left off the list in December, as are all unofficial pages. The brands took them over since then.
• Existing pages including Dr. Pepper, Chase Community Giving and MTV also moved more than 10 places, which is impressive.

Biggest Fallers

• Apple Students disappeared as a fan page in the last six months, eliminating the 24th largest fan page.
• Kisses fell 18 spaces, Slurpee fell 16, Best Buy fell 15 and Kohl's fell 10 slots. Collectively, they grew 14.63%, but that just wasn't fast enough relative to others.
• Over the weekend, both Verizon and Big Prize Giveaway lost over 4,000 fans. Kisses lost just a few over the weekend, showing that fans will leave if you don't keep them involved.

New Arrivals, List Departures

• The following pages make their debut in Ignite Social Media's Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages: Converse All Stars, Converse, IHateBeingBored.net, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Monster Energy, Walt Disney World, Playstation and Xbox.
• The following pages drop out of the Ignite Social Media's Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages: Ben & Jerry's, 5 Gum, Best Buy, Dippin' Dots, Duck Tape, Kohl's, Apple Students and Verizon.

Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages, June 2010

Methodology

Just as we did in the first ranking, we excluded certain categories of fan pages to make the best possible comparison among brand marketers. Specifically:

I left out pages that featured:

• Celebrities (like Vin Diesel)
• Politicians (like Barack Obama)
• Musicians (like Michael Jackson)
• Athletes (like Roger Federer)
• Sports teams and sports organizations (like New York Yankees)
• Comedians (like Adam Sandler)
• Unbranded fan pages (like I SLEEP) or pages for "meme" websites
• Facebook games or apps (like Mafia Wars)
• Generic or unofficial product pages (like Freeze Pops)
• Pages in languages other than English (like Musica En Tu Perfil)

*Kisses is included, as it's a marketing page for Orabrush. ** Breast Cancer Awareness is included as it's a marketing page for a non-profit.

I checked all counts by hand on June 25 and June 28, with June 28 data being used in the chart. InsideFacebook.com's excellent page data was used to check for newcomers and to confirm if pages were official.

While it appeared on the first Top 50, I removed the NBA from this list, as other very active sporting pages are not included. They have an excellent page and a strong fan base, but I wanted to keep it as apples-to-apples as possible. There are other sports organizations, including UFC: Ultimate Fighting Championship that would make a list including sports organizations.

Summary

You'll need at least 1.3m fans (today) to break into this top 50 list. If the growth rate continues at its current pace, you'll need close to 2m fans to make the list in December of this year.

Lots of folks raised questions about the value of these fan pages, and it's an important question. We'll be ranking them by value in a post coming shortly. (And in the interest of full disclosure, I will point out that we actively work on Windows Live Messenger's Facebook page, which is currently ranked 8th.)

What struck you as particularly interesting out of this list?

In today's world, every community is, in essence, an ongoing conversation.

Understanding the role of this conversation is critical to the success of your community development strategy.

I once heard a statement that on the surface seemed contradictory. Underneath, though, it makes all the sense in the world:

To get prospects to become customers, you have to treat them as if they're already customers.

How simple.

Yet it requires a change in the way you and those in your community view and relate to the organizations and people you would like to attract.

Where and how do you start?

It's really not that hard.

People choose where to live and with whom to do business based primarily on personal relationships.

Once you understand this, you can better appreciate the importance of creating and maintaining ongoing conversations with others.

You're not communicating with a community.

You're not communicating with a company.

You're communicating with other people.

A one-on-one, sustained conversation is not only possible, it can be worldwide with just the push of a button.

Imagine this:

Your message of community development can be sent out via social media anytime, to anyone, as often as you choose.

Those who are already doing that have a leg up on success. They become living, breathing human beings rather than abstract entities.

The Center for Rural Affairs has some interesting perspectives on this approach to building and sustaining community development through conversations.

You should check out the blog ReImagine Rural.

Mike Knutson makes several points about social networking and conversations that are worthy of passing along:

1. Markets are conversations. People-attraction strategies are the new form of community marketing.

2. People look to the Internet when considering a community, but they generally don't trust traditional community-based websites as much as information from their peers.

3. Online social networks help build communities.

Until a couple of years ago, I thought of Facebook and MySpace users as geeks who wasted time on the computer. In my mind, spending time on a social network came at the expense of face-to-face interaction.

As I migrated into the world of social media, I began to rethink my assumptions.

Dan Cowling

Many companies, startups and well established businesses are frustrated because their social media presence isn't larger or yet benefiting their bottom line. One of the big issues is that most companies start using social media thinking it's the holy grail. It takes time, effort, and resources before this new media will have an impact on you brand.

Here are a few tips businesses should consider.

1. Are You Using the Right Platform?

There are many social media platforms to consider when designing an online campaign. Twitter, Facebook, blogs and YouTube are some of the biggest and most important. While all the social sites should be examined, blindly signing up for accounts can be a mistake. To start, educate yourself on each platform and how they can enhance your brand.

When launching a Facebook presence, consider the various platforms within this medium; Pages, Groups and now Communities. Each have different purposes, tools and limitations. Do some research before making the commitment.

Twitter is a quick and easy way for brands to share updates and ideas with their consumers, and it's also a good place to watch trends and listen to what your demographic is excited about. Because Twitter is always growing and evolving, it's important to keep apprised of the latest changes.

Blogging can be a powerful tool for any brand. Unlike static websites, daily blog posts improve search engine optimization and provide a constant source of up-to-date information for consumers. Whether you use Blogger, WordPress or Tumblr, your customers will enjoy reading about your company so long as you make it interesting and current.

Video might seem intimidating, but it's an extraordinarily powerful social medium. YouTube is one of the largest sources of search traffic, but most companies fail to include it in their social media plan. Video sites essentially operate as a brand's personal channel and can be viewed by millions.

World famous celebrity chef Jamie Oliver knows the importance of utilizing video platforms. YouTube is a great way to get Jamie's videos out to a wider audience in some months we have twice as many video views on YouTube as on Jamie's site, said Monisha Saldanha, head of online, Jamie Oliver Ltd.

Each social platform has its own job, and they can all be used simultaneously to boost success. Jamie has pages on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube people tend to use their own favorite social networking sites, so it's a good idea to be on all the major ones, said Saldanha.

2. Provide Messages Your Audience Wants

Consider your brand's demographic, who they are, and what information they want to receive. In traditional marketing there is a tendency to manipulate the consumer directly, while in social media it's the audience who truly dictates the message. Successful social media marketing begins and ends with respect to your audience. Understanding what your audience wants to hear is key.

I try to think of our feed from the point of view of what a fan and a viewer of the network would want, instead of what we want to tell them. If I were a viewer I'd want behind-the-scenes info, I'd want to talk to a real person, and I'd want to have some fun, said Craig Engler, the general manager and senior vice president SyFy Digital.

Discounts and giveaways can be useful but shouldn't be all you do. Consider providing interesting facts on topics that coincide with your brand.

I explain how the TV business works so viewers understand why things happen, why do we put that show Fridays at 10 p.m. or why didn't we pick up that canceled show from another network, said Engler.

3. Listen To Your Audience

Listening to consumers is as important as sharing messages with them. Dunkin' Donuts makes this a priority on their Facebook Page:

Because we have over 1.4 million fans on Facebook, we keep several sets of eyes on our Page throughout the day. We make sure our fans are clear on common confusions by selecting important questions posted to our Facebook Page to answer. We can't respond to everything, but by hand picking those that are representative of common questions we show we're there, listening and engaging with our fans, said Ben Smith, their interactive marketing manager.

Consider that there are different ways for brands to monitor what people are saying in each platform.

For Twitter, try TweetDeck which allows multiple columns to be viewed simultaneously. Creating a search column for your brand is easy. Simply create a column for @mentions. This will make it easier to keep track of chatter revolving around your brand.

Facebook platforms can be monitored by watching the wall to see what people are posting, and e-mail notifications can be customized for important alerts when new messages are posted.

YouTube and blogs should also be watched closely for comments and questions. Like Facebook, there are settings that, when enabled, will create e-mail alerts when there is a new comment or connection.

4. Give Your Supporters a Voice

Consumers help define your brand and they want to feel valued. Make sure to ask questions and listen to opinions. When appropriate, implement and share your community's ideas. This can result in not only great content but even stronger brand loyalty. Popular brands do this regularly and with much success.

Jamie Oliver's online guru Saldanha said, Jamie is really passionate about his work and thrives off energy and interaction. It's very important for him to get first hand feedback from people. The recent Food Revolution in the U.S. is a perfect example where the community page on Facebook became a great place for people to share their own experiences with food and cooking.

5. Be Fun

It doesn't matter what business you're in people want to be entertained. Find fun and fresh ways to keep your audience engaged. Dunkin' Donuts does this well through Facebook by creating fun and sharable content. For example, Maurice is a cartoon espresso bean who lives on the brand's Facebook Page.

Maurice was created to raise awareness about our espresso and latte category. It was done in a way that is fun and light hearted but that drives the emotional connection. Instead of straight product talk, make it fun, Smith said.

And If you take a quick look around the social sites, you will see fun marketing is happening everywhere. On any given day you can see Syfy using Twitter in a fun and brand appropriate way. Engler said that sharing behind-the-scenes pictures of their shows or when an actor visits the office is always popular.

Brands put a lot of time and consideration into their offline media campaigns and this should also be done with online media. It's important to have the right people with authority and creativity running these platforms to assure the voice of your brand isn't off mark. Following the lead of brands who use social media effectively is a good start to informing yourself. If you're using social media platforms effectively it won't be long before you start seeing results.

The payoff is that we have tens of thousands of viewers talking directly to us in an unfiltered way, which makes it a genuine conversation but on a tremendous scale. The byproduct of the conversation is that people will go out there and be ambassadors for our shows and our network, which is fantastic, but it's never been the end goal. The goal for me is always the conversation itself, a real back and forth with viewers that was just never possible before, said Engler.

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HP is preparing for a major showdown with Apple. After snapping up the beleaguered Palm for $1.2 billion, Hewlett-Packard has purchased Melodeo, a Lala competitor, for roughly $30 to $35 million, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The acquisition, which was signed this month, may seem inconsequential for a behemoth like HP, but it represents a major shift in strategy for the laptop-maker. With Melodeo in its pocket, HP is now a player in mobile music services. Didn't expect that did you?

What is Melodeo?

Similar to Apple's Lala or Pandora, the Seattle-based Melodeo streams music to its mobile apps from the cloud. Melodeo's main product line is nuTsie yes, an anagram of iTunes. NuTsie's flagship service (which is available on several platforms including Blackberry, Android and Windows Mobile) scans your iTunes playlists and allows you to access those playlists on your mobile device in shuffle mode. You can also look at other users' playlists and discover songs through the company's proprietary recommendation engine or nuTsie's editorial playlists (i.e. Top 100 Reggae Songs, Top 100 90s Songs).

The pricing depends on the wireless provider and the phone, for example, the Android app requires a one-time download fee of $9.95, meanwhile, some Verizon phones are $2.99 a month. The flagship service is not available on the iPhone, for the obvious reason that the iPhone comes with your iTunes library, but nuTsie does sell an assortment of playlist apps on the iPhone, like Top 100 On iTunes, and Effin Genius, an app that scans iTunes and creates new playlists based on your preferences and the songs you don't own.

Melodeo is not as well known as many of its rivals like LaLa, Spotify, or Pandora, but it has a growing base of customers. According to sources, its website attracts a little over 2 million uniques a month and nuTsie apps have enjoyed 2 million downloads with roughly 60% being the flagship app.

Those numbers aren't earth shattering but the real value of nuTsie is in its next iteration. The company is preparing to unleash nuTsie 3.0 across its platforms, a service that will let you take your entire, physical music library, from your desktop, and copy it into the cloud. You will be able to access any song on demand unlike the older version, which ties you to the shuffle mode. The service works through a joint desktop and mobile app, allowing synchronous updates. By unlocking your entire iTunes library and making it essentially fully functional on several devices, Melodeo is presenting a serious challenge (or at least a sizable disruption) to Apple's music business model.

Beyond its stellar design, part of the reason Apple has built such a loyal legion of iPod and iPhone users is the iTunes program. The more portable a user's music library is, the easier it is for users to step outside the Apple ecosystem. With several companies frothing at the lips to take Steve Jobs down a peg, Melodeo was an attractive asset. Prior to the deal, Melodeo raised $7.9 million from Ignition Partners and Voyager Capital amusingly, Ignition Partners was a major investor in LaLa. In the acquisition, HP did not throw down serious coin to be the victor, but there were multiple suitors, including HTC (also a serious suitor of Palm), according to a source familiar with the deal.

With Melodeo, HP also gets a key hire: David Billmaier, Melodeo's VP of Product Marketing. Billmaier is a former Apple employee who worked for Jobs for more than a decade designing Apple products. Billmaier will fit in nicely with the growing collection of ex-Apple employees at HP. In its Palm acquisition, HP gained several former iPhone engineers and Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein (although it's unclear how his position will shakeout in the wake of the takeover).

The question now is what will HP do with Melodio and what does it mean for their larger, mobile strategy.

Logically, I expect HP to launch the latest iteration of Melodio's nuTsie application on every HP-Palm and Slate product, probably starting later this year. The other option is to take the basic technology and create an entirely new HP music experience around it, retire the nuTsie brand, and transition its users over to the new product once it is up and running.

The introduction of nuTsie should enhance the appeal of Palm's operating system, WebOS. Forget about Palm's mediocre stable of smartphones, WebOS will be the critical pillar in HP's mobile strategy. As HP's SVP of Strategy and Corporate Development Brian Humphries recently told TechCrunch: Our intent is to double down on WebOS.

Unfortunately, HP is more than than fashionably late to the mobile party but, at the very least, the company is cognizant of its tardiness. As evident from its recent acquisitions, HP is not wasting any time trying to build new products from within. They have correctly concluded that if they're going to go full throttle on mobile, now is the time. So what HP wants HP will buy. It will be interesting to see if this is just the beginning of HP's shopping spree.

Those of us who have become well seasoned to the dyslexia-inducing array of web languages often overlook the diversity and additional interactivity we can gain by learning another language or two.

Perhaps you are a beginner trying to understand what you need to spend time learning, or perhaps you're an experienced individual looking for something new to play with.

Whichever situation applies to you, this article aims to underline the various languages at your disposal and where they fit in the puzzle.

It should be an interesting ride and seasoned experts may find languages they've not yet encountered!

Too Many Cooks

When it comes to the diversity of coding for the web, the well-known phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth" springs to mind. Not only in the way browsers support modern standards but the ever increasing range of competing formats that exist.

Should you use HTML or XHTML, RSS or Atom, PHP or ASP.NET, SVG or VML, JavaScript or VBS? The list is near endless.

I wouldn't blame anyone for getting confused at this point because the question itself often relies on personal preference something you probably won't have established until you understand the language and use it regularly.

This Catch-22 situation is usually only resolved when experienced people come together and educate each other on why their language is better the others (or as I like to call it, a flame war).

Enough abbreviations to make an English scholar tremble (and give you a migraine)!

What Web Language Should You Learn?

So what is the answer you seek, to which languages you should learn? The simple answer is it depends.

The deciding factor is not only reliant on the type of site you are trying to produce but also the depth of complexity you wish to delve into.

Therefore, before we can hope to determine which languages you should choose, we need to categorise all of the available options based on their purpose.

At first, this may seem like a complex task, but luckily for us, web languages are well-documented and each explains its purpose in context to the various existing layers of the web.

Every language has a specification which explains its purpose and function.

While documentation for each language exists, picking those worthy of your consideration and how they relate to each other in the function they undertake is something beginners regularly struggle with. You literally have to wade through the heavy number of choices and select one that you looks interesting and useful to you.

While I won't even attempt to individually explain each language's history (as this article will become encyclopedic in length at that point instead, I'll link up to their specifications) we shall coordinate the choices into easy-to-recognise segments, and from there, you can decide which choice best meets your needs.

Language Layers

So how many language layers exist? Most people recognise layers like structural markup (HTML), stylesheet (CSS), client-side scripting (JavaScript) and server-side scripting (PHP) but you may be surprised to hear that if you account for every variant based on its intended purpose, a whopping 15 different layers exist.

Of course at this stage it's worth pointing out that learning 15 languages to cover every possible layer isn't going to be in your best interests as you'll simply be spending all your time learning, but learning a new layer as you need the skill can be of genuine benefit to you.

There are 15 language layers that comprise the full spectrum of web development.

Each layer represents a unique piece of functionality such as the ability to add behaviour that interacts with the end user (in the case of JavaScript) or a method of providing dynamic vector graphics on the screen (in the case of SVG).

Having the knowledge to experiment and implement the various independent layers will give you an advantage both in operating as a professional (that you will be able to cover a wider range of skills) and as a hobbyist or newbie (where you can jump for joy at the extended level of fun you can have while experimenting with the web's offerings).

Having a wide range of skills will showcase your growing competency.

Of course, while these layers constitute endless possibilities of functionality which can be injected into your website, some people may simply require only a couple of these layers to produce a basic website (such as HTML and CSS).

There is absolutely nothing wrong with limiting or making a niche for your skills and become a master of either a single layer (and language choice).

This article simply acts as a starting point to which you can examine your current level of knowledge against the wider array of web languages (to determine what you can follow on from if you know any, that is).

Sometimes a simple website requires nothing more than a couple of languages.

Collective Choices

In the language layer diagram that you saw earlier, it became apparent that there's a whole bunch of layers which comprise a website's unique structure, but as it currently stands, it's not much use to you as there's no actual languages listed.

Well this is where all of those awesome abbreviations come in.

For each language layer that exists, you will find (below) a list of the languages which fit the category, their browser support levels, popularity status (useful for seeking help) and details such as the level of complexity involved, and some recommendations based on that information (highlighted from the other languages).

Note: Some languages are a subset of another language listed and some languages may be derived off of a certain implementation, but due to public awareness they have been referenced separately.

It's also worth noting that recommendations are provided based on my own experience, and so there may be some contention on some points depending on who you talk to.

Markup Languages

There are four commonly used markup languages involved in web development.

• HTML
• XHTML
• XML
• WML (Deprecated)
• Others: MHTML and SGML

Syndication Languages

There are two commonly used syndication languages for content delivery.

• Atom
• RSS
• Others: EventsML, GeoRSS, MRSS, NewsML, OPML, SportsML and XBEL

Metadata Languages

There are five commonly used methods to embed rich contextual metadata.

• DCMI
• META (Classic)
• Microformats
• OWL
• RDF
• Others: APML, FOAF, hSlice, OpenService Accelarators, P3P, PICS (Deprecated), SIOC and XFN

Stylesheet and Transform Languages

There is a single stylesheet language and a single transformation language for the web.

• CSS
• XSL
• Others: DSSSL and JSSS (Deprecated)

Client-Side Scripting

There are a number of client side languages, though most are connected to JavaScript!

• AJAX (XHR)
• DOM Scripting
• Flex (ActionScript)
• JavaScript
• VBScript
• Others: E4X, ECMAScript, JScript, JScript.NET and WMLScript (Deprecated)

Server-Side Scripting

There are a huge number of server-side languages to choose from.

• ASP
• ASP.NET
• ColdFusion
• JSP
• Perl
• PHP
• Python
• Ruby On Rails
• Others: Lasso, OpenLaszlo, Smalltalk, SMX, SSI and SSJS

Database Management Systems

There are four popular SQL-based relational databases worthy of consideration.

• MS-SQL
• mySQL
• Oracle
• PostgreSQL
• Others: Derby, MongoDB and SQLite

Sandboxed Languages

The likes of Flash and Silverlight run in an independent sandboxed environment.

• ActiveX
• Flash
• Java
• Shockwave
• Silverlight

Server-Side/Web Server Settings

There are two configuration languages and one search engine language file!

• .htaccess
• Robots.txt
• Web.config

Rich Internet Applications

There are several frameworks which will take your web applications to the desktop.

• Air
• Gears
• JavaFX
• Prism
• Others: Cappuccino, Curl and Titanium

Vector Modeling Languages

There are 5 popular modeling languages for both 2D and 3D graphic and chart rendering.

• 3DMLW
• Canvas (HTML5)
• SVG
• VML
• X3D
• Others: 3DML, 3DXML, SMIL, UML, VRML and XVRML

PostScript Format Languages

There are two web compatible PostScript formats for document manuscripts.

• PDF
• XPS
• Others: FlashPaper and OpenXML

Data Formatting Languages

All of the above languages format information of various different mediums.

• DocBook
• KML
• MathML
• OpenSearch
• PAD
• Sitemap
• VoiceXML
• Others: DOAC, DOAP, GML, GraphML, InkML, OpenMath, SISR, SRGS, SSML and XMLTV

Document Schema Languages

There are two popular schemas for rendering markup languages on the web.

• DTD
• XSD
• Others: DSD, RelaxNG and Schema XML

A Caveat about Comprehensiveness

While only languages that are well recognised and have a reasonable level of support are provided in this list, it's worth pointing out that many others exist and could perhaps be worthy of inspection if you feel the need to dive into something a little more obscure and possibly interesting.

Going Forward

Now that you are aware of the sheer multitude of options at your fingertips, I'm sure you'll want to run off and investigate these languages further and perhaps learn another skill that you can add to your resume (or further enhance the way you approach building a website).

Just Starting Out?

If you are a beginner to the whole web design/development scene, my general advice would be to stick to one of the languages I have highlighted as recommended in each category (if you feel that researching for yourself would just confuse you) and to follow through each layer in order as it's been listed to give you a general roadmap to cover whatever you may wish to employ (HTML is a great starter language).

Depending on the needs of your website, you can wrap additional layers around it.

It's worth making a note at this point that the order, breakdown and recommendations provided are simply my interpretation of how the task of finding a new language can be undertaken.

Factors That Can Affect Your Choice

It's important (before we leave this discussion) to underscore the general point that your choices for each layer should be made upon a mixture of intended compatibility (so you know your choice will work for your visitors), relevancy (if the language is current or deprecated) and what you feel comfortable using.

Don't Sweat It

Beginners to the world of web design/development should remember that even the most experienced gurus of the web started from the bottom and worked their way up one skill/language at a time.

If you feel that all the choice at your disposal is too much for you, simply follow my recommendations and you'll not go far off course. While all of the considerations and lists may seem like a lot to take in, the great thing about coding for the web is that you only need a couple of languages to get started. The rest of your knowledge can evolve over time and evolve as you add more layers to your work.

Hopefully, you've been given the inspiration and pathway to perhaps look beyond the conventional HTML, CSS and JavaScript towards languages you might have never considered before, and I look forward to seeing what comes of your learning a brand new exciting web technology!

Related Content

• The Anatomy of a Website
• The History of the Internet in a Nutshell
• 10 Revealing Infographics about the Web
• Related categories: Web Technology and Web Development

About the Author

Alexander Dawson is a freelance web designer, author and recreational software developer specializing in web standards, accessibility and UX design. As well as running a business called HiTechy and writing, he spends time on Twitter, SitePoint's forums and other places, helping those in need.