After my presentation on Facebook Advertising ROI at the Stamford Business Networking group, I was asked to do a follow up on Facebook basics. So here it is. Enjoy!

Some interesting direct mail stats from Deliver magazine.

More than 12 billion catalogs were mailed in 2010.

55.6% of respondents found catalogs “useful” and 21.5% found catalogs “interesting.”

52.4% of consumers read direct mail from merchants. More than 53% found merchant mail “useful” and 16.8% responded to merchant mail offers.

We’ve been waiting for this to come along, Google’s answer to Facebook’s Like button but for search results pages. You will now start to see a tiny +1 icon next to the title of orgainic and paid (AdWords) search listings. Currently, it appears next to the Favorite star but this is expected to go away soon. The idea of this nifty little gadget is make search more social, allowing users to effectively vote up (recommend) their “favorite” listings. Okay, let’s see how long it takes the search scammers to spoof this one.

InMaps is a cool tool from LinkedIn that allows you to visualize all your connections in your network. Watch the video and then try it yourself at LinkedIn Labs.

A very entertaining and insightful conference from ad man Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy Group, on TEDTalk. I particularly like the bit about Shreddies breakfast cereal and the process of creating intangible value.