In a post on MediaBistro’s PRNewser (Nov. 30, 2009), Joe Ciarallo cites a study by Sysomos that asserts that only 23% of Facebook pages have more than 1,000 fans.

On Facebook, brands and bands and other organizations can create a page account that draws fans rather than friends. Fans of a page subscribe to its news items and can post on the page.

The Wordsupply page has just joined the 95% of sites that have more than 10 fans. (Become a Wordsupply fan on Facebook—update your status and help us break 100! :o)

But even for B2C brands—which may seem more likely to draw numerous fans—it’s tough to lure Facebookers away from the comfort of their Home page news streams.

The pages with the most fans feature celebrities and universal ideas like “Flipping the Pillow Over to Get to the Cold Side,” which boasts 2.9 million fans.

But rather than be discouraged by these stats, we are intrigued. Millions of people are using Facebook, fanning pages, joining groups, reading news, and spreading the word. Whether you work as an individual or organization, offering a service or a product, you must create a page and offer your stream.

You can create a page yourself—and claim your brand name: Just go to Facebook and follow the instructions to create a page.

(And if you need help, Wordsupply is ready to start the news stream and keep it flowing!)

Professor Michael Wesch created the following video – it’s “Web 2.0 in five minutes” – using “CamStudio for the screen captures and Sony Vegas for the panning/cropping/zooming animations.”

Beyond the content itself—remarkably current for a March 2007 release—we should study this use of media.  It represents an emerging (if not “new”) way for businesses and thinkers to present information.

The Machine is Us/ing Us (Final Version)

This post is about a different kind of contract—it’s the contract you make with yourself as a writer.

Thanks to National Novel Writing Month—NaNoWriMo—November has become an annual fest of unfettered word-cranking.

Participants are encouraged to write at least 50,000 words from scratch.  Your inner wordsmith gets the keys to a gassed-up muscle car and an endless row of green lights.  Your internal editor gets locked in the trunk or ditched at the rest stop.

What’s new this year is that a computer-book publisher I’m starting to edit and acquire for, Pragmatic Bookshelf, is encouraging would-be high-tech authors to write in November. The result is editor/author Daniel Steinberg’s PragProWriMo.

No participating authors are under any obligation to submit their results to Pragmatic, and I’m not directly involved—I’m just cheering this on.  (Personally, I may do NaNoWriMo to finally finish my coming-of-age novel!)

Here are the PragProWriMo mechanics:

If you are on Twitter, just tweet when you have finished your writing for the day. Use the tag #pragprowrimo and let us know what you wrote and how it went.

If you’re not on Twitter go ahead and post your progress in the comments to this blog. Somewhere you need to declare what you’ve done. It will keep you writing.

The only rule is to keep writing. Other than that, have fun and check back in with us to let us know how it’s going.

Deadlines work, and I hope this helps!  Leave a comment to let us know if you’re trying NaNoWriMo or PragProWriMo!