I watch a post proliferate late last week about the top 50 branded Facebook Fan Pages from back in July. The nice thing is the post presents a ton of data and then tries to interpret the data and guide readers to action after learning from the data. The trouble is the data.

The data comes from a web app created by Vitrue which boasts to have the ability to quantify Social Media into Return on Investment (ROI) figures. Before you go run and try to calculate your page’s dollar value know that the point of a social media presence isn’t dollar value. I’m not the only one uneasy by Vitrue’s misleading ROI calculations and dollar values for fans.

MySpace is a ‘technology company connecting people through personal expression, content, and culture.’ Facebook gives ‘people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.’ The point of these two major social networking sites is to connect people.

How do you value a relationship? Is it pure dollars? How would you calculate any form of ROI based on relationships, in this case between a brand and followers/fans? Let me throw two thoughts out there: (1) communicating through social media channels is the same or similar to driving traffic from a blog: you provide something your readers/followers want, they identify and discuss around your content. (2) Besides very few, how many people are purchasing goods and services from a Facebook page, or as a result of traffic from a Facebook page to an eCommerce website? How can any Facebook page or social media campaign even guess at potential ROI?

I’m throwing hypotheticals out there to guide you to my point: the bottom line is Vitrue adds false dollar value. Their calculations are not based on analytical data translated into dollars and sense but made on unsubstantiated speculation. The real problem ends up not being with Vitrue’s faking ROI values, the real problem exists with the Web Analysts at corporations (Fortune 200′s to small businesses) who buy into the idea that fans X daily interactions X percentage of annual revenue could equal ROI.

Despite how upset I may be with the concept of ROI association with social media interactions, we should probably ask: Are the folks at Vitrue jerks for obscuring social media value or are they geniuses taking advantage of naive Web Analysts’ and large-scale companies who don’t know better?

Facebook in the last 12 hours launched Universities on Facebook, a page geared to encouraging interaction between people attending universities. The page also provides deals on goods and services from popular brands like Utrecht Art, NewEgg.com and Eddie Bauer. While some of the offers still need to be ironed out, the prospect of network-specific content starts to rise.

For a enterprise level Facebook Application I’m working on, I have been trying to use the Open Graph API to determine where a user’s network, current city or states (of interests) exist and then serving up content based on the the response. If you’ve seen anything from popular fast food chains such as McDonalds and Burger King you’ll know that not all goods, services and specials are offered nationwide. McRib is a good example: despite availability of ingredients, labor for processing etc, the McRib is only ever around for a short period of time and in certain markets. If a brand like McDonalds wants to promote the McRib on Facebook – they can but they have to add a ton of disclaimers saying ‘price and participation may vary.’

Facebook Ads can be targeted at a particular user group, why not target your custom applications’ content? At the end of the day, a lot of brands utilizing Facebook‘s platform, like Yelp, are trying to provide more accurate, socially relevant and locally available content. While I want to be the first to provide the service, we can all benefit from network-relevant content. Universities – and Facebook’s other programs attempt to target types of users with relevant content and best practices.

I ‘like’ Universities and I have a major take away from this campaign (albeit only a few hours old):

I can target the set-up of my content on a demographic and then through carefully planned code I can target sub-groups of my desired demographic.

I keep harping on Facebook campaigns, but what are some of the focuses of your Facebook campaigns? Is it to be informative and interactive, present fun things for your clients and fans to do, cross-promote products or brands?

Threw down an article yesterday about the recent launch of Facebook Places. There seem to be a lot of people worried about privacy, everything is about privacy and who can see what others share about “me.”

What I have a hard understanding is why people don’t communicate in person about tagging on mobile applications. Look: the only way to tag someone through Facebook Places is if they’re already a friend of yours. Unless you’ve mass-added a bunch of folks so you can play an online-game without paid advancement, your friends list should be people you actually know. Why is it Facebook’s problem if your friends, who are presumably physically near you, are tagging you in content?

There’s an argument about a casual Facebook users being tagged without their knowledge of such functionality existing. Moreover: if they have a mobile device that doesn’t connect to the internet, they may not have any ability to monitor where they’re being tagged until they’re in front of a computer again. Acknowledging all of that – the point remains: people tagging you are your friends.

Two things: (i) if your friends are tagging you and you don’t approve, talk to your friends, don’t get upset with Facebook; (ii) be honest with people and all will be well: if lie about your location or activities, expect to get caught – maybe even from a tag from one of your friends checking in with Facebook Places.