Did you know that API stands for Application Programming Interface?  You hear that acronym thrown around all the time these days, but what does it stand for? Why should you care? And most important, how do they impact your business?  These questions and more were discussed during the Social Media Club of San Francisco’s panel discussion at @Mashery HQ in San Francisco, Tuesday the 15th of May.

Moderating was Christopher Saad, the Chief Strategy Officer and Co Founder of Echo. @Chrissaad’s Echo works with sites such as Lady Gaga, Discovery Channel and Universal Music Groups. Raj Kadam, Co-founder and CEO of @ViralHeat and works extensively with sentiment analysis, analytics and engagement for social media and real time web. Roland Smart, VP of Marketing at Involver which powers more pages on Facebook than any other platform. Muray Mckerlie, Co-Founder and VP of Sales & Marketing of Whit.li, an API that creates “Relevancy Ratings.” And to round out the panel, Tyler Singletary, the Developer Evangelist for @Klout and manages the API platform. He also has a brother at Twitter!

API’s are open data systems that allow anyone to create and customize rules to build upon the original data and create what might be needed for your own business or organization. If your not sure what an API is, s simple, fun explanation of API’s is offered by BBYOPEN on YouTube here: http://youtu.be/7r7QpIDEI_o

It was an open discussion also in the way that the seating was set up for the event. Rather than have the 5 panelists that face the audience as if lecturing, the chairs were a bit “helter skelter “off to the side. It set the stage for an engaging and open conversation about how API’s influence us today especially in the world of Social Media.

Kadam of ViralHeat points out, “API’s are universally seen as a way to provide brand awareness that then allows Viral Heat to understand more about their customers and then figure out the proper business model to monetize them.” The Viralheat sentiment API is used by platforms including Klout, Seesmic, and Zuberance.

They all seek to monetize their API’s by enabling anyone with an interest in it to have it. If it’s a bigger customer such as an enterprise company, they “reel” in the opportunity and negotiate a deal. @Whit_li,  focuses on providing a “sandbox” environment to those that want to play with their data and they can learn from them. They have partnered with Tech Crunch for their Disrupt NYC  providing the API that will power TechRecs, an app that will examine each conference attendee’s personality traits, demographics and rare interests, and provide relevant recommendations and suggest whom they should meet during the event.

@Involver’s API’s makes their own products more robust and they recognize it’s critical to their future as their success lies in providing content to their customer’s through API’s. They offer free subscriptions but after a certain threshold of queries and calls that triggers the red light to reach out to those users and do a deal.

Klout measures one’s influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps. It relies on their API’s to provide content to other partners and customers. In fact they offer a threshold of up to 60,000 calls a day! Singletary feels their success is due to them offering a personalized experience through social media. Their perks are pretty cool too – if you download their iphone app and you have a score of over 40, you will have access to the Cathay Pacific Lounge to any visitor traveling through the “A” boarding area at SFO’s international terminal, even if you aren’t a Cathay Pacific passenger.

There are numerous sources on the Internet to learn more about API’s. You can start with Mashery and download their Mashery’s API Kit. Most sites have a .dev page where you can download their API developer kit, they showcase their apps and white papers usually. Although it still takes someone techie to integrate an API, marketers can easily partner with companies who offer API’s to enhance their site with content or data that will enrich their product or user’s experience. That is the brilliance of today’s open api’s – it expands a company’s offerings and many times at this stage of the game, API’s are free!

Programmable Web is “the” place to be part of the community of API’s. It has an amazing directory of over 6,000 API’s and 6,635 Mashups. Each entry provides stats, graphs, social media and all types of information you might be seeking when seeking to know if an app is worth bothering with or if its already out in the market.

The best way to learn about API’s is to go in person and meet other API enthusiasts by attending a Hackathon. This is an organized event where there are usually contests to create the best mashed up API’s. Mashery is well known for their Circus Mashimus at SXSW and you can find others popping up almost weekly these days. As you can see, API’s are here to stay and found all over this wonderful, connected world of ours.

Another great way to meet like minded API geeks, join the Social Media Club #SMCSFO

Here are Bub.blicio.us, we like to try and cover as many parties and events that we can and one of the most common things that we usually see is the free-flowing amount of alcohol. This is typical of tech parties and combined with things like mobile phones and social tools, just one simple click and share could cause some unintended consequences for those in the photo or video. Come on, admit it, we’ve all been in those situations where someone takes a photo at a party where everyone has had one too many and then shares it on Facebook. The next morning, you wake up and realize that the photographer has tagged you in it, thereby allow your friends, family, and even co-workers to view it. What’s worse is if they had pushed it to a service like Twitter or Google+ with you associated with the tweet. The bottom line here? Social media, while it’s great to help you relive those memories, you’re going to want to make sure certain ones aren’t shared publicly.

Enter About Last Night. This mobile application is like the Facebook/Path version specifically for nightlife. It’s going to create a brand new community where people like yourself can hang out (virtually speaking) and share photos and videos. And once there, you can choose who you want to share the photos with or even keep them pretty private so that no one will ever see them in public.

Launched just today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, About Last Night (ALN) was created by the “Dodge brothers”, Derek and Darren Dodge, who are the sons of Google’s Developer Advocate and legendary startup and tech insider, Don Dodge. It’s probably one of the few apps devoted to helping your nightlife experience be more social but adhering to that time-honored adage of “What happens here, stays here” and helps you maintain your privacy without impeding on your ability to share what you want. Sure, this app isn’t necessary if you wanted to just post those nightlife photos onto Facebook and have specific friends view them, but what about those photos where you have people who aren’t your friends but were there and you’d like to share photos with them? It’s going to take a bit more of an effort to friend them just so that they can see the photos. Okay, then what about Path? That’s a true private social network, but again, you’re limited in who can view your content and it’s only for 150 of your friends. Not really ideal and requires some major shifts in your relationships to make it work.

So what’s the next obvious choice? Take a look at About Last Night–there’s much potential for this application. It follows the standard model that what great applications like Path have followed–it’s a mobile first type of service.  There is a website to view some information, but this service has only a mobile interface. When you first download the application, you’re going to be able to connect using Facebook Connect. Once you follow all of your friends, you’ll be able to see their updates, just like you would in any social network. Of course their updates will be limited to what photos they post through the ALN application. But what’s fascinating about this is that you or your Facebook friends can simply create your own photo about your nightlife experience (as you would with Facebook or Path) and it will be public (on the app) for everyone to see…well for at least a certain amount of time. It turns out that photos posted on the app only have a shelf life of about 24 hours. The shelf life of the photos will depend on how many people like the photo on ALN…those that receive the most thumbs up in the app will remain longer and look to forever be associated with that venue.

Both photos and videos can be shared on About Last Night and if you’re worried about some of your friends following you on ALN seeing some “unflattering” media about you and your friends? Well there’s a private feed that you can enable by simply tapping on a button or switch on your posts. Perhaps this is one of the best things about ALN because one of the things you just hate to have is that photo where you’re completely drunk and have certain “liable” photos that should not see the light of day.  But no matter what you share on ALN, you will also be able to share them on Twitter and Facebook for others to see. Prior to TechCrunch Disrupt, I happened to use the About Last Night application and found this amazing photo of the development team with famed musician and entrepreneur, MC Hammer. I decided that it was worth sharing so within the app, I chose to share it and pushed it to Twitter for everyone to see. Users are able to customize their tweet and Facebook post accordingly to help set the mood and story behind what’s taking place.

About Last Night isn’t all about just being an application to hide or display a specific niche set of media. No, it’s also about helping you discover your next destination or understanding where to go to maximize your enjoyment. Take an event like South by Southwest for example–this is an event that is known for dozens of parties each night, many that are filled to capacity, but everyone wants to know which is the “hottest” place to go. Whether it’s partying late at night at the Driskill Hotel bar or perhaps going to a Mashable party or even the Foursquare extravaganza, if About Last Night was used, you’ll be one of the first to know if the lines are long, drinks are flowing, people are having fun, and whether special guest appearances are taking place. And what if the event has a special concert, like how American Express brought Jay-Z to SXSW? Well then people can just simply post their photos and videos to ALN and your friends will be able to gaze in awe over how great your night was without you flooding their stream with glorified content when they weren’t able to make it.

Through the use of location-based technology, About Last Night will be able to share with you some nearby locations that people are posting media to in case you felt compelled to stop in and take a look and spend some money there.

Nightlife establishments and even brands can also participate in this application. Right now the company has deals in place with Sam Adams and many more are expected to roll in shortly. The beauty here is that when individuals post photos at a venue like the Press Club here in San Francisco or the Belmont in Austin, Texas, what should (and probably could) happen is that a message could pop up notifying the user that they can receive a free beer or some cool amenity just for posting photos to that venue. Even though it’s probably only going to stay on ALN for 24 hours, the fact is that the venue/event or promotion is getting user-generated coverage practically for free. And if it’s a nearby venue or whatever, then by using a bit of interception marketing, the user might be targeted and enticed to go pay a visit to that other venue. Just like Foursquare specials, what About Last Night could specialize in is nightlife deals–alcohol and drinks, transportation, free cover, or maybe even accommodations.

While it might seem that this application is all exciting, there are some potential pitfalls and things that the company needs to overcome: the design of their website and logo still need a bit of work. It’s a bit of a mess to look at and if they want to be taken a bit more seriously, then this might be the way to go. Granted they poured most of their design work into their app and it looks pretty good, but when you want folks to download and find more information, a website is still key. Within their application, it obviously can use a bit more finessing on it–I’ve noticed that there are some images that, when shown, look pretty disproportionate and pixelated. Perhaps having them be displayed in a proportional way similar to what Path has might be more suitable? In addition, when people share photos outside of ALN and onto other networks like Twitter and Facebook, the link is a Google URL shortened one–can a branded link be implemented? Obviously any of these could be in their pipeline and depends on their user acquisition and monetization strategy, but it’s a pretty good start for an app.

About Last Night is currently available in the iTunes store. I have been told that the Android version of the application is being worked on and should be released in the next few months. The company is bootstrapped and looking to find some interested investors to potentially help fund their seed round.

Photo Credit: Embarrassing drunken photos via Michelle Rattinger/CollegeMagazine.com

History has just been made. At around 9:30am EST today, the NASDAQ stock exchange welcomed their biggest and latest entry into the public market. It was quite a sight to behold, quite frankly…in just one quick move, founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg did two things: usher in a change from Facebook to $FB and instantly make hundreds, if not thousands, of millionaires out of his colleagues (and himself!). So today, we welcome one of the biggest companies into the world and wish Mr. Zuckerberg congratulations.

So what’s next? Well the stock isn’t going to actually be traded until 11am EST, just less than two hours from now. But the hope is that after the hype and the initial rush wears off, Facebook will certainly get back to work and be more innovative with their technology and platform. In watching CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” this morning, it seemed that the anchors and pundits were suggesting that Facebook was going to be a ad-supported platform and that’s how the would generate revenue. I suppose one might believe that and there’s no doubt that Facebook advertising is going to be a significant factor in their annual growth–although one might think the contrary in light of the move that General Motors played earlier this week. But Facebook is not going to simply be supported by advertising revenue. In fact, another anchor on “Squawk on the Street” pointed this out, that they hoped that Facebook would now make their developer platform more open and by going public, a new era of application development for the platform would be created and usher in profound innovations in how we communicate and share data with one another. That seems to be a pretty interesting thing for a public company to do, right?

Facebook’s foray into being a grown up startup–well scratch that, they are no longer a startup, they’re a company…in fact, probably for several years, they’ve been considered a company in light of the enormous workforce, the senior leadership, and the massive amount of capital and funding that they’ve accrued. But getting back to my point, Facebook’s foray into being a public company has been an interesting one and is momentous because of the effect it will bring to the public market. Sure, there have been other technology companies that have gone public, like LinkedIn, Zynga, Pandora, Groupon, and many others, but Facebook seems to be the one that people are going to be using for the next few years, if not longer and has done quite a bit to help shape the way business and communities have been organized and function. It’s appropo for Facebook to be going public–if anyone had bought them, I’m certain the social network would have ceased to exist and great opportunities would have been squandered. The social network has been about the people and the data and now the people “own” it and can shape its behavior.

Bill Gurley from Benchmark Capital went on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” says that Facebook won’t go down because of their “mobile” fear problem because the company has a lot of passionate employees who will be able to “figure it out”. He does say that they might want to focus on their ad model and have it go towards their mobile platform. With the estimated cash that Facebook will be getting , they will be able to put some significant resources against this problem. There’s definitely lots of pressure on Mr. Zuckerberg since now that they’re a public company, the public backlash against the company could be a bad thing against him…or it could be a good thing. Only time will tell…

How fitting then is it for Mr. Zuckerberg to update his Facebook Timeline soon after ringing the bell at Facebook headquarters? The screenshot above was taken just about an hour ago and right after he took the stage with his senior management team, including COO Sheryl Sandberg, and several hundred of his friends and Facebook employees. Then, at 9:30am EST, the opening bell was run and the company officially became a public entity. Trading does not begin until around 11am EST, although CNBC is reporting on television that it will most likely be around 10:45am EST.

Quoting has already begun.

Photo Credit:
- Facebook founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg via eMarkZuckerberg.com
- Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the Facebook team ring the opening bell for the NASDAQ stock exchange via Facebook.com 

The eve of what looks to be the largest technology IPO in the world is upon us. In just less than 12 hours, the world’s largest social network will certainly become even bigger after it goes public and raises a huge amount of capital–estimates have it being around $16 billion, 150% times larger than what was initially predicted. And to get people even more excited, today, Facebook shared with the world what they’ve been waiting for: its initial stock price. Starting at $38 per share, millions are expected to invest their money in the IPO in order to take their place in history as a shareholder in a momentous company. Some might think that the $38 price tag is pretty high for a startup, but not really. Looking back at search engine giant, Google, when they went public in 2004, the company priced their stock price at $85 and valued at more than double than what Facebook is currently valued. And each company has their own differences, which you can read about in this excellent Forbes piece. Nevertheless, the point here is that Facebook is probably the biggest thing to hit the public market since Google took it by storm eight years ago.

And now, we’re inching ever so close to that historical moment…when the company’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will take his place in history and ring the opening bell at the NASDAQ stock exchange from his office in Menlo Park, California, and watch not only his company enter a brand new era, but also see many of the employees at Facebook become instant millionaires. But has the thought of billions of dollars rolling through Facebook headquarters damaged any prospect of work at the company in the proverbial eleventh hour? Nope…because Mr. Zuckerberg and his troops have assembled at their offices for a hackathon. Yes, a hackathon–something that is rather typical in Silicon Valley and what many see as a way for Mr. Zuckerberg to demonstrate to soon-to-be investors that Facebook isn’t all about the money. No, it’s actually the way of life at Facebook. As VentureBeat explains, this all-night event is meant to reinforce their mantra that “Facebook’s focus will always be on building and shipping products.” The work at Facebook doesn’t stop just because people are going to see all their work come to fruition in less than twenty-four hours.

VentureBeat’s article includes a quote from Mr. Zuckerberg in a letter to investors:

The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration…Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.

For many people at the company, coming this far has been a long and tireless effort with a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. From endless nights toiling away at helping Facebook gain traction, seek out investments, survive controversy after controversy, lawsuits after lawsuits, and rolling out feature after feature that people constantly rebelled against, but mostly ultimately resigned themselves into having, the next 24 hours will be a wild roller coaster of emotions. Who knew that a single startup that came out of a Harvard dorm room would be able to catapult a young kid from relative obscurity into a technology superstar and cultural icon and helped shape a social network that looked to be no different than its predecessor MySpace into a networking and marketing powerhouse that it is today. Not only that, but it’s helped shape cultures, affect people’s behaviors, allowed folks to express themselves, and shape societies in ways no one practically expected.

How did this one social network succeed and become a normal part of society like it was our television, computer, automobile, cell phone, or any normal fixture in our lives, while the other social network “pioneers” faded away into relative niche obscurity or just wound up in disrepair? What did Facebook have that Friendster, Orkut, Bebo, MySpace, and all the others that have fallen to the wayside, have? Maybe because Mr. Zuckerberg and the social network just “got it” when all others didn’t? A quick query search on Quora leads to some interesting answers that make some sense:

• Facebook focused on real personal information & social connections
• Facebook developed more “sticky” features
• Facebook built a developer & technology platform

Whatever that “thing” was that caused Facebook to succeed, it has surely got them this far and up and it’s surely going to make some people very happy. According to CNBC, the company has seen some strong demand for shares since it announced its IPO–so strong, in fact, that brokerage companies were going to cease taking orders for shares as of two days ago. Of course, if you have enough cash and drive, you can certainly still pick up an order or two of stock at a few brokerage houses. And there’s definitely been a lot of buzz about the IPO–the company even amended their filing twice over the past 48 hours just to increase the size and price of the offering. While most people are estimating that Facebook will pull in $16 billion in their IPO, it could probably go as high as $18.4 billion and make it the second largest IPO in US history.

There will be plenty of folks who will see a tremendous windfall from the IPO tomorrow, including Mr. Zuckerberg. He alone stands to reap the biggest fortune at nearly $1.5 billion just from the IPO. Fellow co-founder Dustin Moskovitz is estimated to take $284 million while other investors will get a good chunk of change as well:

• Early stage investor Peter Thiel: $848 million
• Zynga’s Mark Pincus: $4.1 million
• Sean Parker: $38 million
• LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman: $412 million
• Jim Breyer: $125 million
• Accel Partners: $2 billion
• DST Global: $2 billion
• Goldman Sachs: $1.25 billion
• Greylock Partners: $332 million
• Elevation Partners: $202 million
• Microsoft Corp: $287 million

Congratulations to the Facebook community for the incredible success that you’ve had over the years. It has definitely been a long trek over the past eight years and there’s an incredible amount of momentum pushing you forward. Here’s hoping that as the company turns the page and moves towards being a public one, the passion and the drive continues to be there and encourages the team to help build bigger and better programs and tools that companies and individuals can use to keep in touch with one another.

If you want to watch this historic moment online, NASDAQ’s website is scheduled to broadcast all the festivities live on Eastern Standard Time. VentureBeat reports that the festivities won’t be exclusive to Facebook and will be a normal part of the NASDAQ’s opening bell ceremony. It won’t probably be as glamorous as what you normally see due to Mr. Zuckerberg’s decision to stay at Facebook headquarters to ring the bell…it will most likely be all decorated like how Zynga did their IPO launch (see above). But set your alarm, folks, because it’s definitely going to happen tomorrow and it doesn’t matter where Mr. Zuckerberg is because in a few hours, history will be made. It all goes down at 9:29:15 in the morning on Friday, May 18.

Image Credit: “Trading Places”

Photo Credit: Facebook founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, receives a standing ovation at Hackathon 31 on eve of historic IPO via Francis Luu/Facebook

There has been a lot of news and content produced about finding ways to determine one’s influence. Perhaps the two most cited sources of determining influence has got to be with Klout and Kred. These services are known by the community as being the de facto place to measure how influential you are and businesses should determine who they should reach out to when they want to get the community to notice their campaigns. But what if there was a way where people can decide if they’re an expert or not and not have to resign themselves to an algorithm, wouldn’t that offer more value to someone in order to help them determine what they want to actually consume?

That’s exactly what a brand new service called Refer.ly hopes to accomplish. Started by Danielle Morrill, this cool new startup is geared towards helping you create your own affiliate links just for recommending things that you love. And why wouldn’t this be something that everyone wants to do? After all, we’ve all been there where we like a certain product so much that we just have to tell our friends, right? For me, it might be a new gadget or digital camera that I’m rather ecstatic about and as a result, want to share it with people across my social graph–so why shouldn’t I be able to be rewarded for something that I’m already interested in doing AND am in love with? In a 2006 Comscore report, the number one reason why brands and products were recommended was because evangelists and brand advocates wanted to help others. For companies trying to tap into this social graph, it’s going to be rather difficult as people can be suspect of ulterior motives. But if a friend or a colleague recommends it and promotes it using social channels, there’s a higher likelihood of adoption and persuasion. A Harris Poll in 2010 found out:

Nearly half of Americans who use social media say reviews about a particular company, brand or product from friends or people they follow on social networking websites influence them either a great deal or a fair amount (45%) – the same number as Americans who say reviews in newspaper or magazine articles influence them (46%).

So now that we know that there’s a market for referrals, why should the big companies get the money as a result of this effort? Shouldn’t we, as individuals, have an opportunity to reap the rewards of sharing their joys and passion? For Mrs. Morrill, this has been something in the making for many years, judging by what she told TechCrunch writer, Kim-Mai Cutler a few years ago. The passion to solve this problem was too great for Mrs. Morrill, formerly the first employee and the Director of Marketing at telecommunications startup Twilio and so earlier this week, she stepped down from her position to devote her time to making this possible. As TechCrunch puts it, online, there’s an $3 billion annual industry of affiliate commerce that gets paid for helping reward companies and people for their referrals. But these aren’t ordinary people…now Refer.ly makes it possible for them to level the playing field and get some of that change. To Mrs. Morrill, everyone is considered an expert–it does not matter what your Klout or Kred score is. There’s always someone who can influence other people–it’s all about reach and scale.

Users can sign up for a free Refer.ly account and instantly begin making affiliate links. Acting similarly like a URL shortener, you’ll get all the pickings like you would with bit.ly, but with more of a potential financial compensation model. Just like traditional URL shorteners, you can see how many people have clicked on your links that you share on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc and it can be anything, but what Refer.ly does that is different than others is the conversion tracking. You’ll be able to see the count of people who clicked on your link and, in turn, wound up buying that item. So say that I tweeted out a Refer.ly link to the new Canon 5D MKIII SLR camera (affiliate link) on Amazon. In the settings page, I’ll be able to track the conversions from there. You can see a screenshot of what the analytic section looks like below. And, depending on the website you’re linking to, referrers may get a chance to receive rewards for their actions.

The selling point of Refer.ly? Well I’ll let their website explain the benefits: Referly tracks the links you share, and rewards you for your friends’ actions. When you share your favorite products and services, you build a reputation as the “go-to guru” for the things you love, and get rewards for generating purchases.

One scaling problem that the service has was raised by PandoDaily: if you’re not a Robert Scoble or Justin Beiber or even a Kim Kardashian, then what are the odds of you receiving enough traction for people to retweet your links and helping you claim your reward? Individual spammers may decide to leverage the service in order to receive additional dollars by people who foolishly click on links. But then again, keep in mind that the shortened URLs created by Refer.ly do not have to be limited just to Twitter–you can apply the same URL to other social networks like Facebook, Google+, MySpace, and even in your emails to your friends and colleagues. But when asked about the scalability issue that PandoDaily raised, Mrs. Morrill told TechCrunch that she’s not expecting Refer.ly users to make money off living off of the links that they send out. It’s more about how the market will respond to this…and the market will respond favorably. Right now, the service has over 30,000 brands participating in the Refer.ly rewards program (as cited by PandoDaily) and it’s apparently due to deals negotiated with affiliate networks and directly with vendors. The rewards are still unannounced and eventually the service will have a rewards directory that will help you assess what you’re getting.

For many years, the fact that people signed up to be an affiliate probably required them to apply and be scrutinized–no longer is this the case with Refer.ly. Starting this week, anyone can sign up for an account and be masters of their own marketing. If you’re passionate about something like photography, music, fashion, etc, then you can feel free to send out your own affiliate links under the guise of traditional links, and help share your good fortune and make a quick dollar or two as a result. Even companies and brands who want to do a better job of measuring how effective their social media campaigns are going could participate–if there are products on sites like Amazon or eBay, companies typically may have problems trying to determine the source/origin of that transaction. Now, using Refer.ly, if they want to measure the path from a tweet or Facebook posting all the way to the actual transaction, then they can simply use a Refer.ly URL. Maybe tying it back into Google Analytics will help give them more in-depth reporting as well.

The company was founded by Mrs. Morrill and her husband, Kevin Morrill, along with another co-founder Al Abut. The service is now officially just a couple days old and is backed by 500 Startups’ own Dave McClure and Mrs. Morrill’s former boss, Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, who gave his blessing to Mrs. Morrill’s departure from the company. Interestingly enough, Refer.ly is also a member of the latest Y Combinator Summer 2012 class.

The service is open to anyone who wants to give it a try now. Simply go to Refer.ly and sign up using the quick & simple form. Once you’re done, you’ll be able to instantly create your own Refer.ly URLs and start making money. For your convenience, the service also has a bookmarklet that you can add to your browser, similar to what Delicious has on their site so you won’t need to constantly keep the Refer.ly site open and create those links.

So what do you think? Is there enough of a marketplace for individuals to create their own referral system or become affiliate marketers? Do you necessarily need to be someone with a huge Klout score or a large social media following in order to reap the rewards? Let us know in the comments below.

We’re mere days away from the much anticipated Facebook IPO and all interested parties seem to be in an eleventh hour frenzy. First GM pulls $40 million worth of Facebook ad revenue from the site. Next comes a report making the rounds in major news outlets that Facebook ad clicks pale in comparison to Google ads.  The AP now says this lack of trust may even cut into Facebook ad sales, which make up 82% of all current revenue for the site. Things don’t look so good for this week’s stock market darling…

But keep in mind this is all right before Friday (the rumored IPO D-day). The initial poll data from Associated Press-CNBC suggesting the ads on Facebook are ineffective comes in conveniently right before the IPO.

And these results only serve to heighten fears that the stock may be overpriced. Facebook lifted the stock price on Tuesday from $28-$35 to $34-$38 a piece. More seasoned investors caution against investing right away, while over half of those surveyed say they think Facebook is a good bet. However, one poll of 1004 users (by telephone, ahem) does not make for an accurate picture.

Facebook has almost 1 billion active monthly users, more than half use a cell phone and are under the age of 40.

There’ve been plenty of previous case studies (Expedia went from 250k fans to over 1 million with effective Facebook advertising). Ford even made a jab at GM on Tuesday with a post about how they model their advertisements to have engaging content. And those searching can now find a swirl of discussion around how to make their ads more effective if they weren’t initially.

But the point is not that Facebook ads are effective in the hands of a good copy writer, or that people should still invest in Facebook on Friday (many regular investors caution against buying into Facebook for the time being anyway), it’s that, despite the media frenzy, a small poll doesn’t tell a very good story. 1004 old people are more likely (if their memory serves them right) to click on a Google ad more than a Facebook ad. And this is relevant how? But numbers, particularly with percentages behind them, sell to journalists. Especially when it has to do with the IPO of the largest social network in the world.

Whether we do see Facebook open up for trading on Friday, or ad sales plummet or a whole new revenue model in the near future remains a bit murky. What is for certain is the hilarious and possibly well planned timing of negative news to mainstream media right before the Zuck’s big day. Investors will need much more relevant data than a small poll to tell them whether the Facebook stock is worth the initial investment.

Image Credit: “The Simpsons” movie

As each day in the month of May goes by, we move closer to what will surely be a historical day not only in the day of public trading, but also in the technology community. This week, it’s being said that the long-awaited Facebook IPO is set to go forward–or you could subscribe to the other side of the coin that says it’s going to be delayed. All the players are moving into position in what many say could help the social network raise close to $100 billion in capital. The asking price is rumored to be between $28-35 and Bloomberg is reporting that Facebook will stop taking orders tomorrow for the IPO–two days ahead of schedule. It’s being said that the potential investment could have Facebook have a market value that would surpass that of UPS as the “most valuable company in history to go public in the United States” (based on market capitalization). Not bad for a site that is mainly geared at helping folks communicate with each other.

All in all, one of the missing pieces has just come into play–since their IPO announcement months ago, Facebook has been waiting on approval from the NASDAQ stock exchange in order to be listed for their IPO. Today, Facebook filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documentation which stated that their stock has been registered and approved for listing with the NASDAQ. So sometime this week, the world’s largest social network will begin trading under the ticker symbol “FB” (how fitting).

CNN Money reports that Facebook is on track to begin trading publicly starting on Friday, May 18 and in what may seem to be more of a common occurrence, Facebook founder & CEO, Mark Zuckerberg will not be in New York City to ring the opening bell, instead opting to remain at Facebook’s Menlo Park headquarters to do the honors. There is precedent to doing this, as Zynga pulled the same stunt in December by ringing the bell from their San Francisco headquarters. Perhaps Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to get that famous photo opening the market or travel to New York? Or maybe he just cares too much about Facebook and wants to continue focusing on building out the social network’s mobile strategy (because obviously they’re scared of the mobile space). It could also just backfire on the company since there are some investors who have come  to question Mr. Zuckerberg’s demeanor throughout the investor road show. Regardless, one thing is for sure, whether it’s this week or next week or however long, Facebook is sure to go public and the employees will soon realize their dream fulfilled, and find themselves a lot richer too.

It’s the start of a brand new week and this one is especially special since it’s the week where Facebook is rumored to be issuing their IPO. There has certainly been a lot of questions and news surrounding the upcoming public release of Facebook stock, but what’s probably the most surprising came out of a recent article that featured a quote by analyst Michael Patcher, who is the managing director of Wedbush Securities, that said “Mark and his signature hoodie:He’s actually showing investors he doesn’t care that much; he’s going to be him…I think that’s a mark of immaturity…” Soon the debate over whether Facebook’s IPO was worth pursuing shifted from whether the social network could hold up their end of the bargain, in the face of a growing mobile issue to now being about the wardrobe attire of its famed founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and its apparent tie to him being too immature to lead.

Naturally here in Silicon Valley, many founders of the best companies and startups that are succeeding and going public have young founders, but should their wardrobe affect how they lead? Of course the industry covered this with even one respected writer saying that it’s ridiculous. Enthusiastic angel investor and founder of 500 Startups, Dave McClure went on a wild twitter rant soon after the announcement and AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher called Mr. Patcher simply a “doofus”.  Fellow startup entrepreneurs defended Mr. Zuckerberg’s attire simply by saying that the infamous hoodie did not really correlate to the market performance–the company would still probably reach $1 billion in profits. In fact, Box’s CEO, Aaron Levie, of which is probably in good shape to mimic Facebook’s success in the cloud storage department, was quoted as saying:

After Facebook hit $1B in profits, you’d think investors would start demanding Zuck wear a hoodie. Yahoo CEO: No hoodie; AOL CEO: No hoodie; Facebook CEO: hoodie. Coincidence?

All this latest rub against Mr. Zuckerberg’s attire has got some folks thinking that it’s about time to take advantage of this. Earlier this week, Betabrand, an Internet wardrobe service announced that it was selling its own line of “Executive Pinstripe Hoodies” and it would be released around the end of May. Too bad that it won’t be available around the rumored time of Facebook’s IPO as it would be quite amusing to see Mr. Zuckerberg and his management team ring the opening bell in New York City all wearing a hoodie. Even Mr. Zuckerberg’s sister, former head of marketing and now an entrepreneur in her own right, Randi Zuckerberg, tweeted this out earlier this week suggesting the very same sentiment.

So Betabrand is offering founders and entrepreneurs or anyone interested their very own Executive Pinstripe Hoodie–all for the price of $148. The hoodie will fit comfortably–it’s said to not be too baggy or too tailored…it’ll be just right. The site lists the description as follows:

After years of experimentation and one enormous bill at our local particle accelerator, the fashion physicists at Betabrand have finally combined business-suit and hoodie molecules at the subatomic level. The result: our new, limited-edition Navy Executive Pinstripe Hoodie, a revolutionary business-casual — or casual-business, if you prefer — breakthrough, made right here in San Francisco.

Here are some photos of what the hoodie will look like:

Wow, so now there’s all this apparent uproar about buying stock from a company simply because the way their founder dresses, this could lead to an interesting boon for the hipster and entrepreneur look here in Silicon Valley. Fashion companies are probably discussing about how they can bring to the mainstream the looks that founders who sweat and slave away at building a successful company so that it might generate the new fashion for the common person. Okay, maybe not, but at least this is definitely changing the perception of what the traditional business person will/should look like now.

You can purchase your own Executive Pinstripe Hoodie from Betabrand here. Orders received now should arrive around June 22.

Photo Credit: Closeup shot of the inside of Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook hoodie taken at D8 via Asa Mathat/AllThingsD