According to Dara Kerr at CNET News, Facebook has hit another milestone–over one billion video views last month. Since launching Facebook Video in June 2007, video views have steadily grown, and now, there are four times as many video views as actual Facebook members.

In a promotional video that Facebook posted on its Career site Wednesday, two engineers, Soleio Cuervo and Chris Putnam, talk about how they conceived of Facebook Video and then built it out at a “Hackathon” in January 2007.

At Hackathon events, Facebook engineers spend one night, all night, working on ideas that have been simmering for the few months prior. The goal is, “to change the ‘That would be hot!’ sentiment to something real and live on the site,” explains a Facebook engineer, Aditya Agarwal, on the Facebook blog.

When Putnam and Cuervo starting thinking about video, they knew there were already tons of video sharing sites. But, none really allowed for distribution strictly to their friends. With YouTube, videos are either public or private, users can’t pick and choose. They wanted to use the Facebook platform and let people tag kiddie videos or sweet guitar riff videos without fear of the whole world watching.

When Facebook Video upgraded in December 2008, not only could social networkers upload higher quality videos, they could also embed their Facebook videos on other Web sites, like personal blogs. This presumably helped up Facebook’s video view numbers.

However, Facebook doesn’t need much help in the numbers department. According to an article on Mashable, widget company AddToAny has calculated that with 24 percent, Facebook dominates content sharing on the Internet. It’s followed by Yahoo with 14.4 percent and email with 11.1 percent.

One billion video views is no small number, but it still pails in comparison to YouTube video views, which are 1.2 billion per day. But, as Hackathons continue, there’s no doubt Facebook’s engineers will continue to strive for more numbers, (it already holds the top place for photo sharing). And, as Cuervo says in the video, “some of the best products we’ve ever shipped arose from a single night’s effort.”

So your client or company has set up multiple social profiles and channels, and friends and family members have all been found. The big question now is how to build up large communities with people whom you have never met. You have to do things that offer some kind of incentive/expertise/interesting information to these people in order for them to become your friend, fan or follower. Harry Gold from ClickZ did a little survey in his office and got a lot of great suggestions from co-workers, and then he made a list. Below are 25 of the best suggestions Gold and his co-workers came up with, of course there are more, but 25 is enough for now.

Place a personal ad. Use online media (display banners, Flash ads, widget/gadget ads, etc.) to drive traffic to your social media channels. Facebook pages can make great landing pages. They also let you present very high-value brand interactions that spark viral distribution through existing social technologies.

Start with people who know your company. Add Facebook or Twitter addresses to the bottom of your company’s e-mail signature.

Pepper your site. Add calls to action to your site inviting people to become your company’s friend, fan, or follower. Put the icons and links on the bottom of every page and in your “contact us” section.

Create a social hub. Make sure your site has a social hub page in the “about us” section that includes calls to action to friend, fan, or follow you and links to your profiles and channels.

Weave your social Web. Make sure your company’s Facebook page has links to your Twitter page. Also, periodically tweet the benefits of becoming a fan of your Facebook page.

Give them a reason to join. Tell people what they get by being your company’s friend, fan, or follower. Timely industry news, cool content or great offers? What is in it for them?

Shout about it. Drop a press release about the launch of your Facebook page, Twitter micro-blog, or SlideShare channel.

Wrap your product. If you sell packaged goods, make sure your packaging promotes your profiles. If people like you enough to buy your product, give them the chance to connect with you in the places where they want to connect.

Make yourself visible. Join other social networks to establish a well-rounded presence. If you are already on Facebook and Twitter, do you have a Flickr page, SlideShare account, and YouTube channel for your visual content?

Use tools built into social networks. Instead of just listing an event on your Web site, make it Facebook event as well. These tools allow users to interact with your event through RVSP features, photos, and a Wall option. It’s more likely someone notices an event in this way than a static calendar on your site.

Be inquisitive. Everyone is fighting for the spotlight on the social Web and no one likes a know-it-all. Ask questions through Twitter and status updates to not only engage your current followers and fans, but help encourage experts to speak up.

Let go of your secrets. Sharing your knowledge with other people breaks down barriers of engagement. Don’t sell a success package for $19.99; instead start a blog. (For example…this article!)

Don’t give a hard sell. Both Twitter and Facebook are about having a casual conversation with your customers; think Starbucks, not a boardroom. Your corporate brand message in 140 characters will not gain any new fans or followers for most. Instead give information that folks can use day to day that represents your service offering in some manner.

Check the chatter. Use free tools like monitter.com and search for keywords related to your business that Twitter users have used. If they are writing about what you do, start a conversation. Be sure not to use any canned replies. Remember, on Twitter, everything is public.

Daypart. While it may seem odd to some, it’s vital to think about when your target clientele is on Facebook or Twitter and what messaging works at a particular part of the day. Do you target the early morning, lunch, or after hours crowd, and with what message?

Remember: location, location, location. Really think about how someone uses your site. It’s easy to include chiclets, but if they are not in the right location they can easily be lost in a site’s clutter. This can be especially true for sites with heavy advertising such as news sites.

Reach out to key people. There are very influential people on social networks. If you reach out to them in the right way, you can have a great networking experience and prove your worth to others. Find people with a large fan base and see if you can join into their conversation.

Follow trends and join in. Every day on Twitter there are “hot” topics happening. Find out what #hashtags and keywords are being used, and state your opinion. Chances are, hundreds of people are following those conversations and you will instantly be noticed.

Take it offline. Is your Twitter name on your business card? Your Facebook page at the bottom of all letters? How about your print ads and direct mail?

Create a conversation. Don’t let your followers and friends feel like you’re talking at them instead of with them. When their friends see them interacting with you, they could become a friend or follower as well.

Follow back. If you don’t follow people back, you look like someone who only wants to be heard and doesn’t care to listen. That’s not a good way to build relationships.

Have a consistent stream of content. If you start to go dry, people will forget about you. Having an ongoing flow of content and information allows you to stay at the top of your followers’ minds and helps you get noticed. So create a publishing schedule.

Sponsor a contest. People love to win (or the chance to win), and hosting or sponsoring a contest will spur an increase in the number of fans and followers.

Don’t spam. Keeping existing friends, fans, and followers is as important as gaining new ones, so do not generate animosity by being one of those annoying social media spammers.

Do not waste friends. This is the big one! Campaign-specific Facebook fan page are a waste. When you are done with the campaign Facebook page, re-skin the page for the next campaign. Do not just abandon the fans you have made. Campaign-specific Facebook pages that end after the campaign are so 2008!

Today, everyone seems to be talking about Social Media, and companies are rushing “to do” social media, much like a child in Toys R Us when they see a shiny, new toy on the shelves. Businesses are trying to figure out how to leverage it for marketing, increased and more personal customer interaction, and PR. They’re hopping on the Twitter wagon, making Facebook fan pages, uploading videos/pics to Youtube and Flickr, and building social communities in hopes of joining the Web 2.0 conversation. Jason Burby from ClickZ had a great example of social media advantages/disadvantages that I referred to at the bottom of this post. Thanks Jason.

A few succeed, but depending on industry, many pour a lot of resources into these efforts and don’t have much success. The biggest concern is they haven’t defined what success might look like for themselves or their customers and potential prospects. This is where the problem starts. Defining specific site goals is important when initiating an on-site behavior measurement plan (Web analytics). Companies that don’t have documented and thorough site goals really struggle when it comes to prioritizing initiatives and measuring their site’s success. These shared site goals are critical to understanding your site performance’s and impact.

The same holds true when you initiate specific goals in order to understand the impact of social media on your business. You must define what success means to you, because it will be different for everyone.

Consider how you can leverage social media’s enormous reach for your business, but make sure that you understand that you can’t control social media. This is where most drop the ball if they hadn’t already with setting up specific social media goals. You can’t force your goals on people talking about your company, products, and services. When defining your goals, consider what success also means to those interacting on the Web with your brand, whether it’s on your site or not. Like I said before, success will be different for everyone, and after you understand what it may mean for your target, you could end up changing your definition of success, maybe a few times.

When it comes to defining goals and identifying ways to leverage social media, you must understand the difference between social media that you own, and social media that you don’t own. You own the social media that you promote on your site, your Facebook fan page, your Twitter account, and similar communities you or your business may use. You don’t own what other people are saying on their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, reviews on other sites, and blogs.

Too often, companies are only focused on understanding how people interact with the social media initiatives controlled by the company. The conversations I hear are always about how many followers/fans a Twitter account/Facebook fan page has. And while it is important to understand the reach of those owned initiatives, the power is really in the chatter. The conversations that go on between your customers, including information and opinions about your company, products, and services online. That is what is important- analyzing how you are perceived by others, and then making changes or increasing efforts accordingly.

The secret for companies is defining ways in which to harness that positive power of comments while finding the negative comments and addressing them so that they don’t spin out of control and continue to have a negative impact on your business (short term and long term).

According to Jason Burby, a well-known example of this is the buzz that went on a few years ago on the Dell laptop batteries overheating and exploding. There was a tremendous amount of talk about it online before Dell acknowledged and addressed it. It ended up becoming a huge issue leading to recalls and the like.

If Dell had been listening across the Web at that point, it may have been able to identify the issue earlier and get ahead of the problem, working with manufacturing and recalling batteries earlier. It would’ve been seen as getting ahead of the problem rather than getting nailed for ignoring it.

Dell and others have learned from mistakes like this, but many companies still aren’t proactive in listening to what their clients are saying on the Web. To shift corporate thinking in this area, put a strategic plan in place to address these types of things.

How do you define success around social media? What is your strategy to leverage the positive mentions and address the negative (or potentially negative) mentions?

Once you have that in place, you can look at the different tools and listening platforms available to understand what’s happening outside initiatives you control. Make sure you look not just at quantity of mentions but also at quality measurements. Sentiment definition is a great way to help focus on quantity versus quality. Define your goals around these areas and plan your strategy based on that.

Is it finally time to take the Twitter plunge? The free service that lets users micro-blog 140 characters at a time had accumulated around 1.9 million users as of December 2008, according to comScore. If you are just now jumping on the Twitter bandwagon, or are intimidated by your inexperience with Twitter etiquette and acronyms, allow us to share some Twittery tips that will make your experience easier and more enjoyable.

1. Shrink Your URLs

One of the most common uses of Twitter is sharing links. But you only have 140 characters to work with, so instead of sharing a long URL, use one of several URL-shortening services to shrink that link. Some of our favorites include tinyurl.com, is.gd, ow.ly, and bit.ly.

2. RT = Retweet

If you want to copy and paste someone else’s tweet, that’s totally accepted and appreciated, as long as you give the original tweeter credit for it. Just put “RT @name” in front of their tweet and post it yourself.

3. Direct Messaging

With Twitter’s direct-messaging (DM) function, you can send a private 140-character message to another user, kind of like abbreviated e-mail. However, you can only direct message Twitter users that are following you.

4. Use the @ Sign

To create a reply or to give someone props on Twitter, simply place an @ sign in front of their Twitter name. If it is a reply, the @ sign must be the first character of the tweet. To see replies to your own tweets, click on @Replies from your profile page.

5. Search For Your Friends

Search.twitter.com works well for finding your friends, celebrities, or organizations, or for searching for specific topics you’re interested in.

6. Categorize Your Tweets for Added Visibility

If you’re tweeting about a popular subject (Obama, Lost, etc) putting a # in front of the subject makes it easy for others to find your tweet, and perhaps they will want to follow you. For example, when the plane crashed into the Hudson River in January, #flight1549 became a popular tag and search term.

7. Share Pictures

People love sharing their photos with the world, and some even break news with them, like Janis Krums, who used TwitPic to post one of the first up-close photos of Flight 1549 on his Twitter feed. Services like TwitPic let users easily upload their photos and post them directly to Twitter.

8. Tweet from Your Phone

Twitter allows you to update your status and receive updates via text message. Under Settings, go to the Devices tab and enter your phone number to start sending and receiving mobile tweets. If your incoming tweets/texts are overwhelming you, disable this option by going back to the same panel and following the instructions.

9. Pick a Good Desktop Client

With desktop clients such as TweetDeck, Twhirl, and TwitterFox, you can receive tweets in a much more manageable fashion, especially if you follow a lot of people, respond often, and use direct messages a lot. TweetDeck, for example, allows you to create specific groups, if you want to split your feed into individual columns.

10. Download a Mobile Client

If you have a BlackBerry, an iPhone, or another smartphone with Wi-Fi or 3G access, a mobile client might be a better option than using text messages. Mobile Twitter clients worth checking out include Twitterific, TwitterBerry, PocketTweets, and Twidroid.