Welcome to this week’s round-up of all things social. Read on for the top tools, virals, campaigns and news stories that have been distracting us from our to-do list this week…

SOCIAL NEWS DOWNLOAD

• Get your party poppers ready as Facebook celebrates its 8th birthday this Saturday. The site is expected to commemorate it’s anniversary with the filing of an initial public offering, which could value the company at around $100 billion. The IPO could easily create 500 to 1,000 new millionaires — perhaps as much as one-third of the company – not to mention the tidy sum early investor Bono could net…
• Regulators are clamping down on the way companies collect and use data about our movements online, by creating an ‘i’ symbol that will warn users when they are being targeted.
• We mentioned last week that social media friendly President Obama would be taking part in a Google+ Hangout which, according to the White House, was a great success. The President’s face-to-face exchange with voters changed the mind of at least one Republican, who now claims she will vote Obama in this year’s election.

THE TOOLBOX

A new app, launched on Monday, promises to tell you who your top five most valuable Twitter followers are. But much more importantly for marketeers, MVF calculates the combined reach of your followers – a useful tool when running a branded Twitter account.

VIRAL AND CAMPAIGN OF THE WEEK

SkyBet preyed on the 12 year old professional-footballer wannabe in all of us this week with a topical stunt around the January football transfer window. Yesterday on Deadline Day, fans were able to become the star of their very own transfer drama, complete with a Sky Sports News presenter discussing the move.

Twitter enjoyed ‘Hack Week’ recently – a seven day period that the company’s blog claims ‘is just one of the ways we actively promote innovation through experimentation around the company’. Surely a fantastic lesson to all corporations on how to engage staff internally, if the outcome is a particularly hilarious spoof recruitment video for the social networking site.

INFOGRAPHICS

In the first ever attempt to map the use of Twitter in Africa, Portland and Tweetminster analysed over 11.5 million geo-located Tweets originating on the continent during the last three months of 2011. The research identifies the top 20 most active countries, with South Africa topping the chart.

Across the pond in the USA, MR Youth have been busy analysing the effect that social media had on holiday season sales. Interesting conclusions were drawn for brands with a social media presence, as brand’s interactions in that period led consumers to make a holiday gift purchase 80% of the time.