I’ve been frankly ignoring all the FB-related items in my RSS feeds lately, but no longer: it’s time to stop prevaricating and get to grips with them. So (drumroll, please) sit back and enjoy a bumper crop of Facebook factoids:

News and Views

This will come as no surprise to you, but a recent study of US internet users suggests that the top three social networks are FB, LinkedIn and Twitter. Read more on this subject in Mashable.

Ever gnashed your teeth because you couldn’t find anything on FB? The Bing search not cutting it for you? Well, rejoice, because Google is finally trying to get to grips with the problem of finding stuff on Facebook. Read all about it in The Wall Blog here… apparently the results are slightly peculiar.

On a more negative note, an American journalist has pieced together lots of information about how FB tracks its users across the web, and come up with a rather scary list of things that the mighty FB is probably collecting about you (even as we speak! run! hide!). Seriously, this is not necessarily good stuff but read it for yourself in Mashable here.

Have you been wondering about whether you should be chasing Likes or Comments? Add this to your ponderings: All Facebook reports on a study which a comment on your page will glean you four times as many clickthroughs as most Likes. Read it all here.

If you’ve got videos to post, then it may make more sense to post them up to FB than Twitter, according to a study reported in All Facebook. Read it here.

Now this is good: FB are phasing out their original Insights tool (starting from 15 December 2011 and totally vanishing from February 2012, you may want to save your data) and are replacing it with something much whizzier – although, heads up, you’ll need a page with at least 30 likes to access the new stats. So whizzy, in fact, is the new Insights that Facebook have put up what amounts to a marketing seminar about what the stats mean and how you could use them. Despite having a couple of tests that you need to do (it’s ok, they’re multiple choice) it actually works well and is very informative. Set aside a good 30 minutes, though, to work through it all. The link to the video is here, and read about it in All Facebook here.

Tips and Tricks

Fed up with seeing tons more stuff in your news feed, thanks to recent changes on FB? Well then, read this article from All Facebook which tells you how to stop receiving loads of stuff.Here you go.

Now for a tip from a new feed I’m following: the NotProfit Facebook Guy gives us 5 reasons to think about updating your page from your iphone or whilst on the move. He also has a video about it. Here’s the link.

Now you can send money via PayPal, straight from Facebook. Are any charities using this, I wonder? Find out more from All Facebook.

If you’d rather not tap your followers for money, why not tap them for advice or information instead? All Facebook tells us about a new app called Brainstorm which allows you to crowdsource from your page. Interesting possibilities here! All the dets.

And here are even more:

• Security tips you need to know about (courtesy of All Facebook).
• Add a map to an event (All Facebook)
• Skype your FB friends (Mashable).
• Apps to help your communication power (Mashable).

The Obligatory Infographic

It seems no blog post about FB is complete without an infographic or two, so here is today’s offering:

• What’s a typical Facebook user? (Mashable)
• Chart the growth in online commerce and compare FB, Twitter and Groupon (The Wall Blog).

That’s all for now folks, off to lie down in a darkened room…