It is a question I hear several times a week:  What is the value of a Facebook Fan?  I’ve seen answers ranging from $136.38 to $3.60.  I can’t blame vendors, agencies and consultants for trying to answer the question -- the hunger from clients is so great that anyone promising a simple answer is likely to get attention.  The problem is that there is no simple answer to such a complex question. In fact, it may be best if marketers approached this question as if the answer is zero -- unless and until the brand does something to create value with Facebook Fans. 

There are numerous reasons the question of Facebook fan valuation is problematic: 

My colleagues Ted Schadler and Josh Bernoff are preparing the launch of their coauthored new book, Empowered, after the success of Josh Bernoff’s Groundswell. Basically, Empowered’s message is: "If you want to succeed with empowered customers, you must empower your employees to solve their problems . . . . From working with many, many companies on social technology projects, we've found that the hard part is not just the strategy. The really hard part is running your organization in such a way that empowered employees can actually use technology to solve customer problems.” (Josh Bernoff, Groundswell blog post).

Coupled with Smart Computing — a new cycle of tech innovation and growth within the technology industry that Andrew Bartels described — this movement toward empowered employees represents what I consider to be Web 3.0: the next generation of Internet/intranet/extranet usage that will benefit the enterprise and employees. By adopting “Web 3.0,” enterprises can expect productivity improvements of 5% to 15% as well as improved customer satisfaction.

Enterprises should prepare themselves to benefit from Web 3.0 by:

We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations. Why is this important? Well, as you may know, we cover social technologies from a wide range of perspectives – from roles in marketing to IT to technology professionals. We find that each of these roles differ in their general “social maturity” and that most companies are experiencing pockets of success, but few, if any, are successfully implementing it across the board. In fact, full maturity in this space could take years, but there are clear differences in how some ahead-of-the-curve companies are using social technologies for business results. In fact, at this point it has been clearly established by many people (including us many times over) that social technologies are transformative tools that are changing the way companies do business. So we’re not talking as much about the opportunity social presents, but rather we are trying to determine the current reality of practitioners. It’s also clear that many companies have made tremendous strides in planning and organizing for the use of social technologies. However, the one question we consistently get is: “Where is my organization compared to others in the use of social media?”  We want to benchmark these companies to see if we can answer questions like:

• How do you define “social maturity,” and why is it important to get there?
• Which companies are ahead of the curve in implementing social technologies for both external use (i.e., for customers/consumers) and/or internal use (i.e., for employees/partners)?
• What have been the biggest drivers of success?
• What are the biggest challenges?
• What steps do most organizations need to take, and why?

Foursquare, the geolocation social tool, has been a media darling as of late.  Not only is it growing, but people innately understand the monetization model, which is not something you can say about every social site and tool.  As people “check in,” or report where they are to their networks, Foursquare serves them offers from nearby businesses.  It’s a win-win-win situation: Businesses can market to people who are able to immediately take action; Foursquare earns revenue; and users get valuable offers they can use.

But Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect).  I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers.  If other large chains follow suit with similar promotions, those “Special Nearby” tabs within Foursquare’s mobile apps won’t get as much notice, and that means problems for advertisers on the Foursquare platform.