Paris and San Francisco based startup Fanzy, a Facebook app that rewards fans for spreading the word and helps brands to attract social influencers, has raised $500,000 in additional seed financing. The financing brings Fanzy’s total capital raised to approximately $850,000.

Fanzy’s investors include founder and CEO of media buying agency Libre & Change, Georges Chryssostallis, Gary Stiffelman, a partner at the Los Angeles entertainment law firm of Ziffren Brittenham LLP, which also serves as an advisor to Fanzy, and Roland Swenson, founder and CEO of the SXSW interactive and music festival.

Fanzy’s Facebook app gamifies the fan experience by rewarding them for activity around brands, muisc TV, films and sports. Fanzy can be added to Facebook pages at no cost in three clicks.

Users discover Fanzy on a tab of a Facebook Page. Once installed, they are rewarded with social achievement badges, physical rewards, exclusive content and online discounts. Marketers have access to a rewards builder that enables them to offer rewards to influential social fans based on levels of influence on specific topics. There are currently over 2 million rewards available.

More than 14,000 brands have added Fanzy to their Facebook fan page, creating a total reach of 240M fans on Facebook. 300,000 have been dubbed by Fanzy as influential have installed the app and are sharing their fan data with Fanzy on a minute to minute basis.

PhotoBin, a San Diego-based business that creates digital images from old photos, negatives and slides, is trying to capitalize on one of Facebook’s most recent initiatives.

PhotoBin’s offer: It will scan 200 photos for $19.99, instead of its usual $55 price, to help people build their Facebook timelines.

Facebook introduced its timeline feature in September. Timeline lets people post milestones of their lives, especially those moments before Facebook’s introduction in 2004.

The offer, announced Feb. 20, targets older people who use Facebook, noted Hugh Plautz, PhotoBin’s director of marketing. Plautz said he and other PhotoBin managers were “shocked” to learn how many people age 35 and older used Facebook.

PhotoBin founder and CEO Steve Weber may be better known as the founder of Z57 Inc., a specialist in real estate websites.

Facebook has more than 3,000 employees and is based in Menlo Park.

Air Transat continues to celebrate having reached an impressive 100,000 fans on Facebook. Following the surprise trip giveaways for both “Super Fans”, Air Transat invites its supporters to participate in a month-long contest.

As a reminder, every week for four weeks, fans of the Air Transat Facebook page will be asked to vote for one of three destinations served by Air Transat. Once the results are in, they can enter the contest for their chance to win a one-week trip to that destination. In all, there are four trips for two to be won.

The first week’s winner, Stephan Gagné from Quebec, won an all-inclusive trip for two to the Riviera Maya, Mexico. Valued at a maximum of $4,700, this prize includes roundtrip airfare aboard Air Transat from Montreal, a one-week (7-night) stay in double occupancy at the 4-star Ocean Turquesa and roundtrip bus transfers between the airport and the hotel.

Here is this week’s question:

Make Getting Around a Bit of an Adventure!
Here at home we walk, bike or drive. But across the ocean they get from A to B in a variety of peculiar vehicles. Which one have you always wanted to take for a spin? Let us know by liking or commenting and who knows where you might end up!

The photo choices are: A) Citroën 2CV B) Gondola C) Double-decker Bus

The results are in: fans voted for the gondola, which represents the uniqueness of Italy! Canadians can now register on the Air Transat Facebook page for the chance to win a trip for two to Italy.

The name and trip details of this week’s winner will be revealed early next week, after which a different question will be posted on Facebook and another prize will be up for grabs.
About Air Transat

Air Transat is Canada’s leading holiday travel airline. Every year, it carries some 3 million passengers to nearly 60 destinations in 25 countries aboard its fleet of Airbus wide-body jets. The company employs approximately 2,000 people. Air Transat is a business unit of Transat A.T. Inc., an integrated international tour operator with more than 60 destination countries and that distributes products in over 50 countries.

Reagan “didn’t take no crap from nobody.”

“All presidents look out for the wealthy.”

“As a joke I was going to say Millard Fillmore, but I like Carter as a person– just a gentle soul.”

In honor of Presidents Day — officially George Washington’s birthday — we asked our Facebook fans to name their favorite U.S. President.

The highly unscientific survey generated more than 300 responses, ranging from the thoughtful to the profane.

“The president we have right now is so retarded he has done anything for this country than get us more into debt making this country worthless,” wrote Elaine Brenda Rmz. “Can’t wait until he has left the white house.”

Janet Kovalesky disagreed: “Definitely Obama!”

Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were the overwhelming favorites, with the “Teflon Don” finishing slightly ahead.

“The only president in the 20th century that actually made positive growth changes for all Americans,” wrote Larry Friend of Reagan.

For Shohreh Sad Clinton edged out Obama: “We saw a better and more stable economy and foreign relations were better.”

Some refused to choose.

“Ronald Regan and Bill Clinton!!!” said Ariana Camarena.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton never made it past the Democratic primaries as a candidate, but that didn’t stop her fans from naming her their favorite “president.”

In the battle of the Roosevelts, Theodore edged Franklin just slightly.

In a battle of the Fords, Harrison beat out Gerald. Yes, Harrison Ford, the actor.

Harrison Ford beat out Gerald Ford by three votes to one, and he also beat out Andrew Jackson, Millard Fillmore and Harry Truman.

Abraham Lincoln and George Washington received a good share of the votes.

“The first person ever to lead our country had to be the most intimidating and scary thing,” wrote Robert Bishop about Washington.

Ruben Azroyan concurred: “General George Washington the only president who cared for this country more than himself.”

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Marvel Comics announced in a press release today that their official Facebook fan page had exceeded 3 million fans. It’s an accomplishment they’ve been celebrating all day with exclusive reveals at the site as well as a Twitter hashtag, #Marvel3Mill. The site just exceeded 2 million back in July.

In an environment where social networking is increasingly used as a forum for promoting products and services, Marvel describes the page as a destination for fans to get first looks at “exclusive art from upcoming comics, news, & previews from Marvel video games.”

To celebrate the achievement, Marvel is offering 30% off its annual Digital Comics Unlimited program to new users who sign up between now and February 23, 2012. This reduces the overall price of the transaction from around $60 for a year of the service down to just over $40. Check out the Facebook page for more details and a coupon code.

DC Comics, Marvel’s cross-town rivals, have historically had some trouble with their social networking presence and have just over 500,000 fans on their comparable page. Their Twitter pages are much more comparably matched, with DC’s 100,000 or so fans exceeded by Marvel’s roughly 250,000. Marvel, though, has Executive Editorial Director Ryan Penagos, whose Agent M Twitter account has more than a million and a quarter followers and blows both official channels out of the water. As with the monthly market share, smaller publishers appear to be settling into their own microcosm of the Marvel/DC economy, with 10,000 fans or fewer as the norm and many small publishers right around that level.

After a quick survey of major characters, it appears as though the comics property with the largest social media following is The Dark Knight, with nearly 10 million fans, followed by Iron Man (the movie) at a little over 7 million. Beyond that, there is a precipitous drop.

It’s widely believed that the readership base for American comic books is somewhere south of 1 million people, although no credible study on the question has ever been performed.

With an industry that’s frequently characterized as preaching the converted and selling to an ever-diminishing audience, an expanding social media presence that allows the publishers to advertise directly to potential readers’ Facebook pages, and hopefully to be seen by those people’s friends and so on, is not an insubstantial commodity. Marvel has been historically more able to consolidate its fans under a single umbrella, with a single account that provides all the necessary news, whereas DC’s “Vertigo Firewall” in the comics has a similar analog online with imprints like DC Nation, Vertigo and formerly WildStorm all carrying their own websites and social media sites that don’t necessarily feed Batman news to the readers of iZombie, for example.

Until DC’s recent New 52 initiative launched in September, Marvel had been considered the undisputed industry leader in terms of sales and market share, as well as TV and movie tie-ins and most forms of ancillary media, for a number of years. DC has come roaring back in the comics industry and with a number of projects in the pipeline–including a DC Nation block on Cartoon Network and pilot orders for Green Arrow, Booster Gold and more–may be positioned to make a run at Marvel’s movie empire, although they’ll have an uphill battle since The Avengers hits theaters in May and any potential Justice League movie is probably still a decade away.

Grocery stores are making up for lost time in engaging customers on Facebook, with customer interaction on the site growing faster than for any other category of Australian business, a new snapshot shows.

In the three weeks to the end of January, retail grocery and beverage sellers ranked eight out of 12 industries for Facebook fan numbers, with 374,000 fans in the category, according to a report released today by social media consultancy The Online Circle.

Yet the engagement rate for grocery retailers was the highest of any of the categories examined in the report. The study’s engagement rate is derived from the Facebook “People Talking About” counter, then divided by the number of fans for a given brand. For the grocery stores category that measure was 10 per cent, compared to 2 per cent for snack foods, 2.2 per cent for fashion, and 1.6 per cent for beverages.

“Promotions are being used to garner fans and engagements,” says The Online Circle’s Alan Long.

“With the massive growth experienced by Woolworths during January their engagement rate was extraordinarily high,” he said. Woolworths’ engagement rate was 25.9 per cent.

Woolworth’s fans grew by 74.1 per cent or 50,461 fans in the three-week report period from January 10 to January 31, overtaking Coles, which grew 4.5 per cent or 4360.

Mr Long said Woolworths lured fans in through photo competitions during the month, offering free groceries for the winners.

GroceryRun.com.au, a company just a fraction of the size of publicly-listed Woolworths, was ranked third for fan numbers in the grocery category, with 49,700.

“Reflecting the ongoing challenge to traditional brands across all industries, the grocery market newcomer, GroceryRun.com.au, has captured a strong fan base in a relatively short amount of time leveraging effectively off their sister brand, the ever-popular CatchoftheDay,” said Mr Long.

Other strong contenders in the grocery segment were Queen Victoria Market with only 6500 fans but an engagement rate of 20.5 per cent, and getwinesdirect.com with 13,000 fans, and an engagement rate of 13.9 per cent.

As consumers increasingly look online or to mobile devices to find and compare products, traditional retailers have been forced to re-think their marketing and advertising strategies, with many of them turning to social media. At the same time, online-only sellers have entered the fray, ratcheting up the level of competition.

Industry analysis group Forrester Research estimates that Australian-based online retail sales will nearly double from $16.9 billion in 2009 to $33.3 billion in 2015.

The Online Circle’s social media report notes that some industries, such as snack foods and beverages, have an easier time of connecting with consumers online.

The largest category represented on Facebook was snackfood brands with 2.2 million fans.

Pringles Australia had almost half a million fans, while ice-cream Streets Cornetto has the highest engagement rate at 12.3 per cent.

As a category, fashion retailers ranked in second spot with a combined 1.9 million fans.

Women’s clothing brand Supre had the most fans with 374,000 and Lorna Jane go the most people talking.

After fashion came beverages with 1.6 million fans, led by Coca-Cola and its 694,000 fans.

In terms of engagement, banks fared well with 5.2 per cent, while their fans grew 9.1 per cent to 153,00 in the three-week period, reflecting in part the mingling of social media with banking services.

Within the category, Commonwealth Bank had the most fans, with 103,000, most likely aided by the Kaching iPhone app, which lets customers pay friends through Facebook. The bank said 100,000 people had downloaded the Kaching App in the past two months and that Facebook payments using the iPhone software accounted for more than 10 per cent of Kaching transfers.

National Australia Bank-backed UBank had 11,700 fans. NAB itself had 10,500 fans, with Westpac’s Bank of Melbourne having 10,400. Westpac had 1600 fans.

Seattle’s Best Coffee is inviting its Facebook fans to play the “Create Your Deliciousness” game and experiment with their coffee by adding ingredients such as birthday cake, peanut butter puffs, candy canes, pretzels and cotton candy.

The inspiration from the game comes from a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research for Seattle’s Best Coffee that revealed that more than 80 percent of coffee drinkers have added something unusual to their coffee, such as cayenne pepper, balsamic vinegar, grape soda and even gummy bears.

One-hundred customers a day who submit a coffee creation will instantly win a Seattle’s Best Coffee prize package featuring places where the brand is available. The prize includes:

A free 12-ounce bag of Seattle’s Best Coffee and a $1.50 off coupon to buy more;
A free $5 Burger King gift card to purchase Seattle’s Best Coffee at Burger King restaurants; and
A free $5 Subway gift card to purchase Seattle’s Best Coffee at Subway Restaurants.

Each prize pack is equivalent to more than 50 cups of coffee and is valued at $18. Prizes available now through Feb. 17. More information and official rules are available at facebook.com/seattlesbestcoffee.