After reading in today’s Wall Street Journal that private investors are valuing gaming developer Zynga at between $8 billion and $10 billion, and then this beaut in the New York Times – that JP Morgan is looking to raise up to $750 million for a social media investment fund – I figured it’s now time to get out a scrap of paper and compare the present, pre-IPO multiples as we know them for the next batch of Nasdaq darlings. The numbers remind me of another heady period a dozen years ago.

Facebook unveiled yesterday a much-needed revamp of Pages that give admins the flexibility, and, more importantly, visibility to interact with the social web in the name of the fanpage they represent. Here’s what it should mean for all you admins flying the flag for multiple fanpages.

Ethics, values, commitment, the virtue of knowing when to talk and when to listen – if it is anybody who knows the importance of the principles of proper communication it is nuns. They could teach us all a thing or two about proper social media engagement too, the subject of this post.

Madison Avenue is buzzing once again about the last-minute entry of a dot-com advertiser, daily deals aggregator Groupon, in Sunday’s Super Bowl. To hear Groupon tell it, they plan to use the $3-million-for-30-seconds investment as their coming out party. But three days before kick-off and it’s already got people wondering: could this signal a repeat of the disastrous “dot-com” Super Bowl of 2000?

Marketers have to be pretty clever or pretty bold to gain attention during Super Bowl week, particularly if you’re not advertising in the big game. Two years ago, Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) took the latter position forcefully by getting its ad – featuring models humping vegetables in the name of supporting the vegan lifestyle – banned by broadcaster NBC. Peta is back this year dangling no-excuses out-takes of what appears to be the same shoot, this time keeping it to the web.

Ladies, looking for a paying gig in San Francisco where you get to try on lots of new fashions and then Tweet how “awesome” they look on you? You only have two minutes to convince Levi’s you’re their gal. YouTube skills a must.

What is the plural of Prius?, Toyota asks. It’s not meant to be rhetorical. In fact, the beleaguered carmaker is turning the question into a type of public vote being promoted these days throughout the social web.

Twitter has posted to its blog this time-lapsed video of the world celebrating the arrival of the New Year last weekend. The occasion marked a new record in Tweets-per-second, set yet again by the Japanese, the new Twitter-mad nation, with 6,939 TPS wishing friends and followers a fond “Akemashite omedetou gozaimasu” (“Happy New Year!”).

We’re a bit surprised today to learn (a few days late) about the demise of Viewzi, a nifty tool to visualize search that was launched in 2008 by Austin-based entrepreneur Brandon Cotter and died just after Christmas.

Don’t mess with It Girls. We’re talking of course about the massively popular Facebook game that now counts close to 5.5 million style-savvy gamers. The aim of It Girl is to build a confidence-boosting virtual wardrobe that leads inevitably to a state of unquestioned “Hotness.” This holiday season, via a novel real-meets-virtual alliance, It Girl gamers can add Old Navy duds to their wardrobe.