You may have heard that Facebook had its IPO last week. Of course you did-because Facebook notched 329,565 mentions online last Friday when the company went public, according to an analysis for Adweek done by social media analysis firm NetBase. While the IPO was a win for Facebook-at least in terms of word-of-mouth, if not stock performance-it was also a coup for Twitter.

Of the 5,200,587 mentions Facebook received between May 1 and 21, 45 percent came from Twitter, and 36 percent from Facebook. NetBase CMO Lisa Joy Rosner said Twitter usually contributes an even larger share of the mentions related to breaking news, but since the news in this case involved Facebook, she wasn't surprised to see Facebook account for such a big piece. "Facebook users are so into Facebook they are talking about something they don't normally talk about on Facebook, which is an IPO," she said.

But folks weren't just talking about Facebook. Twitter and even Yahoo also received word-of-mouth boosts, albeit for different reasons. The Twitter mentions mostly fell along the lines of users saying they prefer the platform to Facebook, said Rosner, whereas the Yahoo mentions were mixed bag with folks comparing Yahoo's IPO performance to Facebook's or decrying Yahoo's patent suit against the company.

On IPO day sentiment was net positive for Facebook, with 41,425 mentions deemed by NetBase as positive versus 25,278 that were negative (the remaining share didn't indicate enough sentiment to be judged either way). But in the weeks leading up to and the days following the IPO, issues such as Zuckerberg wearing a hoodie into investor meetings, news that GM would stop running ads on Facebook "and people's perception that [Facebook's value] was falling flat pulled the sentiment down and created a collection of negative commentary," Rosner said.

Twitter scored a lot of points in Washington recently when it publicly came out in support of the government's Do Not Track policy recommendation for Web companies. But that doesn't mean the social networking and micro-blogging company can rest easy.

While praising Twitter for its Do Not Track commitment, Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) and Joe Barton (D-Texas), members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus and Energy and Commerce Committee, fired off a dozen of questions Thursday to Twitter's Dick Costolo, about the company's data collection and tracking practices, especially as those practices relate to Twitter's new "tailored suggestions" feature it is testing.

Twitter announced it would experiment with the new feature that gives more relevant suggestions about "who to follow" the same day the company said it would honor Do Not Track features on Web browsers. In a blog post, Twitter said that if a user elects Do Not Track it would not be able to enjoy the feature.

Among the questions the lawmakers ask Twitter is what kind of personally identifiable information Twitter is collecting, how the data is collected, and how long it will be kept. Stearns and Barton also want to know how Twitter will implement the new "who to follow" feature, how it will honor opt-out requests across mobile devices, and if Twitter is planning and more experiments.

Twitter has until June 15 to respond.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Zynga's recently acquired game, Draw Something, which has come under some scrutiny lately for losing five million users last April, is keeping a focus on the future and partnering with Dreamworks to launch a campaign for the launch of the film, Madagascar 3.

The partnership might just be exactly what Zynga needs. The popular Dreamworks franchise has grossed a combined $1 billion plus worldwide, making it one of the biggest global movie franchises in history-one with a very dedicated fanbase. While some critics have been skeptical of Draw Something's staying power, the numbers for the Pictionary-style game are still excellent. According to Zynga, Draw Something is still seeing 10 million or more daily act users.

Anne Globe, chief marketing officer at Dreamworks Animation said that the studio expects Madagascar to resonate with the Draw Something audience. "The real value for us is the extensive engagement you get in a unique way with this kind of promotion rather than buying a thirty second ad, which also works. However, we see a real opportunity for longer engagement here with this audience."

The campaign, which starts today in preparation for Memorial Day weekend and runs for a week, will feature Madagascar advertisements as well as unique film-insipired words for users to choose and draw. Zynga CMO Jeff Karp believes the campaign will help to "blur the lines between the virtual and the physical world" for users and says that the Dreamworks partnership is one of a few digital brand initiatives that will be announced in the near future.

When asked whether integrating brands into such a popular game could devalue a platform that has become a serious cult sensation, Karp argued that the partnerships are carefully crafted. "We have to earn each player's respect every day and ulimtately they have to be the ones to come back tomorrow," he said.

While both sides feel the integration will be beneficial, questions remain as to the demographic matchup as Draw Something attracts a majority of users over the age of 18 and Madagascar 3 is a film likely to be popular with younger audiences. It is hard, however to argue with the brand name recognition that Dreamworks and Madagascar bring to the relationship.

Critics of Verizon Wireless' $3.9 billion spectrum purchase and marketing and joint venture deals with the nation's largest cable companies may have just won a powerful ally in their fight to persuade regulators to either block or condition the deals. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis..), the powerful chairman of the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, said today that the deals "present serious competition concerns."

Though Congress has no authority over a particular deal's outcome, lawmakers like Kohl (who came out against the AT&T-T-Mobile merger that eventually failed) carry influence and provide regulators with political backup should they want to block or impose restrictions.

However, while Kohl called on regulators to block the AT&T and T-Mobile deal, he stopped short of making that same recommendation in his letter about the Verizon Wireless' cable deals to the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Instead, Kohl, who held a hearing in March on the issues raised by the proposed deals, asked regulators to "carefully scrutinize" the transactions for its "potential impact on competition and consumers."

"There is a real concern these agreements transform Verizon and the cable companies from fierce competitors into business partners because they lessen the incentive for Verizon and the cable companies to compete aggressively against each other," Kohl wrote.

For critics, Kohl's eight-page missive to regulators was enough to cheer.

"[Kohl] hit all the right points in the letter," said Gigi Sohn, president and CEO of Public Knowledge, one of the public interest groups opposing the deals. "[He] was right to raise serious issues surrounding AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile, and he is right again now to raise serious issues surrounding Verizon and the cable companies. The DOJ and FCC would be wise to pay attention."

Verizon Wireless saw nothing to worry about in Kohl's letter, interpreting it as confirmation that the deals will be cleared.

"Because these transactions present unique issues that will deliver major consumer benefits, it is appropriate for Senator Kohl to carefully examine the issues that are also being studied by the appropriate agencies. While Senator Kohl's letter recounts the arguments reviewed at the Senate hearing, it is another indication that this transaction is on the road toward approval this summer," said Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vp of public affairs, policy and communications, in a statement.

Coming to Verizon's defense and splitting the debate along party lines, the ranking member of the subcommittee, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) drew the opposite conclusion than Kohl, calling the Verizon-cable deals "procompetitive." In a letter sent within hours of Kohl's to the DOJ and FCC, Lee points out that the spectrum Verizon wants to purchase hasn't been in use since 2006 and that the side agreements with the cable companies are "essential to a vibrant economy."

"Government may sometimes have a proper role in ensuring that businesses compete fairly and do not collude. But it is improper for government agencies to pick winners and lowers in the marketplace or to interfere with private enterprise where robust market forces are in operation," Lee wrote.

Exactly how far does a political misstep travel in the world of social media? Thanks to a number of emerging analytics tools-newsrooms, campaigns and their respective staffs can spend time picking apart the ramifications of a candidate's actions in the ever-exploding social sphere. Cory Booker's appearance on Meet the Press this Sunday provided an excellent opportunity to gauge just how much a gaffe resonates, and how long it lives.

Using VoterTide Pro, a social analytics dashboard focused solely on tracking the every move of politicians across social networks, websites and blogs, it appears that Booker's critique of President Obama's attack ads blew up on Twitter. But like so much on the social Web, the gaffe burned hot, only to fade away.

Tracking the number of Twitter '@ mentions' can typically provide a solid indicator of social buzz. Booker is known as a prolific Twitter user. Boasting of well over a million followers, he averages more than 3,000 mentions a day.

That number spiked last Sunday (May 20) as Booker's Twitter handle was mentioned 12,546 times, according to VoterTide's data. On Monday, the conversation then exploded with the opening of the weekly news cycle as Booker's handle received 28,360 mentions. The pace has since cooled, however, with Booker receiving nearly 17,000 mentions on Tuesday and only 3,000 as of Wednesday evening.

But the real question still remains, what exactly does this kind of social media bounce mean? The answer to that is far more complicated. Social media monitoring alone reveals only so much, but early indications are that the mayor's presence online is undamaged. Since Sunday, Booker has gained 6,190 Twitter followers and 1,083 Facebook fans-only a 1.5 percent increase, but a bigger jump than usual. As political gaffes and flare-ups seem to live more on Twitter, it makes sense that Booker would receive a larger bump (he also boasts far more Twitter followers than Facebook fans), but neither increase is much to write home about.

In Booker's case this flare-up seems to illustrate a bigger point about the online political news cycle-namely, that most people outside the Beltway don't seem to pay attention and the big news of the day will be forgotten tomorrow. The real consequences of these actions will only reverberate behind closed doors at Obama campaign headquarters and throughout hallways in Washington. While Booker's comment earned him a great deal of press (his official YouTube follow-up to his Meet the Press appearance generated over 60,000 views in a little over three days), the news cycle will swallow up his remarks, and Booker can get back to saving people from burning buildings.

For those of you who were getting a little tired of Zooey Deschanel's iPhone commercial with Siri-you know who you are-here's a breath of fresh air. John Malkovich has stepped into the campaign, by TBWA\Media Arts Lab, in a pair of commercials that broke Wednesday night-the 58-year-old actor's first U.S. ads. Malkovich and Siri actually make a pretty hilarious team. They're both equally quirky, and with their matching stilted speech, you get the sense that they really do understand each other. "I enjoyed this chat immensely. You are very eloquent," he tells Siri at the end of the "Life" spot. Is Malkovich falling in love? While these are his first American commercials, Malkovich has done plenty of overseas work, the most amusing of which is probably this promo for the Karlovy Vary film festival.

In April you may have tweeted how much you hate doing taxes. Sometime later you may have been browsing the Web and noticed ads for TurboTax popping up. That probably wasn't an accident.

That's because TurboTax-maker Intuit was testing New York-based startup LocalResponse's new Intent Targeted ad product, which uses publicly available social data to target mobile and desktop display ads.

"We found over a million people that tweeted the week before tax day ‘I hate doing taxes' [or] ‘Taxes suck'...and when these people actually came to the Web, the desktop Web, we actually displayed to them a TurboTax banner ad," said LocalResponse CEO Nihal Mehta. "This is revolutionary because literally we've done tons of research in the space, and we don't think there's anybody else doing this."

Creepy? Yeah, a little. But LocalResponse limits itself to only publicly available content. So while most tweets are fair game, a Facebook status post is shielded, provided users' privacy settings block anyone from being able to see it.

Here's how it works: LocalResponse combs through public social media content from the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Foursquare and identifies a social ID, like a Twitter handle, connected to that content. The company then partners with third-party data providers to connect that social ID to a cookie that will identify the user the next time he or she visits a website and logs in with his or her Twitter account.

At that point a cookie is dropped on the user's browser, so that if he or she navigates to a site where a Twitter log-in isn't required, LocalResponse can recognize that person's cookie within an advertising exchange-and then deliver an ad relevant to that user's social media posts.

Mehta said LocalResponse is able to target up to 100 million unique users on a monthly basis through its partnerships with numerous data providers and online publishers. Company president and co-founder Kathy Leake added that LocalResponse expects to encounter zero privacy issues with this kind of targeting because it only uses publicly available social data such as tweets that can already surface from searching on Google or Bing.

LocalResponse says it can also employ natural language processing, which enables it to infer things such as a person's location. For example, a user could tweet, "There's a sale at Retailer X," with Twitter geo-location settings turned on, and LocalResponse could identify the words "at" and "Retailer X" and correlate that with the longitude and latitude of the tweet's location to determine that the user was in Retailer X's store when the given tweet was posted.

And if Retailer X is a LocalResponse customer, the brand could access the company's self-serve dashboard and launch a display campaign targeted at that user. That's about as precise as it gets, according to Leake.

"If you're broadcasting intent-whether that's sentiment or your location-that's pretty much the strongest signal there is. It's not look-alike targeting. It's not traditional segmentation or behavioral targeting or contextual targeting. It's actually intent that you yourself have declared," asserted Leake.

Specs
Who Top row, l. to r.: Jim Coudal, Matthew Jorgensen, Joe Dawson Jr., Bryan Bedell; bottom, l. to r.: Michele Seiler, Trina Foresman, Steve Delahoyde
What Advertising, design and interactive studio
Where Chicago

Coudal Partners might be the first agency that's proud to have lost all its clients. Not lost, exactly-purged. The seven-person studio, led by Jim Coudal, got rid of its paying clients (whose capriciousness was always a looming threat) to develop its own businesses. Chief among them are Field Notes, exquisitely crafted memo books inspired by ornate pocket ledgers of yore, and The Deck, an online ad network for design, Web and creative types. The agency's own site, Coudal.com, continues to be a destination for like-minded souls. Stop by Fridays for their contest, Layer Tennis, the most fun you can have with your Photoshop on. (Note: Layer Tennis is on hiatus but will hopefully return soon.) More in the video below:

Despite outsourcing its search results to Bing, Yahoo maintains that it is still very much in the search game technology-wise. To prove as much, over the last six months the company's search and innovation team has been working on a new search browser built to deliver an experience that syncs across desktop, iPad and iPhone.

"What we focused on is 'what does search look like over the next two years" and 'how do we build an experience that positions us in a place where we're ahead of the curve?'" said Ethan Batraski, director of product management for search at Yahoo. After peering into the crystal ball, Batraski's team found search's future to lie in "answers, not links."

Of course, Google had a similar vision when announcing its Knowledge Graph last week as centering on "things, not strings."

Yahoo's answer-oriented new search product is called Axis. It's essentially a search browser which displays in-page visual results rather that a bunch of text links. The product is available as a desktop browser plug-in for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari as well as an iOS app (Yahoo's working on an Android version of the app).

Wait, who needs a browser plug-in for search? Batraski explained Axis was developed for mobile first and then optimized for desktops because "your phone is probably the most powerful device you have-it knows everything about you-so really your phone should be able to do more than what your desktop or laptop can do."

Thus, Axis sounds much more touchscreen friendly. When users open the Axis app, they're taken into a typical mobile browser experience that allots them nine tabs with which to surf the Web. But when smartphone users swipe down from the top of the screen, they'll find an address bar that doubles as a search box. When users input a query, results will populate below the box as page screenshots that users can scroll through horizontally.

Yahoo will display up to 25 visual results for any given query with additional results appearing as plain text like on a traditional results page. While Bing powers Axis' back-end search technology as it does with traditional Yahoo search, Batraski and co. have engineered Axis to mine and reorder those results based on click feedback, such as time spent on a page.

The desktop plug-in functions similarly to the mobile apps but presents the results along the bottom of a Web browser and lacks the apps' sharing capabilities. Unlike the desktop plug-in, the mobile apps also enable users to share content to Twitter and Pinterest or via email, and Yahoo will be adding the ability to share to Facebook and Google+, Batraski said.

Users can register with the product through their Yahoo, Facebook or Google account so that the search experience connects across the plug-in and mobile apps. For example, a user of the iPad app can see the last page viewed in the iPhone app and desktop plug-in.

Axis doesn't yet feature advertising, but Batraski said Yahoo would be able to slot in rich-media ads between the search results. "Imagine being able to have the power of a search ad and the contextual [targeting] with the richness of a display ad and have them merged together," he said. "That'd be a huge value prop for the advertiser because now the user knows what's behind the link so they know what to expect, and when they land there, they're a more qualified lead."

Axis marks the third straight week in which a major search product has been announced. Two weeks ago Microsoft announced a social-heavy overhaul of its Bing search engine, and last week Google said it was adding the aforementioned Knowledge Graph.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, joined by three senators, today reopened the debate over protecting U.S. intellectual property with a new report connecting the IP economy with jobs.

It was the first public outing for the chamber since earlier this year when the Internet community staged a Web blackout that effectively shut down the advancement of SOPA and PIPA, two bills that have now become dirty words on the Internet. The two bills, supported by the chamber and big media companies, would have put in place tougher IP laws that the Internet community feared would cripple their First Amendment rights and shut down the Internet.

Since then, the debate has been relatively quiet and neither side admits to holding any discussions about how to protect U.S. IP, which the chamber's report said created more than 55.7 million jobs and accounted for more than $1 trillion or 74 percent of all total U.S. exports in 2011.

Now, it appears that proponents of tougher IP legislation are trying again by shifting the debate, which up until now has pitted Hollywood against Silicon Valley as each side tried to demonize the other.

Speakers during today's press conference admitted their earlier approach didn't work.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told reporters that he knew SOPA and PIPA were in trouble when one of his twin 13-year-old sons woke him up in the middle of the night to ask him why he wanted to break the Internet and why Justin Bieber thought he should go to jail. "That was my first warning that we were not communicating effectively. [The bills] overreached," Coons said. "We didn't succeed in getting our message across."

The chamber trotted out IP examples far from the Hollywood movie set, such as counterfeit malaria medicine, to Sen. Pat Roberts' (R-Kan.) example of GPS technology used in agriculture for planting and irrigation.

"Intellectual property protection isn't just about music labels and movie studios. It's about more than just students in college dorms downloading pirated copies of the latest song. It's about safety for consumers and about jobs for American workers and American families, and it affects every single state in the United States," Coons said.

The study is ready-made for lobbying, detailing the number of jobs IP creates in each state. No surprise that California (where the movie studios are) is first with more than 7 million jobs. Texas is second with 4.6 million jobs. Illinois is third with 2.8 million jobs.

For now, as proponents work to alter the debate, no one is talking about any new bills. "We're focused at this point on showing that IP is a critical part of the economy," said Steve Tepp, the chief intellectual property counsel for the chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center.