• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, February 1, 2012

With Timeline taking over your Facebook page whether you like it or not, there’s a cool new tool to turn your Facebook life (wait, isn’t Facebook life real life?) into video. Marketing agency Definition 6 worked with Facebook to launch the “Timeline Movie Maker” that assembles on the fly your Facebook posts, videos, photos and other news to create a sort of personalized video story of your time on Facebook in a one-minute movie clip. Ah, remember when we had home movies that made that flappy sound when the film hit the reel?  Now, we’ve got status updates and photos of those office parties and kayaking trips strung together.

I was apprehensive about trying this out because I don’t like stuff being added to my Facebook change. But of course, Facebook is making Timeline mandatory  (sort of like a Liz Lemon party, right?) over the next few weeks. So I bit the bullet and tried out the movie of my social life. Admittedly, I was terrified I’d be greeted by all sorts of old updates or photos that made me cringe. But, it turns out I spend most of my time on Facebook posting pictures of my dog, my favorite Web celebs (Martin Sargent, that means you), and myself on good hair days.

Maybe that’s because Facebook at its heart, is a marketing platform, and it’s about putting your best self forward, in many cases. In fact, a new study from social video platform Jun Group finds that social video pays off for brands. (How’s that for a segue, folks?)

In a study of nearly 8 million social video views for brands in CPG, health and beauty, luxury goods and other categories, Jun Group found the average social video campaign yielded a value equivalent to more than 30% additional media spend. For the study, Jun Group defined earned media as the actions Web users take after watching a social video, such as visiting a Facebook page, checking out a store locator, tweeting, sharing, or replaying the video.

The most common action was visiting a Facebook page, and accounted for about two-thirds of all social activity after watching a social video. Tweets, however, were the least popular action.