There's no question social media advertising is blowing up (in a good way) with Facebook alone predicted to take in $1.4 billion in ad revenue this year. But it's equally clear that the discipline is still in an early, experimental phase, as marketers struggle to get a handle on what works and what doesn't.

Facebook's unveiling of its new location-based service, "Places," on Wednesday evening was interesting as much for what wasn't said during some of the presentations by Facebook's "partners" (read: rivals and potential frenemies) in the location-based social network arena.

Here's another one for the "bound to happen eventually" file: It seems police in the town of Evesham, N.J., have begun posting mug shots on the police department's Facebook profile, in a move that is basically designed to publicly shame miscreants ranging from drunk drivers to car thieves and worse. Equally predictable is the wave of criticism this has elicited. Some of these are good points, but I think there is a way to post photos without hurting anyone unjustly.

Wow: sometimes you come across a statistic that says it all. Recently I was impressed by the results of a survey of 1,022 Canadian business execs by Leger Marketing, which found that 90% of the businesses represented are using social media to communicate with the public. This strikes me as more evidence that social media is insinuating itself into every part of our world, rapidly becoming as commonplace as the telephone in the early 20th century or email and cell phones in more recent decades.

Facebook will break the $1 billion ad revenue barrier this year, according to a new report from eMarketer, which shows that the ubiquitous social network is poised for even more growth in 2011. That's great news for a free, ad-supported service with hefty data and server costs. What's interesting to me is how much of the ad revenue growth is coming from Facebook's network outside the U.S.

"North Korea has established its first official presence on Twitter, the micro-blogging site that's being embraced by governments and an increasing number of world leaders." -- IDG News, August 16, 2010. Herewith, a brief sampling of some would-be tweets:

A new report from eMarketer documents the incredibly rapid growth in social networks over the last couple years, and predicts continuing growth at least into the middle years of this decade -- but also suggests that social networks may be approaching saturation in the U.S. According to eMarketer, the number of Americans who checked into a social network at least once a month increased by 24.7 million from 2008-2009, from 84.5 million to 109.2 million -- representing an increase from 41.6% to 51.6% of the total population. This year, eMarketer expects 17.8 million more people to sign on, bringing the …

If anyone out there thinks social networks are a transient phenomenon, those doubts should be put to rest by the results of a survey of 1,058 U.S. adults conducted July 22-23 by Infogroup on behalf of the American Red Cross about where they would go for to contact emergency responders during a disaster if they couldn't call 911. While the findings should be viewed with caution (as an online survey, it obviously skews towards the Web savvy) they provide more evidence that social networks have become an integral -- and trusted -- part of everyday life, like telephones and emails …

Games are serious business nowadays. Two of the biggest companies on the Internet, Google and Facebook, are facing off to control the way bored people waste time online. With popular games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, Facebook currently has the home field advantage (boy, these game clichés just write themselves) but Google has the advantages of size and sheer will ... and oh yes, lots and lots of money. Don't forget that money.

A lot has been written about the potential for social media to enable crime, but what about going in the other direction? It turns out the real story may be social media's crime-fighting capabilities, especially as it merges with mobile devices, allowing users to alert police and the general public to crimes as they happen. Last Friday brought the arrest of Lawrence Maguire, 59, who was charged with indecent exposure on the Boston T Red Line train, thanks to a tweet from another passenger who took a photo and posted it to Twitter under the MBTA hashtag with his mobile …