Considering a promotion to drive fan traffic on Facebook? Not so fast. Facebook recently updated its promotion guidelines and it’s not as straight-forward as you might think.

Thousands of brands, celebrities, sports teams, musicians and other entities have launched fan pages on Facebook. And Facebook is wisely doing everything it can to monetize fan page traffic (for example, last week it announced advertisers can target friends of their fans) and protect itself against any liabilities from the promotions fan pages are hosting.

Most of the guidelines are intuitive – like you can’t offer prizes to people who are under 18 or require a purchase to enter. Section 3/Administering a Promotion through the Facebook Platform, though, was more than a tad surprising. If you are planning a promotion through Facebook, you must receive written approval from Facebook to do so. And, you must administer the promotion through an application (i.e. not via status updates).

Facebook has been a boon for small and mid-size businesses looking for cost effective ways to engage their customers. I haven’t tried to reach a Facebook representative to get approval for a promotion yet. But something tells me these kinds of restrictions are going to make it difficult for the vast majority of organizations that don’t have endless resources to optimize their presence on Facebook.

Fortunately these rules don’t apply if you’re promoting a contest you’re administering outside of Facebook. When we hosted a Twitter scavenger hunt earlier this week for the Radio City Rockettes, we posted these rules on the company website and only used Facebook status updates to alert fans to the opportunity.

Stay tuned as the rules are likely to change again. In the words of Section 6/Facebook Rights, “We may modify these Promotion Guidelines at any time without notice to you. You will subject to the most current version of these Promotion Guidelines then in effect.”

Just after posting a photo of my daughter on my Facebook profile today, I received an email from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) saying that Facebook now has over one petabyte of photo storage.  I did it.  I know I did.

We’ve been guiding a number of clients on setting up Facebook profiles.  For example, we’re promoting a book that chronicles the journey of a home-birth midwife.  We’re helping the author set up her profile.  A non-profit client is becoming a cause that Facebook members can join.  Needless to say, our team spends a lot of time on social networking sites.  In my personal (i.e. non-billable for any clients who are reading this) time, I use Facebook for the same reasons most people do: to reconnect with old friends and colleagues, to check out people’s kids and to find out who just got back from a vacation or is missing their spouse.

In the last week or so, I’ve connected with a number of high school friends.  You know how it works: Join one person’s friends list and their friends see and connect with you.  And so on.  And so on.  All this social networking got me to thinking about the fact that my 20-year (gulp) high school reunion will happen in 2009.  It seems the people who are inclined to go to such events are likely the same people who are on Facebook.  On the one hand, Facebook may expedite the getting-in-touch part of the planning process.  On the other, how anxious will people be to see each other, since we’ve already reunited online?  I’ve seen what they look like, how adorable their kids are and know what they do for a living.

I recently read an article that suggested the demise of local newspapers is in large part due to the newsfeeds people receive on sites like Facebook — the newspaper is no longer the place to find out what’s happening in a community. I am not sure I agree with that.  But I do wonder: Will Facebook kill the high school reunion?  Maybe that’s also an overstatement.  After all, I can’t dance to 80s tunes in a bad hotel banquet room on Facebook.  Or can I?

In the words of British Futurist Peter Cochrane, “If you’re not online, you don’t exist.”

With billions of Web sites, millions of blogs and hundreds of social networking sites, the internet is king – not exactly an earth-shattering revelation in 2008.

All PR professionals must adapt accordingly – knowing and learning new technologies and becoming comfortable with them is essential. It is imperative that we blend the traditional skills of writing and media and communications knowledge with online skills.

As the youngest member of Rose Communications, I have a unique perspective on PR and the online world – as I don’t know the PR landscape without the internet.

I often wonder how media lists were built and clips tracked. I find it hard to imagine calling a reporter with a pitch when I can simply drop them a less intrusive email or message on MySpace or Facebook. I don’t know how releases posted to the wire prior to the web and I’d probably enter a deep depression if forced to work without my laptop or Blackberry for a week. In fact, I’m not sure I’d even know how work without the internet. Far from a crutch, online access enables me – and my Rose Communications colleagues – to successfully practice 21st century public relations.