Every November, men all over the world let their facial hair down to raise awareness for prostate cancer and men’s health. Participants, or “Mo Bros,” grow mustaches to get people to sponsor them. With the help of their “Mo Sistas,” the “Mo Bros” spread the word on Facebook through photos and videos of their mustaches, and status updates about their fundraising efforts. Today, Facebook announced that the “Movember” campaign raised $17.6 million on the social platform out of a total $141.5 million for the cause in 2012.
Facebook strategic partner manager Libby Leffler attributed the group’s success to its sophisticated use of Facebook Pages at the global and regional level.
Specifically, the Movember team reminded participants on Facebook to tell their friends what they were doing, to post pictures and videos to prove it, and to send them the link to the donation page. “Visual images are hugely important,” said Leffler. “Movember is all about that.” The average participant posted 12 times on Facebook during the month of November.
With the help of more than 1.1 million participants who each had an average of 258 friends, Facebook drove more than 10 million visits to Movember’s website in 2012, increasing 37 percent over 2011 and accounting for 30 percent of the traffic. Facebook was the second highest referrer of traffic overall.
The Movember organizers also used a Leaderboard app for tracking participants’ progress and measuring them against others in different areas. It gave the men and their supporters that “boost of confidence as they saw themselves rising up through the rankings,” Leffler said.
In 2012, the average donation amount rose 13 percent to $27 for an overall increase of 26 percent compared to 2011.
Now that Facebook is working on a new layout, pictures will become even more important. ”We’re very focused on getting people to understand that visual imagery is very powerful,” said Leffler. “The [images] don’t have to be super high quality - we know non-profits are resource constrained. All that has to happen is for you to share a great image and a really interesting caption to create compelling content. I think the new layout will help increase engagement with non-profits if they’re willing to experiment and test with using better images.”
Read more tips for non-profits on Facebook’s newly released Best Practice Guide.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Groupon 
LinkedIn is testing sponsored posts from a select set of corporate partners and expects to roll them out for all users in 2013, executives said in a call with analysts following the release of the company’s 2012 financials.
LinkedIn has reported an 86 percent growth in revenue for 2012, with $972.3 million in revenue compared to $522.2 million in 2011.This includes $303.6 million in revenue in quarter four, which represents an 81 percent increase year over year.
Yelp reported a loss of $19 million in 2012, but its sales revenue grew 65 percent.
Zynga reported a quarterly loss of $28.6 in the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to a loss of $435 in the last quarter of 2011. Its annual loss was $209 million, down from $404 million in 2012.
Yesterday during Google’s 
Megan O’Neill
As 2013 kicks off, YouTube is taking a look back at some of the most popular, trending videos of last year. To celebrate 2012 in video, YouTube Trending has released a 
What were your favorite TV shows and movies in 2012? Did you tweet about them? Did you post about them on Facebook? Did you check-in to them on your favorite social TV app? If you did, chances are you helped them make GetGlue’s list of the top social TV shows and movies of 2012!
