The Panelists: Steve Rubel and Dave Kerpen with moderator Mathew Ingram.

Although there are thousands of social networking services, the landscape is dominated by a small handful of players: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and perhaps Google+.

The question is whether there is room my new entrants. For all the talk about Diaspora and, mostly recently, Unthink, there hasn’t been a new kid of social block of any significance in the past few years with the exception of Google+, which is supported by Google’s digital dominance.

What would it take for a new player to establish a strong foothold? What would a new service have to offer and how would it have to market itself to capture the attention of social media users who are increasingly reluctant to wander from existing services? And what should brands do when a new service appears on the scene? Should they jump onto the bandwagon or wait on the sidelines until they know the new service has traction? Come see Rubel and Kerpen provide insight into the competitive social media landscape.

Tickets for meshmarketing can be purchased here. Information about the speakers and schedule is here.

Of course, there are a few exceptions. One of them is Janice Diner, who made her mesh debut last year with a standing room-only presentation about Facebook. There was so much enthusiasm for Janice’s presentation we invited her to do a presentation at meshmarketing. And there was so much interest that we felt compelled to invite Janice to do a workshop at mesh ’11.

So why has Janice become a rare three-repeat presenter? As much as many people use Facebook, there is so much to learn about how Facebook is evolving and the different things that brands can do with it. Janice has a unique combination of insight and hands-on experience that makes her presentation “must-attends”. If you look around the room during one of her presentation, the amount of furious note-taking is impressive.

At mesh ’11, Janice is going to cover some new ground with a workshop focused on the growing amount of e-commerce happening on Facebook, aka F-commerce. Analysts predict commerce from Facebook stores will hit $30 billion by 2015 as more companies look at how to turn conversations into commerce.

“Businesses of all sizes are building and testing commerce solutions inside Facebook and are looking at how they can turn conversations into conversions,” Janice says. “Coca-Cola, Barneys, Sears, Pampers, Dove, Sephora, Lands End and many others pages have built “Shopping” Tabs in their Facebook pages. Facebook is launching, local group buying with its Deal platform and going head to head with companies such as Groupon. Facebook Credits will become the mandatory currency for Facebook games and applications as of July 1 2011.”

For anyone looking for real-world insight into where Facebook is going with e-commerce, you won’t want to miss Janice’s workshop, which happens during the afternoon of May 26.

With Facebook become a more interesting part of the social media landscape, we decided to have Janice come to meshmarketing to provide more insight into how Facebook continues to evolve and what companies are doing to leverage it.

Here’s a mini-Q&A with Janice, who pointed out there are more than 16 million Canadians on Facebook, 9 million Canadians visit Facebook on a given day and they spend five and a half hours a month in the social network.

1. Why do you think Facebook Pages have become so popular?

The popularity of Facebook Pages has become one of the extensions of the users social web experience. For some marketers, their Facebook fan bases have become their largest web presence, outstripping brand sites or e-mail programs. The power of social recommendations is one of the big drivers. Creating opportunities for recommendations from friends have proven to be a great kind of marketing. Facebook Pages is one of the ways that enable brands and businesses to make customers their best advocates.

2. Can you point to any companies that are doing a particularly good job with their Facebook Pages?

There are many companies engaging with their consumers through Facebook both on Pages and through the Facebook’s Open Graph.

Some examples are: With the Starbucks Card Facebook application, I can purchase a cup of coffee for my friends without ever leaving Facebook. This holiday season EBay GroupGifts, a Facebook open-graph gifting service, helps Facebook users get together and buy gifts. If I want to book a plane ticket with Delta Airlines, I can do so inside Facebook with their Delta Ticket Counter. I visit the New York Times and log in with Facebook and I can now see what articles my friends are reading and recommending. Soon, I will be checking in with Facebook Places to a new restaurant while I am travelling and see what my fellow Facebook foodies recommend last time they ate there.

3. What do you see over the horizon with Facebook Pages now that companies have embraced things such as custom tabs?

Businesses and brands now have a great opportunity to be innovative and create lasting connections with their consumers. But fasten your seat belt; it is going to get a bit disruptive out there.

A blog post on Silicon Valley Insider talks about how Facebook was the only social network being enthusiastically discussed at the recent Ad Week and Social Ad Summit – even though other social networks have large numbers of users.

The post’s author, Rory Maher, contends that Facebook’s edge is the high levels of engagement among users who are spending more of their social networking time on Facebook.

The chart below shows how time on social networking social has social over the past year: