If you’re a Facebooker who’s lusting after the Apple iPad (so much so that you’ve joined a Fan Page), then chances are you’re aged between 18 and 25 and have an interest in popular culture — or so says RapLeaf, a company that analyzes social media stats to draw meaningful conclusions from the likes of Facebook Fan Pages.

RapLeaf looked at the top three Facebook Fan Pages (all of which are imaginatively named “The iPad”) to see if iPad fans could be easily grouped into a particular demographic.

The numbers are certainly there for such a study — the three pages together boast almost 98,000 members. While gender pretty much averaged out across all the pages, the age range came in at under Facebook’s average with 85% of overall fans 35 or under, and nearly 50% 25 and under.

iPad-owner-wannabes are also fairly social, with a third boasting more than 300 friends. Other Fan Pages they have joined include, in many cases (and perhaps unsurprisingly), iTunes, as well as other Pages related to caffeine, sleep, pop culture and humor.

What will be truly interesting to see as we edge closer to the April 3 iPad launch is how many of those 98,000 put their money where their Facebook fandom is and go out and buy the device.

Tags: apple, facebook, ipad, statistics

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This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

One of the most powerful aspects of social media and the web is the fact that it isn’t specific to any location. So long as you have an Internet connection, you can be halfway across the world Skyping, tweeting, and communicating with your friends. It has broken down barriers, given people the ability to work remotely, and made it so that your location doesn’t have to determine your destiny.

Still, to discount location would be foolish. It’s where we socialize and, for the most part, where we work. We grow to love (or hate) the neighborhoods and cities in which we live. And with the rise of smartphones and GPS, location-based social networks such as Foursquare and Google Buzz have been growing like wildfire.

Thus, I’m not surprised that a new debate has been raging in entrepreneurship circles over whether it matters where your startup is based. For web entrepreneurs, the perceived epicenter has always been San Francisco and the Bay Area – often known as Silicon Valley. With a huge collection of technology companies, venture capitalists, and talented engineers, many advocate moving to the area if you’re serious about building a startup.

That mentality has been challenged recently by growing startup hubs around the globe. One of the ones making a lot of headlines is New York City’s tech scene, which has been growing rapidly in recent years and includes startups such as Foursquare and VC firms like Union Square Ventures. Boulder, Colorado is also gaining traction due to the presence of Techstars, an early-stage seed venture firm.

Why Location Still Matters

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While you have a lot of good choices for where to build your company, don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that location doesn’t matter; in fact, it does. Here’s why:

• Different locations have different entrepreneurial support communities.

These are vital, because entrepreneurship can quickly become lonely and nerve-wracking without mentorship and support.

• Talent pools around location. You will simply find more talented engineers in Silicon Valley, while you’ll find a larger pool of financial minds in NYC and media moguls in Los Angeles. You can find talent anywhere, but the pool matters.

• In-person meetings are just as important as they were five years ago. Being able to grab a coffee with a potential investor or partner is still going to be more powerful than Skyping or email.

With that said, it doesn’t mean that San Francisco or Silicon Valley is the best place to start a web company.

Yes, in a lot of cases it can be because of the influx of money and talent, but there are a lot of other things you should consider, including:

• Partnerships: Foursquare, an NYC-based company, has succeeded in striking a lot of great media partnerships, including ones with Bravo and The New York Times. Their location has surely helped: NYC simply has more advertising and media companies than other locations, and Foursquare has seized upon the opportunity it presents.

• Talent: While engineering talent is prevalent in Silicon Valley, you need to consider what your startup is about. For example, Boston has a strong startup community with great scientists and academics that come from MIT and Harvard.

• Happiness: If you live in a place that you simply hate, you are not going to be as productive. If your own needs aren’t fulfilled, how can you expect to fulfill the needs of a startup and its employees? If I have any piece of advice for where to create your startup, it’s this: make sure it’s a place that will make you happy first and foremost, and then go from there.

Location matters for your startup, but it doesn’t define success. Hard work, smart execution, and the right team are far more important. Don’t compromise those things in your quest to find your perfect startup city.

More business resources from Mashable:

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- 7 Essential Online HR Resources for Your Small Business
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses
- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Matejay

Tags: business, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, List, Lists, small business, startup

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You can now see Chatroulette users’ locations, thanks to a new Google Maps mashup that pinpoints where in the world people are signing in to the voyeuristic video-conferencing service.

The new Chatroulette Maps website presents markers of users’ IP addresses on a worldwide map, meaning less anonymity than users have previously experienced (which may go some way to encourage folks to keep it in their pants).

Capturing screengrabs of the users, Chatroulette Map then adds them to the map using geo IP tools. The accuracy of tracking locations via IP addresses varies with the provider and area. It’s certainly not super precise technology, but in built-up areas with an ISP with an up-to-date database it can be up to 95% accurate, and elsewhere, certainly enough to get an idea of location.

Although Chatroulette uses Adobe’s Stratus platform, the actual webcam hook-up between two users is a peer-to-peer link, which means the user’s IP address is revealed by this direct means of connection.

Chatroulette Map says there are plans to make the images rateable, as well as filter out any NSFW content, but for now the service just offers a snapshot of Chatroulette users across the globe.

Anyone unhappy with being screengrabbed and mapped can get in touch with the site to have their marker and pic removed, provided they e-mail in a pic of themselves as proof.

Will this development put you off using Chatroulette? Do you see it as an invasion of your privacy? Let us know in the comments below.

[via Laughing Squid]

Tags: chat roulette maps, chatroulette

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We now know how Conan O’Brien plans to leverage the huge swell of support he found online in the wake of being forced out at NBC: a nationwide comedy tour.

The comedian announced on his Twitter account this morning the launch of TeamCoco.com, where fans can buy tickets to one of 30 shows, kicking off in Eugene, Oregon, on April 12. The tour, fittingly enough, is called “The Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on Television Tour,” a reference to the deal he made with NBC that keeps O’Brien off the air until the fall.

A comedy tour has been rumored since shortly after Conan stepped down, and we suspected something might be in the works when he finally joined Twitter (and immediately found a huge fan base, and changed one random girl’s life along the way). Now, Conan officially has an outlet to keep the momentum going while he determines his next move on TV.

Are you going to go see one of Conan’s shows? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: conan o'brien, team coco, trending

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