MKTG

In a move that will likely be surprising to some, Facebook has just announced that it is closing its Gift Shop for virtual gifts in three weeks on August 1st.

Facebook launched virtual gifts a little over three years ago, and has done a variety of e-commerce experiments since. For example:

• Initially launching Facebook Credits in the Gift Shop in November 2008
• Pushing virtual birthday gifts on profile pages in January 2009
• Testing virtual currency gifting with branded virtual gifts in May 2009
• Adding content from third party developers, including e-commerce retailers of physical goods, in August 2009
• Adding licensed sports, music, and charity-benefit themed virtual gifts in October 2009

However, Facebook was never seemingly able to get its direct-to-consumer virtual goods business over the hump. While other niche social sites have increased virtual gift monetization by integrating gift content more heavily into the user experience, Facebook has kept integration to a relative minimum, primarily only displaying them on a user’s wall as just another type of rich feed item.

Instead, Facebook has focused more on its core value proposition as a communication and identity utility, while letting third party developers on its platform develop the rich application experiences that have proven so potent at monetizing through the sale of virtual goods. Now that virtual goods on the Facebook Platform have become such a large business, Facebook is getting involved through its universal virtual currency, Facebook Credits, around which there are a variety of sentiments in the developer community.

In our latest estimates of Facebook’s revenues, which we put at $700 million in 2009 and $1-$1.1 billion in 2010, we estimated that virtual gifts made up less than $10 million in revenue for Facebook last year. Most of Facebook’s revenues in this category this year will come from the growth of its Credits virtual currency business instead.

Nevertheless, it is a symbolic moment in the evolution of the company. Facebook has decided that it doesn’t want to be in the business of creating virtual goods for users to buy, but rather to be the platform on which others can build applications within which users can buy virtual goods with house-issued universal currency.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Foursquare was created to motivate people to discover interesting things around them. As the platform has evolved, we’ve started to experiment with many different ways to encourage users to explore, from surfacing great tips that come from the friends you trust to rewarding users who frequent the gym or commute via public transit. Thousands of merchants, too, are actively claiming their venues in the system and providing additional incentives on the platform in the form of special offers and mayor offers. Some of these are sole proprietors such as the Mermaid Inn in our hometown of New York City, while others are nationwide initiatives from the likes of Starbucks, Sports Authority, Ben & Jerrys, and Whole Foods. 

 
We continue to be inspired and excited as we observe merchants leveraging the platform to engender customer loyalty, drive foot traffic and boost customer acquisition.
 
Some examples:

+ Starbucks: Starbucks offered $1 off any size  Frappuccino® for its mayors. Since running their  mayor special on foursquare, Starbucks (already the most checked in retailer on the platform prior to running the special) has seen a 50% increase in check-ins at its locations. Also, not only are our users excited about the competition the mayor deal creates but they’re also welcoming the opportunity to try new products!




+ our friends at Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto have acquired over 50 new customers and saw well over 100 redemptions as a result of running a special offer over the past seven weeks:



The owner of Monique’s, Mark, also told us that he is running the same special in his local newspaper (cost of ad = $300!) and has acquired only one customer with one redemption from that print ad. He adds that for those who redeem the special via foursquare “more than 25% return regularly to get something, to check in, to see who the mayor is…the gaming part of foursquare really does resonante with people and we’re excited about it!” 
 
 
+ AJ Bombers, a local burger spot in Milwaukee has seen a 30% increase in menu item purchases from running both a special (free cookie if you add a tip!) and mayor offer (free burger!)
 
Joe, the owner, has leveraged foursquare in other innovative ways to drive foot traffic – he was the first to hold “Swarm Badge” and “I’m on a boat” parties for customers!



We LOVE stories like these. We’re deeply motivated to build the best tools to help our merchants use foursquare to get their customers excited about frequenting their venues, while offering sweet deals for our users.

We are taking what we’ve learned so far from these early experiments and introducing a few changes today to make the experience better for users and merchants.

Loyalty offer variability (“Specials Nearby”): 
Starting today, users will no longer see the same loyalty offer (Special offer or Mayor offer) over and over but rather see some variability by seeing rotating offers in the “special nearby” tab.

The “reach” for special offers: 
The current location range for offers “nearby” is approximately 200 yards, but will, in the future, be variable based on the user’s  location. In more densely populated areas, 200 yards will provide adequate variability. In areas outside of cities, we’re going to increase that range to provide better results for users in less densely populated areas.

Participation from employees: 
Thousands of merchants are running specials on the platform and the majority of specials in the system are frequency-based (i.e. “every 5th check-in gets you a free appetizer!”). There are also merchants, like Sports Authority, who are running mayor deals. In the past, we’ve not allowed users identified in our system as employees or managers of venues (see staff tool below) to be eligible for mayorships or participate in Foursquare mayor offers.



This restriction remains true, but we are going to make the process of designating employees as staff on foursquare venues much clearer to merchants. We can’t expect all merchants to require employees to mark themselves as such but we can do better (and we will!) as it relates to communicating to our merchants about the benefits of doing so.

Redemption: 
User experience is paramount to anything that happens within the Foursquare universe. These early experiments are helping us make a better product and ensure that future offers are as easy to redeem as ever. While the ultimate responsibility rests with the merchant, we want to make sure they have the tools and documentation necessary to teach everyone involved about our programs. As technology advances and Point of Sale systems get smarter, this responsibility can move from humans to barcode scans, loyalty card integrations and other means, thus reducing the potential friction.
 
As always, we thank you all for the feedback! We will continue to work to build the best product possible for our users and merchants and we welcome the feedback as we continue to iterate the platform based on these early experiments.
 
— foursquare biz dev team —

Popularity: 1% [?]

Foursquare was created to motivate people to discover interesting things around them. As the platform has evolved, we’ve started to experiment with many different ways to encourage users to explore, from surfacing great tips that come from the friends you trust to rewarding users who frequent the gym or commute via public transit. Thousands of merchants, too, are actively claiming their venues in the system and providing additional incentives on the platform in the form of special offers and mayor offers. Some of these are sole proprietors such as the Mermaid Inn in our hometown of New York City, while others are nationwide initiatives from the likes of Starbucks, Sports Authority, Ben & Jerrys, and Whole Foods. 

 
We continue to be inspired and excited as we observe merchants leveraging the platform to engender customer loyalty, drive foot traffic and boost customer acquisition.
 
Some examples:

+ Starbucks: Starbucks offered $1 off any size  Frappuccino® for its mayors. Since running their  mayor special on foursquare, Starbucks (already the most checked in retailer on the platform prior to running the special) has seen a 50% increase in check-ins at its locations. Also, not only are our users excited about the competition the mayor deal creates but they’re also welcoming the opportunity to try new products!




+ our friends at Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto have acquired over 50 new customers and saw well over 100 redemptions as a result of running a special offer over the past seven weeks:



The owner of Monique’s, Mark, also told us that he is running the same special in his local newspaper (cost of ad = $300!) and has acquired only one customer with one redemption from that print ad. He adds that for those who redeem the special via foursquare “more than 25% return regularly to get something, to check in, to see who the mayor is…the gaming part of foursquare really does resonante with people and we’re excited about it!” 
 
 
+ AJ Bombers, a local burger spot in Milwaukee has seen a 30% increase in menu item purchases from running both a special (free cookie if you add a tip!) and mayor offer (free burger!)
 
Joe, the owner, has leveraged foursquare in other innovative ways to drive foot traffic – he was the first to hold “Swarm Badge” and “I’m on a boat” parties for customers!



We LOVE stories like these. We’re deeply motivated to build the best tools to help our merchants use foursquare to get their customers excited about frequenting their venues, while offering sweet deals for our users.

We are taking what we’ve learned so far from these early experiments and introducing a few changes today to make the experience better for users and merchants.

Loyalty offer variability (“Specials Nearby”): 
Starting today, users will no longer see the same loyalty offer (Special offer or Mayor offer) over and over but rather see some variability by seeing rotating offers in the “special nearby” tab.

The “reach” for special offers: 
The current location range for offers “nearby” is approximately 200 yards, but will, in the future, be variable based on the user’s  location. In more densely populated areas, 200 yards will provide adequate variability. In areas outside of cities, we’re going to increase that range to provide better results for users in less densely populated areas.

Participation from employees: 
Thousands of merchants are running specials on the platform and the majority of specials in the system are frequency-based (i.e. “every 5th check-in gets you a free appetizer!”). There are also merchants, like Sports Authority, who are running mayor deals. In the past, we’ve not allowed users identified in our system as employees or managers of venues (see staff tool below) to be eligible for mayorships or participate in Foursquare mayor offers.



This restriction remains true, but we are going to make the process of designating employees as staff on foursquare venues much clearer to merchants. We can’t expect all merchants to require employees to mark themselves as such but we can do better (and we will!) as it relates to communicating to our merchants about the benefits of doing so.

Redemption: 
User experience is paramount to anything that happens within the Foursquare universe. These early experiments are helping us make a better product and ensure that future offers are as easy to redeem as ever. While the ultimate responsibility rests with the merchant, we want to make sure they have the tools and documentation necessary to teach everyone involved about our programs. As technology advances and Point of Sale systems get smarter, this responsibility can move from humans to barcode scans, loyalty card integrations and other means, thus reducing the potential friction.
 
As always, we thank you all for the feedback! We will continue to work to build the best product possible for our users and merchants and we welcome the feedback as we continue to iterate the platform based on these early experiments.
 
— foursquare biz dev team —

Popularity: 1% [?]

Foursquare was created to motivate people to discover interesting things around them. As the platform has evolved, we’ve started to experiment with many different ways to encourage users to explore, from surfacing great tips that come from the friends you trust to rewarding users who frequent the gym or commute via public transit. Thousands of merchants, too, are actively claiming their venues in the system and providing additional incentives on the platform in the form of special offers and mayor offers. Some of these are sole proprietors such as the Mermaid Inn in our hometown of New York City, while others are nationwide initiatives from the likes of Starbucks, Sports Authority, Ben & Jerrys, and Whole Foods. 

 
We continue to be inspired and excited as we observe merchants leveraging the platform to engender customer loyalty, drive foot traffic and boost customer acquisition.
 
Some examples:

+ Starbucks: Starbucks offered $1 off any size  Frappuccino® for its mayors. Since running their  mayor special on foursquare, Starbucks (already the most checked in retailer on the platform prior to running the special) has seen a 50% increase in check-ins at its locations. Also, not only are our users excited about the competition the mayor deal creates but they’re also welcoming the opportunity to try new products!




+ our friends at Monique’s Chocolates in Palo Alto have acquired over 50 new customers and saw well over 100 redemptions as a result of running a special offer over the past seven weeks:



The owner of Monique’s, Mark, also told us that he is running the same special in his local newspaper (cost of ad = $300!) and has acquired only one customer with one redemption from that print ad. He adds that for those who redeem the special via foursquare “more than 25% return regularly to get something, to check in, to see who the mayor is…the gaming part of foursquare really does resonante with people and we’re excited about it!” 
 
 
+ AJ Bombers, a local burger spot in Milwaukee has seen a 30% increase in menu item purchases from running both a special (free cookie if you add a tip!) and mayor offer (free burger!)
 
Joe, the owner, has leveraged foursquare in other innovative ways to drive foot traffic – he was the first to hold “Swarm Badge” and “I’m on a boat” parties for customers!



We LOVE stories like these. We’re deeply motivated to build the best tools to help our merchants use foursquare to get their customers excited about frequenting their venues, while offering sweet deals for our users.

We are taking what we’ve learned so far from these early experiments and introducing a few changes today to make the experience better for users and merchants.

Loyalty offer variability (“Specials Nearby”): 
Starting today, users will no longer see the same loyalty offer (Special offer or Mayor offer) over and over but rather see some variability by seeing rotating offers in the “special nearby” tab.

The “reach” for special offers: 
The current location range for offers “nearby” is approximately 200 yards, but will, in the future, be variable based on the user’s  location. In more densely populated areas, 200 yards will provide adequate variability. In areas outside of cities, we’re going to increase that range to provide better results for users in less densely populated areas.

Participation from employees: 
Thousands of merchants are running specials on the platform and the majority of specials in the system are frequency-based (i.e. “every 5th check-in gets you a free appetizer!”). There are also merchants, like Sports Authority, who are running mayor deals. In the past, we’ve not allowed users identified in our system as employees or managers of venues (see staff tool below) to be eligible for mayorships or participate in Foursquare mayor offers.



This restriction remains true, but we are going to make the process of designating employees as staff on foursquare venues much clearer to merchants. We can’t expect all merchants to require employees to mark themselves as such but we can do better (and we will!) as it relates to communicating to our merchants about the benefits of doing so.

Redemption: 
User experience is paramount to anything that happens within the Foursquare universe. These early experiments are helping us make a better product and ensure that future offers are as easy to redeem as ever. While the ultimate responsibility rests with the merchant, we want to make sure they have the tools and documentation necessary to teach everyone involved about our programs. As technology advances and Point of Sale systems get smarter, this responsibility can move from humans to barcode scans, loyalty card integrations and other means, thus reducing the potential friction.
 
As always, we thank you all for the feedback! We will continue to work to build the best product possible for our users and merchants and we welcome the feedback as we continue to iterate the platform based on these early experiments.
 
— foursquare biz dev team —

Popularity: 1% [?]

Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.

However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.

We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.

A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.

They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.

Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.

However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.

We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.

A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.

They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.

Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.

However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.

We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.

A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.

They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.

Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.

However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.

We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.

A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.

They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.

Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Gigya, a company that has transformed from widget-maker to social media optimization service, has released a new infographic detailing which social IDs people use most frequently to login to different types of Gigya-optimized websites. Facebook leads with 46% of Gigya logins across all sites, and was also the top social ID for entertainment and business to business sites.

However, Facebook trails Twitter for news site logins with 25% to the microblogging network’s 45%. One should not draw conclusions from this data since there’s no explanation of methodology or notes on the quantity or percentage of total users that employ social IDs. Yet, interestingly, it seems to show ties between certain social communities and content types.

We spoke with Gigya CEO David Yovanno to get some more context about what’s happening in the Social ID ecosphere. He explained that as social becomes a larger source of referral traffic, sites will need to optimize for it in the same way that they have for search in the past. Yovanno says a major thing they’ve learned from their data is that “in different content environments people choose different platforms to connect through.” For instance, “in retail users may be less social during the checkout phase, preferring Google and Yahoo!, whereas for entertainment, which is more chatty, they choose Facebook”.

A key finding of Gigya’s data analysis is the prevalence of Twitter as a social ID on the news sites Gigya powers such as Reuters. We believe this might be due to Twitter’s interest-focus being more conducive to news sharing than Facebook’s geography-focused network, and update frequency norms permitting more posts per day on Twitter than Facebook. Yovanno said Gigya isn’t sure but they are very interested in learning the root of this trend, and have hired an outside research firm to analyze the subject.

They’ve also found that inclusive but curated social login options produce the best results. If your site needs email addresses, you might want to downplay LinkedIn and Twitter social IDs which don’t provide that. By making the login buttons for platforms which provide data a site wants as prominent as possible, designers can corral users to their advantage. Then by adding a “More” button which reveals all the other platforms, including international ones, they can be sure to have a social ID login option for everyone.

Lastly, Yovanno revealed that the type of API that a third-party site uses to let users share to Facebook influences content’s “EdgeRank,” the algorithm that determines what content appears in the news feed. He said that referral traffic for links shared through the outdated REST API was approximately 1/3 of that for content shared through a client-side API. EdgeRank favors client-side API content because its news feed publishing permission request is more explicit than that of the REST API where it’s easier to trick users into sharing. This news should incentivize anyone still using the REST API to upgrade. If sites want to drive leads, increase conversions, and get the best EdgeRank for shared content, they must be concerned with on-site social optimization, social ID login design, and which API they’re using.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Yesterday, Compete published the results of its Q1 2010 Smartphone Intelligence survey, in which behavioral and survey-based insights are gained in regards to how consumers are using iPhones, BlackBerrys, Android devices and other smartphones.

Though it may come as no surprise given the proliferation of smartphones, local search, social networking and gaming are still showing the most movement with consumers.  Nearly one in three smartphone owners has called or stopped into a local business after finding it using a local search application.  In Q1 alone, close to a third of Android and iPhone owners discovered at least two new businesses that they were not previously aware of as a result of using local search applications.

In terms of social networking, Twitter and Facebook continue to dominate the smartphone landscape.  According to Compete’s findings, 33 percent of smartphone Twitter users primarily send tweets via their smartphones, and 33 percent of these consumers prefer to read tweets on their phone.  Of those accessing Facebook from their smartphone, consumers are increasingly using the device to read news feeds (66 percent), post status updates (60 percent), read/reply to private messages (59 percent) and post photos (44 percent).

In terms of gaming, iPhone users remain the predominant demographic- Compete found that 51 percent of iPhone users have five or more games loaded on their smartphones.  In contrast, 46 percent of BlackBerry users have no games on their devices.  Not only do iPhone owners download more games, they play games more frequently than owners of other smartphones.  Of the consumers surveyed, 37 percent of iPhone users report playing games on their smartphones at least daily and puzzle games seem to be capturing the majority of this attention.

Popularity: 1% [?]

[Editor's Note: The data cited in this article is excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Please see Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Facebook’s growth slowed down in the United States in June, following a burst of activity through April and May. The country picked up only 320,800 new monthly active users in June, compared to the outstanding 7.8 million it gathered in May.

It’s not uncommon to see a saturated country like the US take a breather after a spurt of growth. However, some unusually interesting demographic trends took place for the country in June that add nuance to the overall growth number.

Specifically, a number of users in the prime 18-44 age range that represents Facebook’s largest age demographic left or stepped back from the social network:

Why did several hundred thousand young, but no longer teenaged, users suddenly leave Facebook? The slowdown in growth actually verged into the older 45-54 age group, but those numbers were otherwise within normal ranges, as was the growth for the 13-17 group.

One possibility is that we’re finally seeing the backlash from heavy media attention to Facebook privacy issues — some of which were real, some the result of confusion and sensationalism. Regardless of the causes, the age groups that logged a loss in June is also the one most likely to have paid attention to the privacy debates, and the timing could be correct, since the Facebook ad tool we use to gather this data is often several weeks behind.

Less excitingly, the negative growth could simply be a blip. But in the years we’ve been tracking the demographic data, we’ve rarely seen a dip like this, so we would tend to favor the idea of a root cause.

Despite the June traffic changes, the US has a monolithic enough audience that the overall age splits did not change, when rounding to whole percentage points:

Complete data on monthly growth within each of these demographic groups, as well as monthly growth of Facebook’s overall audience in the US and around the world, is available through Inside Facebook Gold.

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Welcome back from the long holiday weekend! Though seriously, this industry doesn’t slow down for a minute, does it? Seems everyone used their day off to get ahead on their blog writing or reading. (I’ll admit, I was guilty, too, with my guest post on Outspoken Media about green business practices that better your bottom line. Check it out if you get a chance, but don’t leave yet! I’m talking here! )

While America was busy with its Independence Day festivities this weekend, for the rest of the world it’s been all about the World Cup. Tomorrow Germany and Spain will fight it out for the last spot in the finals facing the Netherlands. One team that didn’t fair so well during the tournament was Nigeria. The team was eliminated during the group stage — which would have been downer enough for Nigerian nationals — but worse yet, the country’s president issued a two-year suspension to the national soccer team from international competition due to its poor showing. Not about to accept insult with injury, fans of the team rallied together to convince the president to reverse his ruling, where else but on Facebook.

Facebook is the main watering hole of today’s expansive Web, with users turning to the social network to voice their preferences and opinions, connect with friends, find kindred spirits and share passions. And everyday, those with a keen eye will notice one more place where Facebook has crept into the media consciousness. Just today we learned that Lady Gaga is the first to gain 10 million Facebook friends.

But Gaga wasn’t the only one making headlines in the Facebook sphere.

Facebook Page or Group: Which to Use

All Facebook updated an earlier post on the differences between pages and groups, offering brands and businesses a comprehensive guide on choosing how to manage your presence on the social network. A handy graphic comparing the features available to each plus descriptions of metrics, promotion widgets and application support makes this guide a critical starting point for any Facebook strategy.

Facebook Fan Page Tips

I shared these action items back in May, but if you’ve decided social media marketing with a Facebook page is the way to go, be sure you’re taking advantage of custom landing tabs and Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to make the most of your page. The post introduces the factors of Facebook’s news feed ranking algorithm and terminology marketers have developed for the platform.

Facebook’s Internal Search Ranking Factors

See a deeper dive of Facebook ranking factors, as gleaned from a study of the network’s internal search results. Factors in play in the Suggest box as well as ranking factors of SERPs for Facebook pages, groups, applications and events are covered in detail. Comprehensive, clever and actionable insights on internal Facebook search results from the team at aimClear.

SEO Opportunities with Facebook

Zooming out from search within Facebook, marketers can also look at the effect of Facebook on the wider Web. Open Graph and growing use of the Like button have made Facebook a growing influence online. Facebook may soon become a top-tier search platform, and marketers should be optimizing their Facebook output like any other channel. I don’t believe Facebook’s social graph will ever replace search engines, but it’s a powerful channel, no doubt.

Facebook News Round-Up was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

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Welcome back from the long holiday weekend! Though seriously, this industry doesn’t slow down for a minute, does it? Seems everyone used their day off to get ahead on their blog writing or reading. (I’ll admit, I was guilty, too, with my guest post on Outspoken Media about green business practices that better your bottom line. Check it out if you get a chance, but don’t leave yet! I’m talking here! )

While America was busy with its Independence Day festivities this weekend, for the rest of the world it’s been all about the World Cup. Tomorrow Germany and Spain will fight it out for the last spot in the finals facing the Netherlands. One team that didn’t fair so well during the tournament was Nigeria. The team was eliminated during the group stage — which would have been downer enough for Nigerian nationals — but worse yet, the country’s president issued a two-year suspension to the national soccer team from international competition due to its poor showing. Not about to accept insult with injury, fans of the team rallied together to convince the president to reverse his ruling, where else but on Facebook.

Facebook is the main watering hole of today’s expansive Web, with users turning to the social network to voice their preferences and opinions, connect with friends, find kindred spirits and share passions. And everyday, those with a keen eye will notice one more place where Facebook has crept into the media consciousness. Just today we learned that Lady Gaga is the first to gain 10 million Facebook friends.

But Gaga wasn’t the only one making headlines in the Facebook sphere.

Facebook Page or Group: Which to Use

All Facebook updated an earlier post on the differences between pages and groups, offering brands and businesses a comprehensive guide on choosing how to manage your presence on the social network. A handy graphic comparing the features available to each plus descriptions of metrics, promotion widgets and application support makes this guide a critical starting point for any Facebook strategy.

Facebook Fan Page Tips

I shared these action items back in May, but if you’ve decided social media marketing with a Facebook page is the way to go, be sure you’re taking advantage of custom landing tabs and Facebook Markup Language (FBML) to make the most of your page. The post introduces the factors of Facebook’s news feed ranking algorithm and terminology marketers have developed for the platform.

Facebook’s Internal Search Ranking Factors

See a deeper dive of Facebook ranking factors, as gleaned from a study of the network’s internal search results. Factors in play in the Suggest box as well as ranking factors of SERPs for Facebook pages, groups, applications and events are covered in detail. Comprehensive, clever and actionable insights on internal Facebook search results from the team at aimClear.

SEO Opportunities with Facebook

Zooming out from search within Facebook, marketers can also look at the effect of Facebook on the wider Web. Open Graph and growing use of the Like button have made Facebook a growing influence online. Facebook may soon become a top-tier search platform, and marketers should be optimizing their Facebook output like any other channel. I don’t believe Facebook’s social graph will ever replace search engines, but it’s a powerful channel, no doubt.

Facebook News Round-Up was originally published on BruceClay.com, an SEO services and SEO tools provider.

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Facebook has slowly been rolling out “hovercards” to show previews of profiles, Pages, events and groups when their names are moused over on the news feed. This new design element, which has been spotted over the past few months, allows users to learn more about and interact with items in their feeds without opening a new tab or navigating away. The feature encourages a calm, single-window browsing experience versus a cluttered, fatigue-inducing array of active Facebook windows.

While the concepts of hovercards have been around for years, Facebook’s closest rival, Twitter, notably recently introduced them, too.

On Facebook, a hovercard pops up in the news or most recent feed when a user’s mouse cursor hovers over the linked name of a profile (friend or otherwise), group, event, community Page or official Page. Each hovercard displays its object’s photo in its original aspect ratio at approximately four times the size of a news feed thumbnail. Hovercards of friends reveal their networks, the number of mutual friends along with up to 5 mini-thumbnails of these friends, and an option to message them. Hovercards of non-friends include an option to add them as a friend. Those for Pages show their Page category, how many people like them, how many friends like them plus a few mini-thumbnails, and the option to like the Page if you don’t already. Absent are the options to unlike or defriend.

Event hovercards are especially useful, as they allow you to determine the time of the event, location (if short enough to fit) and who you know is attending, as well as RSVP. This relatively low impact decision that is often based on the decisions of friends is perfect for quickly conducting within a hovercard. In order to maintain or increase the 55 minutes a day the average user spends on the site, it’s important that Facebook continues to prevent exhaustion by making information as easy to find as possible.

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At Facebook, everything we do is about making the world more social and creating more personalized experiences. On Facebook, people do everything from remembering their friends’ birthdays to reuniting with old classmates to even finding people willing to donate their organs to save their lives. We think making the world more personal and social is having a profound impact on the way we relate to the people, communities and institutions around us.

In a more connected world, advertisers are social too. This gives you the chance to connect to the companies and brands you like and learn more about their products and services. We believe that more personalized social advertising complements the ways that people use Facebook every day—to discover, share and connect with the people and the world around them.

Whether it’s a new car, a local dentist or a t-shirt, many of the things you discover on Facebook come from your friends. Just as advertising has changed the experience of searching on the web, we think advertisers are a meaningful part of the social graph and the online experience as a whole.

We have designed Facebook to provide relevant and interesting advertising content to you in a way that protects your privacy completely. We never share your personal information with advertisers. We never sell your personal information to anyone. These protections are yours no matter what privacy settings you use; they apply equally to people who share openly with everyone and to people who share with only select friends.

We also protect your privacy by virtue of the way our advertising system works. Because our system chooses which ads to show you, we don’t need to share any of your personal information with advertisers in order to show you relevant ads. In order to advertise on Facebook, advertisers give us an ad they want us to display and tell us the kinds of people they want to reach. We deliver the ad to people who fit those criteria without revealing any personal information to the advertiser.

The only information we provide to advertisers is aggregate and anonymous data, so they can know how many people viewed their ad and general categories of information about them. Ultimately, this helps advertisers better understand how well their ads work so they can show better ads.

Advertisers can also request that we display ads based on the things you have said you liked in your profile. We think this means you will get ads that are more personalized to your real interests and this makes your experience on Facebook even better. For example, if you are a small business selling tents you might want to target adults ages 18-49 who have liked camping or hiking. Our advertising system only shows the number of people who fit those criteria.

Once the ad runs, we report how many people saw or clicked on the ad and we provide aggregate demographic information. We do not show individual profiles or personal information in our reporting tools.

If you are interested in seeing how this works, you can watch this video:

We have built—and are continuing to grow—a successful advertising business that gives you the opportunity to discover and connect to things you like while respecting your privacy no matter how you choose to share your information. We think an online advertising experience that is social and puts consumers at the center of an ongoing, two-way conversation is better for people and businesses alike.

Sheryl is Facebook’s chief operating officer.

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The world may not need a Google-branded social network along the lines of what Google is reportedly building. My fellow columnist Cathy Taylor made that perfectly clear last week. Yet I can offer a barometer to show whether Google will launch a great product: the more boring Google makes it, the better it will be.

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Twitter-based startup TweetUp has acquired Twidroid and Popurls to help bolster its search and advertising platform that identifies the best tweets and users from across the Web based on keyword searches.

TweetUp combines sophisticated relevance algorithms with a bidding system to raise user-profiles to the top of search results and make it easy to acquire new followers, and is being used on several high-traffic sites such as TechCrunch, BusinessInsider and Topix.com.  Though plans are uncertain as to what TweetUp has up its sleeve with the new acquisitions, the company said recently that tweeters will soon be able to bid on keywords in a competitive marketplace very similar to search engines on the Internet.

In addition, TweetUp has inked search agreements with various companies, including Twitter clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic.  It makes sense that TweetUp would want a native client of its own, and therefore chose Twidroid since it’s one of the most popular Android-based clients out there.  The company will likely bake its search solution into Twidroid to have something it has complete control over, and the company has indicated that various clients and websites will bring search results to more than 40 million unique users per month and serve more than 100 million impressions a month.

Popurls, which aggregates items from the New York Times, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Flickr and other sites also makes sense for the company’s search plans.  Aggregating links from traditional Web content to social media sites to real-time content from Twitter could make for an interesting combination when integrated into TweetUp’s other plans.  We’ll definitely be keeping out eyes on this one.

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If you're anything like me, you've spent a decent chunk of your life listening to, discovering and going to see bands play music (350+ shows and counting).  I'm one of those walking encyclopedias of random music trivia and would probably be a certified genius if all the space in my brain currently taken up by song lyrics were replaced with actual useful knowledge.  While it's the entire package contained in each song that I love, my first focus when a new song catches my ear is the lyrics. 

Back when I was an 8 year old Mtv devotee, I had to diligently wait by my boom box with a blank tape at the ready for my favorite songs to be played on the radio.  Once captured on tape, I would rewind-play my way through each section as I took down the lyrics so I could learn the entire song.  While the advent of the internet has made learning the lyrics to new songs infinitely easier than it had once been, it's still been a less-than-ideal experience given the pop-ups and spammy feel of the majority of lyrics resources out there on the web.

That is, until now, thanks to Bing (to learn what this means for adCenter advertisers who can advertise alongside this new feature, skip ahead to the bold “Potential Opportunity for Advertisers” header below for more information).

Let's take my most recent lyrical acquisition as an example: The other day, a friend and I got into a conversation about the music we grew up with, which morphed into a discussion on what we're listening to now.  During the course of that conversation, she asked if I'd heard of The Ting Tings.  I had, in fact, heard of them, but had yet to hear a song by them.  She recommended I check them out, and I made a mental note to do so.

The following day, I logged in to take advantage of my Zune Pass and searched for The Ting Tings.  After checking out a few of their songs, I settled on "That's Not My Name" as the one I liked best… it's got a certain oh-Mickey-you're-so-fine-you're-so-fine-you-blow-my-mind-hey-Mickey cadence that makes that inner 8 year old boom box listener bob her head in approval.  Couple that with the gradual energy build from the bridge onward and I was sold.  My next step was to check out the lyrics. 

I popped on over to Bing and searched on "the ting tings lyrics"; experience has taught me that it's easier to find lyrics to multiple songs by the same band if you keep your query broad as most lyrics sites will bring you to a page that offers links to their entire catalogue (and I did intend to look over the lyrics to the other songs on the album).  Here's what came up:

Not only could I click on any of those little triangle play buttons to listen to the songs (if I weren't a Zune Pass subscriber and hadn't already heard it), there were links to lyrics right there after the song timings.  Much to my delight and surprise, clicking on them brought up a page–still within the Bing user interface–laying out the complete song lyrics.  No pop-ups, no spammy ads and no risky sites (more on that later):

Just as I had hoped to find in keeping my search broad, along the left nav were links to lyrics for The Ting Tings' other songs.  How cool is that?!?  So yeah, like the title of this post says… awesome experience for music lovers like myself; two thumbs way up! 

Keep in mind that lyrics on Bing is a brand new feature and there's still a lot of ground to cover in getting the database populated, so don't expect to find links for lyrics to every single song out there right off the bat.  For those there ARE links for though, it's a far superior experience when compared to constantly being greeted by a pop-up asking you if you'd like to get the song you searched for as a ring tone for your cell… not to mention a whole lot safer and more secure than visiting the lyrics sites you’ll find in most search engine results pages.

NOTE (for my fellow music lovers): A recent report from McAfee, The Web's Most Dangerous Search Terms, gives a really helpful overview of the risk factors involved with particularly “dangerous” search terms that can result in serving up “risky” pages on the internet. The report found that categories with the worst average risk profile were websites dedicated to song lyrics (5.1%) and the categories with the worst maximum risk profile were lyrics keywords (26.3%). If you were to land on one of the riskiest search pages for a typical lyrics search, one of four results would be risky in terms of the potential for malware, whereas finding your lyrics on Bing with this new feature means you don’t have to worry about any of that.  Make a habit of checking Bing for lyrics first and you’ll be greatly reducing your exposure to those other, riskier sites.

Lyrics on Bing: Potential Opportunity for Advertisers

According to our partners in Bing Marketing, music related searches make up about 3% of all queries on Bing, and a large portion of that 3% contains the word "lyrics".  In the image above, you'll notice a graphic and link to sign up for a Zune Pass.  Just below this link and in the mainline above the lyrics (as shown by the blue box in the first image) is prime advertising space to be populated by adCenter ads. 

If you were the owner of a music store or perhaps a local ticket broker, your ad letting users know that you have The Ting Tings merchandise or tickets to their upcoming concert for sale would be right at home here.  Because queries leading to the lyrics page often contain both artist names and song titles, it's a best practice to bid on both Broad and Phrase match for artist names.

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Bharti Airtel, India’s largest cellular service provider, announced a partnership with Facebook yesterday that will bring free access to the site’s mobile version, m.facebook.com, to Bharti’s 130 million customers. For all of July and August Airtel subscribers can utilize key Facebook features like status updates, photos, and private messages with no data charges. The promotion aims to hook users on accessing Facebook from their phones, similar to 0.facebook.com, the free, text-only mobile version of the site Facebook is working with carriers worldwide to bring to users without data plans.

Unlike Facebook Zero, Airtel users will have access to m.facebook.com’s wider set of features, including data-intensive photos, but excluding more complex features like chat and games. Depending on the quantity of photos served, the promotion’s data transmission could become very expensive for whoever between Facebook and Bharti Airtel is footing the bill. The companies are betting they can recoup these costs from users who become accustomed to m.facebook.com and purchase data plans at the end of the two month trial. The promotion will likely boost m.facebook.com’s 19.8 million MAU and 7.76 million DAU, which it in turn seeks to push towards the better user experience of Facebook’s native mobile phone applications.

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[Editor's Note: The data cited in this article is excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Visit Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Growth for Facebook’s top countries in Europe dipped sharply in June of 2010, giving several eastern European countries that rarely break into the monthly top 10 a chance to show off their progress.

Germany, a central European country that has lagged its neighbors directly to the west, lead the pack with 403,860 new monthly active users. That equates to 4.2 percent growth for the month, which isn’t stellar. But the important detail here is that Germany’s growth has been fairly steady of late, instead of moving in fits and starts as it did earlier this year and last. Italy, also, is steady from May.

Surprisingly, Romania comes in third, with 253,360 new users — almost 20 percent growth for the country, in which only a third of the population is online at all, according to World Bank figures. Romania was also logging high growth earlier this year, then dropped off. But even moving in fits and spurts, it’s fast approaching 10 percent penetration.

Hungary, also, managed to claw its way up the rankings in June, along with Russia, which was actually shedding Facebook users for several months. There’s no telling whether Russia will continue growing or slip again — with under a single percentage point of penetration, Facebook is definitely not yet part of the Russian way of life, unlike a site like the Facebook doppelganger Vkontakte.

The rest of the European countries that saw decent growth in June aren’t remarkable this month, unless for their relatively lower rate of growth in June as compared to May. France, for instance, dropped from 1.4 million new MAU to 163,500 in June, while Turkey, which has been a reliable grower, isn’t present at all, having actually dropped a few thousand users. Such changes in growth from month to month are typical, though, and nothing to worry about yet.

Here’s the top 10 chart:

Greater Europe now has some 152 million members on Facebook, making up about a third of the social network’s total userbase. Its growth rate in June was 0.7 percent, leading to a total penetration of 23.5 percent.

Full data on Facebook’s audience growth throughout Europe and in countries around the world is presented in the July 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor report, available through Inside Facebook Gold. An Inside Facebook Gold membership also includes data on language growth, audience demographics by country, and user behavior stats for the Facebook business ecosystem. To learn more about the membership, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

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Our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages, complied by our PageData tool counting the number of fans added to a Page daily, was a mixed bag this week. Lady Gaga was the first person on Facebook to get 10 million fans, beating out President Barack Obama — and Vin Diesel. The World Cup was also had an impact on the list this week, as did music and entertainment generally.

Top Gainers This Week

Name Fans Gain Gain, % 1. Cristiano Ronaldo 6,690,242 +1,189,083 +21.62 2. Lady Gaga 10,425,332 +1,153,117 +12.44 3. The Twilight Saga 7,900,193 +1,083,684 +15.90 4. Michael Jackson 14,634,326 +1,079,729 +7.97 5. Facebook 11,410,679 +1,038,777 +10.02 6. Family Guy 10,668,995 +908,870 +9.31 7. Vin Diesel 10,098,838 +897,593 +9.76 8. Justin Bieber 6,391,863 +789,503 +14.09 9. Eminem 5,539,299 +764,544 +16.01 10. House 8,462,804 +764,210 +9.93 11. Starbucks 9,059,490 +729,448 +8.76 12. Red Bull 5,355,141 +712,299 +15.34 13. Linkin Park 6,952,997 +673,363 +10.72 14. Shakira 3,750,454 +661,278 +21.41 15. Drake 3,292,609 +613,145 +22.88 16. Metallica 5,596,526 +595,626 +11.91 17. Barack Obama 9,818,123 +595,297 +6.45 18. Megan Fox 8,350,152 +591,736 +7.63 19. David Guetta 4,143,394 +585,982 +16.47 20. Toy Story 2,434,630 +583,723 +31.54

Gaga came in second place this week, with 10.4 million fans thanks to an addition of 1.1 5million over the past week. Portuguese football (soccer) star Cristiano Ronaldo came in first place, adding 1.18 million fans this week to his 6.6 million total; aside from playing in the World Cup he also recently announced that he’d fathered a child.

There were a few movies on the list, including third place The Twilight Saga, which added 1 million fans to its Page to come in just under 8 million with 7.9 million fans; the latest installment of the teen vampire franchise is currently in theaters. “Toy Story” was also on the list this week, adding 583,700 fans to take the number 20 spot on the list. We wrote about Disney’s move to sell tickets to “Toy Story 3” right on Facebook recently.

Musicians made up about half of the list. Michael Jackson took fourth place with 1 million new fans and 14.6 million total. Justin Bieber took the number 8 spot, adding 789,500 fans to 6.3 million — he’s been promoting new singles and videos lately. Rapper Eminem came in ninth, adding 764,500 fans to reach 5.5 million by promoting his new album on Facebook. Linkin Park took the number 13 spot, adding 673,300 fans, having recently shared photos of the band working on their next album on Facebook.

Shakira came in at 14, adding 661,300 fans to reach 3.7 on Facebook; this was partly due to the fact that she’s the singer of the World Cup anthem and videos of the accompanying dance have been popular on YouTube. She’s also finishing up her next album and has announced a European tour. Drake took the number 15 spot, adding 613, 100 fans to reach a 3.2 million audience; he’s promoting a new album. Metallica followed at 16, adding 595,600 fans to boast a total of 5.5 million; the band is currently on a world tour. Finally, French musician David Guetta added 586,000 fans to 4.1 million to take number 19 on the list this week; his next album is being heavily marketed in the U.S. and comes out in August.

A few big brands were on the list this week. Facebook in fifth place, adding 1 million fans to reach 11.4 million. Then came Starbucks at number 11, adding 729,500 fans to surpass 9 million, perhaps partially due to the introduction of a new instant iced coffee product. Red Bull followed in twelfth place, adding 712,300 fans, now with 5.3 million, mostly with sports updates.

Television shows and public figures rounded out the list.

“Family Guy” came in sixth place, adding 908,900 fans, accumulating a total of 10.6 million with only one update promoting the show’s iPhone app. “House” was tenth this week, adding 764,200 fans to grow to 8.4 million, most recently updating Facebook with news of the upcoming season’s plot.

Then there was Vin Diesel in seventh place, adding 897,600 fans to pass 10 million. President Barack Obama at number 17, adding 595,300 fans to come to 9.8 million and Megan Fox at 18, who added 591,700 fans to grow to 8.3 million.

This week it took between 583,723 and 1.18 million fans to gain admission to the Top 20 Facebook Pages, a rather high bar, considering we don’t usually see millions of users added in a single week.

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Facebook can now be a job board with a new application, Work For Us, which allows Page administrators to install a tab on their Page to collect potential hires’ information.

The app’s basic version is free for 30 days and allows brands to post jobs on their Pages and automatically create Facebook ads advertising these jobs; Facebook users, on the other hand, can apply for jobs right on this Facebook tab and socialize on Facebook with their potential future employers.

The app was created by Work4Labs, which specializes in recruiting and human resources and according to our AppData tool Work For Us already has almost 11,000 monthly active users, including some listed on the company’s site: Accenture, Monitronics and Amadeus. New and innovative apps are frequently discussed in depth in our premium service, Inside Facebook Gold.

The company has several tiers of service plans, which vary in the number of job slots that may be posted each month and the corresponding number of Facebook ads that will be generated. The Free version, for example, includes 1 monthly job slot, unlimited users and no Facebook ads, whereas the Max version (the most pricey plan) includes unlimited jobs, $1,500 in free ads and unlimited users for $499 a month. Other plans range from $9 monthly to $199.

From a user standpoint, the app is pretty simple. Take SPG Creative & Marketing as an example; one just visits the Work for us tab on a given Page and sees and easy-to-read list of available jobs. Clicking on the job title yields a more substantive description and one may Share the job or Like it to help Facebook friends who may be looking for a new gig. There’s also a search box to more easily sift through the openings and the option of searching for an internship, temporary or permanent job.

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Global food giant Kraft Foods has set its eyes on Facebook, pumping up at least three campaigns for Wheat Thins (crackers), Oreo (cookies) and Crystal Light (flavored beverage) in recent weeks.

The Facebook and Twitter campaigns are paired with television and music venue sponsorship. Specifically, Kraft Foods is the main sponsor of the 2010 Lilith Tour, which is a music festival celebrating women on tour across the U.S. through the summer. Crystal Light is the sponsor of the tour in part to promote its new Crystal Light Pure Fitness sports drink mix.

Overall, Kraft Foods has total revenues of $48 billion, markets products in more than 160 countries and has several brands that exceed $1 billion revenue annually, including Oreo.

Of the three Kraft products, two directly tie their products with Facebook promotion for live music sponsorships. Levi’s was present in a big way at the Austin, Texas South by Southwest festival by co-sponsoring a venue, the Levi’s/Fader Fort, with what the company reported were good results. We’ve written about similar campaigns in the Inside Facebook Marketing Bible.

Odwalla followed with a similar promotion at the Coachella music festival in California. While Odwalla gave out free tickets to Coachella on Facebook, the company also set up a booth to promote its “Living Flavor Vending Machine,” meant to provide a stage for both musical acts and fans to perform at the actual festival.

Crystal Light has seemingly taken music promotion to a new level by becoming a primary sponsor of the Lilith Fair, promoting its products both on Facebook and Twitter, as well as the actual concerts with its “Refreshing Oasis” booth that includes massage chairs and free samples. Mary Garris, senior associate brand manager of Crystal Light said in a press release that the company’s presence at the Lilith Fair was important to concert goers’ hydration, and since Crystal Light is a powder to be mixed with water, the mix “helps women enjoy drinking the water they need.”

Meanwhile, Wheat Thins and Oreo have been dedicating more time and attention to Facebook. The New York Times reported that Oreo has given its Facebook Page a “global look” and Wheat Thins has been rewarding tweets about its crackers by awarding fans free product. On Facebook Wheat Thins has been promoting its sponsorship of the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee and supplementing it with a YouTube channel, Facebook presence and Twitter monitoring to the theme “The crunch is calling.”

Oreo is changing up its Page to be less “American-oriented” to reflect the fact that many comments on Facebook come from other countries, apparently half of the 5 million fans are outside the U.S. This is reflected in the company’s weekly selection of a “world’s fan of the week.”

That a large, global company like Kraft Foods is just now pushing its social media presence is perhaps a bit surprising, although earlier this year we wrote about Proctor & Gamble’s push to be more “bullish” on Facebook, too. That two global conglomerates are pointedly beginning to focus energy and money on social media is a tangible testament to Facebook’s growing marketing power.

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Coming off the heels of the launch of the new Bing Entertainment feature, we’re excited to kick off a music-themed summer with an East and West coast concert series, chances to win tickets to private shows and a Lady Gaga fan search contest!

First let’s talk Gaga. In honor of the 40th Anniversary of  America’s Top 40′, we’re teaming up with Stubhub and Ryan Seacrest to launch the Lady Gaga Superfan Search.  To enter, upload your best Lady Gaga Superfan photo showing your most fierce Lady Gaga fashion.  The winner will receive the ultimate Lady Gaga prize package – round-trip travel and tickets to one of her shows either in Miami, New York, Las Vegas, or Lollapallooza in Chicago. Go to Bing.com/gaga to learn more details and get inspiration from Bing Visual Search and Bing Video; sample Lady Gaga music; read the latest news on Bing Music; and check out what the social sphere is saying about Lady Gaga.

The lucky Lady Gaga Superfan will be chosen on July 23,^, 2010 so make sure to enter soon.  We will also be building a Bing Visual Search gallery of the entrants, so even if you don’t win the grand prize, you’ll still have the chance to show off your Lady Gaga finery online.

And that’s not all… last week we kicked off a summer concert series taking place along L.A.’s famous Sunset Strip with Jane’s Addiction and in the lovely resort town of Montauk, NY with Pete Yorn.  We’ll be uploading videos from the private show to Bing Video so check back soon for behind the scenes footage of the concert. The concert series will continue through the summer with acts like the Pussycat Dolls and RATT. So how can you get in on the action? There will be chances to win tickets on the Bing Facebook page so stay tuned for those details and if you’re not a lucky winner, we’ve got you covered with continuous coverage on Bing video.

Summer is always a great time to catch a music concert! Be sure to check Bing Music for all your music needs.

Kristin Meldahl – Bing

Other posts of interest:

A New Entertainment Experience for Bing

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Since Facebook made a mid-June change that suddenly started counting traffic to user-generated quizzes towards the total of the apps that spawned them, we’ve seen a steady stream of huge quiz creator apps suddenly popping up. One leads today’s list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by monthly active users: Create your Quiz, which registers just under 11 million MAU all told.

Here’s the full AppData list of 20 apps:

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Create your Quiz	13,431,689	+7,063,342	+110.91
2.	FrontierVille	15,726,188	+3,910,161	+33.09
3.	Verdonia	2,812,164	+1,358,591	+93.47
4.	Millionaire City	2,349,821	+1,306,174	+125.15
5.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars	3,978,930	+1,201,490	+43.26
6.	Phrases	19,318,736	+1,061,573	+5.81
7.	Best Match	1,057,205	+904,215	+591.03
8.	Entrevista tus Amigos	11,879,199	+885,736	+8.06
9.	Baking Life	2,656,159	+733,068	+38.12
10.	2010 World Cup Jersey	10,026,709	+712,138	+7.65
11.	Hello City	5,614,096	+693,237	+14.09
12.	Chase Community Giving	1,204,322	+575,764	+91.60
13.	Trivias Locas – Trivias, encuestas y tests	1,042,393	+538,953	+107.05
14.	Zoo Kingdom	1,214,693	+529,997	+77.41
15.	Fashion World	1,615,326	+520,763	+47.58
16.	Windows Live Messenger	2,242,073	+495,508	+28.37
17.	Seni Kimler Takip Ediyor?	459,822	+441,572	+2,419.57
18.	SuperFun Town!	429,183	+409,784	+2,112.40
19.	Zoosk	4,678,982	+403,612	+9.44
20.	BandPage by RootMusic	2,280,182	+397,685	+21.13

What’s interesting here is that if you look down to number six, you’ll find an absolutely massive app that you’ve probably never heard of before: Phrases. This app fits the quiz creator mold, allowing users to spin off their own phrase- and quote-generating apps. Since it was entered into AppData for the first time a couple weeks back, this is also the first time we’ve realized its size: at 19.1 million MAU, it’s the sixth-biggest app on Facebook. The only other non-game app to come in higher is Friend Quiz, at number three.

Speaking of games, FrontierVille holds the top spot for that category. As we mention this morning over on Inside Social Games, FrontierVille appears to be doing quite well, but is actually growing only half as fast as Zynga’s previous hit, Treasure Isle. Head over to our sister blog for more games coverage.

Best Match, at number seven, is a fast-growing app that is, in its own turn, a variation on another quiz concept, the friend quiz. While an ordinary friend quiz asks users questions about their friends and posts the results to the other’s wall, Best Match just asks you to make romantic matches. The viral component is the same, though.

And at number ten, 2010 World Cup Jersey is still growing — something of a surprise, since the high-flying app looked ready to fall from its peak. However, the World Cup is ongoing for another week, so there’s at least some reason for the app’s continued gains.

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Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

• Sims, Strategy and Sports All Appear on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• Plimus Enters the Payment Platform Wars With In-Game Purchases
• Vector Takes an Interesting Approach to Facebook Farming with Fantasy Book
• Mafia Wars Movie Rumor Not True, But Also Not Improbable
• Preview: Ubisoft Goes Fantasy City-Building with The Settlers

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

• Educational Social Games Spread on Social Platforms
• FarmVille’s iPhone App Reveals Heavy Spenders
• Mixpanel: Social Game Developers Use Tutorials to Get Crucial Early Retention
• CrowdStar Signs Five Year Deal with Facebook, Making Credits Its Exclusvie Currency
• Kontagent Raises Over $4 Million More for Facebook Analytics

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

• Lucky Train Gives Facebook Gamers a Railroad Set to Play With
• Pet Resort: A Branded Facebook Simulation Game from Playdom and Purina
• The Best Facebook Games of 2010
• India’s Facebook Penetration Is Actually Good – But Mobile is More Exciting
• MyTown Begins Giving Away Facebook Credits to Location-Based Gamers

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

• Zynga Recovers Some DAU on This Week’s List of Top Growers
• Backyard Monsters Brings Traditional Strategy Elements to Facebook
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Playfish, Playdom, Slide, & More
• Top 25 MySpace Games for July 2010
• Top 25 Facebook Games for July 2010
• In Social Games, the Whales Are Pretty Monogamous

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

• Every Genre Reaches This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Another Facebook Game from Ubisoft: Classic Word Games
• It’s All Money: Virtual Currency Inspires Online Workers as Much as the Real Thing
• Social Gaming Roundup: OpenFeint, gWallet, Sega, & More

Popularity: 1% [?]

Facebook Rules – Hitwise reported this week that Facebook accounted for 75.73% of all social networking visits in the U.S. in May.

16B Minutes on Facebook a Day - Data Center Knowledge reported information gathered from Facebook employees Tom Cook and Jonathan Heiliger. Some of the information reported included a guesstimate that Facebook now has about 60,000 servers, as well as the fact that users spent about 16 billion minutes on Facebook daily, that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month, that 6 billion pieces of content are shared weekly, 1 million photos viewed every second and the company’s servers perform upwards of 50 million operations a second.

Credits Get New Look - Facebook’s Credits Page got a makeover this week. In addition to providing all sorts of information on the Page about what Credits may be used for, the new graphics highlight why developers should use the virtual currency

HTML in App Info Cut Off - Facebook announced this week that the platform is no longer supporting HTML in application info tabs. The company suggested developers begin using custom tabs to provide info to users about the application and they no longer have to include privacy policies in the info box.

Spam Prevention From Facebook - The most common example of Facebook users behaving badly is the abuse of communication tools, according to a blog from earlier this week wherein Facebook explained in detail its spam prevention efforts. Facebook says that efforts to prevent spam attacks has often been misinterpreted as the company trying to stifle expression of a range of opinions.

One common lesson from monitoring spam is that when a user sends the same message to many people not on their friends list in a short amount of time, it’s usually spam; same deal when 75% of friend requests sent by a user are ignored. Facebook has a warning system that culminates with disabling accounts. The idea is both to prevent spam and malicious attacks on users’ computers.

News Sites Love Facebook – News sites, as rated by Alexa, love Facebook. All top 10 sites are integrated with Facebook and 26 of the top 30. This lists includes Yahoo! News, BBC News, The New York Times, The Weather Channel, The Huffington Post, NBC and MSNBC News, CNN Interactive, The Guardian and Fox News.

Facebook Driving Traffic to Home Page - Facebook is trying a new way to get people to visit the site more often by asking some users to set the social network as their default homepage.

More Security Issues - The Harmony Guy reported on some recent security issues on Facebook, most of which have seen been addressed. Some of these revolve around session secrets and API requests, as well as phishing issues. Details here.

How We See Facebook - Mulley Communications published a report this week noting the eye movements of Facebook users on Walls, profiles and Pages. Preliminary results show that advertising “works” on Facebook — especially with proper targeting. Secondly, updates from Pages get noticed: 71% of users looked at homepage advertisements and 31% looked at advertisements in the News Feed. Although, users paid more attention to Page updates than ads. A few other tidbits: the average user is a fan of 28 Pages and about one-fourth of those surveyed play games.

Facebook Focuses on Russia, Brazil – “The Facebook Effect” author David Kirkpatrick gave an interesting interview with Andrea Catherwood this week in which he discusses Facebook’s plans for growth, specifically in Russia and Brazil.

Boycott BP Page Deleted, Restored - Facebook deleted a Facebook Page called Boycott BP, referring to the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this week. The Page had more than 734,000 fans and Facebook put the Page back up 9 hours later, explaining that it was, “disabled by our automated systems therefore removing all the content that had been created by the profile. After a manual review we determined the profile was removed in error and it has now been restored along with the Page.”

Facebook Promotes Females in CompSci - The Grace Hopper Scholarship is Facebook’s answer to the low numbers of women in tech-related fields. Facebook’s Grace Hopper Scholarship is for 5 female Computer Science students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28 – October 2, 2010. The award includes airfare, accommodations, a food stipend and the chance to apply for a paid Facebook internship; deadline to for applicants, who must be U.S. residents and pursuing a computer-related degree, is July 31.

Facebook and the World Cup - The New York Times created an interactive graphic illustrating World Cup football/soccer players by how many Facebook status updates, Wall posts, comments, shares and Likes contain their names by day.

Lamebook Prints Book - Lamebook, which satirized Facebook, is set to print a real book spoofing the social network. The people behind Lamebook are seeking photo submissions for the book here.

Facebook and Food - User Operations Analyst Amanda Johnson posted a blog discussing all the ways people use Facebook to share their love of food this week. She, for example, posts photos of food she eats, although food-related articles, profile interests, Community Pages, friend lists, Pages, profiles the Notes function for recipes are all examples. There are more details at the link.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Facebook Rules – Hitwise reported this week that Facebook accounted for 75.73% of all social networking visits in the U.S. in May.

16B Minutes on Facebook a Day - Data Center Knowledge reported information gathered from Facebook employees Tom Cook and Jonathan Heiliger. Some of the information reported included a guesstimate that Facebook now has about 60,000 servers, as well as the fact that users spent about 16 billion minutes on Facebook daily, that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month, that 6 billion pieces of content are shared weekly, 1 million photos viewed every second and the company’s servers perform upwards of 50 million operations a second.

Credits Get New Look - Facebook’s Credits Page got a makeover this week. In addition to providing all sorts of information on the Page about what Credits may be used for, the new graphics highlight why developers should use the virtual currency

HTML in App Info Cut Off - Facebook announced this week that the platform is no longer supporting HTML in application info tabs. The company suggested developers begin using custom tabs to provide info to users about the application and they no longer have to include privacy policies in the info box.

Spam Prevention From Facebook - The most common example of Facebook users behaving badly is the abuse of communication tools, according to a blog from earlier this week wherein Facebook explained in detail its spam prevention efforts. Facebook says that efforts to prevent spam attacks has often been misinterpreted as the company trying to stifle expression of a range of opinions.

One common lesson from monitoring spam is that when a user sends the same message to many people not on their friends list in a short amount of time, it’s usually spam; same deal when 75% of friend requests sent by a user are ignored. Facebook has a warning system that culminates with disabling accounts. The idea is both to prevent spam and malicious attacks on users’ computers.

News Sites Love Facebook – News sites, as rated by Alexa, love Facebook. All top 10 sites are integrated with Facebook and 26 of the top 30. This lists includes Yahoo! News, BBC News, The New York Times, The Weather Channel, The Huffington Post, NBC and MSNBC News, CNN Interactive, The Guardian and Fox News.

Facebook Driving Traffic to Home Page - Facebook is trying a new way to get people to visit the site more often by asking some users to set the social network as their default homepage.

More Security Issues - The Harmony Guy reported on some recent security issues on Facebook, most of which have seen been addressed. Some of these revolve around session secrets and API requests, as well as phishing issues. Details here.

How We See Facebook - Mulley Communications published a report this week noting the eye movements of Facebook users on Walls, profiles and Pages. Preliminary results show that advertising “works” on Facebook — especially with proper targeting. Secondly, updates from Pages get noticed: 71% of users looked at homepage advertisements and 31% looked at advertisements in the News Feed. Although, users paid more attention to Page updates than ads. A few other tidbits: the average user is a fan of 28 Pages and about one-fourth of those surveyed play games.

Facebook Focuses on Russia, Brazil – “The Facebook Effect” author David Kirkpatrick gave an interesting interview with Andrea Catherwood this week in which he discusses Facebook’s plans for growth, specifically in Russia and Brazil.

Boycott BP Page Deleted, Restored - Facebook deleted a Facebook Page called Boycott BP, referring to the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this week. The Page had more than 734,000 fans and Facebook put the Page back up 9 hours later, explaining that it was, “disabled by our automated systems therefore removing all the content that had been created by the profile. After a manual review we determined the profile was removed in error and it has now been restored along with the Page.”

Facebook Promotes Females in CompSci - The Grace Hopper Scholarship is Facebook’s answer to the low numbers of women in tech-related fields. Facebook’s Grace Hopper Scholarship is for 5 female Computer Science students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28 – October 2, 2010. The award includes airfare, accommodations, a food stipend and the chance to apply for a paid Facebook internship; deadline to for applicants, who must be U.S. residents and pursuing a computer-related degree, is July 31.

Facebook and the World Cup - The New York Times created an interactive graphic illustrating World Cup football/soccer players by how many Facebook status updates, Wall posts, comments, shares and Likes contain their names by day.

Lamebook Prints Book - Lamebook, which satirized Facebook, is set to print a real book spoofing the social network. The people behind Lamebook are seeking photo submissions for the book here.

Facebook and Food - User Operations Analyst Amanda Johnson posted a blog discussing all the ways people use Facebook to share their love of food this week. She, for example, posts photos of food she eats, although food-related articles, profile interests, Community Pages, friend lists, Pages, profiles the Notes function for recipes are all examples. There are more details at the link.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Facebook Rules – Hitwise reported this week that Facebook accounted for 75.73% of all social networking visits in the U.S. in May.

16B Minutes on Facebook a Day - Data Center Knowledge reported information gathered from Facebook employees Tom Cook and Jonathan Heiliger. Some of the information reported included a guesstimate that Facebook now has about 60,000 servers, as well as the fact that users spent about 16 billion minutes on Facebook daily, that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month, that 6 billion pieces of content are shared weekly, 1 million photos viewed every second and the company’s servers perform upwards of 50 million operations a second.

Credits Get New Look - Facebook’s Credits Page got a makeover this week. In addition to providing all sorts of information on the Page about what Credits may be used for, the new graphics highlight why developers should use the virtual currency

HTML in App Info Cut Off - Facebook announced this week that the platform is no longer supporting HTML in application info tabs. The company suggested developers begin using custom tabs to provide info to users about the application and they no longer have to include privacy policies in the info box.

Spam Prevention From Facebook - The most common example of Facebook users behaving badly is the abuse of communication tools, according to a blog from earlier this week wherein Facebook explained in detail its spam prevention efforts. Facebook says that efforts to prevent spam attacks has often been misinterpreted as the company trying to stifle expression of a range of opinions.

One common lesson from monitoring spam is that when a user sends the same message to many people not on their friends list in a short amount of time, it’s usually spam; same deal when 75% of friend requests sent by a user are ignored. Facebook has a warning system that culminates with disabling accounts. The idea is both to prevent spam and malicious attacks on users’ computers.

News Sites Love Facebook – News sites, as rated by Alexa, love Facebook. All top 10 sites are integrated with Facebook and 26 of the top 30. This lists includes Yahoo! News, BBC News, The New York Times, The Weather Channel, The Huffington Post, NBC and MSNBC News, CNN Interactive, The Guardian and Fox News.

Facebook Driving Traffic to Home Page - Facebook is trying a new way to get people to visit the site more often by asking some users to set the social network as their default homepage.

More Security Issues - The Harmony Guy reported on some recent security issues on Facebook, most of which have seen been addressed. Some of these revolve around session secrets and API requests, as well as phishing issues. Details here.

How We See Facebook - Mulley Communications published a report this week noting the eye movements of Facebook users on Walls, profiles and Pages. Preliminary results show that advertising “works” on Facebook — especially with proper targeting. Secondly, updates from Pages get noticed: 71% of users looked at homepage advertisements and 31% looked at advertisements in the News Feed. Although, users paid more attention to Page updates than ads. A few other tidbits: the average user is a fan of 28 Pages and about one-fourth of those surveyed play games.

Facebook Focuses on Russia, Brazil – “The Facebook Effect” author David Kirkpatrick gave an interesting interview with Andrea Catherwood this week in which he discusses Facebook’s plans for growth, specifically in Russia and Brazil.

Boycott BP Page Deleted, Restored - Facebook deleted a Facebook Page called Boycott BP, referring to the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this week. The Page had more than 734,000 fans and Facebook put the Page back up 9 hours later, explaining that it was, “disabled by our automated systems therefore removing all the content that had been created by the profile. After a manual review we determined the profile was removed in error and it has now been restored along with the Page.”

Facebook Promotes Females in CompSci - The Grace Hopper Scholarship is Facebook’s answer to the low numbers of women in tech-related fields. Facebook’s Grace Hopper Scholarship is for 5 female Computer Science students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28 – October 2, 2010. The award includes airfare, accommodations, a food stipend and the chance to apply for a paid Facebook internship; deadline to for applicants, who must be U.S. residents and pursuing a computer-related degree, is July 31.

Facebook and the World Cup - The New York Times created an interactive graphic illustrating World Cup football/soccer players by how many Facebook status updates, Wall posts, comments, shares and Likes contain their names by day.

Lamebook Prints Book - Lamebook, which satirized Facebook, is set to print a real book spoofing the social network. The people behind Lamebook are seeking photo submissions for the book here.

Facebook and Food - User Operations Analyst Amanda Johnson posted a blog discussing all the ways people use Facebook to share their love of food this week. She, for example, posts photos of food she eats, although food-related articles, profile interests, Community Pages, friend lists, Pages, profiles the Notes function for recipes are all examples. There are more details at the link.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Facebook Rules – Hitwise reported this week that Facebook accounted for 75.73% of all social networking visits in the U.S. in May.

16B Minutes on Facebook a Day - Data Center Knowledge reported information gathered from Facebook employees Tom Cook and Jonathan Heiliger. Some of the information reported included a guesstimate that Facebook now has about 60,000 servers, as well as the fact that users spent about 16 billion minutes on Facebook daily, that more than 3 billion photos are uploaded each month, that 6 billion pieces of content are shared weekly, 1 million photos viewed every second and the company’s servers perform upwards of 50 million operations a second.

Credits Get New Look - Facebook’s Credits Page got a makeover this week. In addition to providing all sorts of information on the Page about what Credits may be used for, the new graphics highlight why developers should use the virtual currency

HTML in App Info Cut Off - Facebook announced this week that the platform is no longer supporting HTML in application info tabs. The company suggested developers begin using custom tabs to provide info to users about the application and they no longer have to include privacy policies in the info box.

Spam Prevention From Facebook - The most common example of Facebook users behaving badly is the abuse of communication tools, according to a blog from earlier this week wherein Facebook explained in detail its spam prevention efforts. Facebook says that efforts to prevent spam attacks has often been misinterpreted as the company trying to stifle expression of a range of opinions.

One common lesson from monitoring spam is that when a user sends the same message to many people not on their friends list in a short amount of time, it’s usually spam; same deal when 75% of friend requests sent by a user are ignored. Facebook has a warning system that culminates with disabling accounts. The idea is both to prevent spam and malicious attacks on users’ computers.

News Sites Love Facebook – News sites, as rated by Alexa, love Facebook. All top 10 sites are integrated with Facebook and 26 of the top 30. This lists includes Yahoo! News, BBC News, The New York Times, The Weather Channel, The Huffington Post, NBC and MSNBC News, CNN Interactive, The Guardian and Fox News.

Facebook Driving Traffic to Home Page - Facebook is trying a new way to get people to visit the site more often by asking some users to set the social network as their default homepage.

More Security Issues - The Harmony Guy reported on some recent security issues on Facebook, most of which have seen been addressed. Some of these revolve around session secrets and API requests, as well as phishing issues. Details here.

How We See Facebook - Mulley Communications published a report this week noting the eye movements of Facebook users on Walls, profiles and Pages. Preliminary results show that advertising “works” on Facebook — especially with proper targeting. Secondly, updates from Pages get noticed: 71% of users looked at homepage advertisements and 31% looked at advertisements in the News Feed. Although, users paid more attention to Page updates than ads. A few other tidbits: the average user is a fan of 28 Pages and about one-fourth of those surveyed play games.

Facebook Focuses on Russia, Brazil – “The Facebook Effect” author David Kirkpatrick gave an interesting interview with Andrea Catherwood this week in which he discusses Facebook’s plans for growth, specifically in Russia and Brazil.

Boycott BP Page Deleted, Restored - Facebook deleted a Facebook Page called Boycott BP, referring to the company responsible for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this week. The Page had more than 734,000 fans and Facebook put the Page back up 9 hours later, explaining that it was, “disabled by our automated systems therefore removing all the content that had been created by the profile. After a manual review we determined the profile was removed in error and it has now been restored along with the Page.”

Facebook Promotes Females in CompSci - The Grace Hopper Scholarship is Facebook’s answer to the low numbers of women in tech-related fields. Facebook’s Grace Hopper Scholarship is for 5 female Computer Science students to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28 – October 2, 2010. The award includes airfare, accommodations, a food stipend and the chance to apply for a paid Facebook internship; deadline to for applicants, who must be U.S. residents and pursuing a computer-related degree, is July 31.

Facebook and the World Cup - The New York Times created an interactive graphic illustrating World Cup football/soccer players by how many Facebook status updates, Wall posts, comments, shares and Likes contain their names by day.

Lamebook Prints Book - Lamebook, which satirized Facebook, is set to print a real book spoofing the social network. The people behind Lamebook are seeking photo submissions for the book here.

Facebook and Food - User Operations Analyst Amanda Johnson posted a blog discussing all the ways people use Facebook to share their love of food this week. She, for example, posts photos of food she eats, although food-related articles, profile interests, Community Pages, friend lists, Pages, profiles the Notes function for recipes are all examples. There are more details at the link.

Popularity: 1% [?]