Facebook introduced app ratings and negative feedback metrics to the app insights tool today as a way to help developers gain a better understanding of how users respond to their apps.

Detailed on developer blog post, these new metrics allow developers to go beyond monitoring growth trends and gain. Facebook has used this data to determine what appears in News Feed, but developers previously did not have the ability to see these insights or track their performance over time. Facebook says app ratings and negative feedback will also factor into what apps appear in the recently announced App Center.

The new app ratings dashboard in app insights will show developers how users have rated an app on a scale of one to five stars. Developers can view ratings as absolute numbers or relative percentages across different demographics, including age and gender, country and locale. Before, developers could only see their apps’ average overall rating and could not determine how the rating varied over time or by demographic.

The negative feedback metric will show developers how many times people have chosen to hide stories from an app, reported stories as spam or blocked an app completely. These reports are the same ones Facebook uses in its automated systems to detect spam on the platform, so it will be useful for developers in monitoring their performance over time. The insights will include the ratio of negative feedback to total impressions as well as an overview chart that displays green when an app is doing well and yellow when an app has reached a level for concern. Developers will even be able to compare the type of feedback they get from specific action types, as well as compare how users versus non-users respond to their content.

Facebook for Every Phone once again topped our list of growing Facebook pages, reaching almost 3 million new Likes this week. There were several musicians, movies, games, sports, and brand pages that also made the list.

Pages on our list this week grew from between 326,100 to 2.9 million Likes. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

#	Name	Total Likes	People Talking About	Daily Growth	Weekly Growth
1	Facebook for Every Phone	86,571,250	3,016,214	+414,856	+2,933,819
2	김현중 (Kim Hyun Joong)	2,508,779	2,220	+558	+2,439,528
3	Halo: Reach	2,647,760	20,870	+959	+692,426
4	Titanic	23,470,148	678,984	+80,520	+578,116
5	Adele	28,240,917	675,389	+84,269	+571,319
6	League of Legends	3,300,089	146,988	+4,339	+481,005
7	Guaraná Antarctica	5,423,864	657,801	+50,799	+442,519
8	Jeremy Lin	954,881	552,606	+34,979	+438,508
9	The Simpsons	50,254,983	682,251	+60,670	+417,711
10	AKON	39,018,597	366,913	+38,039	+385,812
11	LMFAO	17,077,805	679,364	+54,578	+380,268
12	Porsche	4,021,632	42,892	+5,148	+373,331
13	Bruno Mars	23,297,335	510,967	+50,673	+354,039
14	Will Smith	30,996,556	478,196	+54,919	+352,121
15	Shrek	25,720,278	385,077	+48,445	+343,413
16	Slotomania – Slot Machines	4,020,120	247,807	+74,318	+341,761
17	FC Barcelona	30,822,638	1,063,145	+47,731	+331,982
18	Target	12,060,776	373,601	+42,153	+328,167
19	Intel	9,991,939	360,375	+46,527	+327,061
20	Facebook	66,473,555	399,247	+51,802	+326,088

김현중 (Kim Hyun Joong) is a Korean artist came in at No. 2, leading other musician pages from Adele, AKON, LMFAO and Bruno Mars.

Halo: Reach took the No. 3 spot, though online games League of Legends and Slotomania – Slot Machines made the list as well. Movies on the list were led by “Titanic.” Actor Will Smith has seen significant growth on his page as he promotes his latest film.

Guaraná Antarctica is a popular beverage company that continues to increase engagement and Likes among users in Brazil. The car company Porsche had a large single-day spike in new Likes, suggesting a page consolidation. Football club FC Barcelona posts in multiple languages about its latest events. Finally, Target and Intel have been running ad campaigns and posting about their latest offerings and promotions.

Facebook has hired the team behind Android photo-sharing app Lightbox, according to a blog post on Lightbox’s website.

The app has already been removed from the Google Play store. It is likely Facebook did not acquire the company or its technology because of its recent acquisition of Instagram. As the social network plans to keep Instagram as a standalone app, the opportunity for Lightbox was diminishing. According to the Google Play store, Lightbox had between 1 million and 5 million installs. Instagram has between 10 million and 50 million.

What Facebook gains is a team that’s focused on mobile and Android specifically. Facebook is seeking to building out its mobile offerings and determine the best way to monetize the rapidly growing user base that accesses the social network from mobile devices. In addition to its $1-billion Instagram purchase, the company also picked up ambient mobile location app Glancee and mobile loyalty startup Tagtile this year.

According to TechCrunch, seven Lightbox employees will join Facebook. This includes Lightbox co-founder Thai Tran, who was previously a product manager for YouTube and Google Maps.

“The Lightbox team has incredible experience developing innovative mobile products that people love. We look forward to welcoming this world-class team of engineers to Facebook,” Facebook said in a statement.

Exisiting Lightbox users can continue to visit Lightbox.com and download their photos here. Lightbox says it will open-source portions of the app’s code for other developers to build upon.

Facebook had 488 million users access its site through its mobile site or mobile apps in March. On Monday, the social network redesigned its mobile News Feed so that photos display three times larger.

Facebook today increased the expected share price range for its initial public offering to $34 to $38 a share, according to an amendment to its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. On the high end, the new price range puts Facebook’s market cap over $100 billion.

Previously, the company set a range of $28 to $35, giving it a maximum valuation of $96 billion. Facebook’s initial price range was relatively low considering that company shares went for $44.10 on secondary exchange SharesPost in March. The increased price range suggests there has been significant demand for the stock as Facebook executives met with investors during its roadshow last week. Some reports had said that investors were concerned with how the social network would be able to monetize mobile usage and were showing less interest than expected. Now this does not seem likely to be the case. According to the S-1, underwriters will also sell an additional 50,612,302 shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments.

Facebook made another change to its S-1 today indicating that its acquisition of Instagram could be delayed. Previously, the company said the deal would close in the second quarter of 2012, but now it says the deal is expected to close sometime in 2012. This gives weight to reports last week that the Federal Trade Commission would be investigating the deal. An investigation does not necessarily imply wrongdoing, as the FTC regularly reviews acquisitions over $66 million. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion. According to the S-1, Facebook has agreed to pay Instagram a $200 million termination fee if for any reason the deal does not close.

Facebook executives are expected to present its IPO pitch to investors in Kansas City and Denver this week. The company is likely to set a final offering price on Thursday before floating the shares on Friday. Some reports say CEO Mark Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell remotely from Facebook’s offices in Menlo Park, Calif.

Facebook analytics platform PageLever has added features that let page owners categorize and compare their posts, as well as receive alerts about any changes in key metrics.

With post tagging, PageLever users can indicate which of their posts are related to a particular campaign or employ a certain tactic, for example, asking a question or making a fill-in-the-blank post. Then page owners can quickly compare the performance of different types of posts. PageLever co-founder Jeff Widman tells us one media company that used this feature discovered that posts about Google were, on average, twice as popular as posts about Apple. These insights would be difficult to discover through manual aggregation and analysis.

Another new PageLever feature — page alerts — helps page owners see changes in reach, growth rate and People Talking About This, among other metrics. For example, page owners can see alerts about a higher-than-usual number of fans unliking their page. PageLever users can adjust the sensitivity of alerts to be notified more or less often. Users will see their alerts when they log into the platform, through email or via RSS.

Widman says these features were both part of the original vision for the PageLever platform, which launched in August 2011. He says his team is working on additional features that build upon the existing Facebook Insights API to present information in a way that is more actionable for page owners from small businesses to large agencies.

Facebook today announced a new design for its mobile News Feed that displays posts in individual boxes similar to how they appear on Timeline.

As part of the redesign, photos now appear three times larger than before, which could make browsing more efficient since there is less need to tap to see an image fullscreen. Fewer stories are visible at one time, but each one stands out more now that Facebook has added a light blue background to the feed.

This could improve engagement with page’s posts on mobile devices. Currently in the desktop feed, photos from pages appear significantly smaller than those from personal profiles. However, the mobile feed treats posts from pages and profiles the same, which could be particularly beneficial for advertisers running Sponsored Stories that appear on mobile devices. Facebook did not comment on whether it would make any changes to the desktop version of News Feed to be more similar the mobile experience.

Nonetheless, pages should consider sharing square photos to maximize the amount of space their posts take up in the mobile feed and increase the likelihood that fans Like or comment on the activity.

These design changes will begin to roll out on iOS, Android and m.facebook.com today. Users will not have to download a new version of the Facebook app to get the new layout.

Facebook proposed a number of changes to its Data Use Policy on Friday, including an updated disclosure about the potential for Facebook data to be used to serve ads on other sites.

The social network also added a number of examples and tips for users to better understand its policies. A pdf of the tracked changes and an explanation of the proposed updates are available from the Facebook Site Governance page. Users have until this coming Friday at 5 p.m. PDT to comment on the changes.

Notably, Facebook has modified its wording about the potential for ads off Facebook to suggest that if it began showing these ads, they may or may not include social context. Part of what makes Facebook ads effective is that they highlight the connections between a business and a user’s friends. However, users might be upset if this information began appearing in ads elsewhere online. Perhaps the company is considering whether to create an ad network that doesn’t show these connections so explicitly. Regardless of whether its ads display social context, the demographic and interest data Facebook has on more than 900 million users could allow Facebook to create an ad network that targets ads more effectively than Google’s AdSense.

Most of the changes Facebook is proposing to its Data Use Policy include editing language related to new features like Sponsored Stories, Timeline and Activity Log. The company has also added clearer examples of what its policy means for users per recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, which audited the social network’s data collection practices last year. Here are some of the significant additions to the policy:

• New language that explains how Facebook will retain data. The company will continue to retain most data received from advertisers for 180 days, but it notes that there may be some times when it will need to keep information longer. For example, if an advertiser creates a Facebook page, the social network won’t delete information the advertiser puts on its page simply because 180 days had passed. Instead, Facebook will delete it when when the page owner deleted it or closed its account.
• New language to explain that, in addition to websites, apps — including those on page tabs — may also use instant personalization.
• New section explaining Facebook’s use of “cookies” and other tracking technologies.
• New language about groups and subgroups to reflect the launch of “Groups for Schools,” which are special groups that are only open to people who have a confirmed email address for a particular school.

Since 2009, the social network has taken a unique approach with its terms of service. Before instituting any new policies, the company shares proposed changes with users, who then have a period of time to comment and ask questions. For example, in April, Facebook proposed revisions to its Statement of Rights and Responsibilities based on feedback it received on the first draft in March. In some cases, Facebook even puts issues up to a vote.

Last week the social network created a new hub for all of its terms and policies here.

Facebook has nearly doubled the size of “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed by adding a recent post from the page to the story.

It is unclear whether the change will make these ads more effective in helping advertisers get new Likes. However, because the unit also includes a recent post, advertisers can get across a more specific message and promote engagement in the form of commenting or sharing. Previously, pages could not get their posts featured in News Feed unless a user’s friend took action on that specific post. Now, a recent post will be displayed with any Page-Like story.

Facebook seems to be trying to find a design that makes Sponsored Stories effective for advertisers without making users feel their experience is being disrupted by ads. Although the new story takes up more space, it is in some ways less noticeable than the previous version, which looked very different from any other story in the feed. The old Page-Like stories included a much larger version of the page’s profile picture and listed more friends who Liked the page. This new unit emphasizes a page’s content rather than its logo. Because of that, the “Like Page” call to action has been moved the upper right of the story, which could be unfamiliar for users. However, the unit no longer includes the distracting “Find More Pages” link that took users to the page discovery browser rather than to an advertiser’s own content.

This is the second time the social network has redesigned the Page-Like Sponsored Story unit since it began showing ads in News Feed in January. In March, Facebook changed the unit from being a simple line of text to a much larger one including the page’s profile image and thumbnails of more friends who are connected to the page.

The new design will apply to Page-Like stories that have not been sponsored, but we have not yet seen an example of this.

Here is the previous design for “Page-Like” Sponsored Stories, which first appeared in March:

This is the first iteration of  ”Page-Like” Sponsored Stories in News Feed, which we saw in February:

Our list of growing Facebook applications by monthly active users this week was again dominated by Open Graph video apps. In addition, there was dating app Zoosk, several games, and other popular apps such as Skype and Pinterest.

Titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 200,000 and 7.6 million MAU, based on our AppData tracking service. However, Facebook has not returned new data for apps since May 10, so it is likely that theses applications have even higher MAU.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Socialcam	41,800,000	+7,600,000	+ 22%
2.	Click Video	10,600,000	+4,100,000	+ 63%
3.	Zoosk	13,300,000	+3,100,000	+ 30%
4.	Chill	7,100,000	+2,600,000	+ 58%
5.	Viddy	36,100,000	+2,300,000	+ 7%
6.	Mynet	3,400,000	+1,100,000	+ 48%
7.	Zapkolik	12,000,000	+1,100,000	+ 10%
8.	Metacafe	17,100,000	+800,000	+ 5%
9.	Candy Crush Saga	6,000,000	+600,000	+ 11%
10.	Pinterest	10,200,000	+600,000	+ 6%
11.	Marvel: Avengers Alliance	7,400,000	+500,000	+ 7%
12.	Pyramid Solitaire Saga	820,000	+440,000	+ 116%
13.	Mystic Ice Blast	1,400,000	+400,000	+ 40%
14.	Skype	12,900,000	+400,000	+ 3%
15.	schoolFeed	14,700,000	+300,000	+ 2%
16.	Le Mie Foto	410,000	+280,000	+ 215%
17.	9GAG	3,100,000	+200,000	+ 7%
18.	Astro Garden	1,900,000	+200,000	+ 12%
19.	Buggle	1,400,000	+200,000	+ 17%
20.	Disney Animal Kingdom	1,800,000	+200,000	+ 13%

Socialcam outshone every other app again this week, gaining 7.6 million MAU. Last week Socialcam became the top application integrating with the Facebook platform. Other video apps on our list this week included Viddy, Click Video, Chill and Metacafe, as well as a few Turkish video websites.

Pinterest’s Timeline app continued to be popular, as did Skype and comedy website integration 9GAG.

Zoosk was very popular, as well, and a representative recently informed us that the dating app has expanded into other services. Specifically, Zoosk now offers a Couples Profile feature, which allows couples to create and share their relationship milestones and memories in a joint profile. The dating app features a live newsfeed, video and chat, and other features.

Games on our list were led by Candy Crush Saga.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

A roundup of all the news Inside Network brought you between May 7 and 13.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms and virtual goods.

Monday, May 7

• Emerging free iOS apps: 100 Floors, GifBoom and Race or Die 2
• Rovio’s revenues jump 963% year-on-year to $106.3M in 2011
• Take to the text-based streets in Machine Zone’s Race Or Die 2
• Electronic Arts’ mobile revenue climbs again, up to $87M in Q4

Tuesday, May 8

• Dismember yourself across America with Zombro
• How Japan’s social game regulations will impact GREE, DeNA and the U.S.
• GREE’s net income hits a record high of $167.6M on $578M in sales during Q3

Wednesday, May 9

• Pocket Gems bets on Android with Tap Dragon Park
• Capcom’s grim earnings report boosted by $79.2M in mobile revenues
• Take to the skies (and plummet to the ground) with Rocket Fox
• DeNA sets new earnings record with $529M in sales and $234M in operating income during its fourth quarter
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Sojo, Sneaky Games, GameHouse and more
• Google+ mobile app revamped on iOS, Android update “coming soon”
• New Speakers Confirmed for Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit – June 26th in San Francisco
• At $5 million a month, Fuzio’s sales show how much mobile devs really earn
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model
• Emerging paid iOS apps: Ski Safari, Pandemic 2.5 and Robbery Bob

Thursday, May 10

• Emerging top grossing iOS apps: Kingdoms of Camelot, Crime City and Slots Journey
• GREE continues its bid for North American domination with Dino Life
• Tencent looks to boost mobile content with GameSalad partnership
• New hires in mobile: Atari, Square Enix and GREE
• Drawbridge lands $6.5M round for mobile ad targeting technology

Friday, May 11

• Emerging popular Android apps: Rage of Bahamut, The Avengers Live Wallpaper and Zombie Smash
• East Side Games evolves NomNom Combo with new version 2.0 update
• GameDuell and Vostu sign up for GetJar Gold in hopes of doubling revenues
• Mobile app news roundup: Google Play, Tapjoy and Rovio

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Sojo King.com, Kixeye and more

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, May 7

• Candy Crush Saga still on top of fastest-growing Facebook games by MAU
• Become a ‘big cat burglar’ with 6waves’ Ravenshire Castle
• Electronic Arts sees traffic drop in Q4 2012, bringing more brands to social games platforms
• Rumble Games focuses on both casual and core gamers, skips out on traditional social mechanics

Tuesday, May 8

• Zynga’s Bubble Safari takes aim at Bubble Witch Saga’s success on Facebook
• Get by with a little help from your Tribe in Spellbound City 2
• Zynga sues over PyramidVille’s name 15 months after launch

Wednesday, May 9

• King.com continues to top list of fastest-growing games by DAU
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: King.com, Kixeye, PopCao and more
• EA exploring social game publishing with Insomniac Games
• Make the right life choices in Jay-Z’s social game Empire
• Japanese developers abandon kompu gacha mechanics in social games
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model

Thursday, May 10

• Get buff with Self Magazine’s Workout in the Park social game
• New hires in social gaming: Eruptive Games, Mob Science and East Side Games
• Candy Crush Saga and Empires & Allies this week’s gainer and loser among May’s Top 25 Facebook games

Friday, May 11

• 5th Planet Games making $10M in revenue between Facebook, Kongregate
• UberStrike developer CMUNE nets first round of funding, goes cross-platform
• Halfbrick’s Jetpack Joyride blasts on to Facebook
• Social games news roundup: Jetpack Joyride, FarmVille’s sequel and McDonald’s

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Ryzing, Nuukster, King.com and more

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, May 7

• Viddy, Instagram, Pinterest, games, Metacafe, Zoosk, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by MAU
• How Glancee acquisition fits into Facebook’s strategy of letting users share where they are, were, will be
• Data shows social readers have mixed results, but aren’t ‘collapsing’

Tuesday, May 8

• Mobile, Intel, ‘Titanic,’ Adele, FC Barcelona, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook pages
• Facebook asks some users ‘Which ad do you prefer?’
• New Facebook platform industry hires: Unified, TBG Digital, Kontagent, more
• ‘Custom user clusters’ feature appears and disappears from Facebook ad tool
• Facebook tries new prompts to encourage users to organize friends into lists

Wednesday, May 9

• Facebook offers suicide prevention information for military, veterans, families
• Socialcam, Zoosk, Pinterest, games, more on this week’s top 20 growing Facebook apps by DAU
• Socialcam passes Yahoo, CityVille to become most popular Facebook app by monthly active users
• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lowe’s, Townsquare Media, Sociable Labs and more
• Facebook replaces Apps and Games Dashboard with App Center, introduces paid app model
• Facebook to provide developers with new app ratings metric
• Early Bird Deadline for Social Media Marketing Boot Camp Ends Tomorrow, May 10
• Facebook announces paid app beta program

Thursday, May 10

• Bing expands Facebook integration with new social sidebar on search results pages
• Facebook hires: engineering, design, counsel, more
• Facebook career postings: media solutions, analysts, recruiting, more
• Facebook to give all groups file-sharing capabilities
• Vitrue partners with 7 ad platforms to create loop between paid and owned media

Friday, May 11

• Facebook gauges interest in new way to monetize users: ‘highlighted posts’
• Etsy, Kickstarter, pages, music, more on this week’s top 20 emerging Facebook apps by MAU
• Inside Facebook’s pre-IPO hype
• Facebook roundup: Optimal, Instagram, TBG Digital, action spec ads

Saturday, May 12

• New this week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lowe’s, Fiveonenine, SponsorPay and more