Facebook recently released a standalone page management app for iOS devices which gives page owners better moderation tools and alerts about fan activity.

Pages Manager has a similar format to Facebook’s existing iOS app, but it adds notifications and insights, as well as eliminates any features that are not related to pages. Here we’ll walk through the available features and address the areas where the app would benefit from additional functionality.

Viewing pages

After users download and connect the app with their Facebook account, Pages Manager will allow users to visit and take action on any page they have admin privileges for. Users can switch between pages from the menu that appears after tapping the button in the top left of the app. Also from that menu, users can access their page’s insights, admins, the help center and log out.

When visiting a page from Pages Manager, users can filter between all posts, page posts only or hidden posts. Hidden posts are something that are not available from the main Facebook app, however we’d like to also see an “only others” view to more quickly browse posts from fans and people besides the page.

Insights

Page owners can see how many fans have been reached and how many people are talking about a given post. Tapping on this area will bring up additional post metrics, including organic vs. paid vs. viral reach, the number of clicks on a post and the number of shares. Unlike on the desktop version of Facebook, users will not be able to see the number of shares directly from the post itself. There is also no way to view who shared a post or what they said about it from the mobile app. Still, Pages Manager is an improvement over the main Facebook app, which does not include information about shares or any other insights besides Likes and comments. We’d like to see Facebook add “negative feedback” metrics to the mobile app — as well as make it more prominent on the desktop site — to let page owners know when their posts are being hidden or marked as spam.

Page owners can get a snapshot of their overall page metrics by tapping the gray bar at the top of their page or by visiting “Insights” from the main menu. This is useful for being able to refer to in a meeting, for instance, but actual analysis will need to be done from the desktop site. In future versions of the app, it might be useful to provide basic demographic data or a list of the most engaging posts in the past month.

Moderation

Admins can use Pages Manager to moderate comments and posts more easily than they can with the main Facebook app. First, users will receive push notifications about recent activity. Page owners who see a lot of hourly activity might want to turn off push notifications for those pages. Unfortunately, this is not possible from the mobile app and has to be done from the “edit page” dashboard on the desktop site. Facebook’s Help Center suggests this feature will come to a future version of Pages Manager. Interestingly, Facebook seems to automatically turn off push notifications for pages over a certain size, but leave the default on for smaller pages.

Even without push notifications enabled, users can access notifications from the top of the app, just as they can for their personal accounts in the main app. Page owners can see Likes, comments and Wall posts here.

Admins can read and respond to comments on behalf of the page, just as they would on the main app. However, Pages Manager offers additional options to hide posts and ban users, whereas the main app only allows admins to delete posts. Users can take one of these actions by swiping across a post or comment, either to the left or right. The app will offer a “confirm delete” dialog to prevent accidents.

Creating posts

Page owners can create posts from the new app. Similar to the main app, they can make text posts, link posts and photo posts. There is not a way to create events, customize how links appear, or upload multiple photos at a time. There is also no option to schedule posts or post to past points on a page’s Timeline, as is available on desktop. Of these features, being able to upload multiple photos in a single post is likely to be the most useful for page owners on their mobile phones. The other actions are fine to be reserved for desktop.

Admins

The mobile app allows page owners to see all the admins of their pages, but they cannot take any action here to add or remove admins. There’s also no indication here what level of admin access a user has, but since Facebook added that feature to the desktop site this week, we could see it in a future version of the mobile app. Currently, the main Facebook mobile app does not include any way to view page admins.

What’s missing

One important feature that has been left out of Pages Manager is messages. On the desktop site, pages have the option of accepting private messages from users and being able to respond as the page. Facebook says this will be available in future version of the app.

There is also no way to view or edit a page’s “info” section from Pages Manager, though this isn’t particularly necessary to have on a mobile device. If admins want to see what their info tab says, they can view it from the main Facebook app or mobile site.

There’s also no way to “use Facebook as a page” in the same way that is available on desktop. This feature lets admins take actions — Liking and commenting on other page’s posts or writing on another page’s Timeline — on behalf of their page rather than their personal accounts. It also allows page owners to see a feed of recent stories from other pages that they’ve Liked as their page. These features make it similar to using a company Twitter account rather than a personal one. It’s unknown what percentage of page owners use Facebook in this way, but this could be useful for the standalone pages app to include one day.

Download Pages Manager from the App Store here or directly on your iOS device. Facebook has not indicated when the app would be available for Android.

May proved a slow month for the social game industry, based on our lists for the Top 25 games of June 2012. Both lists saw notable traffic declines, few gains and no new game debuts.

We start with the list of top 25 games by daily active users, which is the best way to evaluate a title’s core audience. Only four games showed gains over last month, the largest belonging to recently-launched Zynga Bingo with 1.8 million DAU. King.com’s Candy Crush Saga continued to climb the charts, gaining 1.4 million DAU (100,000 more than it gained last month). Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance shows also strong traffic a month after The Avengers hit theaters, gaining 920,000 DAU. Nordeus’s Top Eleven – Be a Football Manager is still making gradual gains, up by 100,000 DAU.

As was the case last month, the two biggest losses belong to Zynga’s CityVille and Hidden Chronicles. CityVille dropped by another 1.4 million DAU, while Hidden Chronicles lost 1.1 million DAU.

Now it’s time to look at monthly active users, which measures a title’s overall reach on Facebook. Zynga’s CityVille lost 6.2 million MAU and its declining traffic caused it to drop to the No. 2 spot on the list. The top spot is now held by Texas HoldEm Poker, which lost 1.7 million MAU. After CityVille, the largest loss belonged to Hidden Chronicles, which dropped 4.3 million MAU.

Only three games on this list saw gains over the past month. The largest increase was with King.com’s Candy Crush Saga, up by 5.2 million MAU. Disney Playdom’s Marvel: Avengers Alliance grew by 3.5 million MAU. Finally, Geewa’s Pool Live Tour was up by 600,000 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for the beginning of June’s  Top 25 gainers and losers, when we look at the continued performance of games that appeared on the top 25 DAU list.

This article was originally posted on our sister site, Inside Social Games.

Facebook has made proposed revisions to its Data Use Policy and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities open to a user vote between now and June 8.

The vote is the second of its kind since Facebook decided in 2009 to give users the option to review proposed policy changes and then offer a vote if more than 7,000 users comment on those changes. User Max Schrems, who leads the activist group Europe Vs. Facebook, encouraged users to comment “I oppose the changes and want a vote about the demands on www.our-policy.org.” More than 10,000 users did so on the English-language version, and there are thousands more on other pages.

Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer for Policy Erin Egan told TechCrunch that the company will consider changing its voting threshold to promote quality over quantity, and prevent spam-like comments from triggering votes in the future.

“[Schrems] is interested in us changing our product, but these revisions are about our policy. We can’t please everyone”, Egan told TechCrunch.

The proposed revisions do not include any major changes to how the social network collects or uses user data. The changes are mostly updated wording — for example, using “Timeline” instead of “profile” — and added clarification about existing policy. Clearer examples and user tips have been added to the Data Use Policy per recommendations from the Irish Data Protection Commissioner’s Office, which audited the social network’s data collection practices last year.

Users can visit the Facebook Site Governance page to review all changes, compare these with the existing policies and read Facebook’s explanation of the changes. Through an application, users can vote for either the new policies or the previous policies. To the dismay of Schrems and Europe Vs. Facebook, there is no option to vote for an alternative policy. His group, for example, calls for all Facebook features to be opt-in rather than opt-out and for Facebook to provide users with full access to all personal data in raw format within 40 days upon request.

Voting will end June 8 at 9 a.m. If 30 percent of active users vote, the results will be considered “binding.” That means if fewer than 270 million of Facebook’s 901 million monthly active users vote, the results will be considered “advisory” but non-binding.

A digital photo app, DoAlbums, topped our list of emerging Facebook applications by monthly active users this week.

We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week. This week’s top apps grew by between 100,000 and 490,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	DoAlbums	720,000	+490,000	+ 213%
2.	Vidd	660,000	+450,000	+ 214%
3.	ooVoo	730,000	+360,000	+ 97%
4.	Crush Meter	460,000	+290,000	+ 171%
5.	House M.D.: Critical Cases	740,000	+200,000	+ 37%
6.	Dragon City	350,000	+180,000	+ 106%
7.	Jetpack Joyride	420,000	+180,000	+ 75%
8.	Baseball Heroes	260,000	+180,000	+ 225%
9.	Waze – Drive Social	410,000	+160,000	+ 64%
10.	Cute Smileys	590,000	+150,000	+ 34%
11.	Smarter Than A 5th Grader?	710,000	+150,000	+ 27%
12.	Friend Hug	320,000	+150,000	+ 88%
13.	GifBoom	830,000	+150,000	+ 22%
14.	Zombie Island	910,000	+140,000	+ 18%
15.	Especially for You friend ≧✯◡✯≦	330,000	+140,000	+ 74%
16.	The Fan Machine	310,000	+140,000	+ 82%
17.	Gourmet Ranch	570,000	+120,000	+ 27%
18.	KKBOX	300,000	+120,000	+ 67%
19.	Rabbids Invasion	650,000	+110,000	+ 20%
20.	❤◠❥ LoVe to YoU ❤◠❥	430,000	+100,000	+ 30%

DoAlbums helps users create photo albums on Facebook by uploading photos from their computers or Instagram accounts. Video apps were popular as well. There was Polish video site Vidd, group video chat app ooVoo and mobile video effects app GifBoom.

House M.D.: Critical Cases led the games, and quiz apps continue to be popular. Cute Smileys grew by postings a photo to the stream of a user’s name designed with smiley faces. Crush Meter tells a user which of their friends has a “crush” on them.

Finally, online community Waze – Drive Social, page app  The Fan Machine and Chinese music platform KKBOX (not available in the U.S.) rounded out our list.

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

Facebook added data center, engineering and other account management staff to its Careers page this week. On LinkedIn the company posted analyst, mobile, recruiting and marketing positions.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Application Engineer, HR
• Data Center Business Analyst
• SCO Procurement Coordinator, Site Operations
• Infrastructure Construction Manager
• Regional Logistics Coordinator (Lulea)
• Accessibility QA Specialist – Contract
• Salesforce Application Developer
• Account Manager, Gaming (Singapore)
• Event Marketing Manager
• Associate Analyst, Custom Market Insights (London)
• Analyst, Payment Operations (Austin)
• Analyst, User Operations – Contract
• Accessibility QA Specialist – Contract
• Account Manager, Tech/SocialCom (Menlo Park)
• Ad Operations Analyst, Global Marketing Solutions (Austin)
• Client Partner, Retail (Chicago)
• Manager, Global Marketing Solutions, Gaming

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Account Manager, Gaming (Singapore)
• Pricing and Yield Management – EMEA
• Manager, Global Sales Outsourcing (Tokyo)
• Analyst, User Operations, Intellectual Property, French (Dublin)
• Analyst, Platform Operations (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations, Arabic (Dublin)
• Senior Analyst, Custom Market Insights (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations, LatAm Spanish (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations, Brazilian Portuguese (Dublin)
• HR Specialist EMEA – FTC 11mts
• Revenue Manager, International (Dublin)
• Head of Mobile Operations
• Infrastructure Operations Engineer
• Data Center Energy Manager
• Network Infrastructure Acceptance Engineer
• Compensation Consultant
• Business Analyst, Compensation
• Global Immigration and Tax Manager
• Analyst, Payment Partnerships (Dublin)
• Manager, Business Operations
• Business Operations Sr. Analyst
• Finance Manager, Technology Infrastructure & Supply Chain
• HR Specialist – Contract (Austin)
• Technical Recruiter – Contract (Seattle)
• Design Recruiter – Contract
• Engineering Leadership Sourcer
• Design Recruiter
• Platform Developer Marketing Manager
• Product Marketing Manager
• Platform Product Marketing Manager

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook appears to have hired a director of investor relations in addition to some data center staff and engineers, according to its Careers page. Various other staff in business development, marketing and user operations were hired, according to the company’s LinkedIn feed.

Facebook has updated its Open Graph publishing guidelines to require social news and video apps to wait at least 10 seconds before posting “read” or “watch” actions to a user’s Timeline. This will prevent Open Graph applications from being able to publish stories on behalf of users immediately after they click a link.

Facebook seems to be starting to enforce some best practices for social readers and video apps, which have grown extremely quickly but have poor public perception. Many users complain that these applications publish stories that they didn’t mean to share. Although 10 seconds is the minimum amount of time that a user must be on a piece of content before their activity is shared, some developers might want to use an even longer span to ensure that published actions reflect a user’s actual behavior. If a video is 5 minutes long and a user leaves after 20 seconds, for example, the user might resent the app telling their friends that they watched the video.

In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook told developers they should allow users to easily turn sharing on or off, and that the setting should persist. However, it’s unclear if a particular setting should be applied every time a user visits an app or be reset when a user leaves and returns. Spotify, for instance, offers a “private session” mode, but if users close the application and reopen it, their listening activity will reset to sharing.

Users can always change their app settings and delete stories from their activity log, but Facebook is encouraging developers to give users more control from within an app. Open Graph documentation says social reading apps should provide users with an option to remove any “read” stories directly from an article page. For video applications, Facebook says developers must provide the option to remove the activity from the same page the content appears. Video apps must also give the user clear, ongoing, and in-context messaging that their watch actions will be published on Facebook.

Also in Wednesday’s developer update, the social network announced that applications must use the built-in “read” and “watch” actions moving forward. Previously these actions were in beta for certain Open Graph partners. Now no custom “read” or “watch” actions will be accepted, and developers have 90 days to convert their custom actions to the built-in verbs. This will allow all social reader and video activity to be aggregated properly on users’ Timelines and in News Feed. For example, Facebook displays “trending articles” and “trending videos” based on these built-in actions.

Facebook page owners can now create posts and schedule them to appear a specific times by using a new feature in the page’s publisher.

Previously, page owners had to use third-party tools like those from HootSuite or Buddy Media to schedule posts for future points in time. Now, users can click the clock icon in the bottom left corner of the publisher and select a date up to six months in advance. While this additional functionality could help page owners not already using third-party tools, social media platform companies should not feel too threatened by the feature. Most platforms offer a unified dashboard for Facebook, Twitter and other networks, so that user can create a post from one location and then schedule it to appear in several channels. This is something Facebook is not likely to replicate.

The social network’s new feature requires that posts be scheduled at least 10 minutes from when they are created. The publisher also offers times in 10-minute increments so it seems posts cannot be scheduled for 12:15, for example. However, Facebook’s Help Center says posts can be scheduled in 15-minute intervals. We have asked the company for clarification.

After scheduling a post, page owners will see a confirmation that will let them know that they can view, reschedule or cancel their post from the page’s activity log.

Earlier today, Facebook released different levels of admin access for page owners. These features are likely to most help individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses that don’t have a budget for third-party platforms. Most larger companies have additional needs that won’t be met using Facebook’s native tools. As we’ve seen in the past when the social network improves its page moderation features, third-party platforms are able to incorporate the features into their own tools using Facebook’s APIs.

Facebook now offers pages fives different levels of page admin privileges so that businesses can assign roles to different people without giving up full control of their pages.

Previously, all admins had equal access to create posts, view insights, manage applications, respond to fans and edit page settings. The new roles are “manager,” “content creator,” “moderator,” “advertiser” and “insights analyst.” Facebook offers the following chart to break down what each type of admin is authorized to do.

Facebook first announced that it would offer five levels of admin access at the Facebook Marketing Conference in February, but at the time it did not explain what the different roles would be. For now, page owners cannot change the privileges associated with the roles above. For example, an advertiser cannot create posts as the page unless they are changed to a content creator — though doing so also gives them the ability to respond to fans through comments or private messages. Still, these roles seem to cover the needs of most pages.

The current default for all admins is manager status. Levels can be changed from the “admin roles” panel within the “edit page” dashboard.

Thanks Blink VP of Media and Planning Eti Suruzon for the tip

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms. Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Abundance, SponsorPay, Socialdealer, Warner Bros, Spooky Cool Labs,  Wooga, TinyCo, King.com, PopCap Games, Jellyvision Games, Mixr Inc. and Activision.

•  Social Media and Web Specialist

Abundance

• Social Media / Online Community Manager Abundance

• Integration Engineer
• Senior Mobile Ad Sales Manager
• Mobile Developer Relations Manager

• Senior .NET Developer

• Social Community Manager

• Business Analyst- Digital Games
• Associate Product Manager, Digital Games

• Game Improvement Specialist
• Localization QA Analyst
• Marketing Manager
• Player Experience Manager
• Product Manager – Bubble Island
• iOS Games Developer

• Backend Engineer
• C++ Game Engineer

• Business Developer
• Business Intelligence Developer
• Game Artist Malm
• Game Artist Mobile
• Game Developer
• Game Programmer
• Graphic Designer – Vanadisplan
• Graphic Designer – Malm
• IT Technical Recruiter
• Java Developer
• Product Manager
• Senior Systems Developer
• Awesome 3D Artist
• System Administrator
• Tools Programmer
• Senior Advertising Sales Manager (UK or DE)

• UI Lead

• Software Engineer

• IOS Developer

• Mobile Analystics Manager

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.