Facebook’s relationship with the music industry is certainly “complicated” at the moment – the company has recently been rumored to be talking with various potential partners about a deal to create an official “Facebook Music” service. However, while Facebook navigates relationships with labels, app developers, and potential new partners, tonight it has (at least temporarily) removed one popular music application from the Facebook Platform.

Music Playlists, until today the 2nd most popular music application on Facebook, has been removed due to “Terms of Service” violations, Facebook says, until it can resolve its issues directly with the RIAA. Music Playlists is a product of Project Playlist, whose MySpace music application was also cut off just a few days ago. Here’s Facebook’s full statement:

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) initially contacted Facebook last summer requesting the removal of the Project Playlist application for copyright violation, and recently reopened those communications. We have forwarded the RIAA’s letters to Project Playlist so it can work directly with that organization and music labels on a resolution. In the meantime, the application must be removed to comply with the Facebook Platform Terms of Service. Our hope and expectation is that the parties can resolve their disagreements in a manner that satisfies the developer and copyright holder, that continues to offer a great experience to music fans, and that doesn’t discourage other developers from using Platform to share their creativity and test new ideas.

Owen Van Natta, Facebook’s former Chief Revenue Officer, joined Project Playlist as CEO just last month.

AppData for Music Playlists:

While the Bush shoe-throwing incident sparked an inevitable wave of creativity from b3ta (some of the best efforts can be seen here), how has the viral event of the month hit Facebook? It’s not too much of a surprise to see that alongside the expected video and image sharing, Facebook users and application developers have wasted no time in using the platform to generate their own fun or, occasionally, serious commentary:

• Slide’s SuperPoke now lets you throw shoes at your friends
• One Facebook fan page created for the shoe-thrower has over fifty thousand fans. (There are others, but this seems to be the largest.)
• There are at least three dedicated “throw shoes at your friends” applications including this one, and probably more out there

So far there’s no sign of the Sock and Awe Flash game being ported into a Facebook application, although surely it’s only a matter of time. Perhaps the most surprising discovery, however, is that following a recent spam attack on the Facebook developer’s forum, the word “shoe” is now blacklisted.

Happy Holidays everyone! It’s time to spread some more Christmas cheer. No, that doesn’t mean more egg nog (save that for later). So what are some of the most festive apps you can check out this Christmas? Well, here you go:

10.) Send Cards
E-cards have always been pretty popular on the internet. They’re quick, thoughtful, and usually very entertaining. Here’s an app that is not only good for Christmas, but for all occasions. Whether or not you want to be cute or funny, this card sharing program has something that you can use, whether or not it is a pug in a santa hat, or a kitten in a stocking, it makes a great gift.

9.) What’s your Funny Christmas Name
Sometimes funny, sometimes cute, sometimes… not really either. Regardless, this app is a rather amusing name generator that a number of people might get a kick out of. Simply select a card, and input their name and gender and see what yuletide alias they end up with.

8.) Twisted Christmas
This app is truly entertaining. How could it not be with such a title? Essentially, you pick a.. well.. twisted character and go off Christmas caroling with it. The caroling gets sent off to the friends of your choosing, and the more you do so, the more gifts you earn. Said gifts can then be sent to your friends and range from “festive poo” to a dancing Santa.

7.) 25 Days of Christmas
Okay, maybe it is a little too late to be sharing this application, but it’s nice just the same. Have you ever had those countdown calendars or trees in which you open a new day everyday until the 25^th? Inside each door is usually a piece of candy or small gift. Well, that’s exactly what this app is. Open a new door each day until Christmas and receive a virtual gift each time.

6.) What you REALLY Want
Can’t afford the perfect gift? Here’s a “solution.” In this application you can send your friends what they really want for Christmas. Nope, it’s not that new tool set, DVD, or dress. This app lets you send some of the most expensive stuff you can think that range from a collection of diamonds to a personal jet.

As players get deeper into the app, the gifts also get bigger and better (much better), so it is definitely something fun for the holiday season.

5.) Christmas Friend’s Tree
A very simple application that involves decoration your very own Christmas tree with, you guessed it, your friends. The app is nothing extravagant, but you know what they say: “It’s the thought that counts.” During such a joyous time of year, the personal value that is attributed with this app goes a long way.

4.) Say Merry Christmas
Another application that goes along with “Christmas Friend’s Tree,” and yet again another enriched with sentimental value. This app lets you send season’s greetings to anyone, but as simple as it sounds, it lets you say it in virtually any language.

3.) A Christmas Story
“You’ll shoot your eye out!” Though it is merely a virtual gift giving app, it has to be included out of obligation as one of maybe three good Christmas movies.

As you might expect, this application consists of sending images from the classic, 1983 film, A Christmas Story. And for those of you who have been deprived of this movie, it is the story of a young boy, Ralphie, trying to convince everyone around him that he must have a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. Now, go watch it.

2.) Christmas Music Tree
This Christmas Tree app is very soothing. Essentially, you decorate a tree with your friends, but the ornaments are musical pieces. Some of it is classic, upbeat music like Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree or slow and peaceful like the Coventry Carol Kings Choir. Regardless of the music choice, it is perfect for the season, and there is something for everyone (sorry, that was a cliche line wasn’t it?).

1.) Christmas Tree
Quite possibly one of the best applications this season. Whether it’s the Charlie Brown tree or your own classic pine, this app lets you design and decorate any Christmas tree you desire. Set in a festive, wintery background (which can be changed), choose your bases, trees, decorations, presents, and display it all on your profile. To top it all off, the game has a wonderful Christmas atmosphere as the festive music plays and blends seamlessly together.

Of all the Christmas apps out there, the creative value you get when using this app is a great deal of fun, and you can remake your trees again and again. It is a bit of a time sink though, as it is easy to loose track of time.

Well there you have it. As always, if you have any apps you think deserve mentioning, then by all means post them in the comments. Until then, have a safe and happy Christmas.

In an effort to simultaneously increase the growth of Facebook and applications, Facebook’s growth team tonight announced the launch of an update to the “multi-friend selector” to now allow app users to invite friends not already using Facebook to the application as well.

The new feature allows Facebook users to type in email addresses to send app invites to anyone. (However, it doesn’t provide in line access to contact list importing from popular email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail.)

Here’s how the user experience works:

When users type in addresses, a “special email” is sent which invites the recipient both to Facebook (where they will become friends with the sender) and to the application. When clicking on the email, the recipient is sent to an “Express Registration” page. After they join, the app from which the Facebook invite was sent will be bookmarked and present on the home page app menu.

At the end of the day, this update should help Facebook leverage applications to expand more deeply into demographic niches it has not yet reached. With over 50,000 applications on the Facebook Platform, that number could add up over the coming months and years.

Chris Kelly, Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer who spent time this summer explaining Facebook’s privacy principles to Congress, is planning to announce his candidacy for the California Attorney General’s office, TechCrunch reports.

Kelly is certainly well connected in the state AG circles, having spent a lot of time over the last couple years working with state attorneys general to put together legislation that protects kids’ privacy online. Earlier this year, he helped get the KIDS Act of 2008 passed, which requires “all convicted sex offenders provide their email and instant messaging addresses as part of their registration with the National Sex Offender Registry.” Kelly wrote on the Facebook blog:

At Facebook, we’ve long barred registered sex offenders from our service. Currently, we work cooperatively with individual states’ attorneys general to check users against state-registered sex offender lists. Unfortunately, we both consistently find that these registries lack the essential email and IM data for comprehensive and rapid screening. The process is also less efficient and less effective than anyone, especially concerned parents, would like, which is why we’re such ardent supporters of the KIDS Act Registry.

Earlier this year, Facebook also struck an agreement with 49 state AGs to implement several features designed to protect children.

Facebook’s 140 million users place an immense amount of trust in the service not to share their personal information too broadly. Facebook has earned this trust by limiting profile access to friends and those in the same network since it launched and implementing robust privacy settings as the site has grown. Last week, an information security analysis firm named the company one of the 20 most trusted companies in America.

Facebook faces immense challenges on both the public policy and user fronts in the years ahead as it stewards such large volumes of personal information. Continuing to work with policy makers will be vital, particularly as the company continues to innovate on privacy and identity issues through Facebook Connect.

Check out the latest news & insights this week from Inside Social Games:

• Social Games Debut on Yahoo’s Application Platform – This week, Yahoo announced a major release of its open Yahoo Application Platform, including app integration with My Yahoo and Yahoo Mail. Major social game developers, including Zynga, Playfish, and RockYou, launched social games with the platform’s launch on Monday. Read all the details.
• Top 10 Facebook Games We Love to Hate – With hundreds of applications on Facebook it can be hard to tell which ones are worth even opening. These are some of the most ridiculous concepts out there, but you can’t help but grin at some of them.
• Social Games and the 2008 iPhone App Top 10 Lists – Social games had a great first year on the iPhone. Check out which ones ranked highest in terms of downloads with new stats from Apple on its iPhone app store.
• KickMania! Cheats, Tips, & Tricks/Strategy Guide – Check out all the latest cheats, tips, and tricks, with this KickMania strategy guide from Inside Social Games.
• Habbo Hotel’s Mini Friday Coming to the iPhone Soon – Habbo Hotel just reached 10 million active players, and is coming to the iPhone soon.
• Nonoba Offers a Multiplayer & Payment API – Nonoba has created powerful multiplayer and payment APIs, and we hear they’re doing very well.
• Hasbro Drops Lawsuit Against Makers of Facebook’s Scrabulous – After suing the Agarwalla brothers to take down Scrabulous successfully, Hasbro has decided to drop the lawsuit against the Indian duo.
• Christmas Carnage is Actually a Fun (PG) 3D Facebook Game – Check out this cool 3D Facebook game, that’s nowhere as violent as the title makes it sound.
• Relax With a Game of Chess Pro with Friends on Facebook – Another title by the Agarwalla brothers, Chess Pro is a great way to play with friends on Facebook.
• Fable Island – A Little Too Relaxing – Fable Island is a new RPG that’s still early in development…

In what could be remembered as one of the larger exposés of aggressive viral marketing tactics on Facebook to date, a recruiter in the Butler University admissions department has unearthed evidence that college guide book publisher College Prowler has been using Facebook Groups, fake Facebook accounts, and savvy understanding of some behavioral dynamics inside Facebook to essentially build a mailing list for the entire incoming college class of 2013.

In his original post on Thursday, Butler’s Brad Ward discovered that over 500+ Facebook Groups for incoming freshmen next fall at colleges around the world, like University of Michigan – Class of 2013 and The Official Cornell University Class of 2013! were all created by a small group of accounts that were friends with each other and affiliated with College Prowler – none appeared to be legitimately affiliated with the incoming freshman class at any of the hundreds of universities for which they had created groups. Said Ward,

But for 500+ schools? Owning the admin rights to groups equaling easily 1,000,000+ freshman college students? That’s huge.

Think of it: Sitting back for 8-10 months, (even a few years), maybe friending everyone and posing as an incoming student.  Think of the data collection. The opportunities down the road to push affiliate links.  The opportunity to appear to be an ‘Admin’ of Your School Class of 2013. The chance to message alumni down the road.  The list of possibilities goes on and on and on.

Responding on Mr Ward’s blog, Luke Sherman, College Prowler’s CEO, left the following comment:

Yes, College Prowler has been directly or indirectly involved with the creation of multiple Class of 2013 groups. The original purpose was to use these groups as a way to inform students that they can access a free guide about their new college on our site. No employee or anyone else associated with College Prowler has used these groups to send out messages or wall posts.

Until about an hour ago, I was unaware that College Prowler was working with another company that may have been using fake aliases to create to these groups. The groups that College Prowler was responsible for creating were set up with real accounts. Here are the names that are associated with College Prowler, and they will all be removed immediately from the Class of 2013 groups (all other names are not controlled by College Prowler):

• Mark Tressler
• Ron Tressler
• Brenna Young
• Lisa Young
• Lauren Plavchek
• Jessica Lash

From a big picture perspective, having a marketing strategy using social networking sites (like Facebook) is something that is necessary to be effective in our business. We do pride ourselves on being forward thinking and aggressive. In this instance, in its current form, we have crossed the line and to reiterate, we will be removing our administrator privileges from all of these 2013 groups immediately.

Feel free to email, luke@collegeprowler.com, with any additional concerns or questions.

Luke

This looks like a classic class of guerilla marketing gone wild. As Butler’s Ward discovered, there are a lot of aggressive marketers out there taking advantage of Facebook Groups to reach hundreds or thousands of Facebook users. Groups grow virally through Facebook’s invitation channel, and some groups can even grow into the millions of members in a matter of just a few weeks. However, unfortunately, College Prowler apparently used fake accounts to carry out its marketing tactics, a sure fire way to get shut down (usually by Facebook’s automated systems – but in this case, by the self-regulating social pressure from other Facebook users).

As we discuss in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Groups are one of the oldest ways to build community around your company or brand, but Facebook is encouraging legitimate brand owners and marketers to adopt its Facebook Pages platform. Pages are a better way for marketers to build long lasting relationships with large volumes of people, and are extensible with Facebook Platform application functionality. Learn more about the best ways to employ both Pages and Groups as part of your overall strategy here.

Also see more notes from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Jibjab’s ever popular creation, ElfYourself, is a major digital marketing success story. Building on the campaign’s success last year, this holiday season Jibjab partnered with OfficeMax to promote the ElfYourself experience across the web, including a Facebook app that has recently experienced tremendous growth, according to AppData.

The application is essentially a shell of the external site experience, as the .com is actually the home of the full video creation functionality. The screenshot above is of the app’s canvas page, which includes little more than the image pictured that redirects to the external site. You can also post a link to your customized ElfYourself video on your profile page. Clearly, this “app” was merely a small part of a larger distribution strategy.

AppData for ElfYourself

This small part seems to have paid off. In the past 30 days, the app has grown nearly 3000% and has been shared with nearly 750,000 Facebook users. Given the simplicity and success to date of this application, tapping into the Facebook platform was clearly low-hanging fruit for the already hyper-viral ElfYourself campaign.

Note: OfficeMax contacted us to let us know that the campaign was actually created by them starting in 2006. They partnered with JibJab in 2008 to assist with this year’s edition, including the Facebook app.

Inside Facebook wrote recently that Facebook’s growth in Spain had risen to 132% during the first half of this year, going from 332k users in February 2008 to 774k in August 2008.

Well, the December numbers are in and Facebook penetration has reached 2.3 million users in Spain, showing a 595% increase this year.  With a population of approximately 40 million people, Facebook penetration in Spain has reached 5.7%.

While these numbers aren’t necessarily the most impressive of those throughout Europe, Facebook is still growing at a blistering pace in Spain.  We expect that trend to continue in 2009.

If Facebook’s recent global growth has been exponential, Italy’s growth in 2008 can be described as explosive. In the past five months alone, Facebook has grown an incredible 763% from 572k users in July to 4.9 million today! With 8.5% of the population on Facebook, Facebook has become the fourth most trafficked site in Italy.

With the release of the Italian language version of Facebook Platform in March 2008 and the rising traffic in users outside of the U.S., developers are wondering how they can ride the wave.  Many developer are asking questions about which ad networks perform best in Italy. One developer, “david,” writes:

Still, $1 eCPM is really weak when english ads earn $3.  Looking at yesterday’s new installs, 520132 were italian whereas 201123 were english.  I gotta find an Italian ad network!

The traffic is here, now where are the ad companies?

Now that 70% of Facebook’s users are outside the US, ad networks need to really step up their international performance.