Last night, Facebook held a Developer Garage on Feeds and Social Distribution at Blue Chalk Café in Palo Alto. The event gave the developer community a sneak preview of how Feed Forms may evolve, provided developers with tips on how to create more meaningful Feed stories, and demo’d Facebook’s first social widget, the Comments Box. The speakers included Dave Morin, Josh Elman, Ari Steinberg, Jerry Cain, and Ray He.

The message to take home about the future of feeds on the Platform: more sharing in the user’s voice, less reporting in the third person.

Facebook has over 175 million users worldwide who together represent the social graph that links family, friends, and coworkers together. As Elman explained, because these relationships are based on mutual trust, your social network helps you filter information for relevance. The News Feed’s function, then, is to promote the selective sharing of information between friends.

Here’s a practical example of how Facebook sees feed stories changing in the future. When sharing a video on Facebook today, the Feed story shows up in your friend’s News Feed like this:

Notice that even though my intention is to share a video, the overall style of the story is report-like: “Jessica Lee posted a link to a video.” With updated Feed Forms, Facebook will encourage users to add comments before publishing feed stories, and the feed stories will lead with their comments in the first person voice.

This story structure feels more like I’m telling a story by myself, in my own words. Visually, it’s as if I’m talking with a bubble coming out of my mouth.

(It should be noted that while Facebook said it would be encouraging developers to publish feed stories in the first person in the future, any changes will be backwards compatible.)

If this preview is a good indication of where Facebook is headed in the development of Feeds, then developers should be prepared to adapt and build their applications with the impact of prominent comment fields in mind. Being able to integrate rich media (images, video, audio, and flash) into Feed stories will also become increasingly important in the creation of Feed content that is engaging. This means that developers must learn how to leverage Facebook’s functionality in a way that enhances application performance and delivers greater social value to the user.

Here’s a video of Facebook’s Ari Steinberg explaining the new approach at the event:

Please note that Facebook prefaced the ideas shared at the Developer Garage with the statement that they are a work in progress, and are subject to change. In addition, specific timing of potential new features was not announced.

In this week’s “Facebook Marketing 101″ series, Inside Facebook will be discussing first steps businesses can take to start marketing on Facebook.

Inside Facebook recently wrote about ways for all businesses to boost their internet marketing efforts by increasing their presence on Facebook. We’ve showed you how small businesses, from lawyers to restaurateurs, can use Facebook and the “social graph” to market themselves better. Now, we’ll show you how even everyday plumbers (who haven’t quite achieved the notoriety of “Joe the Plumber”) can start getting online referrals via Facebook to boost business in a bad economy.

Facebook Marketing 101 for Plumbers (and any Local Service Provider)

1) Create a Facebook Page. One of the best ways to increase SEO is with a dedicated page on Facebook. Don’t forget to mention your physical address, your phone number, and maybe a price list for the services you offer.

2) Publish useful information and rich media on your Page to draw visitors. A “How to fix a runny toilet” video would definitely be interesting to several people with leaky pipes…and when the DIY-ers try and fail, guess who they’re going to call? That’s right… you.

3) When you’ve got your Facebook page set up and put some useful and interesting information on it, let people know! Tell your friends and family and ask them to spread the word. Don’t forget to use Facebook’s Social Ads platform to deliver targeted ads to those in the your geographic area so you can reach out to people outside of your immediate circle of friends.

These quick tips should give you a good start to marketing yourself on Facebook whether you’re a plumber or electrician or any other local operation in need of some social media advertising help. If you’re a small business that’s already using Facebook to get the word out, let others know what strategies work for you!

Facebook has just released its first in-house widget built on Facebook Connect tonight: the “Comments Box.”

With the Comments Box, users can login through Facebook Connect and leave comments on your website with their real name and profile picture from Facebook. It’s an easier way for websites to integrate social features through Facebook without developing or managing custom plugins. A full list of Facebook Connect-enabled plugins is available here.

When users post comments on your site with the Comments Box widget, they will also have the option to share their comments on their profile. Non-Facebook users can leave comments as well, and the widget can also show other related comments made on Facebook too.

This is the first Connect-enabled widget Facebook has released. Others, including Socialfeet, have been developing Connect-enabled widgets that both increase the social features on and across websites.

While there is still some lack of clarity around what is and isn’t allowed exactly in so-called “fourth party” design (i.e. creating Facebook Connect widget-to-user relationships), Facebook said today that it will have some “exciting updates on the policies and implementation coming next week.”

To learn how to install the Comments Box widget on your website, find the directions here or check out the video below:

Facebook has recently started mixing more recommended Facebook content based on friend profiles in with the Social Ads that appear on the right hand side of application pages and many other pages within the site.

“Suggestions” that appear (see right) include Groups that friends are members of, Pages that a friend may be a fan of, or even Events that friends are attending. Friend suggestions can sometimes appear here too.

The suggested content is interleaved with Social Ads on a fairly random basis. It’s fair to say that it makes the whole area much more attention-grabbing, especially since the name of the friend that is a fan of a page or a member of the group being recommended is shown.

The advertisements shown below recommended content are labeled “Sponsored” in the bottom right hand corner of each one, but other than that it’s hard to distinguish between ads and real social data. The presentation is reminiscent of some of the ways Google used to interleave sponsored results in with natural search while they were trying to arrive at a definitive approach.

This is likely one of the many tests Facebook is conducting to increase engagement and ad performance on the site. Yesterday, Facebook announced it is also testing a new in-house ad network for developers.

Facebook’s demographics are shifting now that it has grown to over 175 million active users: users of the site are now generally older and more geographically dispersed than ever before. Which applications are helping Facebook engage these older users?

We’re Related, one of the most popular applications on the Facebook Platform, just crossed 14 million monthly active users for the first time. Today, Inside Facebook profiles this Facebook Platform leader that is helping Facebook users connect across generations.

What is We’re Related?

The We’re Related application, developed by FamilyLink.com, is at its core a family tree tool, allowing users to easily find their relatives on Facebook and build out their family trees.

Much like the current Facebook profile design, each user has a profile page featuring a status message, a wall, info, photos, and relatives in lieu of friends. Users can see their relatives’ news on a filterable page that is similar to the Facebook home page. We’re Related is like Facebook’s friend list feature in that users can communicate with and focus on a subset of their Facebook friends, but the application offers a more fully featured and strictly family-focused experience.

In We’re Related, users send app invitations to build up their networks of relatives. In many Facebook applications, the friend picker step seems unnaturally tacked-on, and is often presented before the user has interacted with the actual app. With We’re Related, the process of sending invites (“adding relatives”) makes sense in the context of the application’s overall experience, a fact which likely has a beneficial impact on both acceptance rates and invites sent per user.

App Traffic

AppData for We’re Related

As of February 18th, We’re Related has vaulted into the fourth overall position on the platform application leaderboard, slightly edging out RockYou’s Super Wall. Today, We’re Related sits at roughly 14 million MAU having grown nearly 42% in the past 30 days.

AppData for My Family

In addition to We’re Related, FamilyLink.com also develops My Family, another Facebook application that allows you to add stick figure icons of your family to your profile page. My Family has also shown strong growth from 240k to nearly 400k MAU in the past thirty days.

Of the applications with 10+ million MAU on the platform (there are currently five), We’re Related has shown the strongest growth lately. We will continue to track this high growth period for We’re Related, and it will be interesting to see if the app emerges from this supernormal growth period as one of, if not the largest Facebook app for months to come.

Competitors

In terms of functionality, Family Tree by Familybuilder.com is We’re Related’s closest competitor on the Facebook platform. While quite similar to We’re Related, one significant differentiation is Family Tree’s robust points and virtual goods offering.

AppData for Family Tree

While small relative to We’re Related, Family Tree has over 922k MAU, landing the application within the top 100 apps on the platform. In the past 30 days, Family Tree has grown approximately 42%, keeping pace with We’re Related.

Demographics

developerAnalytics‘ audience profile for We’re Related suggests that We’re Related’s users are predominantly female (61%) and the average user age is 25. For purposes of comparsion, Top Friends’s audience profile shows 58% female and an average age of only 15 years.

Conclusion

As we reported earlier this month, Facebook’s population is diversifying in terms of age and is, quite simply, getting older. For example, the fastest growing demographic group is women over 55. The overall trend of a growing, diversifying population stands to benefit applications like We’re Related and Family Tree that appeal to an older audience.

20 million people are already accessing Facebook through mobile platforms, but Facebook is stepping up its efforts to land deeper integrations with mobile handset makers around the world.

Most recently, Facebook has been stepping up discussions to integrate its software into a broad array of mobile devices made by Nokia, according to The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ says Nokia has been considering building its own mobile social networking platform in house, but the Facebook deal could supercede those plans. Facebook is also in talks with Palm and Motorola to integrate with their mobile operating systems.

Facebook says the company is “dedicated to working with and developing partnerships with mobile operators and device makers all over the world.”

The mobile social networking space is still in its formative stages in the US, relative to most other markets. MySpace recently partnered with T-Mobile to develop a mobile product for the SideKick, and several others already established in the space include location-based services like Loopt, BrightKite, and Whrrl. And very recently, Google’s new location-based mobile product Latitude has quickly attracted over 1 million people since its launch.

Today, Facebook operates multiple mobile services worldwide:

• Facebook for iPhone, which currently has over 5.4 million monthly active users
• Facebook for Blackberry, which currently has over 3.7 million monthly active users
• m.facebook.com, the standard mobile interface
• x.facebook.com, an advanced mobile interface
• Facebook SMS, through which users can update their status and receive notifications

Facebook has yet to break out active users of its mobile services by country. However, it has been growing by leaps and bounds internationally, specifically in Europe and South America, throughout the last year. Striking deals with major handset makers around the world will certainly increase its mobile growth worldwide.

In this week’s “Facebook Marketing 101″ series, Inside Facebook will be discussing first steps businesses can take to start marketing on Facebook.

In a recent post, Inside Facebook discussed several ways for businesses large and small to leverage Facebook and the social graph to market more effectively. While the concept of “Facebook marketing” for small businesses isn’t yet as mainstream as advertising in the yellow pages, it’s not hard to imagine why thousands of restaurants, bars, and clubs are already leveraging Facebook to win new patrons.

Facebook Marketing 101 for Bars and Restaurants

For restaurateurs who haven’t yet realized how powerful Facebook marketing can be – or for those that are having trouble learning how to use Facebook as a vehicle for claiming new customers – here are Inside Facebook’s three simple and easy tips for engaging with Facebook users to win new customers.

1. Create a Facebook Page! Wasn’t creating your web page a great idea? Well, your Facebook page will get even better SEO results. In a few simple steps, you can advertise your restaurant, location, and hours to a community of over 150 million people – 45 million in the US alone. It’s definitely worth your time and it will take you less than an hour to display some basic information about your business.

2. Make your Page engaging with applications. Show your restaurant’s great ratings by displaying the Zagat application or add a reservations widget through OpenTable on your main page; display a video of the chefs making the house’s special; allow users to click through an interactive menu. The possibilities are endless.

3. Create and promote events online and offline. Let people know about a special Mother’s Day brunch or a regular Friday Happy Hour by sending invitations and ask people to RSVP on Facebook. This can be a great way to increase viral marketing as information about Facebook Events travels through news feeds from your network of friends and family outwards in the greater social graph.

These are just a few basic ways to launch your restaurant’s presence on Facebook and to increase your general visibility. As an example of how one restaurant employs the above methods (and more) in creative ways, check out the spicy flavors of Junnoon.

Facebook focused on Platform growth over Platform monetization in 2008: the company largely focused on launching the profile redesign and Facebook Connect instead of other monetization initiatives.

However, it looks like 2009 may be the year Facebook starts ramping up its monetization efforts: today, Facebook announced that it has started testing an in-house ad network with developers.

According to the company,

Starting today you may notice a few applications occasionally serving Facebook Ads directly in their canvas pages as a part of a small alpha test. We will use the results of this test and other tests that we do to determine the best ways we can help you monetize. For this initial test we picked a few developers that had a variety of different user bases and application types to give us the kind of data we need. We will examine the results to decide whether to open up the program to more developers in the future.

The move has been expected for some time by companies that have built large advertising networks within the Facebook Platform ecosystem. Companies like SocialMedia, RockYou, AdParlor, AOL’s Advertising.com, SocialCash, Sometrics, Adknowledge, Rubicon Project, VideoEgg, Google’s AdSense, and other ad networks have been serving app developers since the Platform launched. Others, like Super Rewards and Offerpal, manage networks of offers for developers which generally pay on a CPA basis.

How has performance fared? While some direct and integrated deals can go for anywhere from $5 to $20 CPMs, most developers have been reporting between $0.10 to $0.50 CPMs on most Facebook Platform remnant inventory (with European prices being generally slightly higher). And several developers have reported very high eCPMs by integrating offers into their apps and games.

While it’s too early to tell exactly how Facebook’s ad network efforts will fare – and affect other players in the space – rest assured everyone will be watching the alpha test closely. As the Platform on which all apps and monetization efforts run, Facebook faces the challenge of helping developers monetize directly while still cultivating a robust monetization ecosystem for third parties. We’ll have more as the alpha test progresses in the coming weeks.

Many new applications are showing up this week that are growing quickly on the Facebook Platform.

Here’s the current list of Top 20 fastest-growing mid-sized applications on Facebook from AppData. These are the top apps in the 100K-1M monthly active user range with the most growth in the last week.

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		Cool Animated Gifts	192,045	+103,444	+116.8	—
2.		Manda un Beso Sexy!! Besame!	311,148	+162,301	+109.0	Product Madness
3.		I Love Chocolate	236,059	+120,487	+104.3	Friend2Friend, Inc.
4.		Send Love Hearts	189,231	+85,968	+83.3	Martin Wee
5.		Collect Sweet	251,992	+112,899	+81.2	—
6.		Send Good Karma	101,217	+37,008	+57.6	—
7.		Send “Willow Tree” Angels	119,375	+42,851	+56.0	—
8.		Tiddy Bear for Cancer	172,334	+60,029	+53.5	—
9.		Say Something	202,521	+64,194	+46.4	Offline
10.		Free Gifts	877,072	+277,106	+46.2	SGN
11.		Jugement	360,515	+109,893	+43.9	Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Nieto
12.		Quiz Creator	917,898	+278,991	+43.7	—
13.		My Tattoo Wall	252,898	+73,571	+41.0	Make The Web Better
14.		What every mom needs	467,525	+129,482	+38.3	—
15.		Water Gun Fight!	698,126	+192,862	+38.2	—
16.		80′s Memories Gifts	217,580	+55,343	+34.1	—
17.		Photos and Slideshows	123,181	+31,316	+34.1	RockYou!
18.		Scriptures & Uplifting Messages!	139,340	+33,324	+31.4	—
19.		Flowers 4 You!!	119,088	+27,491	+30.0	Sukaina Hussain
20.		Winnie the Pooh	410,777	+90,589	+28.3	David Hu

As you can see, the top gainers this week were Valentine’s Day gifting apps. Cool Animated Gifts, Manda un Beso Sexy!!, I Love Chocolate, and Send Love Hearts all grew by about 100% in the last 7 days, as Facebook users turned to Facebook Platform applications to send Valentine’s Day greetings and flirts to their friends.

In addition, SGN’s Free Gifts saw a major resurgence last week, growing by nearly 50%, or over a quarter of a million active users, during Valentine’s Day week.

Meanwhile, LOLApps’s Quiz Creator has been gaining major steam lately as well. The venture-funded company makes white label apps for users to create custom experiences for their friends.

In the French market, Jugement exploded this week by over 40%. It’s like Compare Friends – a simple way to “judge your friends and see what they think of you.”

Finally, Scriptures & Uplifting Messages is one of the few religion-themed applications that we’ve seen grow to this size so quickly. As you may expect, the application lets users send Bible verses to friends.

In this week’s “Facebook Marketing 101″ series, Inside Facebook will be discussing first steps businesses can take to start marketing on Facebook.

In a recent post, Inside Facebook discussed 10 ways for businesses large and small to take advantage of Facebook to market their products and services. One professional group that could undoubtedly better leverage the power of Facebook’s social graph is the lawyers and attorneys that are already trying to stake their claim online in blogs and other social media.

Below, Inside Facebook details three easy steps for attorneys to get a great return on time and effort spent on social media marketing through Facebook.

Facebook Marketing 101 for Lawyers & Attorneys

1. Invest in Social Ads. For smaller firms, Social Ads offer a minimally expensive way to deliver targeted ads with practical pay-for-performance pricing. Legal teams can zero in on the region and demographic that they want to reach and deliver ads that are tailored to suit. For example, intellectual property and patent attorneys based in New York may want to expand to the West Coast to generate business in innovative cities. Or maybe a firm that specializes in natural disaster claims against insurance companies would want to drum up some business in South Florida in the post-hurricane season. With Social Ads, this micro-advertising is not only possible, but a good campaign could generate a large viral reaction with only a small initial investment.

2. Create online events or promotions – and don’t forget to ask for RSVPs. Creating events and promotions is another great way to boost viral marketing on Facebook. A mom and pop legal shop, for example, might tap into networks beyond friends and family by incentivizing those closest to them to spread the word about good counsel on Facebook. Something as simple as an appraisal in the form of a Note might be a great way to get the news out within the social graph. Facebook Events with RSVPs that promote offline gatherings are another easy way to gain viral exposure. A small law group might pair an informal “Meet the Attorneys” advice session with a wine tasting at a local restaurant. This is a great way to use social media to market professional events.

3. Create a Facebook page with engaging content. This is the internet, after all. Make sure to include videos, sound clips, and any other rich media that might make your Facebook page more interesting. For example, you can whet the appetites of once and future clients by offering starter legal tips in videos like Hamilton and Perryman do. Or, maybe you want to skip the fun and games and add something more serious — a scheduler, perhaps, to initiate appointments for initial consultations. The possibilities are endless.

These are just a few ways that attorneys can differentiate themselves and market their services on Facebook. Other things lawyers should consider include partnering with or sponsoring popular applications on the Platform, sending virtual gifts, and of course, using Facebook as a way to communicate with a base of your firm’s biggest fans.