Facebook CFO Gideon Yu is leaving the company today, the Wall Street Journal and AllThingsD report. Facebook has confirmed the departure, and says the company is looking for a new CFO with “public company experience.”

Yu joined Facebook as CFO in 2007, replacing former CFO Mike Sheridan. He has since overseen several major rounds of equity and debt financing, including $240 million from Microsoft in 2007 as part of a preferred equity investment and strategic alliance that valued the company at $15 billion, $100 million investment from Chinese billionare Li Ka-Shing in early 2008, $100 million loan from TriplePoint in May 2008, an undisclosed investment by Germany’s Samwer brothers also early last year, and another potential $100 million equipment lease line very recently.

In a statement today, Facebook said that its “financial performance is strong” and that the company has retained executive search firm Spencer Stuart to lead its search for a new CFO “with public company experience.”

Facebook confirms that CFO Gideon Yu will be leaving the company. Gideon has played an important role in helping us achieve our financial success, building a strong finance team and establishing the core financial operations of our company. We are grateful to Gideon for his contributions to Facebook and what we are trying to accomplish. Despite the poor economic climate, we are pleased that our financial performance is strong and are well positioned for the next stage of our growth.  We have retained Spencer Stuart to lead our search for a new CFO and will be looking for someone with public company experience.

VentureBeat reported this week that a source close to the company said Facebook did $300 million in revenues in 2008 and was nearly break even, and expects to do over $400 million this year. However, the company’s operational costs have been growing with the rapid increase in the size of Facebook’s active user base.

Yu was previously the CFO of YouTube and played a large role in its sale to Google. Before YouTube, he served as treasurer and SVP Finance at (publicly traded) Yahoo.

Update: Kara Swisher at AllThingsD has further updates on the story:

The company said in its internal memo to staff that it was on the path toward an IPO soon, with revenue growth up 70 percent in 2009, was EBITDA profitable this year and would be cash flow positive in 2010.

The memo also painted Yu’s departure as another step toward its much-anticipated IPO, although it is clearly an ouster of much more complex internal reasons about how Facebook is run…

But while Facebook can be a highly political place, with a high level of infighting among execs, it is also a place where Zuckerberg and his wishes firmly hold sway.

And those wishes included the fact that Zuckerberg has long and publicly maintained that Facebook’s growth was paramount over a total focus on monetization of the service.

70% revenue growth in 2009 is higher than most estimates we’ve heard. Yu was reportedly out of the office this afternoon.

Last week, Inside Facebook took a look at many of the fastest growing applications on the Facebook Platform since the redesigned home page launched. The results? Many of the top 20 were a variety of now-familiar personality quizzes. While those applications are likely to become more subdued once the latest version of Facebook reaches a new equilibrium, there is another application that has skyrocketed in usage since the redesigned home page launched that may have more staying power.

LivingSocial, the flagship application from the Grotech-funded application developer by the same name, has seen its number of monthly active users increase by nearly 5x since this time last week from about 2 million users to nearly 10 million users, according to AppData.

AppData for LivingSocial

How? Basically, LivingSocial has been making extensive and compelling use of Facebook’s new sharing features which enable applications to gain more visibility in the home page stream when users share content from the app. For example, here’s a recently shared feed story that was created through LivingSocial:

While the company has been building apps on Facebook for a long time, LivingSocial has reoptimized its product around list building and sharing since the new home page launched. Now, when users go to the application, they are simply prompted with a menu of lists to build, and then given the chance to build the list. After building the list, users are prompted to post it to their profile via a Feed Form, so that it will also show up in their friends’ streams. The stories also make good use of action links.

As we wrote last week, the prevalence of quiz apps in the new Facebook “is somewhat reminescent of earlier chapters on the Facebook Platform when there were far less rules around virality. Now, these quiz apps are growing largely through explicit sharing by Facebook users via Feed Forms. It will be interesting to see if Facebook responds if these personality quizzes continue to hang around.”

While quiz apps will likely become less visible as more users hide them from the stream through Facebook’s stream customization controls, apps like LivingSocial that enable more intentional sharing of more meaningful content should better stand the test of time.

While content sharing on Facebook is increasingly becoming oriented around the stream, Facebook recently created a new way for users to share Pages with friends. The new “Suggest to Friends” link directly underneath the profile picture now allows users to send Page invitations to their friends.

Now, page administrators can encourage users to share pages with friends via invitations, just like Facebook applications have been able to do for a long time. And while applications are rate limited to usually around 10-20 invitations per user per day, Facebook is not placing any limitations on Page invitations, apparently because Facebook wants more users to become fans of more Pages ASAP.

Here’s how it looks when inviting users to Inside Facebook’s page:

When users receive the invitation, they can convert and become a fan in just one click.

However, unlike status updates or shared content, which appear in the streams on users’ home pages, page suggestions are discoverable only on the invitations and requests page. While the invitation will remain there until acted upon, Page owners should encourage fans to actively share content from the Page in their streams as well.

Thousands of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators from around the world have purchased Inside Facebook’s Facebook Marketing Bible: The Guide to Marketing Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook and Facebook Marketing Bible: Agency and Brand Edition – the leading resources on Facebook Marketing today.

In December, Inside Facebook and French social media agency Sociabliz announced the launch of the Facebook Marketing Bible in French, and in January, Inside Facebook and Colombian social media agency eSocial Marketing announced the launch of the Facebook Marketing Bible in Spanish. Today, we’re proud to announce a new partnership with Milan-based Digital PR, the leading “PR 2.0″ agency in Italy, and the simultaneous launch of the Facebook Marketing Bible fully translated into Italian!

La Bibbia del Marketing su Facebook: 39+ modi per promuovere Brand, Azienda, Prodotti o Servizi in Facebook is the definitive resource for advertisers, social media marketers, application developers, and entrepreneurs throughout the Italian speaking world. Inside, you’ll find all the comprehensive strategies and insights of Inside Facebook’s Facebook Marketing Bible adapted to the Italian context.

“Facebook grew fast in Italy after latest summer holidays. Now there are more than 8.5 millions Italians on Facebook. All ages are represented, but recently we’ve been noticing a steady growth of two age groups: 13-18 and 36+. Facebook is the second most popular web destination in Italy after Google, but the problem is that Italian firms are not yet aware of the opportunities Facebook presents,” said Vincenzo Cosenza, the Director of Digital PR’s Rome office and lead translator of La Bibbia del Marketing su Facebook.

Based in Milan, Italy, Digital PR (part of Hill & Knowlton) is a leading Italian PR and social media agency, focused on web monitoring, online influencers’ relations and social media consulting for some of Italy’s largest brands. In addition, Vincenzo Cosenza also runs the Facebook Observatory blog, with notes and statistics about Facebook in Italy.

For those interested in learning more about La Bibblia del Marketing su Facebook, click here. The price is €39 EUR, and the full table of contents (or contenuti) is below. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Contenuti

I. Strumenti per Guerilla Marketer

1. La pagina profile

2. I gruppi

• Strategia: Conviene riempire di spam gruppi esistenti?
• SEO

3. Le pagine

• Strategia: Gruppi e pagine sono molto simili.  Cos’ha più senso?
• Strategia: Ho appena creato una pagina. Come posso promuoverla?
• Migrare un Gruppo verso una Pagina
• Linee guida per promuovere le pagine al di fuori di Facebook
• Pagine ufficiale vs Pagine non ufficiali
• Pagine e SEO
• Modi attraverso cui i gestori delle Pagine possono limitare i contenuti per i minori
• Presto nuove funzionalità

4. Gli Eventi

• Le API dell’applicazione Eventi
• SEO degli Eventi

5. Le Note e le Foto

• Le dinamiche virali dell’attività di tag delle foto
• Foto come canale di marketing su Facebook: Opportunità e Limitazioni

6. I Messaggi

7. Il Mercato

8. Condividi / Elementi pubblicati

9. Mini Feed e News Feed

10. Importare i feed

> Statistiche: tracciare la crescita internazionale di Facebook nazione per nazione
> Statistiche: età e sesso degli utenti statunitensi
> Strategie consigliate per Guerilla Marketers

II. Strumenti per pubblicitari

11. Social Ads
12. Engagement Ads

• Riassunto delle unità di pubblicità disponibili su Facebook
  1. Unità di sponsorizzazione della nuova Home Page di Facebook
     • Social Video
     • Regali virtuali sponsorizzati
     • Eventi
     • Pagine
  2. Pubblicità ne nuovo News Feed di Facebook
  3. Pubblicità sulla Pagina Profilo (e sulle altre pagine)

13. Regali virtuali

• Il futuro dei regali virtuali su Facebook

14. Performance Ads

15. Opportunità di localizzazione

16. Opportunità integrate

17. Facebook Platform Ad Networks

• Lista dei più importanti network pubblicitari per la Piattaforma Facebook
• Quale eCPMs per applicazione? Dati dagli sviluppatori di applicazioni Facebook

18. La sponsorizzazione di applicazioni su piattaforma Facebook

• Lista di aziende che operano in tale campo
• Strategia: Perché sponsorizzare applicazioni quando posso sponsorizzare direttamente Facebook?

19. I Gruppi sponsorizzati

> Strategie consigliate per i Pubblicitari

III. Strumenti per sviluppatori di applicazioni

• Strategia: Qual è  il modo giusto di usare le applicazioni di Facebook per raggiungere il proprio mercato?
• Strategia: Da dove vengono gli utenti delle applicazioni?

20. Il “Profile Box”

• 5 cose che gli sviluppatori potrebbe non sapere del redesign
• L’integrazione del profilo: esame delle impostazioni delle applicazioni del nuovo Facebook

21. Le schede delle applicazioni

22. Le sezioni Info delle applicazioni

23. Progettare storie per i Feed

• Strategia: progettare elementi dei feed ad alta performance
• L’ottimizzazione del News Feed: Strategie e tecniche

24. Feeds 2.0

• Feed Forms
• Raggruppamento dei feed

25. Feed Publisher

• Pubblicare nel Feed attraverso i commenti

26. Richieste / Inviti

• Aggiornamento delle Policy: richiesta di inviti per accedere a funzionalità nascoste, offerta di incentivi per inviti, pubblicità proibita sui profili
• Strategia: l’approccio evolutivo di Facebook al governo della piattaforma
• Spedire inviti a coloro che non sono membri di Facebook

27. Le notifiche di Facebook

• L’integrazione con la Chat: Facebook vuole più notifiche sincrone
• Aggiornamento delle Policy: preselezione di massa proibita
• Le notifiche dall’applicazione all’utente
• Gli aderenti ai programmi di affiliazione sicuramente verranno censurati

28. Le notifiche via email

• Aggiornamenti: Lo status dell’email come canale di marketing fondamentale per le applicazioni è in dubbio

29. I segnalibri dell’applicazione

30. La directory delle applicazioni

31. La fonte dell’aggiornamento di stato

32. Le restrizioni demografiche

33. Verifica e Certificazione

• Il programma Great Apps
• Il programma Application Verification

34. Traduzioni

• Dati: Statistiche su Applicazioni Facebook realizzate per il mercato internazionale
• Tutorial: Tradurre le vostre applicazioni Facebook usando il servizio di traduzione affidato agli utenti di Facebook

35. Facebook Connect

• Panoramica: Integrare Facebook Connect nel vostro sito
• Esempi: 40 siti con Facebook Connect
• I vari plugin di Facebook Connect ora disponibili per Blog e Wiki
• Affine: Google Friend Connect

36. Strumenti di Analisi

• Lista dei principali fornitori esterni di statistiche per la Piattaforma Facebook
• Nuove metriche per gli sviluppatori dopo il re design del Profilo di Facebook

37. Ottimizzazione per i Motori di Ricerca (SEO)

38. Mobile

• Facebook per iPhone e Connect per iPhone

39. Servizio Clienti

> Sondaggio: Quali sono i canali virali più odiati dagli utenti relativamente alle applicazioni ?
> Strategie consigliate per gli sviluppatori di applicazioni

Conclusione

Since the Facebook Platform launched, many top Facebook app and game developers have built their products in Flash. A few innovative Facebook Connect implementations have been built in Flash too. Tonight, Facebook and Adobe are announcing a formal partnership and the release of a new Flash client libraries to make it easier for developers to plug into the Facebook Platform inside their Flash applications.

The ActionScript3 Client Library for Facebook Platform is an open-source toolkit that allows Flash application developers to plug into all the core Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect APIs. Basically, Flash developers can now build Facebook apps just as easily as PHP developers have been able to for a long time. The release should make the biggest difference for sites considering implementing Facebook Connect through Flash.

The new libraries are going to be officially supported by Facebook and Adobe, who have been collaborating for a long time to create a comprehensive and optimized set of APIs.

“Combining social functionality with the Adobe Flash Platform gives the millions of Flash developers the tools to create Web experiences that are truly differentiated,” said Bryant Macy, Adobe’s director of platform product marketing.

“Today’s announcement is a further step toward creating experiences that are more social and visually compelling,” said Sebastien de Halleux, co-founder and COO of Playfish, one of the top game developers on Facebook.

The libraries, documentation, and tutorials can be downloaded from Adobe’s DevNet here.

Businesses and agencies interested in marketing on Facebook are always looking for ways to creatively use Facebook’s features more powerfully to reach and engage users. And as we’ve noted in the past, some marketers and developers have found creative ways of using Facebook photo tags to do so.

With nearly 15 billion photos on hand and 850 million more uploaded every month, Facebook Photos is the most popular photo sharing site on the web. Why not let users tag pages and public profiles they’re a fan of in their photos too for all their friends to see? Currently, users can only tag their friends.

Doing so would let celebrities, event promoters, and business owners benefit from one of Facebook’s most powerful viral loops. Whenever users uploaded photos of themselves with or near a product, store, or artist they were fans of, they could easily tag their photos with that public profile for their friends to see. Each public profile photo tag would generate many clicks to the public profile (i.e. “viral growth”), and in turn increase the number of fans of the page.

Of course, Facebook could give brands the choice to opt in or out, as brands would probably want to “de-tag” some of the photos they were tagged in by users. But it would be a relatively small cost compared to the benefit of all the traffic coming to their page through Facebook Photo tags.

If the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is women over 55 and the number of Facebook users over 35 doubled in the last 60 days, what’s Facebook plan for keeping older users coming back to the site? One important part of it is increasingly encouraging users to connect with their family members inside Facebook.

Recently, Facebook began promoting the creation of private groups for families through this wizard. The wizard combines 3 elements:

1. Creating a private group for your family
2. Inviting your family members on Facebook to the group
3. Inviting your family members not yet on Facebook to join Facebook and the group

Here’s how it looks:

After you create the group, it’s no different than any other private group on Facebook: users can post discussion topics, photos, videos, and links, but no one else can access it (or even know it’s there) unless they are invited. It’s a simple way for families to stay more connected on Facebook.

Of course, Facebook users interested in tracking their family members’ Facebook activity more closely can also create a home page stream filter for family members. To find out how, read our 3 tips for customizing the new Facebook home page.

Facebook users interested in more powerful tools for communicating with family members can check out We’re Related, the fourth most popular application on the Facebook Platform as well as Family Tree by Familybuilder, with nearly 2.5 million monthly active users. As large genealogy sites like Geni and Ancestry.com have shown, building out your family tree is a great scenario for viral marketing.

Today we are excited to announce the launch of Inside Facebook en Español, the world’s first blog dedicated to serving Facebook brand marketers, advertisers, and Facebook Platform application developers in Spanish.

Inside Facebook en Español – Monitoreando Facebook y su Plataforma para los Desarrolladores y los Profesionales del Mercadeo

For Spanish and Latin American brand marketers, advertisers, and application developers, Facebook and the Facebook Platform offer unprecedented opportunity to engage users in their authentic social environment online. Facebook saw tremendous growth throughout South America, Europe, and Latin American markets in North America throughout the last year. Like the original Inside Facebook, Inside Facebook en Español will track all the latest developments on Facebook and the Facebook Platform to keep you informed. And in addition to all the stories you see here on Inside Facebook, Inside Facebook en Español will provide additional coverage of Facebook developments happening in Spanish speaking markets.

For those interested in jump starting their understanding of the Facebook marketing landscape, last month we released La Biblia del Mercadeo en Facebook: La guía para mercadear su marca, compañía, producto o servicio en Facebook, the definitive Facebook marketing guide for brand marketers, guerilla marketers, and application developers. It details dozens of tactics used by leading marketers inside Facebook, and is a great way to both learn the wide variety of ways marketers can engage Facebook users, and benchmark your marketing strategies and tactics. (The English version is available here.)

We’re very excited to have Luis Alberto Del Castillo, founder of leading Latin American social media agency eSocial Marketing, on board as lead translator and writer at Inside Facebook en Español. Luis brings a wealth of experience in the Latin American social media market to the table. eSocial works with many traditional and digital agencies like Leo Burnett and DDB, and has served clients like Nestlé, Nokia, and Telmex across multiple South American and Central American markets. Luis is also the lead translator of La Biblia del Mercadeo en Facebook.

Inside Facebook en Español is very excited to work and partner with more Spanish and Latin American social media agencies and developers. If you’re working in the space, please email us at mail AT insidefacebook.com and introduce yourself!

“Saludos” to the year ahead!

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games:

• Live from GDC: Mobile Social Games – Are They As Big on Phones as They are on Social Networks?
• Live Notes from GDC: Games That Connect People
• Loudcrowd is a New Social Music Gaming Site
• The Fellowship is a New Turn-Based Facebook RPG
• Facebook Game Developers Raise $100,000 for Charity
• Ngmoco Raises $10 Million in a Second Round of Funding
• China Increases Restrictions for Foreign Online Games
• In Brief: Bebo Growing Mobile Virtual Gifts Service, MySpace Virtual Goods Launch Date Unknown
• Data from PlaySpan Consumer Insights Report on Retail Video Game Cards
• Aurora Feint: The Arena – Tips, Tricks, & Cheats
• The Attack on Glowbuleville: Whack-o-mole Comes on Facebook

In a symbolic move that sends a strong signal to the privacy community, Facebook has hired Timothy Sparapani, a senior attorney from the American Civil Liberties Union, as its new director of public policy, according to a report from the New York Times.

The ACLU is well known for its vigorous advocacy of internet privacy issues. Recently, Facebook reverted changes to its terms of service after complaints from some user and privacy advocates, and soon thereafter instituted new governing documents and processes including a user comment period and, in some cases, user voting on proposed changes to the site’s terms. (The comment period for the new documents ends tomorrow.)

At the ACLU, Sparapani worked on cases covering national ID cards, data mining, and open government issues. According to the Times, Sparapani is also well connected to those critical of Facebook:

Perhaps most important for Facebook, Mr. Sparapani has deep ties to some of its loudest critics at organizations like the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Digital Democracy, which have been raising alarms about Facebook’s increasingly precise ad-targeting technology and its controversially revised terms of service agreement.

Sparapani will be based in Washington and report to Facebook’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly when he starts next month. Kelly himself is rumored to be mulling a run for California Attorney General next year, but no official announcements have been made.