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Social Gold is a simple and secure way for developers to integrate virtual currency transactions into games or applications.

Super Rewards is a leading monetization solution for applications and games running on social networks like Facebook.

Zong is a leading provider of mobile payments serving the digital content, social media, and gaming industries.

Offerpal Media is a leading managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

AdParlor is a leading advertising network designed specifically for social networking sites.

SocialMedia Networks is an advertising network for social media platforms like Facebook and OpenSocial.

Facebook’s performance advertising system is a powerful platform for a variety of businesses large and small to reach and engage their audience on Facebook in a very targeted way. However, unlike search marketing, which is keyword-targeted, Facebook Ads are people-targeted, meaning advertisers can filter their target audience according to almost any information they’ve shared on their Facebook profile. Just last month, Facebook released new radius and language targeting capabilities.

Today, Facebook says it has “tens of thousands” of advertisers on its performance ads platform. However, for marketing firms managing multiple campaigns across multiple accounts, it can become complex to manage everything with Facebook’s standard ad management interface. Google AdWords, albeit of course a much more mature platform, has a robust API that has enabled an entire ecosystem of sophisticated third party ad management tools designed to manage and optimize AdWords performance.

When will Facebook do the same thing? Such APIs would allow more marketing dollars to flow through the system, increase the quality of the ads, and make pricing more efficient. For its part, Facebook is still building out many of the key features advertisers are requesting (like radius and language targeting most recently), but won’t comment on any specific plans to open up APIs.

“We’re always looking into ways to make Facebook Ads easier.  Developing an API is one way to do that but we have no announcements to make at this time,” a Facebook spokesperson told Inside Facebook.

As it stands, search marketers tell us that they are resorting to internal naming conventions to manage their campaigns. For now, that level of campaign management will need to suffice. However, we’ll let you know whenever Facebook makes any APIs available.

Shaquille O’Neal has been making waves with his prolific use of Twitter in recent months. In fact, Shaq has Tweeted 42 times in just the last 24 hours, including posting this photo of himself in bed at 5am this morning. Today, Shaq has over 500,000 followers on Twitter, making him the 8th most followed account on Twitter, according to Twitterholic.

Why isn’t Shaq doing the same thing on Facebook? With over 56 million Americans active on Facebook each month, an active community of sports application developers, and recently redesigned Facebook public profiles, one might guess that top US athletes would be making better use of Facebook to build their brand and grow their fan base.

However, according to PageData, few American athletes (with the exception of Michael Phelps) are taking advantage of the opportunity. The most popular athlete pages on Facebook are predominantly international figures:

	Name	Fans
1.	Cristiano Ronaldo	2,806,593
2.	Michael Phelps	2,046,294
3.	Usain Bolt	1,043,925
4.	Roger Federer	908,238
5.	Zidane	843,374
6.	Lionel Messi	739,743
7.	Rafael Nadal	730,783
8.	Ricardo Kaka	643,342
9.	Arda Turan	578,134
10.	Fernando Torres – El Niño	533,439
11.	Diego Armando Maradona Best Soccer Player Ever	464,122
12.	David Beckham 23	462,213
13.	Oronzo Canà	354,163
14.	Fernando Gonzalez	317,799
15.	The Rock	302,656
16.	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	302,425
17.	Usain Bolt !!!!!!! 100m World Record Holder !!!!!!	289,040
18.	Francesco Totti	267,383
19.	Steven Gerrard: world class	258,932
20.	Oronzo Canà	249,086

Many of these pages are not even managed by the athletes themselves – but simply by passionate fans.

How has Phelps become so popular on Facebook? Quite simply, he started early and capitalized on his incredible performance in Beijing by frequently updating fans with announcements on his life and appearances.

However, recently, Phelps has not been updating his Facebook profile as frequently. Phelps has only posted one status update in the last month, and he’s now only gaining about 1,000 fans per week.

By contrast, American cyclist Lance Armstrong has recently started updating his Facebook public profile many times per day, updating fans about his recent injury and day to day life. And it’s showing in terms of growth of his fan base:

In fact, according to PageData, Armstrong now has the 5th fastest growing Facebook athlete page this week, growing by over 30% in the last 7 days alone:

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Roberto Baggio	109,766	+98,159	+845.69
2.	姚明 Yao Ming	213,518	+77,353	+56.81
3.	Cristiano Ronaldo	2,806,593	+29,357	+1.06
4.	Kenny Powers of Eastbound & Down	172,555	+16,357	+10.47
5.	Lance Armstrong	65,007	+15,223	+30.58
6.	Edin Dzeko	20,190	+13,465	+200.22
7.	Ryan Allen Sheckler	176,414	+9,951	+5.98
8.	Lionel Messi	739,743	+8,156	+1.11
9.	Zidane	843,374	+7,927	+0.95
10.	David Beckham 23	462,213	+7,828	+1.72
11.	Ricardo Kaka	643,342	+7,255	+1.14
12.	Fernando Torres – El Niño	533,439	+5,697	+1.08
13.	Roger Federer	908,238	+5,473	+0.61
14.	Arda Turan	578,134	+5,358	+0.94
15.	The Rock	302,656	+4,833	+1.62
16.	LeBron James !	33,308	+4,662	+16.27
17.	Steven Gerrard: world class	258,932	+4,176	+1.64
18.	Zlatan Ibrahimovic	302,425	+3,731	+1.25
19.	Shawn Johnson	152,627	+3,674	+2.47
20.	Rafael Nadal	730,783	+3,571	+0.49

Armstrong is showing that investing in your Facebook public profile and sharing information with fans – even just 1 or 2 status updates a day – can make a big impact in growing your fan base on Facebook. It’s an example more athletes should follow. Imagine the possibilities if more athletes followed Lance’s and Shaq’s lead.

While college athletes may want to consult their athletic department about best practices and NCAA rules, there’s no reason top pro athletes around the world shouldn’t be building their brand inside Facebook.

Just under a month after Oodle launched “Facebook Marketplace 2.0,” Facebook is kicking in some special marketing treatment to boost traffic to the app. Over the last couple of days, many users have noticed that the Marketplace application bookmark has appeared on their menu bar, despite having not placed it there themselves.

Today, Facebook confirmed that it had “restored” the Marketplace bookmark for users “who either previously used the original application or had a bookmark to it.” Facebook wouldn’t say exactly how many users that was, but we would estimate it in the low to mid tens of millions.

While Facebook and Oodle have not disclosed the terms of the deal that brought Marketplace to Oodle, signs point to a revenue sharing agreement as the Marketplace service grows. Currently, the Marketplace app has about 2.2 million monthly active users.

This is the first time we’ve seen special treatment for partner applications in a while. Last year, Facebook gave prominent home page promotional placement and sent Facebook messages to many users regarding the CBS Sports college basketball bracket application. However, there was no special promotion for the CBS Sports bracket game this year.

It’s April Fools Day, and Facebook users and app developers alike are coming up with creative ways to play practical jokes on Facebook.

One of the most common “roommate” tactics we’ve seen is that of friends posting content without their roommates’ knowledge, only to have it be discovered hours later (or when they get a flood of calls from confused friends and relatives). However, this approach can also be dangerous (and technically against the TOS). Of the variety we’ve seen today, here’s a relatively harmless example of the “hacked status update” with accompanying email blast:

On the app developer side, the most creative marketing prank we’ve seen today comes from We’re Related, who sent notifications to 19 million members this morning telling them that Barack Obama has confirmed them as his “fourth cousin once removed”:

Barack Obama (Washington, DC) has confirmed you as his fourth cousin once removed on We’re Related.

Follow this link to see how you are related:
http://apps.facebook.com/we_r_related/?page=profile&fid=0U812&ref=fl.30

We’re Related Team

Jim Ericson of FamilyLink.com, the makers of We’re Related, says that 3 million people have visited the app today, and that, “Reactions have been extremely positive (94%), but have ranged from warnings about fraud/viruses to sheer delight, with hundreds of thousands of people falling for the joke.”

Inside Social Games has just released its list of top 25 Facebook games for April 2009, and the battle is heating up between Zynga (AppData) and Playfish (AppData) for the top spots in the Facebook gaming charts.

Although Zynga claims 38 million monthly active users to Playfish’s 27 million overall, together the companies account for 11 of the top 20 titles on Facebook (by total reach) today. In addition, both companies are allegedly generating very healthy revenues, primarily through in game transactions.

March was a mixed month for many of the top game developers on Facebook…

Read More at Inside Social Games >>

There’s been a lot of discussion lately on Facebook’s increasing infrastructure costs due to its rapidly growing global audience. While Facebook’s growth means unprecedented opportunities for global advertisers and online marketers, it also means Facebook will need to deliver unprecedented amounts of data around the world. Where is Facebook growing, and what will that mean both for its capital expenditures and opportunities for marketers and developers?

Purchase this report The Facebook Global Monitor – Current Edition Buy PDF: $99 USD OR Buy 6 Month Subscription: $395 USD

Today, Inside Facebook released the April 2009 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor – tracking Facebook’s growth in global markets. The Facebook Global Monitor tracks data from Facebook on the company’s international growth to enable marketers, developers, and analysts to spot trends and opportunities. A few highlights from the April report’s findings:

• Facebook crossed the 9 million active user mark in France during the last month, showing 5% growth in the last 30 days. Facebook’s audience in France is growing more than twice as fast as the rest of Europe, which itself still grew by over 34% in the last quarter.
• For the first time, Facebook crossed 1 million active users in Israel. Nearly 15% of the country’s population has been active on Facebook in the last 30 days, and we expect growth to continue throughout the rest of the year.
• Facebook has been quietly growing strongly in Mexico throughout the first quarter of 2009. Facebook’s monthly Mexican audience just crossed 2 million users for the first time ever, and has been growing by about 15% per month in each month this year.

The Facebook Global Monitor provides alerts on breakout and cooling markets, as well as our latest in-house projections on Facebook’s growth in each country 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months into the future. See the full table of contents below for details.

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $99 per issue, or $395 for a six month subscription. Future monthly updates will be delivered directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic. (Custom reports are also available.) You can reach us at mail AT insidefacebook DOT com with questions at any time.

We believe big opportunities exist for developers and marketers to reach and engage the Facebook audience in these rapidly emerging and expanding markets. Cheers to continued growth in 2009!

The Facebook Global Monitor

Tracking Facebook in Global Markets

April 2009

Contents

I. Introduction: The Year That Facebook Went Global

II. Global Market Report

1. Audience Size Today

2. Fastest Growing Audience

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

3. Market Penetration Today

4. Largest Market Penetration Increases

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

III. Emerging Market Analysis

1. Growth Projections

• Next 30 days
• Next 90 days
• Next 12 months

2. Technical Alerts

• Breakout Markets: Last 90 Days
• Cooling Markets: Last 90 Days

IV. Regional Summaries

1. Africa
2. Asia / Pacific
3. Europe
4. North America
5. South America

V. Country Updates

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Austria
4. Bahamas
5. Bahrain
6. Bangladesh
7. Belgium
8. Bolivia
9. Bosnia & Herzegovina
10. Brazil
11. Bulgaria
12. Canada
13. Chile
14. China
15. Colombia
16. Costa Rica
17. Croatia
18. Cyprus
19. Czech Republic
20. Denmark
21. Dominican Republic
22. Ecuador
23. Egypt
24. El Salvador
25. Finland
26. France
27. Germany
28. Ghana
29. Greece
30. Guatemala
31. Honduras
32. Hong Kong
33. Hungary
34. Iceland
35. India
36. Indonesia
37. Ireland
38. Israel
39. Italy
40. Jamaica
41. Japan
42. Jordan
43. Kenya
44. Kuwait
45. Lebanon
46. Lithuania
47. Luxembourg
48. Macedonia
49. Malaysia
50. Maldives
51. Malta
52. Mauritius
53. Mexico
54. Morocco
55. Netherlands
56. New Zealand
57. Nicaragua
58. Nigeria
59. Norway
60. Oman
61. Pakistan
62. Palestine
63. Panama
64. Paraguay
65. Peru
66. Philippines
67. Poland
68. Portugal
69. Puerto Rico
70. Qatar
71. Romania
72. Russia
73. Saudi Arabia
74. Serbia
75. Singapore
76. Slovakia
77. Slovenia

Purchase this report The Facebook Global Monitor – Current Edition Buy PDF: $99 USD OR Buy 6 Month Subscription: $395 USD

78. South Africa
79. South Korea
80. Spain
81. Sri Lanka
82. Sweden
83. Switzerland
84. Taiwan
85. Thailand
86. Trinidad and Tobago
87. Tunisia
88. Turkey
89. Ukraine
90. United Arab Emirates
91. United Kingdom
92. United States
93. Uruguay
94. Venezuela
95. Vietnam

Footnotes & Methodology