While traditional media companies initially struggled with how best to utilize Facebook, their understanding of the Facebook ecosystem has improved in reaching their audiences during the past few months.

Most recently, the Viacom-owned MTV worked with Vitrue, a social media agency, to create a new Facebook app for College Life, the network’s new reality show. In the College Life show, MTV provides students with cameras so they can chronicle their day-to-day lives without the interference of producers or directors, who can cause “reality” shows to look staged.

The College Life Facebook App is essentially a personality quiz. After installing it on their Facebook pages, users answer 10 questions about their personality. Depending on their answers, the app will classify the users into one of five categories: Total Package, Art Freak, Loner, Party Animal, or Bookworm.

To boost the reach of the application, users may share quiz results with their Facebook friends. They may also post their quiz results to their profile. Any social action they take via the app will be published to the News Feed for their friends to see.

Conclusion

Although it remains to be seen whether or not this app will be successful in bolstering MTV’s marketing efforts for College Life, it’s encouraging to see traditional media companies take new approaches to promoting their products on Facebook. The early Facebook marketing efforts by media giants were dogged by apps and pages that lacked viral or social elements. By partnering with companies like Vitrue, whose business it is to understand the Facebook ecosystem, they might enjoy better success.

MTV has been the only one showing progressive approaches to utilizing the Facebook platform. Other examples include the following:

1. Watercooler (AppData), one of the largest developers on the Platform, has been operating a network of hundreds of rich TV fan applications on Facebook since 2007.
2. Slide (AppData) has also been distributing video clips for major media companies since last year.
3. Back in January, during the inauguration of President Obama, the Time Warner-owned CNN posted two million status updates from Facebook to its site.
4. In February, 10 entertainment sites (including CBS’s The Insider) partnered with Facebook so users could post status updates to participating sites about their thoughts on the Academy Awards as they unfolded.

The Facebook Platform Team appears to have banned an unruly developer from the Platform by disabling all of their applications.

Users started noticing that “Elven Blood” and other games by Patrick Shyu (who built apps under the moniker Royal East India Trading Company) had stopped working over the past few days. The Facebook page for Elven Blood is still live, but the game itself looks to be gone for good.

There are no confirmed reasons as to why the applications have been taken down. However, other application developers have previously complained about Facebook Platform terms of service breaches, like cross-promotion of applications through notifications. Prior to the application’s removal “Elven Blood” had around 240,000 monthly active users according to AppData (see this review from Inside Social Games last fall).

Although action has been taken against applications in the past, either through temporary or permanent removal, this may be the first time that such action has been taken against a set of applications, especially ones with such large numbers of users.

The Facebook Platform Team also appears to be keen to track down any more applications by the same developer:

“If you have evidence of any apps still available on Platform that are operated by Patrick Shyu, then please let us know.

To reiterate an earlier post, there are more enforcements on Platform than you are aware of, since Facebook does not publicize enforcement actions.”

Earlier this week Facebook made a small but significant tweak to the way applications are reviewed: now, Facebook is prompting users to review applications in the uninstall flow.

As can be expected, this has led to surge of low 1-star and 2-star reviews for many prominent applications, including Great App-designee Causes. These reviews can easily be identified by the lack of text comments accompanying the rating, since there is no option to leave text comments when removing an application.

There was no official announcement from Facebook on the change. Rather, developers began to notice dips in their ratings and posted several accounts on the Developers Forums in this thread.

While there are obvious disadvantages to the system, what are the benefits? According to Facebook’s Mike Vernal:

We’re exploring a variety of ways to increase the number of reviews per application, including (but not limited to) this change.  We think that giving users the ability to review the app when they remove it will help to capture one pretty valuable type of feedback.

It is still unclear what, if any, effects the review system will have long-term for applications once the Facebook Application Verification Program gets into full swing. While there may be several iterations to the current design, the review system is large is likely to stay.

Several alternate ideas were proposed by developers in the forum thread to either replace or compliment the current implementation, including time restrained reviews, an FBML tag for a drop-in review widget, and the most popular idea (it seems) is a review widget at the bottom of each canvas page. Below is a mock-up of what this might look like:

Facebook’s Platform Team has since been quiet in the thread. However it is likely that we’ll see some iterations on this design in the near future — and we’ll keep you up to date on any updates.

In celebration of hitting the 200 million user mark today, Facebook announced that it has partnered with 16 global charities/advocacy groups to create virtual gifts promoting their causes in the Facebook Gift Shop. Facebook will donate all of the proceeds from the gifts to the groups involved.

Unlike most Facebook virtual gifts, which cost 100 credits (the equivalent of $1), the for-charity virtual gifts being promoted on the home page of the Facebook Gifts Store cost between 500 and 1000 credits ($5 to $10).

This is the first time we’ve seen Facebook experiment with promoting gifts that cost this much. Currently, the only way to obtain credits is to purchase them directly from Facebook with your credit card (though Facebook has also been testing a credit gifting system with a few users).

To check out the gifts, visit the Facebook Gift Shop. The 16 charities and advocacy participating in the campaign are:

• Lance Armstrong Foundation
• American Red Cross
• American Heart Association
• UNICEF
• EDUN for Invisible Children
• TOMS
• The Global Fund Inspired by (RED)
• ONE
• UNHCR’s GIMME SHELTER campaign
• Malaria No More
• World Wildlife Fund
• Surfrider
• Kiva
• charity: water
• Women for Women International
• United Way of America

For most users, a Facebook home page is something behold. With a rich trove of content at their fingertips — from pictures to videos to Wall posts — people connect and communicate with their friends at astonishing speeds, and with incredible ease.

But that hasn’t been the case for all users — especially those who are blind or visually impaired. From the hurdles caused by visual verification tools (like CAPTCHA) to learning what’s happening in a photo their friends share with them, many users have missed out on the joys of the Facebook experience.

Far from neglecting these users, however, Facebook has worked with the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) to make the social network more accessible to those with visual disabilities, according to AFB’s president and CEO, Carl Augusto, who published a guest blog post on Facebook this week.

Wondering how blind users get around Facebook? Augusto figures you’re not alone.

“The answer is quite simple,” he wrote in his post. “People who are blind or visually impaired use a screen magnification program to enlarge fonts in order to optimize the screen for reading, or they use a screen reading program that reads the text aloud. These are quick, efficient and helpful solutions — that is, if the websites and computer programs are properly designed.”

On Facebook, blind and visually impaired users have been challenged by barriers both technological and human. For one, like many other websites, Facebook uses CAPTCHA as a means to prevent spam. CAPTCHA is a technology that generates random letters and words that users must enter to authenticate that they intend to sign up for the site or publish certain pieces of content.

Another problem has revolved around pictures. Unless Facebook users write descriptive captions, blind users miss out on what’s being presented in the photos friends share with them.

While it’s largely up to users to deal with the caption issue, Facebook has worked on the technology side to make its site work better with screen readers and other technologies that aid blind users’ overall experience. As Augusto mentioned in his post, Facebook has set up a help page for Accessibility and Assistive Technology.

So far, Facebook has helped blind or visually impaired users in the following ways:

1. Facebook has provided an audio CAPTCHA, which allows a user with a screen reader to access the site.
2. Because screen readers don’t handle web pages with more advanced computing codes as well, Facebook has a full HTML version of the site (which is the same as its mobile site: http://m.facebook.com).
3. Facebook’s Gift Shop has a “no javascript” version.
4. Facebook enables Facebook Chat to work with screen readers (using the pop-out function).
5. Facebook has several shortcut keys to navigate to key areas of the site, such as the Home page and Profile.

Conclusion

Users without these sorts of challenges shouldn’t take the plethora of rich content they see everyday on Facebook for granted. They can help fellow Facebook users with visual disabilities by adding more descriptive captions and comments throughout the site.

For Facebook, though it appears the site has worked hard to remedy the technological hurdles for blind users, more work needs to be done. As an example, a blog post on AFB’s site noted the audio CAPTCHA doesn’t always work.

Thus far, however, it sounds like great strides have  been taken to help make Facebook more accessible for everyone. To learn more of how you might help visually impaired Facebook users, visit AFB’s Facebook Cause Site.

Inside Facebook is excited to announce the kickoff of our summer startup/developer happy hour series!

We’re teaming up with Peanut Labs to co-host their popular monthly happy hour tomorrow night in San Francisco. Ping Pong, Texas Hold’em Poker and other games will be available to complement a free-flowing bar. Come and mingle with entrepreneurs, geeks, developers, and folks from Facebook, MySpace, Google, and Bebo.

Please RSVP to the Facebook event if you plan on attending, as space is limited. Look forward to seeing you there!

Details:

• When: Thursday, April 9
• Time: 5:30pm – 9:00pm
• Where: 114 Sansome St #920, San Francisco (View Map)

The London Facebook Developer Garage is taking place tonight, Wednesday April 8th, at 45 King William Street, London. The doors open at 6pm and there’s free beer and pizza provided by Sun. Tickets cost £7.50 (£4.50 for students) and are available from EventBrite or at the door.

This month the event includes talks on social games and Facebook Connect for iPhone, as well as a panel on application monetization. Speakers include:

• Hidden Pixel (authors of PetPupz) and Kramaley Games on their experience of monetising their apps
• Clara Shih, author of new book, “The Facebook Era“
• Dan Borthwick, Head of Multi-Platform Technology at Playfish, speaking about the new Facebook Connect for iPhone
• Representatives from OfferPal Media, Social Cash and AdKnowledge on how to make money from applications

The talks will be followed by a 20 minute Q&A session, plus there’s the usual time for networking. Info can also be found on the Facebook event page.

Just seven months after hitting the 100 million user mark last August and 90 days after hitting the 150 million mark in January, Facebook confirmed today that the site has just crossed another major milestone: 200 million active users.

On average, Facebook has added nearly half a million users per day, every day, since late August. If Facebook were a country, it would now have the 5th largest population in the world (about 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States).

In addition, Facebook and Causes are running a charity virtual gifts campaign to celebrate the milestone, The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), one of the participants in the program, reports. Senior External Relations Officer Claudia Gonzalez-Gisiger says users will be able to donate $10 for a “virtual tent” or $5 for a “gift token” in the UNHCR’s “Gimme Shelter” campaign.

“Facebook now has more than 200 million active users,” said Facebook spokesperson Kathleen Loughlin. “While an important milestone for the company, we believe 200 million people, as an interconnected whole, have a greater opportunity to initiate and affect positive change,” she added.

Update: Facebook has just posted a blog post on hitting the 200 million user mark. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook will be promoting virtual gifts for charity through its Facebook for Good initiative to celebrate the milestone:

We’ve also worked with 16 charitable and advocacy organizations to create gifts that are now available in our gift shop. The organization the gift represents will receive between 90 percent to 95 percent of the cost of the gift, after administrative expenses for the transaction, so we encourage you to share your passion for a cause with your friends and in doing so, support the cause. Facebook will not keep any part of your contribution.

When Facebook launched the redesigned home page a month ago, it gave applications more prominence on the home page than they had ever had before. Now, all application content shared by users through feed forms (i.e. “posting to profile”) shows up in the home page stream, which has led to faster viral growth for many applications.

Shortly after the redesign launched, the Facebook Platform saw a resurgence of quiz applications from app developers familiar with the aggressive tactics needed to rapidly grow within the Facebook Platform. However, as expected, most of these quiz applications have begun to subside as Facebook tweaked the stream and the Platform has started moving toward a new equilibrium.

Nevertheless, while the quiz craze may be subsiding, other developers are finding that the “post to profile” + distribution through the home page stream is a powerful viral channel for their applications. Let’s take a look at the 15 applications that have grown the most in the last 7 days, according to AppData:

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		LivingSocial	14,473,138	+5,450,053	+60.4	LivingSocial
2.		Sketch Me	4,570,018	+1,760,369	+62.7	Fendoo
3.		Online Friends	1,355,623	+994,428	+275.3	Jose Dos Santos
4.		The True Age Test	4,083,198	+919,007	+29.0	Quiz Monster
5.		Super Wall	18,229,495	+853,740	+4.9	RockYou!
6.		Name Generators	1,791,660	+715,172	+66.4	Quizopolis
7.		We’re Related	15,620,712	+661,002	+4.4	FamilyLink.com
8.		What is Your Actual Age?	3,205,021	+547,297	+20.6	Quiz Monster
9.		Which TV Mom are You?	999,968	+539,520	+117.2	Michelle Buell
10.		Pet Society	9,874,757	+468,255	+5.0	Playfish
11.		Texas HoldEm Poker	11,708,301	+385,897	+3.4	Zynga
12.		Where Should You Be Living?	1,176,735	+363,583	+44.7	—
13.		Street Racing	2,698,146	+359,446	+15.4	Zynga
14.		What color are you?	1,232,658	+352,927	+40.1	—
15.		Birthday Cards	6,863,508	+335,917	+5.2	RockYou!

As you can see, LivingSocial, which grew from 2 million to 10 million monthly active users during the last week in March, has continued its climb as the fastest growing app on the Facebook Platform. Now, the app is reaching over 14 million monthly users, up 5 million in the last week.

Coming in at #2 is Sketch Me, a Facebook app which has been around for a long time that reoptimized its sharing behavior around posting to users’ profiles. Sketch Me has grown by over 60% in the last week to over 4.5 million monthly active users.

Also growing this week are many apps from top app and game developers also taking advantage of the post to profile viral channel – Pet Society from Playfish, Texas HoldEm and Street Racing from Zynga, and Super Wall and Birthday Cards from RockYou.

Many quiz apps are continuing to do well on Facebook, and it’s likely that quizzes will always do well on social networks. Any application that fits will with Facebook’s new model of explicit sharing via feed forms on the profile has room to grow.

Additional stats from Compete are in for March, and here are some interesting numbers:

Time Spent Across Facebook & Facebook Platform

Facebook is now the #1 site in the US by time spent by a large margin, with Yahoo, Google, Live.com, and eBay rounding out the top 5. Americans spent over 7 million hours on Facebook in March. However, Compete does not break out how time spent on Facebook Connect sites contributes to this number – it could make an appreciable portion of the overall total.

Reach Across Facebook & Facebook Platform

With 91 million US uniques in March, Facebook is now the 4th largest site by reach in America, trailing Google, Yahoo, and Live.com. (However, this number includes Facebook Connect uniques, as described below.) The main Facebook site saw 73.4 million US uniques in March, which is still higher than the numbers Facebook reports for itself.

Compete estimates Facebook saw about 1.5 billion US visits in March, which averages out to about 16.8 visits per user for the month. That ballpark makes sense, since Facebook says over 50% of users visit the site every day.

Reach by Facebook Connect

As Facebook rolls out Facebook Connect (the company says it’s installed by over 8,000 sites thus far), the number of unique users reached by sites which have implemented Facebook Connect continues to skyrocket. Reach grew by 71% in March to over 40 million US users.

However, just to be clear, this does not necessarily mean that a large number of those users have authenticated through Facebook Connect. Rather, this means the number of users visiting sites where Facebook Connect has been implemented is going up – a factor which is playing a role in Compete’s measurement of Facebook overall, as noted above.

Reach by Top Application Developers

Compete doesn’t clearly break out top application developers. If it were able to, I’d expect to see some of them climbing the unique visitors charts. AppData is tracking around 20 developers with 5+ million monthly users, and the largest developers are seeing nearly 40 million monthlies.

Related Resources from Inside Facebook:

• Facebook Marketing Bible – April 2009 Edition
  
• Facebook Marketing Bible – Agency & Brand Edition
• Facebook Global Monitor