Newsweek will host a live Q&A with Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner on Facebook this afternoon. Jon Meacham will be conducting the interview from the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Monday at 1 p.m. EST, and Newsweek will be driving viewers to its Facebook page to discuss the interview and post updates in real time.

While this interview is a wonderful opportunity for anyone to gain some insight on how one of the most influential people in the country is tackling the economic problems of the day, it does appeal more to slightly different demographic than your “traditional” Facebook user. Many of the 800-plus Facebook users that have confirmed their attendance seem to be among 25-and-older crowd, and they’ve already posted questions and left remarks.

The fact that Newsweek is promoting this interview through Facebook does make a strong statement on the emerging shift in how publishers and news organizations are using Pages. Many current and potential political figures are putting a lot of time and effort into utilizing Facebook to reach voters and constituents. It’s a powerful tool to post public appearances, push political agendas, and to keep his or her name in people’s minds on a regular basis.

Secretary Geithner’s interview on Facebook is also an attempt to reach out to a younger demographic, something the Obama administration has made obvious attempts to do — President Obama currently has the most popular page on Facebook and ranks fifth among the most-followed Twitter users. As more and more people of all ages and walks of life turn to social media sites for news and information, it’s going to become more of a necessity for public officials to take an active role in forums like Facebook where there’s an opportunity for more ineraction between the people and the politicians.

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

Monday, May 11

• Cooking Meets The Sims In Playfish’s Restaurant City on Facebook
• Social Gaming Summit 2009 Coming June 23rd in San Francisco

Tuesday, May 12

• Viximo Raises $5M in Funding and Hires New CEO
• Android Grows, But Lags Behind iPhone
• Zynga’s Virtual World YoVille Generating Real Donations

Wednesday, May 13

• KP Startup Booyah Building “Cause-Oriented” Social Games for the iPhone
• Chain RXN is a Soothingly Simple Facebook Game That’s Growing Fast

Thursday, May 14

• Catch Me If You Can is a Great Social Strategy Game Out of Korea
• RockYou Pets Becomes First hi5 App to Launch with Virtual Currency Integration

Friday, May 15

• Spotmania – Can You Spot the Difference?

Facebook is close to finalizing a $150 million round of financing which it intends to primarily use to buy back stock from current employees, VentureBeat reports.

According to the report, Facebook will repurchase 15 million shares of stock at $10 each, which is around recent valuations we’ve heard for employee stock in secondary markets and should provide most early employees a substantial return. Accel, Greylock, Founders Fund, and “Asian investors” are said to be participating.

Last month, several rumors circulated around Facebook’s valuation and fundraising efforts, saying that Facebook was recently offered term sheets at $2 billion and $4 billion by private equity shops Providence Equity Partners, General Atlantic, and others. Most of those rumors focus on Facebook’s burn rate and need to raise more capital to pay for servers.

However, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told BusinessWeek in an interview last month that the company was “profitable [and] on a clear path to being cash-flow positive,” and in a leaked letter to company employees a couple months ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company expects revenue growth of 70% in 2009 from a reported $270-$280 million in 2008.

However, Facebook has not officially announced any details on its internal valuation since Microsoft’s $240 million strategic investment in 2007 that valued the company at a very high $15 billion. We’ll continue tracking Facebook’s fundraising efforts as it continues to grow this year.

Since its launch one year ago, Facebook Chat has become a vital tool for keeping users on the site for longer periods of time, and Facebook has continued to enhance the service. Just last week, Facebook added Friend List support for Chat, letting users choose who they want to be visible to while online. Now, it appears Facebook may be preparing to add video chat soon as well.

According to a JavaScript file live on Facebook CDN servers, it appears Facebook could be preparing a robust video chat service inside Facebook. The function names all clearly describe a video chat service, and the code prints messages like “Incoming call,” “Waiting for your friend,” and “Video call canceled” to users.

The potential launch of a video chat service reflects Facebook’s desire to expand the communication applications it operates on top of its social graph. Many Facebook applications offer video chat, but operating such a service directly is in line with Facebook’s strategy to date of building out communication utilities directly, and is in line with user expectations for chat.

Such a move could also threaten other popular video chat services from Skype, Google, and others, as many users will prefer to use the tool that’s most integrated with their routine ways of communicating with friends. However, it’s also not cheap to build or operate.

In the end, video chat is a natural extension of Facebook’s synchronous communication tools that should continue to increase session length. And as more Facebook users are on the site synchronously, new product doors are opened – for Facebook, and for app developers.

Update: Facebook says the company has no plans to launch the feature for now. “We had been testing a video chat feature, but currently have no plans to launch it to users,” Facebook says.

As Facebook plans to launch early tests of its virtual currency, Facebook credits, with Platform application developers in the next few weeks, developers and virtual currency and payment providers alike are considering how Facebook’s move to participate more directly in Platform monetization efforts will affect the Platform economy.

Yesterday, Jambool’s Vikas Gupta shared his thoughts on the impact of Facebook credits on Platform payments. Today, we’ve asked several more leading companies in the space to share their thoughts, included below.

It’s still early in the process, and Facebook hasn’t given any concrete word on its timeline for the alpha tests, other than to say they will start them in the next few weeks. Given the pace of in-house monetization-related developments so far, it wouldn’t be surprising to see these tests take a long time to develop as Facebook solidifies its own plans and roadmap.

“We think this is a good thing for the space. Even though there are plenty of users already taking part in virtual economies on Facebook, MySpace and hundreds of standalone web sites and games, there is also a certain percentage who are uncomfortable with sharing personal or payment data with third-party apps. They do tend to trust Facebook, however, so a universal virtual currency would help overcome this barrier. It should also help speed the growth and availability of new virtual goods and premium digital assets.”

- Matt McAllister, Offerpal Media

“We think it’s an exciting development for publishers, and should wind up an a reduction in the number of barriers/steps needed to make payments. This also galvanizes the whole micropayments model as the Facebook brand stands behind it. We are optimistic that it will bring in more developers to this eco-system which is a good thing for both us and Facebook.”

- Jesse Manuel, Super Rewards

“This is a dangerous development for all payment providers who derive most of their business from the facebook platform such as Social Gold, Spare Change etc. Mobile, Survey and Offer providers are less affected at this point. However this is good for the ecosystem – it will end up growing the overall market, and increasing the trust levels between users and applications. Facebook should end up making tens of millions in transaction fees in their first year after rollout.”

- Ali Moiz, Peanut Labs Media

“Obviously Facebook is in an advantageous position. But, At the end of the day, Facebook is another competitor – a big competitor, but that doesn’t mean other virtual currency or offer payment platforms won’t exist. We’re not anxious or excited, but it’s something to keep eye on. It’s going to be interesting to see how Facebook’s virtual currency test rolls out, and if the company decides to go with a full-fledged offer wall, what kind of offers it would have. With all the volume of user information it has, Facebook could do some really interesting stuff. For example, if someone wrote a Wall post about a Britney Spears concert they want to attend, Facebook might be able to use that info within an application to offer you a 10 percent discount to the upcoming Britney Spears concert.”

- Hussein Fazal, AdParlor

“We think it will be good for the market as a whole. What it will do is increase user demand. We see ourselves as an enabler of transactions. We’re a payment network, so we’re an ideal solution in the US and other countries for virtual currency and micropayments. We’re excited about what’s happening in the social networking and gaming space.”

- Paul McGuire, Paymo

While we recently examined early examples of retailers implementing Facebook Connect, leaders in the retail industry have also been experimenting with how best to utilize the Facebook Platform by building profile pages and accompanying applications. As a result, many marketers in the industry should pay close attention to the recent efforts of one heavyweight: Target. The $64 billion superstore launched an application on its Facebook profile that allows users to vote on a list of charities to whom Target should donate money.

The application supports the “Bullseye Gives” campaign (named after Target’s logo), and it falls in line with the company’s philanthropic efforts. In the announcement, Target noted that it donates five percent of its income a year “to support education, social services, the arts, and volunteerism,” which works out to more than $3 million a week. With the Facebook app, users may choose from the following charities:

1. American Red Cross
2. Breast Cancer Research Foundation
3. Feeding America
4. HandsOn Network/Points of Light Institute
5. Kids In Need Foundation
6. Operation Gratitude
7. Parent Teacher Association
8. National Park Foundation
9. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital®
10. The Salvation Army

Before users submit a vote, they can click on the charities’ Facebook profiles to help make their decision. Once users vote, they have the option to publish that action back to their Facebook profile.

After voting, the app displays the results of how each charity is fairing. The voting will end on May 25, 2009, and $3 million will be distributed to the charities as relative to what percentage of the vote they capture.

The application links to Target’s community outreach site, which gives users information about how they can get involved with charities in their local communities by volunteering, allowing Facebook voters “to find local causes that matter to them most.”

Conclusion

To date, the application has garnered more than 75,000 votes. Considering the efforts of retailers to gain Facebook traction remains in a nascent stage, this must be looked upon as a successful campaign. That said, Target shouldn’t stop with this application. It should seek to use Facebook Connect to allow customers to use their Facebook identity to interact with products and share their thoughts on those products with friends, as we saw with Jansport and other retailers last month.

Over 50,000 applications have been added to the Facebook application directory since it first launched two years ago, and Facebook says it’s about to take some steps to clean it up and make it easier to find out what apps friends are using. In addition, Facebook says it will launch redesigned application profile pages that work like regular Facebook public profile pages at the same time, sometime in the “coming weeks.”

Currently, the app directory is not easily discoverable by users and is a light source of new users for most developers. It lets users view apps according to which ones friends have (“Apps You May Like”), most active, and newest. In addition, apps can be filtered by category, though the distribution between those categories is so uneven that they don’t end up being that useful.

Facebook says the new version will have 3 main features:

1. App Directory Getting a Stream

First, the app directory home page will become a News Feed of stories just from applications. It’s another step by Facebook to encourage sharing amongst applications, and will help users discover which apps their friends are using to actively share content on their profile.

2. App About Pages Getting Streams

Editor’s Note: Earlier this week, Facebook confirmed to Inside Facebook that it is planning to launch an alpha test of its virtual currency, Facebook credits, with Platform application developers in the next few weeks. Under the test, application developers will be able to accept Facebook credits as payment for in-app features and items, and be reimbursed by Facebook for the credits spent inside their applications. Obviously, news of a universal Facebook currency has major implications for application developers, Platform payment companies, and the development of the Facebook Platform economy overall.

This is a guest post by Vikas Gupta. Gupta is CEO of Jambool, the developer of SocialGold, a virtual currency and payment platform for social applications.

Facebook Credits will be a meaningful complement to, but not a replacement for, existing payment methods and virtual currencies on the Facebook platform.  It simply creates a new channel for developers on the Facebook platform to grow their revenue. Developers who already rely on virtual currencies for game play, or use subscriptions or other means to monetize, will continue to do so;  Facebook Credits will become yet another option for the user to transact.

Payments is a pain point for most developers, who’d rather focus on the game experience and growing an audience than processing credit cards or managing a currency.  When considering a new payment method or virtual currency, these developers tend to focus on ease of integration and conversion.  Basically, if it’s easy not only for the developer to integrate but also for the end user to transact, then the conversion will justify its inclusion in the game.

People currently can bring money into the application environment from a variety of different channels, and they can spend it in a variety of different ways within the applications themselves. The most common incoming channels today are pre-paid systems, direct in-game payments, subscriptions and lead-gen offers. Facebook Credits can offer an alternative pre-paid system, and will compete with other similar network wide pre-paid payment methods.

However, where people spend money to buy currency directly within the application, or pay for subscriptions that get billed periodically, Facebook Credits will provide negligible value to users and developers. At Social Gold, we’ve found that direct, in-game payments drive much higher conversion than any other payment method, due in part to a seamless transaction flow that does not disrupt game play, so requiring an intermediate step (i.e., purchase Facebook Credits at the Facebook Gift Store) will be much less effective.

Ultimately, the introduction of Facebook Credits will help increase the overall monetization on the Facebook platform, because it will associate virtual goods and virtual currencies with a trusted brand for those users who might’ve been apprehensive about transacting in the past with less known and less trusted applications; it basically will help more users get accustomed to the concept of virtual goods and currencies. This can only bode well for the overall ecosystem, and I’d even venture to say that it will help drive the growth in user spending on applications via payment methods other than Facebook Credits.

In many ways, the release of Facebook Credits validates models like ours, because we already let users transact across many popular Facebook applications, using a Social Gold wallet that is associated with their Facebook ID. On that front, we see our offering as very complementary to Facebook Credits.

With over 35,000 fans, Stanford University’s Facebook Page ranks among the top five most popular Facebook public profiles owned by a US academic institution.

According to PageData, Stanford shares a spot in the top five with the University of Kansas, Ohio State University, Texas A&M, and Indiana University. However, even the most popular university page, the University of Kansas, only has about 40,000 fans – much lower than celebrity numbers we’ve seen. This number makes sense though: colleges and universities are more likely to draw a small, tight-knit group of fans – mainly comprised of students, alumni, staff, and faculty.

How has Stanford grown its audience? Take a look at Stanford’s new fans per day over the past month:

While some spikes may not be within the Page administrators’ control, other spikes are correlated with high-quality Wall posts that are engaging fans. When fans comment or like photos, these stories are featured in the Highlights column to the right of the homepage, encouraging users who aren’t currently fans to become one. For example, the spike around May 8 comes right after a Wall post announcing this month’s Open Office Hours, featuring Psychology professor Philip Zimbardo – a popular story with a lot of viral potential. (Stanford’s Open Office Hours initiative is further explained below.)

Inside Facebook spoke with Ian Hsu, Director of Internet Media Outreach at Stanford University, to find out how Stanford is leveraging its Facebook Page to communicate with the university community.

Before the launch of redesigned Facebook Pages earlier this year, Facebook invited Stanford to test out enhanced Pages as an alpha partner. During this time, the university used each Wall post as a small experiment to gather data (e.g., number of comments, likes, and fans removed) on what types of media forms and topics resonated with fans – and the finding was that fans responded to people-centered content.

With this information, Stanford is the first among universities to build its Page around interaction – not with the university itself, but with the people within it. To create this intimacy, Stanford began a monthly Open Office Hours series that runs exclusively through its Facebook Page. Each office hours begins with a five minute video in which the speaker introduces his/her research and passions. Fans then ask questions via comments, which are answered in two subsequent follow-up videos.

The intersection of academic institutions and social networking sites such as Facebook enables dynamic two-way conversations to take place in a one-to-many virtual format. And this high-reach method of spreading information extends beyond intellectual discourse.

As Hsu shared, “We’re incorporating Facebook (and Twitter) into our emergency communications plans. In the event of an earthquake or other emergency, we’ll be using Facebook as a key part of our communications mix. It may be the case that someday, a communication through the Stanford Facebook Page could help save someone’s life. In order for this to be effective, it’s essential for us to earn a trusted place in our Fans’ News Feeds today and over time.”

CourseFeed, an education application developed by ClassTop, Inc. and former fbFund recipient, is quickly approaching 1 million monthly active users (MAU). The app now has 997,712 MAU and has been experiencing serious user growth – earlier this month, it only had around 100,000 MAU, according to AppData.

What is CourseFeed? The app has two main functions: finding your classmates and organizing school courses. Users of the application can group their friends by context (elementary, middle school, high school, college, or graduate school) and view their latest status updates from within the app. In addition, users can sync their classes with the app to get course updates and watch and discuss video lectures on topics ranging from entrepreneurship to robotics.

An Introduction to Robotics lecture at Stanford University, one of the many lectures available on CourseFeed

CourseFeed’s jump in user acqusition comes at an interesting time, as talk went on about CourseFeed possibly being the first verified application to go live. In reality, Facebook hasn’t formally announced the first batch of applications to go live under its Application Verification Program. The verification badge (a trademark of a verified app) that users were seeing on CourseFeed’s page earlier this week was due to pre-announcement testing, Facebook clarified.

The program, announced at last year’s f8 developer conference in July and launched in November, is designed to distinguish applications that meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness from the sea of other apps on the Facebook Platform. If an application passes the program’s evaluation process, it’s given several benefits, including “increased visibility” and a badge that’s placed on the app’s About Me page. Chosen applications are re-evaluated every year.

As the Application Verification Program rolls out, following the first set of verified applications will be one way to assess how much value the program is bringing to participants. If verified apps are indeed being noticed more because of the program, then the $375 dollar application fee may end up being a small price to pay.