Ever since Facebook launched Facebook Chat one year ago, grouping contacts inside the Facebook Chat window has been a top user request. This afternoon, Facebook just turned on grouping friends by Friend Lists in Facebook Chat – and also started allowing users to turn their visibility on and off per Friend List. Here’s how it looks:

After choosing which Friend Lists to show in the chat window, friends included in selected lists show up at the top of the list. Other friends remain in the chat window below selected Friend Lists in a group called “Other Friends.”

However, the most interesting new feature is the ability to turn your visibility on and off for individual friend lists. Say, for example, you want to be available to work friends during the day but not after certain hours, or vice versa – now you can. The “slider” next to each friend list name lets you make yourself visible or invisible to that particular friend list.

Originally used for privacy settings, the concept of Friend Lists is becoming much more thoroughly used throughout Facebook these days. With the launch of the new home page a few weeks ago, Facebook promoted Friend List creation to the home page. They can also be used to send Facebook Messages to entire groups of Facebook friends at a time.

As social network application platforms mature, public application engagement data is vital for the overall health of the developer ecosystem and growth of the platform economy.

In the beginning of the Facebook Platform, Facebook published the total number of users that had engaged with each application. However, the company quickly realized that simply providing a total user number was a “rather crude metric,” and switched to providing daily (and then monthly) active user numbers instead. Why?

Facebook wanted to encourage the developer community to optimize for sustained engagement, not one-time use. By switching public metrics from all-time user counts to recent engagement, Facebook gave the developer community a kernel of valuable data which it could use as a proxy for success on the platform in a rapidly changing environment. That data has in turn bred higher quality and more engaging applications on Facebook – not to mention a significantly larger overall platform economy – than would have developed in the absence of these fundamental engagement numbers.

By contrast, however, MySpace (and other social networks) have decided not to share even this small amount of engagement data publicly. MySpace, in fact, still publishes only total user numbers. (MySpace also allows you to sort applications by “Recently Popular,” but that view is not very useful or clear – many of the apps at the top of the list still only have a couple hundred users.)

Why doesn’t MySpace make any engagement data public? It’s not clear – there has been no shortage of big internal changes at MySpace in recent months – but one possible reason is fear of embarrassment that the numbers are lower than Facebook’s, and thus developers might lose interest.

The ironically unfortunate consequence of not sharing that data, however, is that the developer community is blinded from knowing what is really working well on the MySpace Platform, and thus unable to iterate and improve the quality of MySpace applications very quickly at all. While some developers are having incredible success, it’s hard to know without going to the right geek events in San Francisco.

MySpace need not fear that developers are going to abandon ship – enough people know that MySpace app and game developers are making money. But instead of being able to optimize for what’s worked well since the latest changes to MySpace viral channels a couple weeks ago, developers are left guessing. There’s simply no easy way for developers to know what’s going on.

If I were running a social network platform, I would publish more data than either Facebook or MySpace share now. Sure, it could create more of a headache as spammers rush to copy the latest overly aggressive viral design. But at the end of the day, it’s a competitive advantage over other platforms. Would you rather have the top developers spending their day figuring out how to optimize for successful trends on your platform, or on someone else’s?

If developers don’t know who to look up to, they’ll inevitably keep running in circles.

Simultaneous posting to multiple Facebook pages is now possible, thanks to a new application introduced by HelloTxt. Administrators can add messages, photos or video links to any or all of their pages from HelloTxt’s interface, with the ability to use tagging to filter what goes where.

The tagging feature is an interesting tool that allows users to set certain keywords for individual or groups of pages across a number of social networks. Tag your social pages as “personal”, and any updates you prepend with #personal with only show up on those walls. This could become especially useful for administrators working across a number of pages for a business, or for anyone that handles postings for clients. The service sets up easily for Facebook — just add an application and you’ll be able to link to all of your pages and to set preferences and begin updating.

Also announced was a similar service from Ping.fm. The setup is slightly more complicated, and you don’t get the same sort of tagging feature found on HelloTxt, but you will be able to post to any number of Facebook pages from the Ping.fm control panel. The biggest difference is the tagging feature, which allows you to insert Twitter-like hashtags into posts or take advantage of sites that support mood tagging.

Currently, HelloTxt seems to have a better grasp on what professional posters need from a service like this. What’s clear is that it is a helpful service, so expect to see more and better refined versions coming from these two companies and their competitors.

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

Monday, May 4

• The Top 25 Facebook Games for May, 2009
• The Top 25 MySpace Games for May, 2009
• World of Warcraft Coming to the iPhone?

Tuesday, May 5

• Trip Hawkins Says the Way to Monetize iPhone Games is Virtual Goods
• Hi5 Shifts Gears: The Change from Social Network to Social Entertainment
• OutSpark Building MMO Service Platform

Wednesday, May 6

• UniWar is an Online Multiplayer Strategy Game for the iPhone
• Nonoba’s GameRise Platform Signs 100 Developers

Thursday, May 7

• 2008 Funding for Games & Virtual Worlds Totals Just Under $1 Billion
• Apple Facing Lawsuit Threats from iPhone Game & App Developers

Friday, May 8

• Games.com Brings Roulette to Facebook

To celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, Facebook announced on Friday that users will soon be able to list their family members on their profile. In the new “Family Members” section, users can add the names of their parents, siblings, and children, just as they’ve always been able to with significant others.

With the number of Facebook users over 35 (and in particular women over 55) is growing rapidly, the option of linking family members on your profile makes sense. Whether or not users will choose to do so will be an indication of how ready they are to more openly share with family – the social awkwardness factor.

We’ve seen the beginnings of connecting with family on Facebook through popular applications such as We’re Related (by FamilyLink.com, with 14 million monthly active users), Family Tree (Familybuilder.com, 3.6 MAU), and Geni (Geni, Inc., 75,600 MAU).

Combined, these apps allow you to find and stay in touch with family, build a family tree, scrapbook family events, and remember family members who have passed away. With Facebook’s new family section, basic features such as Family Status and Family News Feed may no longer be as useful. On the other hand, the introduction of family information in the profile may generate greater demand for family-related apps, as families “become” families online.

A few weeks ago, Facebook started publicly testing a gifting program around its virtual currency, “Facebook credits”. In the test, users were able to give each other Facebook credits as public reward for content they posted to their stream – a kind of “Super” Like. Now, Facebook has expanded its virtual currency gifting experiment to branded virtual gifts in a test that’s currently running with Mars.

Here’s how it works: When fans go to a Facebook Page of a Mars candy bar like Snickers, Twix, or Milky Way, Facebook has installed a special version of the Gifts application on the Gifts tab. In this version, the branded virtual gifts (in this case, a virtual candy bar) also come bundled with 10 Facebook credits.

In other words, Facebook is enhancing the virtual gift with a virtual gift certificate (worth about one tenth of a standard Facebook Gift) to the Facebook Gifts store.

By this point, it’s clear that Facebook has broader ambitions for its virtual currency than simply directly selling items from the Facebook Gifts store. The company is hoping to broaden the utility of its currency by more deeply integrating it into the social actions already happening on the site. For example, rewarding a status update or interesting photo.

For advertisers, this means Facebook is working hard at trying new things to increase the volume of branded virtual gifts sent through the Facebook system. Branded virtual gifts are one of the more promising new forms of online advertising in social environments, because studies show they’re often a form of advertising that people actually like to receive.

Whether or not Facebook integrates its virtual currency with applications on the Facebook Platform, Facebook credits are quickly becoming an increasingly visible part of Facebook’s monetization strategy. Branded virtual gifts are likely to become  a mainstay part of its direct sales efforts, but there’s no reason why Facebook couldn’t expand the program to more advertisers in the future.

This particular campaign is part of the “Mars Real Chocolate Relief Act” and Free Chocolate Fridays: every Friday from now until September, Mars will be mailing out 250,000 coupons that you can redeem for full-size packages of chocolate that you can get from its website Realchocolate.com.

This is a guest post by Kunal Kripalani, who most recently led marketing strategy for Australia’s biggest online bookstore, Fishpond. Kripalani has been experimenting with Facebook Ads as a channel for affiliate e-commerce sales, so we asked him to share his tips here.

My recent Facebook Social Ads trials were aimed at driving traffic to retail websites in order to earn affiliate commissions.  Here is what I did and what I learned.

Bidding

Place very low bids.  Adhering to Facebook’s recommended bids will drive you to complain about how ads on social networking sites do not work. My objective was to drive lots of low cost but well qualified clicks to high value products on retail websites, and then benefit from sales that occur over the next 30 days (affiliate cookies typically last 30 days).

Headlines

Like with any ads, experimentation with different headlines and ad copy is critical. Once established, the optimized copy can deliver consistent returns.

• Well targeted headlines that were very specific worked best. For example, “Buy Books” was not as good as “Vampire Lover?” when talking to an audience of female Edward Cullen fans.
• Getting clicks is easy using truisms in your headlines and Facebook’s interest based targeting system facilitates this well. For example, a female between 18 and 25 who has an interest in Vampires and Edward Cullen is likely to be responsive to the headline:  “Vampire Lover?”  And a 27 year old male in San Francisco is likely to take notice of the headline:  “27 and in SF?”

Ad Copy

With ad copy, I found two styles work well:.

1. A compelling message that is conversational in style.  For example, positive customer reviews like: “I love this set of Vampire tales! It has everything you want Mystery,Fantasy and of course romance with juicy bits! Only $88.99.”
2. Other good ad-copy requires a compelling, yet specific value proposition that sounds believable.  For example “Today Only” was not as good as “Until sold out” because people hear the phrases like  “Today Only” and “One Day Only” far too frequently.

Coupon codes also drove good clickthrough rates and allowed me to easily track which specific combination of headline and ad-copy worked best.  Interestingly, resulting conversions where very limited.

Product Strategy

Promote specific, high value items to a captive audience (people who want what you are selling) who are more than likely to become customers. This increases the probability of your ROI being positive.

Targeting

Improve your targeting by looking at which specific page or application on Facebook each of your clickthroughs come from.  I ran identical Google Ads for comparison and my sales reports told me exactly what search terms people are using to trigger my ads to show.  I can then add these keywords to my Facebook targeting.

Limitations of the Facebook Social Ads Platform

Currently the Facebook social ad campaign manager is somewhat limited compared to AdWords. For example, if you want to change your bid, you need to make the change for each ad manually.  There is no global bid manager, although i’m hopeful we will see this option appear in the future, together with email reports. In addition:

• A recent change has meant that the % symbol is no longer allowed in ad-copy, which constrains the type of value proposition you can convey to your audience.
• I’ve tracked a number of clicks from intern.facebook.com.  I was suspicious that I was being charged for these clicks, but a count of my clicks vs. charges revealed that this was not the case.

Concluding Observations and Comments

I was using the Amazon Associates Program until they announced they will no longer pay referral fees on paid-search-derived traffic. In any case, the system seems to work better outside of the USA.

Finally, Subway has made clever use of Facebook, displaying ads with headlines like: “It’s time for Lunch” and “Hungry?” between around 11am to 2pm and encouraging you to order online. I think they are certainly doing something right.

It seems that the programmers at Facebook have embedded a small Easter egg into the site. (An Easter egg is a secret embedded by the developers.) To find it:

1. Log in and go to the homepage (although many other pages seem to work this one’s certain)
2. On the keyboard press: up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-(enter)
3. Click anywhere on the page, and you should see a lens-flare effect

The effect works in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome but doesn’t appear to be supported by Safari. Once the effect’s working, try typing into a comment box to get a more persistant flare.

Is this just one of many yet to be discovered?

Appssavvy, a venture-funded company managing direct sales for several Facebook application developers, has announced several new partnerships with some of the more recognizable names on the Facebook Platform.

The company says that it has reached exclusive agreements to represent Circle of Moms, LivingSocial, Texas HoldEm Poker by Zynga, and Friends For Sale, Rock Legends, and Happy Hour by Serious Business.

Appssavvy’s model is to connect brands and agencies with social applications through custom integrated sponsorships. Unlike other large Facebook shops like Slide, RockYou, iLike, Flixster, and Watercooler, most of their clients don’t have sales teams pitching to brands directly. The company has focused many of their efforts on vertical applications that connect well with advertisers.

“Through appssavvy’s direct sales team we’re taking a step forward to achieve our business goals, while focusing on delivering the best social gaming experiences,” Serious Business’s Charles Hudson said in the announcement.

In March, Inside Facebook discussed the official Facebook application that would be coming soon for Windows Mobile 6.5 users, and this afternoon, Microsoft announced the long-awaited release of Facebook for Windows Mobile. Previously, Windows Mobile users accessed Facebook via a basic mobile interface or the iPhone’s web version through Opera Mobile. But now, they can download their own Facebook app here.

Like the other Facebook applications out there for mobile phones, Microsoft’s newly released Facebook application allows users to update the News Feed with status and photo updates, receive Notifications and Requests, and access their own personal profile pages. A noteworthy feature is the phone book, which takes the phone numbers listed on your friends’ profiles and consolidates them: you can directly call, text, or Facebook message these contacts.

As you can tell from the image above, the Windows Mobile Facebook application doesn’t look the usual Facebook interface. Compare this to the iPhone Facebook app, which retains the same look and feel of the Facebook site.

Facebook for iPhone already has over 5.7 million monthly active users, and Facebook for Blackberry has over 4 million. The release of Facebook for Windows Mobile will surely increase Facebook’s mobile presence. You can follow what users are thinking about the application at the Windows Mobile Facebook Page.