Facebook US traffic data for April is in from Compete. During the last month, traffic to the main Facebook.com site grew by 4.6%, a healthy pace but also a slowdown from its torrid 11% monthly growth rate in March.

In addition, Facebook Connect continued to grow in terms of the total number of US internet users who are visiting Facebook Connect-enabled sites and using Facebook Connect-enabled desktop and mobile applications. While this number does not necessarily correlate to increased usage of Connect, it does mean that Connect is getting implemented across a variety of sites.

Meanwhile, MySpace traffic was flat for April at 55 million US uniques, and Twitter jumped to nearly 20 million total US uniques in the month, up an incredible 38.6% from April.

While the Compete numbers are just one estimate, it is notable that Facebook’s growth rate slowed considerably from March to a more sustainable pace. However, Facebook.com’s reach still grew by over 3.5 million US uniques during the month, to 76.8 million.

As Facebook continues to expand internationally, its crowd-sourced Translations application continues to play a vital role in making Facebook accessible to more and more people around the world. Facebook now is fully translated into 40+ languages, with 50+ more on the way.

Today, translations in several languages spoken in India went live:

According to a 2008 JuxtConsult study, 80% of India’s 35 million monthly Internet users live in urban areas. The availability of these six languages on Facebook will have less of an impact on India’s urban Internet users, many of which have already converted from Orkut (India’s dominant social networking site) to Facebook.

Many of Facebook’s 1.7 million monthly active users in India today use the site in English. Facebook’s step toward localization in India, then, will likely more affect growth figures amongst the rural Indian Internet population.

As spring settles in and summer approaches, cameras (or camera phones) will be pulled out for family vacations and weekend getaways, and people may be looking for new ways to share their photos on Facebook. This week, Inside Facebook gives a quick tour of four photo applications that can help you edit, present, and visualize pictures with greater creativity.

1. Animoto Videos (by Animoto.com, View AppData)

Animoto Videos is an application that creates a 30-second slideshow using pictures from your Facebook albums. After selecting 15 pictures, you pick a song (either from Animoto’s collection or your own), and the app puts a video together for you that’s customized to the music: “No two videos are ever the same.” A neat feature is that you can remix the video in one click if you’re not happy with the current version, and Animoto will re-customize the video for you. The app allows you to tag friends and circulate the video by publishing it to your Wall. However, for friends to view it, they must install the app.

2. Picnik (by Bitnik, View AppData)

Picnik is a photo-editing application that gives you access not only to your own photos, but also your friends’.  You can select a picture and edit it (rotate, crop, resize, colors, sharpen, red-eye), as well as add special effects (the Puzzle effect, below, is a fun one), text, stickers, and frames. When you’re done,  you’re given the option of saving the photo to the Facebook album of your choice.

3. Sketch Me (by Fendoo, View AppData)

Sketch Me is a simpler application, allowing you to convert your profile picture into an artistic pencil sketch format. You can set the darkness of the sketch (light, medium, dark), and once the sketch is generated, it’s supposed to appear in the My Sketch tab, or you can just save it on your desktop.

4. TouchGraph Photos (by TouchGraph, View AppData)

TouchGraph Photos is a visualization solution that lets you see the relationships between your Facebook friends, using mutual pictures as a way to gauge the strength of relationships. You can filter your graph by Network. Notice that some friends’ profile pictures don’t show up due to their privacy settings. This is definitely an interesting approach to weighing social relationships within your Networks.

With Facebook being the top photo-sharing site in the world, application developers in the photo space need to develop applications that go beyond merely managing and sharing photos: they need to provide you with the tools to do something more.

Last week at Facebook’s “technology tasting” event where Facebook announced the Open Stream API, several launch partners were on hand to demonstrate the capabilities of the new API. Seesmic, Plaxo, and Microsoft all showed early products built on the new API that take data from the Facebook stream and let you interact with it outside Facebook.com.

One of the demos that showed new ways the Facebook stream could be visualized and manipulated was a Silverlight app built in just a couple of days by Brian Goldfarb‘s team at Microsoft. Goldfarb showed different ways stream data could be grouped, consumed, and annotated in a completely different way than the traditional Facebook.com interface provides. Check it out in the video below:

It’s likely that as more Facebook stream apps come online, those apps will actually be more useful to some users than the Facebook.com stream filtration system, and traffic to the Facebook home page could appear lower while the stream is being fully interacted with elsewhere. While the Microsoft app is just a demo, it’s indicative of new types of experiences possible with access to the full real time Facebook stream – much like similar apps built around Twitter, except with a lot more built in data available to developers.

Last week, Facebook reoptimized the Friends page for contact list importing and friend list creation – two features vital to Facebook’s future growth and usability. However, at the same time, users complained that the functionality of the old Friends page, which let users see friends’ recent profile updates and status updates, was needlessly removed altogether. Today, Facebook has added a “Recently Updated” filter back to the Friends page and added a “Status Updates” filter back to the home page stream.

The Recently Updated filter on the Friends page now lets users see which profile fields friends have updated lately. Users can see which properties of their profile friends updated, but not the actual text of the old and new versions itself.

The Status Updates filter on the home page is much like the old News Feed filter. Now that Facebook’s home page has switched models from activity updates to explicitly shared information, status updates are already given very high prominence. This new filter will simply filter out all the other shared items from the home page Stream.

Users who want to view status updates by default in their home page stream can drag the Status Updates filter to the top of the filter list.

Nearly a year after Digg announced it would support Facebook Connect, the integration has finally gone live. Now, Digg users can login, share, and find and invite friends through Facebook Connect. Here’s how it looks:

1. Now, the Digg login screen offers users the choice to login with their Digg or Facebook accounts.

2. After logging in through Facebook Connect, Digg gives you the option to automatically become Digg friends with Facebook friends who are also on Digg. This is a powerful feature because it removes the need to “refriend” your friends on Digg. You’re also given the option to overwrite your current Digg photo and name with your Facebook profile photo and real name.

3. Once you’ve successfull logged in through Facebook Connect, Digg gives you the option to share Diggs, Comments, and Submissions through your Facebook feed, as well as invite your Facebook friends to Digg using the familiar multi-friend selector.

Conclusion

Overall, Digg’s Facebook Connect implementation looks great. It takes advantage of all the key features of Facebook Connect – authentication, content distribution, and enhanced social context – which should increase the quality and authenticity of Diggs and Comments on the site.

For many publishers, Facebook is becoming an increasingly important channel for content distribution. While it took Digg a long time to get this far, this is a great first step in bridging the power of content sharing of Digg and Facebook. We expect to see further updates to make sharing between the two services even easier down the line.

Facebook just turned on the Comment and Like features for Wall posts made by fans on Pages.

Previously, these features were only available for posts made by Page administrators. Now, you’ll notice that the Comment and Like links also sit below posts generated by fans. This is a welcome feature, as extending commenting and liking capabilities to information shared by fans will allow for a more engaging experience on Pages.

Questions like these can now be answered by both the admin(s) or other fans, in a more efficient, direct manner. The move will make it easier for organizations and marketers to observe the two-way conversations that are happening between their fans and customers. Page administrators can use the upgraded “Insights” dashboard that Facebook is rolling out today to track how many interactions their Page is getting.

As we chronicle our lives online with pictures, video and notes, the information should live on Facebook for our families to enjoy years into the future. At least, that’s the aim of Footnote.com. The site, which stores historical documents, recently launched a Facebook application called I Remember, which helps people build Facebook profiles for their loved ones who have passed away.

The application constructs profiles that look similar to that of a regular Facebook profile. It has four tabs: A Wall, Info, Photos and  ”Remembered By.” The info tab is even more interactive than it is for living Facebook members. It sports a “timeline,” where you can chronicle the significant events in a person’s life. It also features a “facts” box where you record vital information, such as birth, marriages, children and deaths.

The application makes what would be an otherwise static online obituary more social as well. Users can invite friends to contribute pictures and other pieces of content to the profile that help enrich the person’s memory.

The application touches on an inescapable issue for Internet users of all ages: If they die, what will happen to their identity and information on Facebook? The market has responded to that question with nascent start-ups. Legacy Locker, for example, launched a service that stores login and passwords, giving them to your friend or family member of choice in the event you pass away.

Conclusion

Despite its increased pervasiveness amidst older demographics, Facebook still has a young user base. Since many of their parents and grandparents who have passed away didn’t have Facebook, the ability for those users to make a profile in their memory should be viewed as an admirable endeavor.

That said, we see some potential problems with this service.

Assume, for a moment, that a mother passes away. If her children have never got along well, it might be difficult for them to agree how her presence should be memorialized on Facebook. Would Footnote.com remove a profile after a loved one complained about the content?

The app also fails to address how Facebook users can authorize their loved ones to access content from their own personal profiles. Creating an application (like Virtual Locker) that authorizes friends or family members to manage a profile after their death seems like a critical feature that Facebook itself, perhaps without the aid of third-party companies, should consider managing itself given the gravity of the task.

Facebook users feel the need to express themselves through their fashion brand preferences, but very few companies in the space seem to be executing on this. According to PageData, only 4 of the top 25 Facebook Pages in the fashion category are actually run by the fashion brands themselves:

• Victoria’s Secret PINK (#6, with 1.24 million fans)
• ZARA (#7, with 1.23 million fans)
• Dolce & Gabbana (#22, with 324,000 fans), and
• Gap (#24, with 319,000 fans).

However, while technology may be the last thing on the minds of fashionistas (and vice versa), Victoria’s Secret PINK and its following of 1.24 million Facebook fans show that fashion markters can and should consider leveraging Facebook Pages in their marketing efforts.

What’s Victoria’s Secret doing right? Talking to customers often (frequent Wall posts) in ways that bring value to them (special offers) and that draw them into conversation (likes and comments).

On the Victoria’s Secret PINK Page, you’ll notice that the administrator is consistent about posting information to the Page’s Wall. This alone already sets the Page apart from Pages like ZARA and Gap, both of which post status updates sparingly. Updates to the Wall need to find a balance between posts that are purely self-promotional and those that benefit and engage fans in some way. Unlike Dolce & Gabbana’s Page (above), which is heavily focused on self-promotion and offers fans few perks and opportunities to voice their opinions, Victoria’s Secret PINK Page complements self-promotional posts with value propositions: purchase that and get this for free; or sign-up for this and get that.

But perhaps most importantly is the ability to generate high quality posts, inviting fans to participate in a two-way conversation. On April 28 of last week, the following announcement was posted on Victoria’s Secret PINK Page:

By announcing that its PINK Collegiate Collection would be adding 24 more colleges to its list of exclusive schools, the update earned 4,287 likes and 476 comments, the majority of which pleaded that their schools be picked. Interestingly, in that same time interval, PageData documents a significant spike in the number of new Victoria’s Secret PINK fans per day, highlighting the positive impact of post quality on fan growth.

Generally speaking, technology meeting fashion makes sense, especially now. In an economy where retailers are suffering, low-cost but high-reach marketing intiatives are the key to achieving greater visbility and brand equity. And the two industries coming together makes a sort of intuitive sense: like social networking, fashion is another kind of platform for social expression.

The wildly popular Jonas Brothers are gearing up to launch a series of live webcasts through their Facebook public profile, with the first in a series slated for tomorrow night. The unveiling of the single “Paranoid” marks the first time a U.S. artist has used a live Facebook webcast to debut a song, according to Facebook.

The Jonas Brothers will be able to interact with fans during the webcast through a Facebook application developed by Ustream. Along with the debut of the single and chat with fans, the teen singers are scheduled to discuss their new album and upcoming tour.

Using Facebook to introduce fans to new material is a great way for any band, not just multi-platinum artists like the Jonas Brothers, to reach new fans and firm up an existing fanbase. It will also keep viewers on the page for an longer period of time, giving other content on the page extended exposure, including ads. In the case of the Jonas Brothers, this would mean a lot of face time with teens and tweens, a demographic that is wildly coveted by any number of companies.

This personal connection through live, interactive video will also give the Jonas’s a chance to gain a little ground on other artists on Facebook. Currently, they aren’t in the top 10 — surprising when you consider their fan base.

	Name	Fans
1.	Rihanna	2,549,981
2.	Lady Gaga	2,500,767
3.	Linkin Park	2,166,086
4.	Coldplay	2,150,592
5.	Metallica	1,835,535
6.	Chris Brown	1,783,874
7.	Beyoncé	1,744,252
8.	Susan Boyle	1,707,280
9.	Katy Perry	1,686,854
10.	Justin Timberlake	1,656,481
11.	Pink Floyd	1,526,434
12.	Britney Spears	1,437,317
13.	Avril Lavigne	1,381,112
14.	AC/DC	1,357,324
15.	Kanye West	1,269,270
16.	T.I.	1,238,689
17.	Jonas Brothers	1,134,251
18.	Daft Punk	1,128,239
19.	Shakira	1,119,450
20.	Taylor Swift	1,118,472
21.	Miley Cyrus	1,109,686
22.	U2	1,093,784
23.	50 Cent	1,079,706
24.	Radiohead	1,067,980
25.	Tiësto	1,059,433
26.	Ashley Tisdale	1,040,640
27.	Bon Jovi	1,030,974
28.	Snoop Dogg	1,019,754
29.	Enrique Iglesias	944,237
30.	Green Day	918,082