If you’re the type of event planner who’s into spontaneous and open events, your life just got a little bit more interesting. Facebook has just added new features to the “publisher” that let you create and share events in one step. The idea behind the new feature is that, until now, Facebook users who wanted to quickly organize open events either did so via status updates or creating Facebook Events, which you could then share; but now, they can combine both options in one step by creating an event directly through the Publisher.

The Publisher, which sits at the top of the homepage and your Wall tab, now gives you the choice of attaching an Event. Once you select Event from the menu of attachments, you can fill out the following fields:

Once you click Share, the story will appear on your Wall and the News Feed. There is a subtle difference in the story that gets published:

With this new method, anyone can “Invite guests,” so make sure this is the intention of your event.

Sharing events without the Publisher: No “Invite guests” link: less conducive to viral and open sharing.

When you click on the “Invite guests” link, a dialogue box appears, and you can select friends you want to send targeted alerts to. (You can then further edit the event – adding photos, changing settings, etc. – directly within the Events application.)

The addition of publishing Events to the News Feed via the Publisher is another move toward making the Publisher a more powerful tool for creating rich content that friends will find useful, enhancing the overall relevance of the News Feed. And because sharing events through the Publisher is designed to be open to all guests, it’s another indication of where Facebook is headed with a more publicly open stream.

One of these months, Facebook’s growth in the US is going to slow down. June was not that month.

According to web metrics firm Compete, total uniques to Facebook’s main Facebook.com site were up 10.7% in June to 91.7 million US visitors. Traffic to Facebook Connect-enabled sites also increased 10.6% to 71.9 million uniques. Total uniques to all Facebook domains were up 8.5% to 122.6 million for the month.

Just to put that in perspective, US traffic to the main Facebook.com site has increased 65% in the last six months, up from 55 million visitors in December 2008, according to Compete. During the same time period, MySpace’s traffic is roughly flat at 60 million visitors (though it had a nice up month in June to return to beginning of year levels), while US traffic to Twitter has increased several times over from 4 million uniques in December to 23 million in June (Twitter.com was up another 16% this month after holding steady in May).

Of course, Compete is just one data source, and reports often vary greatly amongst different web metrics firms. Nevertheless, 10% US audience growth to 91 million uniques continues to be a very impressive clip for Facebook at this stage.

Facebook: Up 8.5% overall in June to 122.6 million US uniques

MySpace: Up 7.2% overall in June to 61.0 million US uniques

Twitter: Up 16.6% overall in June to 23.0 million US uniques

To learn more about how to engage Facebook’s 91.7 million visitors and growing, check out our industry leading Facebook Marketing Bible.

In a move to increase the power of Facebook Pages, Facebook has just released a new widget that allows brands and businesses to share status updates from their Facebook Page – and get new Facebook fans – on any website.

The new “Fan Box” widget, built on Facebook Connect, allows Page owners to put a piece of their Facebook Page anywhere on the web.

Facebook says the Fan Box widget is designed to help convert website visitors into Facebook fans. It’s a smart move by Facebook to make it easier for brands and businesses to encourage more of their customers to become fans of their Facebook Pages.

“Users can view the most recent posts from the Page, see a list of other fans (including their friends), and, most importantly, become a fan without leaving the site,” Facebook Product Manager Mark Kinsey says. “Additionally, if a user visits the site and isn’t logged in to Facebook, the user can log in and become a fan directly inline as well.”

In other words, users can authenticate themselves to the widget using Facebook Connect in order to become Facebook fans without leaving your page. Later, when logging into Facebook, fans will see your updates in their stream just as they would any other Page they had become a fan of inside Facebook.com.

How should the new widget be implemented? For many brands and businesses, the new widget can be integrated into sections of your site where fans and customers already go to get news and updates, akin to an email newsletter subscription or RSS feed. For example, here’s how it looks live on LanceArmstrong.com:

Or, if your campaign is designed to drive more fans of your Facebook page, the new widget could obviously play a more important role in your website. See more Fan Box integrations here: Kings of Leon, Lenny Kravitz, Roger Federer, ABC News, National Public Radio, Newsweek, World Wildlife Fund, (RED), Coca-Cola, Tide, Herbal Essences and Blackberry.

Page administrators can add the Fan Box to their site by adding a JavaScript code snippet. Just click on “Add Fan Box to your site” underneath your Page’s profile picture. You can then choose whether you want to include both a stream of recent posts and a list of fans, as well as the dimensions of the box. The minimum width for the widget is 200px, and height can range up to 554px with all the options included. More details are on the Developer Wiki.

On its Facebook Wall this morning, 1-800-FLOWERS told its fans that it has launched a new shopping tab inside its Facebook Page so that fans can shop for flowers without leaving Facebook. As part of the launch, the site is offering a 10% discount off all orders made through its Facebook page.

I just tested out the feature and sent the a bouquet of flowers for a friend’s birthday. Once users select an item, they are taken through the standard online shopping steps: 1) Review your cart; 2) Enter shipping information; 3) Select payment option; and 4) Confirm and place order. The experience was not any different from your typical online shopping trip around the Web, and it all happened seamlessly within the frame.

With so many sites integrating with Facebook Connect these days and finding it a worthwhile endeavor, it’s definitely worth asking why 1-800-FLOWERS chose to create a standard shopping cart experience within its Facebook Page instead of leveraging Facebook’s social features or implementing Facebook Connect on its site. While the tab does provide page fans with an easy and convenient next step to any of the call to actions posted on the Wall, it doesn’t take advantage of Facebook’s viral potential. For example, after placing my order, I wasn’t given the option to share my purchase on the News Feed (or send a virtual gift as well).

Sure, there’s the argument that retail shopping sites may not always represent the most appropriate context for sharing information since users are often reluctant to broadcast their purchases to the world. But, in the case of flowers, there’s often a special occasion underlying the purchase, and we’ve seen that Facebook is a platform where users love to give shout-outs to friends and family on those days.

The Page admins are doing a good job sharing relevant content as far as we’ve seen. Weekly birthday giveaways have encouraged fans to post their friends’ birthdays, and fans have been coloring these posts with other tidbits. One fan posted: “My wonderful husband’s birthday is this week 7/10/1982. He’s amazing and sacrifices everyday for our family…”

Facebook is fighting hard to gain ground against Orkut in India, and now is launching a new developer contest for original applications developed in the country.

Facebook has just announced the Facebook Developer Contest – India, giving resident developers in India a shot at winning cash prizes in one of two categories: Facebook Applications and Facebook Connect integrations. The contest runs from now until September 11, and is only open to residents of India.

The contest is a move to spur development in a country that has seen incredible growth recently, with Facebook users in India jumping to more than 3 million from 1.6 million in May. By luring developer attention, Facebook hopes to grab more users from Orkut, which remains the dominant social networking site in India.

This contest is the latest in the “Build, Engage, Win” series that Facebook has created targeting developers in specific countries. Winners from France and Spain were announced in May, and German winners were announced last October. Facebook continues to move into more and more international markets, and encouraging developers from more countries to become involved in building home-grown applications will spur more interest in Facebook – and let more users better relate to apps on the Facebook Platform.

Starbucks is promoting its launch of branded ice cream by giving away hundreds of free pints to Facebook users through a new Facebook app called, imaginatively, “Share a Pint of New Starbucks Ice Cream.” The gifting application allows users to send friends (or themselves) a coupon for free ice cream. Free pints and discount coupons are available through July 19.

Each hour, Starbucks is offering 800 coupons for free pints. The free ice cream goes quickly, but if you don’t pounce on the offer in time, there’s the consolation prize of a coupon good for $1.00 off a pint of the new ice cream. The promotion is already very popular, and in my three attempts at grabbing a free pint, I’ve only been able to produce the discount coupon so far.

A few large companies have used free products to successfully promote their brand on Facebook. Late last year, Papa John’s offered new fans a redemption code for a free medium pizza with any online order. Papa John’s added 125,000 fans in one day through a combination of Facebook engagement ads and the free pizza offer. Each Papa John’s fan is now receiving branding information and advertisements in his or her feeds – a great way for companies to stay top of mind with customers through Facebook.

It’s the middle of summer – a time when many tend to relax a little and spend more time on entertainment, both on and offline. Well then again, maybe not everyone. In the U.S., Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 25 (Facebook’s largest age group) have decreased by about 600,000 users this past month. Their parents and grandparents, by contrast, are finding their way to the site more and more: in the last 30 days, users in age groups 35-44, 45-54, and 55-65 increased by about 1.5 million each. Surprising?

So how are Facebook users entertaining themselves on the site? Today we take a look at the fastest growing Facebook applications in the Entertainment category, according to AppData.

		Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %	Developer
1.		Music	8,666,586	+728,892	+9.2	iLike, inc
2.		RockYou Live	14,975,851	+436,696	+3.0	RockYou!
3.		Mobile	7,157,658	+370,790	+5.5	Facebook
4.		Bumper Sticker	5,023,212	+160,403	+3.3	LinkedIn
5.		PageRage Super Profile	955,136	+76,228	+8.7	Yontoo Technology, Inc.
6.		My Band	660,563	+44,457	+7.2	ReverbNation
7.		Visual Bookshelf	581,803	+28,510	+5.2	LivingSocial
8.		iCast	167,024	+17,820	+11.9	iLike, inc
9.		MixPod Playlist	168,973	+14,938	+9.7	Mixpod.com
10.		My Flickr	241,111	+13,149	+5.8	Kaleb Fulgham
11.		Photo Album Strip	247,044	+12,354	+5.3	Arda Erol
12.		YouTube Video Box	935,555	+9,979	+1.1	Craig James Bovis
13.		Deezer	78,049	+9,168	+13.3	—
14.		YouTube Box	363,172	+7,956	+2.2	Tim Nilson
15.		Seegugio	29,409	+6,775	+29.9	Seegugio
16.		Xbox 360 Live Gamercard	133,647	+6,353	+5.0	Ben Caller
17.		Addicted to Gossip Girl	33,956	+5,939	+21.2	Watercooler
18.		Picnik	421,453	+5,556	+1.3	Bitnik, Inc
19.		Fan Posts	68,461	+5,016	+7.9	iLike, inc
20.		Music	122,606	+4,885	+4.2	Burst Development

In the #1 spot is iLike’s popular Music app, which among other things allows users to share music and find out about concerts nearby. At 8.7 million monthly active users (MAU), the app gained over 700,000 MAU in the past week.

RockYou Live by RockYou! (#2), Mobile by Facebook (#3), and verified app Bumper Sticker (#4) all saw weekly gains of over 3% – Facebook’s Mobile app saw a gain of 5.5 percent and currently has over 7 million users. And In the #5 spot is PageRage Super Profile by Yontoo Technology, an app we recently covered for its viral (and questionable) growth.

RockYou Live is growing again after seeing a decrease this spring.

Also in the Top 20 are LivingSocial’s Visual Bookshelf at #7, My Flickr at #10, and YouTube Video Box at #12. It’s definitely interesting to come back to this and other leaderboards in different seasons, even different economic times, when certain verticals – entertainment being one of them – see fluctuations in user activity.

For example, leaders in the virtual currency monetization space have repeatedly told us that they are bucking trends in this economic downturn because when times get rough, consumers can still afford to make small payments in exchange for entertainment – and they’re doing it increasingly inside Facebook applications.

On Sunday, in the longest Wimbledon final ever (in terms of number of games), Roger Federer took home his sixth Wimbledon Cup, beating Andy Roddick 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14. And what was he doing both before and after the epic battle? Posting videos to his Facebook Page, apparently.

Federer’s page now has around 2.6 million fans, with a huge spike taking place (not surprisingly) on the day of the final. According to PageData, Federer gained about 55,000 fans on that day.

Both before and after the final, Federer connected with his fans by sharing pre- and post-final messages on his Wall. Throughout the tournament, Federer updated his fans with photos, and even a couple on the outfits he could be spotted in. On the Wall, you’ll see that the athlete has also taken the time to converse with his fans be it via Q&A or simple status updates.

Compared to his counterparts who are also reaching and communicating with their fans through Facebook, Federer ranks #2 on the Athlete leaderboard – leading David Beckham, Rafael Nadal, and Michael Jordon, but trailing behind Michael Phelps. Federer’s page, however, stands out not only in terms of the frequency of updates, but also in the level of personalization. There is a real conversation going on here. This is the type of connection and rapport athletes and other celebrities on Facebook can be building on Facebook, because as much as fans are in love with your brand, they’re also poking around for the real identity behind it.

	Name	Fans
1.	Michael Phelps	2,562,618
2.	Roger Federer	2,233,348
3.	David Beckham	1,993,482
4.	Rafael Nadal	1,812,496
5.	Michael Jordan	1,214,100

It’s been nearly a year since Facebook announced its “Great Apps” program at f8 last summer with charter applications iLike and Causes. Originally intended to be a second, higher tier of Facebook “blessed” apps (above and beyond simply “Verified” apps) that embody Facebook’s “guiding principles for social applications through their meaningful, trustworthy and well-designed user experiences,” Facebook has never said much about the program since the original announcement.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Facebook told TechCrunch today that the Great Apps program has been merged with the Verified Apps program. Facebook says:

We decided to merge Great Apps with the App Verification program, as they achieve similar goals of helping users identify trusted applications and rewarding the developers who create them. Given the high quality of the applications that have come through the Verification Program and the positive response by users, we believe focusing on one program will provide the best outcome for both users and developers.

At its launch, Facebook said Great Apps would receive “greater visibility on Facebook, earlier access to new features and more feedback from Facebook.” While it’s not clear if all Verified Apps receive “more feedback from Facebook,” early testers of Facebook’s new Platform payments service are indeed Verified Apps. Developers of Verified Apps have also been telling us they’ve seen increased traffic due to higher limits Facebook has placed on their use of viral channels and more prominent placement in the app store.

However, on the whole, Facebook’s consumer branding for the Verified Apps program has been relatively light. Verified apps get a logo on their application about page and an icon in the application directory – but not during application use or on application invitations. On the whole, however, the program is currently a good first step toward achieving its goals of increasing user trust in the platform.

The months of May and June were big ones if you take a look at Facebook’s international growth numbers. In April, Facebook announced that it had crossed the 200 million user mark. Now, three months later, its global audience is nearing 250 million. As we’ve said before, just to put that into perspective, if Facebook were a country it would be the fourth most populous in the world.

And most of this growth – 70 percent – is happening outside of the U.S. In general, for the past three quarters, Facebook grew at 300,000 to 400,000 active users per day. But in recent weeks that number has jumped to anywhere between 700,000 and 750,000 – and emerging countries are telling a lot of this story.

Facebook Battling Orkut in Brazil and India

In Brazil and India, Facebook has been presenting Google’s Orkut with some stiff competition. Facebook almost doubled its user base and passed 1 million monthly active users (MAU) in Brazil, and Facebook’s audience in India leaped from 1.6 million to 3.2 million MAU in May and June.

However, despite the growth, Facebook’s audience in Brazil and India still lags far behind Orkut. The Google-owned social network still leads with over 20 million monthly visitors in Brazil and 13 million in India. Will Facebook continue to steal more market share during the rest of the year?

Facebook Gaining Ground in China, But Still a Drop in the Bucket

Facebook is continuing to grow quickly in other new countries as well. In June, Facebook grew by 60 percent in China, despite reports of being blocked in some parts of the country.

At nearly 1 million MAU, Facebook’s audience in China is still rather minuscule – but a 60 percent monthly growth rate is nonetheless significant in a country where local players like Tencent QQ, Xiaonei, and Kaixin are winning big.

Facebook Marking Milestones in Other Countries Around the World

As Facebook is busy making its way into challenging markets such as Brazil, India, and China, strong international growth is also happening elsewhere. For example, in June alone, Facebook grew by 50 percent in the Philippines, 42 percent in Indonesia, and 25 percent in Mexico.

In addition, during June, both the Netherlands and the Czech Republic passed the 1 million active user mark, and Italy passed 10 million users. This means that in the last three months, Facebook’s audience has grown 76 percent in the Netherlands, 144 percent in the Czech Republic, and 22 percent in Italy.

By continent, Asia is the fastest growing with a three-month growth rate 67 percent. Facebook’s user base in Africa and South America both saw three-month growth rates over 25 percent.

Explaining Facebook’s Continued International Growth

So what’s the reason behind all this growth? Many may point to Facebook’s crowd-sourced language localization efforts, but examples like India show that this may not be the primary driver for all countries. Facebook is available for users in India in several Indian languages now, including Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and Telugu. But as a recent BusinessWeek article on social networking rightly points out, in India, most Internet users are urban educated youth who are used to communicating in English and would much rather to do so given the challenges that come with typing foreign languages on an English keyboard.

And in emerging markets where mobile phone penetration is overwhelmingly high, another way Facebook is acquiring more users is by focusing on mobile distribution. Facebook is reportedly making deals with dozens of major carriers around the world, so we expect to see more integrations coming out soon.

Conclusion

The numbers show that Facebook is still growing quickly in a number of markets around the world. As users gradually begin finding their way to the site and engaging on Facebook as a “second social network” to their local site, it’s likely that we’ll see network effects continue to benefit Facebook. As one user shared with Business Week, “I have both now, Orkut and Facebook,” says Chavvi Nangia, 23, a fashion designer in New Delhi. “None of my U.S. friends even know what Orkut is, so I finally gave up and joined Facebook.”

Inside Facebook Resources:

• The Facebook Global Monitor – July 2009 edition