Learn more about building your brand and growing your audience with our comprehensive guide to marketing on Facebook. The Facebook Marketing Bible is available at FacebookMarketingBible.com

Quick serve restaurants are continuing to grow in popularity on Facebook. Last week, Chich-fil-A became the first restaurant chain to hit 1 million Facebook fans, but hot on its heels is Pizza Hut, who just crossed the 1 million fan mark.

A generic Pizza page is one of the most popular generic food Pages on Facebook with more than 4.5 million fans, but Pizza Hut is the first pizzeria to move past 1 million itself. The next closest pizza joint is Papa John’s with a little over 300,000 fans.

The Pizza Hut Fan page offers several nice features. First, there’s a Facebook application for ordering from your local Pizza Hut restaurant. The app requires you to create a Pizza Hut account, but once you do, you don’t have to leave your Facebook page to order, and the process is much quicker since all of your info is already on file.

Second, the company is also heavily promoting its Pizza Hut iPhone app, which allows users to place orders from their iPhone. Many other restaurants offer an iPhone app to make ordering easy, but Pizza Hut is cross-promoting the it well, making the tab the default landing page.

Pizza Hut has done a good job of paying attention to the way Facebook users interact with other sites. While they offer discounts and promotions in their update stream, they do so lightly. Instead, the company is focusing first on building and promoting its e-commerce functionality to drive more pizza sales.

The newly revised, expanded, and hot-off-the-press Facebook Marketing Bible: 40+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook – September 2009 Edition is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has been purchased by thousands of agencies, marketers, social application developers, entrepreneurs, and educators, and is the leading resource on Facebook marketing today. It is also available in French, Spanish, and Italian. (A special edition with additional content designed for agencies and big brands is also available.)

The densely-packed Facebook Marketing Bible contains four detailed sections: Tools for Guerilla Marketers, Tools for Advertisers, Tools for Application Developers, and Tools for Webmasters. Each part outlines the best available channels and strategies for reaching your audience inside Facebook. Please see the full table of contents below.

In addition, Inside Facebook is happy to announce that through September 30th all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms). Now that Facebook has crossed the 250 million active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience inside Facebook.

The September 2009 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• The latest updates on Facebook Pages (public profiles), including the new Twitter integration and “Facebook Fan Box” widget. We’ve broken down all the new elements piece by piece and offered detailed and specific advice for marketers hoping to reach more users inside Facebook than ever before – including details on why marketers should choose Facebook Pages over Facebook Groups, key SEO strategies every Facebook Page owner should know, and the best tools to manage your Facebook Page. See the table of contents below for more details.
• The latest updates on Facebook’s advertising tools, including several powerful new targeting features. With Facebook’s new “connection” targeting, birthday targeting, and time scheduling tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences better than ever before. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new “Open Stream” API and what it means for marketers, publishers, and developers. With the new Open Stream API – which just opened up to everyone last week- Facebook has released the power of the Facebook stream to live anywhere developers can put it – including publisher websites, desktop applications, and mobile phones. Find out exactly what you can do with the new Open Stream, and what it means for the future of the Facebook Platform and Facebook Pages.
• The latest details on Facebook’s new developer Gift Shop program and “Pay with Facebook” virtual currency payment service for application developers. Find out the latest on what Facebook’s new payment program means for the future of virtual currency payments on Facebook (and Facebook revenues) – including Facebook’s latest international currency efforts.
• The latest tools for webmasters to drive more traffic to their site and build more social context through Facebook Connect and Facebook Share. With Facebook Connect (now available in dozens of languages) and Facebook Share, publishers have new opportunities for both enriching their sites with deeply social features and leveraging Facebook’s powerful feed system for driving traffic to their site. Get new details on metrics early Facebook Connect partners are seeing, and learn how to optimize your Facebook Share integration.
• New tools for advertisers to target their Facebook Ads better than ever before. With enhanced Facebook targeting tools, advertisers now have the ability to reach their target audiences in much more powerful ways. Learn how to use these new tools to get the most out of your performance marketing dollars. Plus, check out ways Facebook is experimenting with virtual currency gifting and branded virtual gifts.
• Plus, more updates on Facebook’s “Live Stream” widget for live events on your website or Facebook Page, recent rule changes for Facebook Platform ad networks, and more.

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible – Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $49, or $149 with 12 months of free updates emailed directly to your inbox. As always, please make suggestions if you’d like to see more attention paid to any topic!

Purchase this report The Facebook Marketing Bible – Current Edition Buy PDF: $49 USD OR Buy PDF + 1 Year of Free Monthly Updates: $149 USD

Check out the top headlines and insights this week from Inside Social Games – tracking all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, August 17

• Social Games Come to iGoogle
• Tencent’s Explosive Earnings Powered by Virtual Goods and Social Games

Tuesday, August 18

• Rekoo Bringing Leading Chinese Social Games to Facebook – Q&A with CEO Patrick Liu
• Scoreloop Closes $2.8 Million Series B from Earlybird and Target Partners

Wednesday, August 19

• Playfish Launches Quiztastic – The Newest Quiz Game on Facebook
• AGON Online is the Newest Social Gaming Platform for iPhone Developers

Thursday, August 20

• La Chance Tourne is a French Wheel of Fortune on Facebook
• Finnish Startup Everyplay Launches New Virtual World Inside Facebook

Friday, August 21

• Former Digg Lead Architect’s First iPhone Game: Chess Wars, with Facebook Connect
• Summer Continues on with Cellufun’s Beach Party

Facebook has made a big sweep on developers violating Platform policies today, suspending a few popular applications as well as many smaller ones. Many of the applications that have gone missing were quiz applications, and Facebook has confirmed to us that it has suspended MyCalendar, Collect Smiles, and Best Friends, among others.

In the past, Facebook has suspended applications large and small for violating Platform policies, including user privacy. While Facebook didn’t say specifically why any of the applications were suspended today, they’re all most likely due to either violations of Facebook’s privacy rules or creating misleading user experiences. A couple of weeks ago, Facebook also prohibited Facebook Platform ad networks from showing user data in any ads.

We spoke with Facebook’s platform policy head Paul Jeffries this afternoon, who said, “We take enforcement of the platform policies very seriously, and we don’t hesitate to take enforcement action when it’s warranted. We’re committed to maintaining the platform ecosystem that supports the developer at large and supports the user experience.”

Like in other app suspension cases, we expect the developers involved will want to work with Facebook to make the appropriate changes to their applications in order to be allowed back on the Platform. That will likely involve less aggressive use of viral channels and more straightforward claims inside the user experience.

All in all, Facebook is continuing to try to keep the worst apps from gaining too much traction on the Platform. We expect to see similar actions whenever apps that are breaking the rules cause enough headaches for Facebook in the future.

Popular quick-serve restaurant chain Chick-fil-A has something to cluck about on Facebook this week: it just joined Tiger Woods in the 1 million Facebook fans club, becoming the first restaurant to hit that mark. Chick-fil-A has amassed an almost cult following for its chicken sandwiches, and it’s that same sort of loyal following that has helped its Facebook Fan page hit this milestone.

Chick-fil-A has accomplished this despite a few handicaps compared to other QSR’s (quick-serve restaurants) like pizza delivery chains. One, the franchise does not have national distribution – the highest concentration of Chick-fil-A locations are in the southeastern United States. Second, the nature of the Chick-fil-A business and service is also slightly different, as they do not offer deliveries and only some of their locations offer online ordering. Finally, Chick-fil-A hasn’t done big Facebook promotional campaigns like Papa John’s, who recently jumpstarted its Facebook Page with 200,000 fans through a single engagement ad promotion

Chick-fil-A’s success has a lot to do with their brand loyalty, as well as its light-hearted contests like the current Cow Appreciation Day, which encourages fans to dress like a cow and send in their photos for a chance at prizes. The overall focus of the company has always been creating a superior product, and their Facebook success is a good indicator that building brand loyalty in the real world can translate into popularity in social networks, where future customers can be reached powerfully through viral communication channels.

There’s no denying that finding a job in today’s market is a challenge. So what can you do to up your chances of landing the right position? According to CareerBuilder, you better keep a clean Facebook page.

According to a recent survey by the site, 45% of companies are checking out potential employees’ social pages. This is twice a high as last year’s numbers, when only 22% of companies surveyed last year were checking in on applicants through their social sites.

Facebook was the most-checked site, with 29% of hiring managers saying they browsed through people’s pages to get an idea of what candidates were like away from work. That’s even higher than the 26% of employers that checked out profiles in LinkedIn, which is considered more of a business-related site.

10% of employers say they look at personal blogs, and 7% of employers checking out Twitter feeds. Not surprisingly, the industries that are the most prone to screening social sites are IT (63%) and Professional and Business Service (53%).

Of course, Facebook users that are also seeking jobs may want to take a little time to make sure there aren’t any photos or posts on their pages that may reflect poorly on their judgment. On the other side of that coin, your Facebook page can serve to boost your odds of landing a job. A professional presentation and the right affiliations with applicable Facebook groups can make you a much more attractive candidate than someone with the exact same resume and questionable pictures of his or her trip to Vegas posted in their news feed.

A few weeks ago, we noticed a test tweet from Facebook that looked like the company might be working on a new way to syndicate status updates to Twitter. Today, Facebook just launched exactly that.

Now, with a new Twitter application created by Facebook, Facebook Page owners can automatically syndicate their posts to Twitter just by installing the app on their Facebook Page. You can decide whether you want to share each update with your Twitter followers, and you can control which types of updates to share (status updates, links, photos, notes, events or everything). If you have multiple Pages, you can also link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. Updates are posted to Twitter with a short URL from bit.ly.

“Public figures, musicians, businesses and organizations of all types who’ve created Facebook Pages often want to share a status update, a photo or an event with as many of their supporters as possible,” Facebook’s Michael Gummelt says. “Celebrities may want to share personal news or charities may want to put out calls for help to both their Facebook fans and their Twitter followers, all at the same time.”

It’s the first time Facebook has created any official Twitter integration.

“Twitter was a natural next step to link with Facebook Pages because it is a powerful tool for broadcasting short messages widely,” he added.

As we speculated earlier, this is an interesting move by Facebook that could potentially make Facebook one of the largest sources of updates on Twitter – an interesting inversion of the way Twitter is used as a Facebook application by many users, Page owners, and content publishers today to syndicate content into Facebook. Were Facebook to expand the application to all users – not just Pages – Facebook could become the largest Twitter app if just a few million users started using it.

The move correlates with Facebook’s strategy in recent months to make status updates and streams more open and public. Will Facebook make it easy for users to automatically syndicate their public posts to any number of other services? It could very well make a lot of sense, and Twitter is one of the best places to start.

Dane Cook, LIVESTRONG, The World Wildlife Fund, and the NBA, WNBA and D-League. are already up and running with the new app.

Tiger Woods is the most recognizable name in golf, and the 14 time major winner is expanding his widespread brand appeal to Facebook. This week, Tiger topped more than 1 million fans on his Facebook Page, becoming the first golfer ever to do so. Although Tiger has only posted a few updates to his Page relative to other athletes and celebrities, that hasn’t stopped fans from flocking to the page and leaving comments at a steady clip.

The success of the Page can easily be attributed to Tiger’s already huge fan base, but there are a few things that Tiger is also doing right. There are no huge ads or blatant attempts to push any of the many products that Tiger endorses, with the only real money-driven content being a link to donate to the Tiger Woods Foundation. And the content Tiger has shared is honest and personal, with a few photo albums of pictures taken with fans, Tiger’s family and even one with Diddy.

Given the fact the this page has done so well with so little content, there is the potential for Tiger’s page to become one of the most popular athlete Fan pages on Facebook if Tiger were to post more. Both Shaquille O’Neal and Lance Armstrong saw their fan numbers rise when they began investing more time on their Facebook Pages, including personal message written by the athletes themselves. Shaq and Lance both promote their own brands fairly aggressively on their respective pages, and sometimes it seems as though Shaq will promote anything.

The Birthday application on Facebook has experienced incredible growth recently, but well-wishers may want to think twice before sending the gift to a friend. The app has grown from zero to nearly 2 million active users in the last two weeks, but there are quite a few negative reviews on the page claiming the app is a source of excessive spam.

Source: AppData

On the surface, the application seems pretty standard — a couple of gifts are immediately available to users, with several more unlocked when recipients accept your gifts. However, the language in the application could cause users to mistakenly send invitations to friends to “confirm their birthdays.” These factors are apparently resulting in a fairly large influx of spam, which has led to an extremely low user rating for the Birthday app and more than a few bad reviews from users.

Sending a friend a birthday gift laced with spam probably isn’t users’ intent. The developer also doesn’t reveal any information about themselves, with a faceless profile photo, no friends on their personal profile and no other applications or information available.

However, by developing an application purportedly around birthday messaging – a very popular activity on Facebook – Birthday was able to reach a large user number before word spread that it is spreading spam. It will be interesting to see how quickly users catch on, or if Facebook imposes any changes on the developer.

We’ve covered the evolution of Facebook’s virtual gifts extensively on Inside Facebook over the last couple of years, but tonight we’re hearing that Facebook is about to start testing a major new expansion to the Gift Shop that will integrate items from third party developers. The move will expand Facebook’s merchant platform beyond the “Pay with Facebook” tests that are running inside a few applications and, for the first time, integrate a variety of third party virtual gifts into the Facebook Gift Shop. In addition, for the first time, Facebook users will be able to purchase physical merchandise in the Gift Shop with Facebook Credits.

Facebook has just confirmed the test to us, saying that the changes will go live for a limited number of users tonight. Four developers are part of the initial program: American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Someecards, and Real Gifts.

Here’s how it will work: gifts created by developers will be integrated into the Facebook Gift Shop alongside regular Facebook virtual gifts, marked with the developer’s logo or icon. In the case of virtual gifts, the price will usually be 10 Facebook Credits or USD $1, the same price as most virtual gifts created by Facebook. However, physical gifts – for instance, say a dozen roses – might cost up to 500 Facebook Credits, or USD $50. When users select a physical gift, they’ll be prompted to enter the delivery address in line, just like in a traditional shopping cart experience.

While Facebook says the launch is still a test, we think it’s indicative of Facebook’s desires to develop a much more robust merchant platform. Between the Gift Shop and payment service for developers, Facebook is in the unique position to build a robust commerce business and simultaneously create powerful new monetization opportunities for developers. And because all items in the Facebook Gift Shop are purchased with Facebook Credits, a growing gifts business expands the footprint of Facebook’s virtual currency, which is also used in Facebook’s application payments service.

When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson issued us the following statement:

“Yes, I can confirm that Facebook is making some changes to the Gift Shop that are expected to launch tonight. As we continue to provide users news ways to share with their friends around birthdays and special occasions, we are conducting a test in which third party developers will be able to offer virtual gifts in the Facebook Gift Shop.  This initial test is being conducted with a limited number of users and American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Someecards, and Real Gifts will provide gifts. We will share additional details of this program as they become available.”

All in all, we expect developers to be very excited by the opportunity to participate in Facebook’s Gift Shop for the first time. The sheer volume of users that Facebook has the potential to distribute premium content and merchandise to should be very attractive to any developer hoping to monetize through virtual gifts. In addition, it will be very interesting to see how sales of physical items within the Facebook Gift Shop go – this will be the first time Facebook has so heavily integrated physical goods for sale into the native Facebook experience.

Finally, Facebook’s decision to open up the Gift Shop to third parties should present significant opportunities to those with licenses of popular brands. For example, just last week, Facebook launched a special set of Britney Spears-themed virtual gifts for 20 Facebook Credits (USD $2) each. We expect to see more tests like these as Facebook further opens up the Gift Shop in the weeks and months ahead.