Since Facebook Connect launched one year ago, it’s been implemented by thousands of websites and dozens of desktop, iPhone, and mobile apps. However, because Connect is actually a set of technologies that can be implemented in different parts and combinations, Facebook today has released new tools and guides to make it easier for developers to get started.

The first is a new tool called the Facebook Connect Wizard, which takes developers through a three step process to get the basic Connect plumbing setup on your website. After entering your site’s URL, you’re given an HTML file to upload to your server, and then you land in a “Social Markup” tutorial (what Facebook is calling XFBML), in what is called the Facebook Connect Playground.

The Facebook Connect Playground contains makes it easy for webmasters and developers to grab code snippets to implement building block elements of Facebook Connect on their sites. For example, the page makes it easy to grab code to implement a login button, profile pictures, names, and friends.

Finally, Facebook has updated the documentation on the main Connect site in order to make Connect’s three value propositions (more traffic, better engagement, higher registration rates) clearer, and to explain the difference between “simple” and “advanced” Facebook Connect implementations.

On the simple side, for example, Facebook says developers can expect the following results:

Share Button

• 2-4% users share
• 3-10 clicks/share

Fan Box Widget

• 5-10% fans click through per post

Live Stream Widget

• +15-20% time on site for users who engage
• +5-15% traffic

Social Comments Widget

• +15-20% comments
• +15-20% registered users

Single Sign On

• 15% increase in registrations

And here’s Facebook’s description of how developers should be thinking about making deeper Connect integrations: personalization, social context, and social experiences.

Social Revitalizer is the latest company to offer a tool to bring together Facebook and Twitter — Social Twitter, a Facebook application that lets users of both social networks to post Tweets directly from their Facebook page.

Using Social Twitter to update your Twitter feed from your Facebook page is pretty straightforward. You need to add the app, then give it your Twitter handle and password. In the app, there’s a 140-character counter and tabs to post or clear your entry. You can also create a profile box on your wall or Boxes tab which shows your Twitter avatar, name and latest Tweet on your home page.

Social Twitter offers users a way to selectively post their Facebook status updates to their Twitter feeds, sort of like Facebook’s new in-house app for posting from pages to Twitter. Facebook, however, doesn’t currently let you selectively post status updates from your personal profile to Twitter (something MySpace has notably recently turned on). Most of Twitter-Facebook applications already available, including Twitter’s own Facebook app, third-party apps like TweetFace, Selective Twitter Status and desktop app Tweetdeck, are built around Twitter, then let you selectively post tweets into Facebook.

Social Twitter is also a little different in that it also allows users to create a Twitter tab on their Facebook pages where they can access their Twitter account and track all of their own Tweets.

Social Revitalizer offers a range of other Facebook applications and services for individuals and businesses, and it seems that it has done a good job of addressing some of the concerns that arose with similar programs. The convenience of posting directly to Twitter while seeing your feed from Facebook is a nice touch, but it could be even better if there was the ability to view the feed of those your following, or at least those that are also using Facebook or the service. This is still a rather new application, so it will be interesting to see how it develops as more people beginning using and commenting on the app.

Facebook is becoming an increasingly important source of distribution and traffic for online video sites. And with over 3.6 million fans, YouTube has one of the most popular Pages on Facebook, and certainly the most popular Page for any video sharing site. But over the last few months, Google-owned YouTube has been making a major push to increase its Facebook fan base even more. In fact, 60 days ago, YouTube said it would surpass Will Smith, Megan Fox, Lady Gaga, Adam Sandler, and Vin Diesel by yesterday, or else it would “eat humble pie” and spotlight a video on the YouTube home page for a nonprofit cause.

Well, yesterday marked the end of the 60-day period, and YouTube didn’t quite hit the high numbers that it had promised. However, YouTube took the shortcoming in stride, and made good on its word to feature charity videos on its homepage for a day.

YouTube ended the run with about 600,ooo new fans, which wasn’t even close to the number it needed to move up the list and challenge Will Smith, Megan Fox or Vin Diesel. The final count is about 3.65 million fans, which is still one of the higher numbers on Facebook. YouTube’s original challenge featured the numbers they thought they needed to move past more popular celebrities, but the site neglected to factor those celebrities also growing in popularity over the last 2 months.

The promise to eat humble pie was fulfilled on Monday in a blog post on the site, along with the non-profits that would be featured on the site. The four winners were chosen through a fan poll, marking the first time Facebook fans chose what videos would be featured, with the top four receiving valuable real estate in the YouTube featured video tab on the home page.

AMC Television’s “Mad Men” is as popular as ever mid-way through its third season, and the show continues to grow its fan base through a very interactive Facebook fan page. After some early confusion over how to manage its brand in online communities, AMC seems to have found a good formula for keeping viewers involved and cultivating new fans for the period drama.

The Mad Men official fan page has been growing steadily, with a current following of more than 176,000 Facebook users. The page offers a forum for fans to discuss recent episodes and weigh in on where the story line is heading, with discussions, a blog and a steady stream of fan wall posts.

Many Facebook users have created unique avatars with the “Mad Men Yourself” application, and the illustrated portraits are now all over Facebook and Twitter. Another popular application is “Which Mad Man Are You?”, which presents a short quiz to help match your personality to a “Mad Men” character.

Multiple videos are posted on the Facebook page to help fans catch up on missed episodes and keep them up-to-date on the story, and the photo section is filled with albums of past and recent episodes. Fans have also filled the photo page with nearly 2,000 pictures of their own, showing that there is a healthy level of interaction.

Multiple elements of the Facebook page link back to the show’s official page at amctv.com. The official page features prominent links to the various social network campaigns, including Facebook, along with a well-populated blog and in-depth coverage of the latest episode. Visitors to the page have a huge amount of content at their disposal, and AMC has done an excellent job of cross promoting their various social media campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, iPhone and more involving the show.

This is not a huge news item, but notable as retail sales on Facebook is still a relatively unexplored area. Basically, an analytics tool from Omniture is being integrated into 1-800-Flowers’ flower delivery storefront, which is available in the online florist’s Facebook Page. This means the company can gather more data about what’s working — or not working — in terms of selling real-life flowers on Facebook.

Specifically, here’s what’s how it works. Omniture’s SiteCatalyst tool measures demographic segments, number of friends, types of social activity, friend invites, what portion of an app users spend time on, and how all of this engagement leads to actual sales. It launched a Facebook app measurement version in late May. The tool has now been integrated by Alvenda, a company that builds white-label storefront widgets for companies including 1-800-Flowers; the florist’s storefront, launched in early July, lets consumers on sites like Facebook make purchases without having to leave the page.

For Facebook users — many of whom do not want to leave Facebook — the page-based store could be a more convenient way to order flowers. And so it could be a new way for 1-800-Flowers to make money. With SiteCatalyst, now it can better track how well it does that, and identify particular problem points. The question, of course, is how well all of this actually works. The companies aren’t talking about that part, yet.

Similar to how Facebook has let users translate its site into more than 65 languages, the company is releasing a new version of its crowd-sourced translation tool so third parties can let users translate their sites, Facebook applications or web widgets.

Facebook has more than 300 million monthly active users around the world, and some 70 percent of these people are outside the US. By making it easier for companies to reach many of these users in their native languages and dialects, Facebook may spur further adoption of Connect and its other services around the world.

Here’s more, from the company blog post on the announcement:

You can start integrating Translations for Facebook Connect into your site with an HTML file and a few lines of JavaScript in less than an hour. Whether you want to translate an application, a social widget, or an entire website, you have complete control over every aspect of the translation process. After you choose what languages you want your site or application to support, you can get help from the Facebook community to translate your site, as we did, or you can do the translation yourself, or make a specific person the administrator of the process. To start translating your site, read the documentation on the Developer Wiki.

Facebook’s translation service has enabled applications with passionate fan bases outside the developers’ region to translate the service into their local languages and grow. We could see the same thing start to happen with websites as well with the expansion of Facebook’s translation service through Connect. Facebook has been growing by leaps and bounds in many popular European and South American countries for the last year and a half, and is now growing in many Asian and Middle Eastern markets more recently.

Two months ago, Facebook tightened the rules on the types of advertising units Platform ad networks could display after user concerns about privacy and Facebook Platform ad networks spread. Since then, user complaints have died down.

However, some Platform ad networks have also seen decreases in their eCPMs lately – over 50% in some cases, according to one Platform ad network executive. Those ad networks that were most affected by the policy changes have expressed to us that their ability to innovate has been too constrained. But is Facebook likely to reverse the new policies any time soon?

Not according to the company. Facebook says allowing the types of advertisements which are now prohibited – those that display user data or a user’s friends in the ad – would lead to bigger long term problems for the sustainability of the Platform and the Platform economy.

“The direct feedback we received that led to the revised policies in July indicated that there was a strong risk users could lose trust in the platform because of the experience they were having with some third-party ad networks,” a Facebook spokesperson told us. “We continue to see developers build thriving businesses on Facebook Platform and will continue to focus on policies that position users, advertisers and developers for success.”

“We are always looking for ways to improve our policies but have no imminent plans to make ad policy adjustments,” Facebook added.

For now, Platform ad networks are still adjusting to the new rules and reoptimizing their algorithms for other ad units. Overall, the challenges in monetizing purely through more traditional advertising on the Facebook Platform are driving more and more developers to invest more heavily in optimizing for virtual currency monetization. The virtual goods economy has been broadly thriving on the Facebook Platform this year.

However, while Facebook says no policy changes are planned, the company says it’s still open for more feedback from Platform ad networks and developers about its advertising policies.

“We are actively reaching out to members of the community to understand how the policies are working,” Facebook tells us. “If there are ideas for changes that would continue to provide the basis for a great user experience while increasing opportunities for developers, we’d be eager to discuss them.”

We’ll keep tracking eCPM trends on the Platform for the developer community. If you have more data to share on what you’re seeing, we’d love to hear from you.

Like its overgrown canine namesake, social gaming company Zynga has become the largest developer on Facebook’s platform over the past year. And, it cannot get away from whispers about its plans for an initial public offering. A key reason: Within the last six months, it has piled on a series of hit games, from virtual poker game Texas Hold ‘Em to mob-themed role-playing game Mafia Wars to virtual world YoVille — and most recently, FarmVille, which just hit 50 million monthly active users this past week.

It is proving the possibility of social gaming companies being long-term hit factories, not unlike more traditional, publicly-traded gaming companies like EA. And it is, from what we and others here, bringing in the money to prove that it is a real business.

So what’s going on with the IPO plan? This spring, a reliable industry source insisted that Zynga was in the process of closing a round of funding for possibly around $30 million. Another industry source now adds that it had at that point hired Allen & Co., the boutique investment bank, to raise a round of funding with a valuation between $550 million and $600 million. But when we asked about the funding, then, the company adamantly denied that it had raised any new round.

> Continue reading at Inside Social Games

Virtual event hosting site Unisfair has just received $3.2 million of an expected $9.3 million in funding to help develop and expand its already comprehensive offerings, including a recent integration with Facebook. The company creates a virtual meeting place for events, such as job fairs, that give its clients a low-cost alternative to hosting real events.

Each virtual event consists of a variety of portals through which attendees can view live and on-demand presentations, chat with company representatives and more. These virtual events can bring together thousands of people from all over the world — so far more than a half million people have participated in over 500 virtual gatherings, presentations and job fairs arranged through Unisfair.

Unisfair recently im its virtual events by integrating with social networks like Facebook and Twitter to create new avenues for companies to bring in participants and increase brand awareness. Attendees of virtual events are exposed to various forms of advertising and branding throughout the meeting halls and showcases and they now have the opportunity to share what they see back on to Facebook. This gives the sponsors and partners associated with events the ability to further spread word of their brands through news feeds, also promoting the Unisfair service and future events. The service also supports 15 languages, so Unisfair is able to reach out to the expanding international contingent on Facebook.

With more and more companies wanting to both access potential employees and clients through social networks and cut back on operating costs, Unisfair’s service is another way to reach a potentially large group of people. Unisfair also offers a full range of statistics to track where and how people used the meeting place, along with a chronicle of posed questions and a record of interactions.

Country music star Taylor Swift won the “Best Female Video” award at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards — and, as most readers probably know, was interrupted mid-acceptance speech by fellow musician Kanye West. As part of a national outpouring of sympathy for Swift, her page unsurprisingly saw an increase in new fans.

But that was on September 13th, more than two weeks ago.

Her page is still apparently growing faster than it was before the event. It has grown steadily from 2.1 million fans to 2.3 million fans today, or around 200,00 fans in two weeks. That’s twice as fast as the approximately 100,000 fans she gained in the two weeks before the show.

One cause may be the ongoing media coverage of West’s various apologies, another may be the additional mainstream pop audience attention she’s gotten as a new and successful crossover star.