The use of hot keys has long been as easy way to quickly navigate around the Web, and now it’s possible to breeze through Facebook using your keyboard and the Firefox plugin Greasemonkey. The Facebook Keyboard Navigation tool became available earlier this month at Userscripts.org, and can be customized to create a unique set of hot keys to fit any user.

Facebook Keyboard Navigation gives users 16 assigned shortcuts, as well as the ability to customize the keys further to suit individual needs and preferences. The preset keys redirect to some of the more heavily used aspects of Facebook, such as photos, your events, your groups and more. But the real advantage will probably be in the easy access to some of the more buried features like account settings and privacy settings.

Of course, with the ability to customize your short cuts, your keyboard can take you anywhere on Facebook. All you’ll really need to know is the URL target for the desired page, and with a couple of edits to the very simple script, you can navigate to every corner of your Facebook universe with just a single key. The caveat is that you’ll have to use the Firefox web browser to use this plugin.

Here’s the breakdown of the hot keys already set up in the tool:

A – Edit application settings
B – Go to list of birthdays
C – Go to photos
D – Find friends
E – Go to your list of events
F – View the list of all your friends
G – Go to groups
H – Go to your home page
I – Go to the message Inbox
L – Go to your links page
M – Send a message
N – Go to your notes
P – Go to your profile page
S – Edit your account settings
T – Go to Notifications page
V – Edit your privacy settings

While everyone from designers to heavy Web surfers to gamers have long enjoyed the advantages of hot keys, this added level of access is useful to anyone that frequents Facebook. It’s also a great tool for anyone using a laptop or netbook with small, cramped trackpads, and offers a way to quickly check out areas of your page that you may not have visited on a regular basis.

More and more offerings for Facebook customization are popping up on Greasemonkey, such as the ability to track who’s dropping your from their friends list, and this latest addition to the tool kit creates an even more convenient and efficient interface.

A photo of the forthcoming Buick Regal was recently posted on the Buick Facebook fan page, sparking auto blogs like Jalopnik to take notice and post about the new model. While the photo itself may be exciting to those that have been waiting for a glimpse at the Regal, it’s also an interesting look at how Facebook is influencing news in the automotive world.

Leaked photos of pre-production cars and spy photos of concept vehicles on the road have always been a part of the auto industry, but this is one of the first times where we’ve seen a social network being used as the primary outlet. That’s not to say that the auto industry isn’t delving in to Facebook and other networks; there are a number of campaigns running through Facebook right now that indicate car manufacturers are taking the power of social networking seriously in their bid to connect with potential buyers.

Some of the more engaging campaigns have come from Toyota and Ford. Toyota’s Random Acts of Prius is a smart application that speaks to the lifestyles of Prius owners and Facebook users by promoting simple ways to make the world a better place everyday. Ford took a more marketing-oriented approach with its new Fusion 41 initiative, which gives current 2010 Fusion owners the chance to chronicle their adventures tackling a series of challenges presented by Ford. The campaign is aimed at getting real people to report on the attributes of the car through various social networking outlets, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

As car companies seek to regain profitability, Facebook can prove to be a powerful method of engaging car shoppers. It seems that brands are doing their best to remain in the conversations and news feeds of their followers and fans, but the leaking of the Regal photo may be a shift towards also using Facebook as an outlet for spreading the type on information and marketing material that has traditionally been reserved for auto magazines, shows and press events.

Social activism application developer Causes released a number of tools as part of its new nonprofit partner center, earlier this month, and we recently had the opportunity to take a closer look at it.

The new functionality is specifically tailored towards nonprofit organizations with multiple chapters (or multiple Causes that support the same nonprofit beneficiary). As Causes put it:

We’re adding to our nonprofit-specific tools because nonprofits 1) play a critical role in the Causes ecosystem and 2) have unique needs and goals that can’t be addressed solely by the current cause-based model we’ve pioneered through our application.

The new partner center allows Cause administrators to access more sophisticated communication, fundraising and metrics for one or more Causes.

Causes, it should be noted, has thousands of organizations using its applications on Facebook and MySpace, with 35.2 million monthly active users on Facebook alone — the second-largest third party app on the site.

Coordination and Communication

Previously, communication across multiple related causes could only be done manually, and there was no way to indicate linked Causes or networks of Causes. Administrators now have the ability to designate Causes as “Affiliate Causes.” Affiliate Causes can then be labeled with user-generated categories (which are like tags). The categorization seems somewhat similar to the customization made possible by Friend Lists released by Facebook earlier this year—a welcome step which allows administrators to target campaigns to subgroups of Affiliate Causes and to see the data which will come from messages. Petitions can also be developed in the partner center and then shared across multiple Affiliate Causes. Messaging features are much more sophisticated: Administrators can target all Affiliate Cause members, administrators only, supporters of particular campaigns, or donors.

Each Cause’s home page has been redesigned to move static content lower on the page and bulletins to the top of the page. Additionally, Causes now presents a third indicator of virality: a list of Top Promoters (in addition to Top Recruiters and Top Donors), reflecting the additional ways members can support a cause by publicizing content or updating their statuses on Facebook.

Data

Insights data is now tracked for all Affiliate Causes and is presented in the nonprofit partner center in a similar manner to data tracked by Facebook Pages. Causes now compiles reports on bulletins or updates sent to Cause members, including a breakdown by email bulletin vs. notification and click through numbers.

Donor names are now tracked via the nonprofit partner center—a huge improvement over previous fundraising tracking. Donors can opt-in to share additional contact information such as mailing address or email address. Downloadable donation history as a CSV file is also now available. It is unclear whether or not Causes plans to integrate this data with existing CRM/donor database software so as to simplify content management for nonprofit staff.

Over the past few months, critics have protested Causes withholding data from the exit survey data users complete when they leave a Cause. This feedback seems to have been taken into account. This anonymous data is now tracked in the nonprofit partner center.

Monetization and Revenue

The new products certainly bode well for Causes’ potential revenue growth, and the portfolio of nonprofit tools stands to drive revenue on two fronts:

1. Strong growth in MAUs will likely produce growth in donations

2. Addition of a premium membership option will generate new revenue

As regards the first point, the company has been very smart in timing the release of these tools to coincide with the America’s Giving Challenge. Causes are competing for daily prizes and an overall prize based on number of donations, and it has already raised $1 million. Additionally, the donation page itself has been revamped. Causes can now do more to customize the graphic or photo to accompany donations of various amounts. Administrators can tailor the donation page for each Cause by creating up to 5 of these “Donor Choices.” Previously, the only customized graphics which accompanied donations (or named gifts) were the Charity Gifts, arranged by Causes headquarters and certain nonprofit partners. The Donor Choices now give every Cause the opportunity to create these icons to help users understand the value of their donation. Some gifts from organizations on Causes have also begun appearing in Facebook’s virtual gifts store.

With respect to the second point, the full range of new tools are available to all Causes at no cost as part of a free trial of the premium membership until November 7. After November 7, certain functionality and options will only be available to Causes who purchase the premium membership. It is unclear how much it will cost to purchase the premium trial. Before we are able to see how many nonprofits opt for this membership, it seems safe to say that Causes is well positioned to generate revenue from the new range of tools. The premium membership will probably make sense for nonprofits who:

• depend heavily on numerous chapters/Causes
• have dedicated online fundraising/social media budgets.

From the standpoint of this longtime Facebook user and nonprofit fundraiser, this is a tremendous upgrade by Causes. It will be exciting to watch how the nonprofit partner center fares after the free premium trial ends, and in the months that follow.

Yesterday, Facebook made a slew of product roadmap announcements at the Facebook Developer Garage at its headquarters in Palo Alto. In addition to the recent updates to the News Feed, this means significant changes are happening across the Facebook ecosystem that marketers and brands need to be aware of and account for in their products and strategies.

Here are 5 of the most important implications of the changes that Facebook has announced in the last week:

1) News Feed distribution to all fans is no longer guaranteed

With the previous version of the News Feed, all content shared by a user’s friends or Pages they’re a fan of appeared in the stream by default. In the current News Feed, an algorithm determines what appears for each user. This means that no longer is simply publishing content sufficient to guarantee exposure to all your fans – instead, Page owners will need to optimize the content they publish for maximum News Feed distribution (“News Feed Optimization,” as we like to call it).

So, how does Facebook decide which updates to show? When the News Feed rolled out last week, Facebook Product Manager Peter Deng told us that Pages are conceptually being treated similarly to friends. In other words, Facebook will take into account:

• How many people (and especially your friends) comment on and like stories from Pages you’re a fan of
• Which Pages you visit frequently
• Which Pages you interact with frequently

So, engagement is now a lot more important – it’s what earns you News Feed presence. However, Facebook may be using other factors as well. Remember, Facebook’s News Feed knows what you did last summer (and the summer before that, and yesterday, and last week), so it should be able to come up with some “serendipitously” good suggestions.

Of course, there’s always Facebook Ads for those Pages that want to increase their exposure more quickly.

Note: Even in the new Live Feed, Facebook chooses a subset of friends and connections if you have more than 250 overall, though you can increase that default number – to see all Pages updates, users will need to click on the “Pages” filter in the left hand menu.

2) The upcoming email API creates new opt-in opportunities

Facebook announced yesterday that it will be creating a new API to enable users to easily deliver their email address to developers when they so choose, in order for developers to be able to directly communicate with users.  For brands who’ve built Facebook applications, this could present interesting new opt-in email opportunities.

While applications have been able to collect opt-in information manually in the past, this new “1-click” type option could reduce friction and make gathering fan contact information easier, bridging email and social media marketing opportunities in new ways. The API is scheduled to go live sometime in November.

3) Tab widths on Facebook Pages are NOT changing (UPDATED)

Yesterday, Facebook also announced that in “late 2009 or early 2010″ tabs on Facebook profiles will change width from 760 pixels wide to 510 pixels wide. We assume this means that tab widths will be changing for Facebook Pages too (we’re currently awaiting confirmation from Facebook on this). If so, this means that all Pages that have created custom tabs (for example, application tabs, or tabs designed around special promotions) will need to be updated to fit the new width. (UPDATE: A Facebook spokesperson has confirmed to us that “Pages will not be changing at this time, however we are continually making upgrades to products. We’ll share more when we have further details.”)

4) Expanded platform policy enforcement team should increase overall application quality

In addition to the product changes we’ve covered, Facebook also announced yesterday that it was modifying its approach to platform governance again. Now, it’s getting rid of the “Verified App” program, and instead says it will be building out its platform policy enforcement team and applying verified app principles to all developers.

While this may spell trouble for developers of some applications, especially lower quality ones, it means good things for brands. With time, users should start to have a higher view toward applications overall, which should keep application engagement strong in the long term.

5) The new Open Graph API, while still at least 3 quarters out, indicates that Facebook doesn’t just want to bring brands and businesses inside Facebook onto Pages

The Open Graph API, which was the broadest idea presented yesterday, is an important signal on Facebook’s 12 month product strategy for brands and marketers. The “Open Graph” API is Facebook’s plan to make any website a first-class object in the social graph. In other words, Facebook wants brands and publishers to think about their website almost like a Facebook Page – with the Open Graph API, any website can have access to all the communication channels that a Facebook Page does, while living outside Facebook.com.

Here’s how it will basically work: when a website is registered with Facebook, users can then become a “fan” of the site itself. Webmasters and publishers can then publish content to users’s News Feeds through the stream publishing APIs. This means that Facebook could become a more important distribution channel for publishers even if they don’t have a Facebook Page – which could be very powerful for both Facebook, brands, and publishers across the web.

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

Cc:Betty, a company that offers a comprehensive group of features when using email to plan or organize events, is now integrating with Facebook so users can share their discussions in news feeds. The pairing is aimed at bringing in more people to discussions and spread word of events to more people within social networks.

The service is simple to use: once you’ve set up an account, you just need to CC Betty when sending out invites, information or starting group discussions through email. Cc:Betty then pulls out key information into scannable categories, using Google Maps to illustrate addresses, organizing photos and attachments in albums, sorting dates into individual events and creating a sidebar to easily view each person included in the email, with pictures when available.

Connecting Cc:Betty and Facebook places an alert in your news feed so that your friends and colleagues can join in on the discussion or add their insights to topics. Users can still simply like your post or add comments as with any other entry in a news feed, but they’ll now have the added ability to join through the Cc:Betty interface for a more complete picture of the event or discussion.

Cc:Betty estimates that about 70% of the content that flows through their service is business related, and is speculating that the Facebook integration will help shift the way people use the service to a more balanced distribution of work and fun. The integration is now live, and can be activated by creating a Cc:Betty account and clicking on the Connect tab at the top of the Cc:Betty home page.

Earlier this year, we first covered the news that Facebook had filed a federal lawsuit against famed “Spam King” Sanford Wallace for crimes under the CAN-SPAM Act, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and the California Anti-Phishing Act. Today, Facebook says the company won the case and was awarded $711 million in damages, the second largest CAN-SPAM judgment only to Facebook’s $873 million judgment against Adam Guerbuez and Atlantis Blue Capital last November.

“While we don’t expect to quickly collect the full amount, we’ll work hard to get everything we can,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “Most importantly, the judge referred Wallace for prosecution for criminal contempt of court, which means that in addition to the judgment, he now faces possible jail time.  We’re confident that today’s ruling will act as a powerful deterrent against those who would abuse Facebook and its users.”

Wallace used “phishing” techniques to gain unauthorized access to users’ accounts, and then send fake wall posts and messages. He filed for bankruptcy this summer.

This is not the first time Wallace has been found liable for malicious marketing practices on social networks. In May of 2008, MySpace won a $234 million judgment against Wallace and business partner Walter Rines for illegal spam and phishing attacks against MySpace users. Wallace has been actively building his “Spam King” reputation since 1997, having been charged with various federal crimes over the last decade.

As it did with changes around its at-one-time controversial terms of service earlier this year, Facebook is making a new draft of its privacy policies available for public comment. You can view it here; comments can be left on the Facebook Site Governance page.

Part of the intent with this draft is to provide a “clearer and more comprehensive” description of what the policies actually mean, something Facebook also did with its terms earlier this year. Writing clear legal language and asking for feedback about it are two things that most companies never do, and something that Facebook has made a policy this year. The Facebook blog post on the matter includes a sample of how it has rewritten legalese to be more legible to most users. Facebook is also aiming to further satisfy the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which has pushed the company to adopt more detailed rules about a number of practices, including better informing users what data they are sharing, and with whom.

There are also a few interesting new components of this latest draft. One is a blurb on “location,” where Facebook says it will treat your location as subject to your overall privacy settings (share with “everyone,” just “friends,etc.); the company confirmed with TechCrunch that this part is entirely new. The Facebook legal team, at least, is preparing for the possibility of more location-based services.

In terms of advertising, Facebook has included language that allows it to provide general statistics about users who interact with ads, but not personally identifiable information. Facebook also says:

We may institute programs with advertising partners and other websites in which they share information with us:

• We may ask advertisers to tell us how our users responded to the ads we showed them (and for comparison purposes, how other users who didn’t see the ads acted on their site). This data sharing, commonly known as “conversion tracking,” helps us measure our advertising effectiveness and improve the quality of the advertisements you see.
• We may receive information about whether or not you’ve seen or interacted with certain ads on other sites in order to measure the effectiveness of those ads.

Other notable reiterations of previous policies include what Facebook has to say to developers. “We do not guarantee that Platform will always be free,” for example, which is perhaps not so surprising given that the company previously charged a small fee to developers who wanted to be in its “Verified Apps” program. That program, in which Facebook staffers examined applications, gave them a “verified app” seal of approval, and gave them special placement within Facebook features, is no longer. The company announced yesterday that it is going to look at every application, and more closely police any one that does not meet its quality standards. Another interesting line for third-party developers: “We can create applications that offer similar features and services to, or otherwise compete with, your application.” Facebook has already done this, or considered doing this, in some circumstances.

The policy page for this document has 62 comments so far, after the new draft was released today. A large portion of commenters have asked for a “red-line” version, where they can see the changes that Facebook made versus the previous draft. Also, unlike with the TOS changes, Facebook is not putting the new draft up for a vote (given the relatively small turnout for the TOS vote last April, the company perhaps figured it wasn’t worth the effort).

Here’s the sample draft rewrite from the blog post today.

Old:

When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information. …
… Even after removal, copies of User Content may remain viewable in cached and archived pages or if other Users have copied or stored your User Content. …
Access and control over most personal information on Facebook is readily available through the profile editing tools. Facebook users may modify or delete any of their profile information at any time by logging into their account. Information will be updated immediately. Individuals who wish to deactivate their Facebook account may do so on the My Account page. Removed information may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time but will not be generally available to members of Facebook.

New:

Viewing and editing your profile. You may change or delete your profile information at any time by going to your profile page and clicking “Edit My Profile.” Information will be updated immediately. While you cannot delete your date of birth, you can use the setting on the info tab of your profile information page to hide all or part of it from other users. …

Deactivating or deleting your account. If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.) in case you later decide to reactivate your account. Many users deactivate their accounts for temporary reasons and in doing so are asking us to maintain their information until they return to Facebook. You will still have the ability to reactivate your account and restore your profile in its entirety. When you delete an account, it is permanently deleted. You should only delete your account if you are certain you never want to reactivate it. You may deactivate your account on your account settings page or delete your account on this help page.

Limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users. However, your name will no longer be associated with that information on Facebook. (For example, if you post something to another user’s profile, and then you delete your account, that post may remain, but be attributed to an “Anonymous Facebook User.”) Additionally, we may retain certain information to prevent identity theft and other misconduct even if deletion has been requested.

Backup copies. Removed and deleted information may persist in backup copies for up to 90 days, but will not be available to others.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that it would be creating a Live Status dashboard for developers to get the latest on Platform performance and issues.  The new site just went live, and here’s how it looks:

As you can see, Facebook is providing a color-coded status feed, graphs of overall API response time and error counts (without Y axes) for the last six hours, and “top live platform bugs.” Overall, the Live Status dashboard will provide developers with a quick way to see if any hiccups they’re experiencing are on Facebook’s or their own end.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also said yesterday that over time, all Platform APIs as well as Facebook’s own use of its data would be served through a new middle tier that architecture lead Bobby Johnson is heading up. However, Zuckerberg said the new infrastructure would take “a while” to build.

For all the product managers and engineers out there, yesterday’s Facebook Platform roadmap announcements were a mixed blessing: on one hand, it’s fantastic to have a relatively cohesive picture of what’s coming in the next few months for the first time. On the other, there are a lot of changes coming, the specific consequences of many of which are unknown, and there’s a ton of work to do as a result.

So in case you missed one of the 19 specific announcements Facebook made yesterday, here’s your calendar of upcoming Platform changes, based on Facebook’s Developer Roadmap:

Late October 2009

1. Simplified policies posted, verification program ended, and “extending verification standards to all applications”
2. Platform Live Status tool launching, which will show “updates on platform stability and load”

November 2009

3. New email permission API (developers can ask users to share their email address)
4. Access point to invites will be moved “to either a filter in Inbox or surfaced in the Application and Games Dashboards”
5. User-to-user Inbox APIs will be launched
6. Stream story formatting changes (1 image shown by default, few lines of text, 1 action link)
7. New “add bookmark” button

November/December 2009

8. Notifications API (both app-to-user and user-to-user) will be removed (note: Facebook says this will happen “30 days after email permission is available”)
9. Feed forms cannot be popped open without “explicit user intent” (note: this is a new Facebook policy)
10. Application bookmarks moving from the bottom menu bar to the left side of the home page
11. Counter API launching (counts can appear on home page application bookmarks)
12. Applications and Games dashboards launching
13. New application branding on canvas pages launching

December 2009

14. All stream publishing APIs beside Stream.publish, Facebook.streamPublish, and FB.Connect.streamPublish will no longer be supported (this will happen on 20 December)
15. Revamped developer site launching

Late 2009 / Early 2010

16. Requests API will be removed (note: Facebook says this will happen “30 days after launching new Inbox sharing”)
17. Profile boxes will be removed (application tabs will be the only way to integrate into the profile page at that point)
18. Improved analytics and APIs launching

Early 2010

19. Open Graph API launching

If you’re like some people in the US and around the world, you’ve already decided you prefer Facebook Lite, the extremely simplified version of the Facebook site, the one that loads really fast on most any connection, but doesn’t have groups, chat, third-party applications available.

Now there’s a new way to make it your default, so that you see Lite whenever you go to the main www.facebook.com URL. Here are the steps to take.

1. Go to lite.facebook.com. Click on the Settings image (the wrench). Then, in the settings interface, click on the “Default Site” option:

2. You’ll be taken to a screen that gives you the option to make Lite your home Facebook site. Click on whatever you prefer. (Notice, in the screenshot below, that Facebook is advertising this option within Lite.)

3. If you’re not sure, you can toggle the “Let me switch between Regular Facebook and Facebook Lite.” This way, you can either be on either version of the site, and see a blue bar at the very top of that version asking if you want to switch to the other.

And, the view of the blue bar from “Regular Facebook.”