There are a few diamonds in the rough mix of simple applications on this week’s list of the top 20 up and coming apps. We put this list together by looking at the applications with between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users in AppData, sorted by which applications gained the most users in the past week. As this week shows, looking at this segment of apps can show great apps before they become hits.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	What kind of mask do you wear?	235,158	+207,243	+88.13
2.	JibJab	896,201	+190,506	+21.26
3.	what are you born to do?	913,576	+189,108	+20.70
4.	商業大亨Web	243,784	+184,795	+75.80
5.	Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With?	707,949	+153,073	+21.62
6.	iTop Hits Photo	999,975	+143,170	+14.32
7.	Icy Tower	735,383	+135,090	+18.37
8.	Acımasız Gerçekler	339,686	+117,885	+34.70
9.	Do you think…?	208,255	+98,426	+47.26
10.	MixPod Playlist	621,098	+92,855	+14.95
11.	Huggles	155,295	+92,448	+59.53
12.	Tarjetitas	958,169	+85,017	+8.87
13.	Goobox – Free Games	526,077	+84,995	+16.16
14.	Snowball Fight!	245,950	+80,096	+32.57
15.	Happy Halloween	122,360	+79,734	+65.16
16.	Halloween Costume	293,201	+75,416	+25.72
17.	Petits quiz entre amis	643,118	+72,898	+11.34
18.	Band of Heroes	107,565	+72,519	+67.42
19.	Fun Cards – Thanksgiving & More!	497,893	+71,508	+14.36
20.	A Special Bouquet Greeting!	599,752	+66,856	+11.1

Not speaking of great apps, though, at the top of the list is a quiz app called What kind of mask do you wear? We’re not going to cover it too closely, other than to note that it is made by Quiz Monster, and its interface misleads users into clicking on an IQ Quiz ad, as you can see from the screenshot below. The app has managed to grow quickly, gaining 207,000 to reach 235,000 monthly active users this week.

Not every quiz app misleads users like this, of course. Some of the others near the top of the list, like what are you born to do? and Which Zodiac Sign Are You Most Compatible With? are not designed to deceive users like this, even though the quizzes are basic templates. Judging by my number of Facebook friends who have played both of the latter apps, many people enjoy them.

Now, for the diamonds on the list. At the top is animated e-card creator JibJab, sort of. The app lets you create and share these cards with your Facebook friends — although the company has apparently taken the app offline, because when you try to add the app you’re taken to a landing page telling you to visit JibJab’s main site. JibJab has been big on using Facebook Connect, and apparently it decided its home site was a better venue for its business. We’re not sure how the app is continuing to post growth: It gained 190,000 new users to reach 896,000 monthly actives.

Further down the list, a few other apps deserve a mention. Icy Tower, an Ice Climbers-style game we covered recently over on Inside Social Games, grew by 135,000 new users to total 735,000. Another app, called MixPod Playlist, gained 93,000 to reach 621,000 monthly actives; the app is sort of similar to iLike, in that it lets you create playlists of songs using content like music videos from YouTube. Another game we recently reviewed on Inside Social Games, called Goobox – Free Games, is also seeing a solid surge. It grew by 85,000 to end the week at 526,000. The game is actually a collection of mini-games, with each one having a goo theme.

Also notable is the diversity of this list. As we’ve seen in past up-and-coming lists, this one includes apps in Turkish, Chinese, Spanish and French.

A new plug-in for Facebook from music player WinAmp may be a long-awaited key to comprehensive music sharing that has been lacking from the site — at least for people who still use Winamp. I am Listening To gives Facebook users the ability to share what they’re listening to at any given time, as well as load playlists directly to their profiles.

The Facebook Listening To v1.0 application updates your Facebook status when you listen to songs with the WinAmp music player. Your Facebook friends will know exactly what tracks you’re enjoying, or you can load entire playlists to share with everyone, marking a big improvement over some of the current options for sharing music on Facebook. The plug-in even has the ability to post your WinAmp tracks when you’re not logged into Facebook. The application is free, though donations are encouraged, and setup requires a special user ID and key code.

There are a few ways to let Facebook friends know about what type of music you enjoy. These are mostly limited to linking to songs in outside sites or programs, like the integration with iTunes, and programs that have offered music sharing directly through Facebook are often short-lived due to licensing and DRM issues. And, recently, Facebook let people send virtual songs to each other through Lala.

While WinAmp has been around for years, its popularity has waned due to more users migrating to players like iTunes and Windows Media Player. If this application can gain a little steam, this integration might help it gain a little momentum.

Retailers that are launching or beefing up their Facebook pages may not be able to easily track a monetary return on the time and energy spent on the pages, but many are starting to see benefits. Engaging in customers and building large fan followings is giving retailers like Kohl’s valuable insight into what their customers want, so sellers are better able to tailor their sites and specials to meet buyers’ needs.

A recent poll buy Shop.org revealed that as the holiday shopping season  get in full swing, almost half of all online retailers will begin to ramp up their presence on social sites, including Facebook. The more successful retailers wil be able to utilize Facebook to converse with consumers, mainly those who frequent their sites and stores, to create a better shopping experience.

While several applications, like the recent offering from Payvment, are allowing retailers to set up actual storefronts inside Facebook to translate fans into actual dollars, the real value comes from the free information Facebook offers, according to the report. Companies have traditionally paid a great deal to have outside companies conduct surveys to pinpoint trends in their respective industries — with Facebook, those companies can simply ask their customers themselves. The information gathered on Facebook can be used to implement sweeping changes across the brand or specialized offers to targeted demographics.

According to a report in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, retailer Kohl’s has been using its rather popular Facebook page to listen to improve its site and service for customers. The company is even planning to alter the look of its Facebook page to match a holiday ad campaign. The company’s willingness to embrace both praise and criticism on its page has proven beneficial, with Kohl’s using the information to give consumers more of what they want, and giving the brand the ability to directly address any complaints.

Facebook now has 326 million monthly active users, according to the data the company makes publicly available, and Europe countries make up around a third of this number. From the United Kingdom to Turkey, many of the largest countries in the region gained the most users, totaling 108 million monthly actives by the end of this month — across Europe, that’s up around 10 million from October.

The trend is shifting from what we’ve seen before, when the United Kingdom and northern European countries with smaller populations gained the most. Now, in order to make our list of the top 20 fastest-growing countries in the region, you need to be a big country with room left to grow. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and a few others have already apparently maxed out with more than 30% of the total country using the site every month; in fact, Iceland continues to have the highest Facebook penetration rate in the world, at 51.6% percent.

The United Kingdom gained the most new users of any European country last month, with 1.98 million new people using the site. It continues to be the single largest country for Facebook on the continent, with 22.6 million monthly active users. Behind the three Scandinavian countries mentioned, it has the fourth-highest-penetration rate, at 36.9%.

Meanwhile, France and Italy both grew by more than a million users, with Turkey, Spain and Germany close behind.

Here are a few milestones, across the map. Turkey passed 15 million users to reach 15.3 million from 14.5 million last month, making it region’s second-largest country; in a sign of its popularity, we’re seeing Turkish applications and pages become regular hits. Germany, a country with an entrenched set of local competitors (albeit ones that are patterned after Facebook) went from 4.36 million monthly active users to 5.08 million. Greece grew from 1.90 million to 2.09 million. Ireland, where Facebook’s European headquarters is located, grew from 995,000 to 1.15 million.

In contrast, the only two countries in the world to lose Facebook users were Cyprus (see here for more on that mysterious case) and Norway. The latter country has the second-highest penetration rate in the world after Iceland, coming in at 45.1%. But, in a statistical blip of Facebook fatigue, it fell from 2.26 million last month to 2.17 million monthly actives.

Overall, Facebook’s growth makes it an interesting new place for third parties to do business, which explains the recent surge in European applications and monetization companies.

To get a full look at Facebook’s monthly global gains, check out our Facebook Global Market Monitor.

This past July, following increased concerns about the ways Facebook Platform ad networks were incorporating user data in their ads and landing pages, Facebook released updated Platform advertising guidelines that more clearly stated what was and wasn’t permissible on the Facebook Platform. A few weeks earlier, it had suspended two Platform ad networks from operating on Facebook altogether.

Facebook told developers it would take new measures against scams in offer networks last week. But now, after a week in which offer networks have come under increasing scrutiny for running deceptive ads, the company has announced that it has banned two more Platform offer and ad networks “who have repeatedly violated our policies.” According to Facebook,

First, deceptive ads are a widespread issue on the Web and one we fight aggressively. This battle is not new and it’s far from over. We faced stimulus scam ads on our own system earlier this year and pushed them off the site with rigorous enforcement. We did the same months later when deceptive ads from third-party ad networks appeared in applications. We’re doing that again now as we see them appear in the form of offers.

Since introducing updated policies for third-party ads on Facebook Platform in July, we have disabled two entire ad networks and suspended or brought into compliance over 100 applications for ad-related violations in regions around the world, over half of which had more than one million monthly active users.

We recognize that monitoring ads isn’t the first area of focus for an entrepreneur just getting started with social applications. That’s why ad networks that don’t play by the rules should expect to be our first point of contact in our line of enforcement. Our policies are clear. If you’re an ad network and don’t comply with them, you are doing a disservice to your customers, and you should expect your business opportunities on Facebook to cease.

In addition to legal notices that have been sent to many ad networks to mandate ongoing compliance on Facebook Platform, today we are disabling two additional offer and ad networks who have repeatedly violated our policies.

We don’t know who they are for now. We’ll be updating with more.

Update: Still no more word on the identity of the two ad networks. If you know more, please let us know at mail AT insidefacebook DOT com.

A Facebook page can help a local government build a stronger social connection to the citizens it represents. Sure, local governments in democratic countries are already social, as they do things like offer public hearings around controversial issues, or mail out surveys to residents. But how many people come to hearings, or bother to fill out these surveys — especially students and working-age adults who have many other responsibilities? For any local government leader looking to truly understand the needs of the people they were elected or hired to serve, the answer is never enough.

1. Find real constituents: While anyone can join any Facebook page, the fact that people live their real lives and list their locations on Facebook means that you can easily see if someone commenting on a page is actually a constituent versus, say, a digital out-of-towner looking to cause trouble. Should a government page owner make sure to respond to these people, too, for example? San Francisco, California‘s page has a whopping 263,000 fans (around a third of its total population) but a large portion of those fans don’t actually live in San Francisco. Many of these people are likely fans of San Francisco as a concept, and aren’t tax-paying residents who want to hear about the minutiae of city life. Their comments may not be as valuable. Note that Facebook does allow you to send geo-targeted “updates” to fans in certain geographic areas that appear in a secondary tab in the Facebook message inbox.

2. Decide who is in control: Who has the responsibility for managing the page? The city council? The county? The mayor’s office? A paid employee of one of these offices? An independent member of the government? Many local governments are still figuring out how to handle online political campaign disclosures in general; we don’t recommend putting campaign material on a city page, for example. But How restrictive are you going to be about social media in general? Earlier this year, Bozeman, Montana, sparked controversy when it went as far as to ask for employee’s user names and passwords to Facebook and other sites — its goal was to make sure employees didn’t misrepresent the city on those sites, apparently. Also, some issues — like state legislation affecting towns across the state, may be left for another page; an example of that is the Illinois Municipal League Legislative Department page, an organization representing more than 1,000 towns across the state. And be aware of legal issues. Here’s Coral Springs, Florida’s guidelines, for example.

3. Make clear administration policies: Does the government have the budget and the focus to pay someone to post regularly? Ventura, California has a general “civic engagement manager” position, for example, who is charged in part with social media, but the city also pushes its other employees to use social media. Is the page an appropriate forum to discuss issues with citizens — should sensitive issues be reserved for town halls or other in-person forums? If the government has a junior employee reading and responding to comments, it needs clear rules about what sort of comments they can respond to, and what comments should be sent up the hierarchy for response. Many companies use enterprise software services for pages, like Context Optional or Buddy Media, to manage this process. Page owners can also choose to either restrict users from leaving their own status updates, or you can let them post away. We suggest you moderate for hate speech and other inappropriate content, if you choose the latter. Also, watch out for employees who spend too much time using Facebook, especially for non-work related things like social games.

4. Provide useful profile information: It may seem simple, but what other contact information are you going to provide fans? Many local government pages we’ve seen provide physical addresses, phone numbers and email addresses for central government offices or for specific departments. The pages for Knoxville, Tennessee and Grand Rapids, Michigan, for example, provide addresses, numbers and also business hours. If you do blog or tweet, we also recommend that you provide links to those destinations.

5. Decide if you need more than one page: Should the police department, the fire department, the school district, and other parts of the government have their own pages? The Dallas, Texas police department has its own page, for example. What about the mayor’s office? On a related note, should each elected leader have their own personal page, that they take with them after they leave office? In general, we suggest more populated cities and counties create pages for individual departments. The goal is to have an active page, and if you’re a local government for, say, just a few thousand people, you don’t want to split your potential fans to the degree that you have a hard time getting conversations started.

6. Share content to and from your other sites: Many cities already have their own web sites, and some use social tools like blogs or Twitter accounts. How should a page be integrated with these services? If other services already have active communities, then we recommend governments do things like post links to blog articles within their page, in order to help direct Facebook users to discussions already happening off the site. If your government is also using Twitter, Facebook provides an option that lets you repost any update from your page to Twitter; the Twitter app for Facebook, as well as some third-party apps, also let you post from Twitter to your page. If you have a blog, you can use the Networked Blog service or a number of other third party applications to syndicate the RSS feed of your blog into your page. A Facebook page can also be a place to promote other new services from. Cudahy, Wisconsin has an active page, that it has launched a new, full-service web site. Morris County, New Jersey posts to its page — and to other social sites — using Ping.fm, one of several third-party services that let you post remotely, take a look at this coverage for more detail. Gillette, Wyoming, is using its page to show off mock-ups of a forthcoming city site redesign.

But What to Share?

Sharing status updates, photos, and other media in the stream is the single most important aspect of the site, as this information is what appears to users in their news feeds, and what typically generates the most conversation. Are you going to post only major news? Are you going to ask questions of your citizen-fans? Are you going to provide tips?

7. Public service announcements: Are you making sure important public service announcements are reaching Facebook users? The H1N1 flu season is here, and Fairfax County, Virginia, is posting links about the availability of flu shots, with links to its web site on the topic. Montgomery County, Maryland, used its page to keep fans informed of a traffic light software glitch, and to let commuters know about public transit options.

8. Events: Orlando, Florida‘s page includes posts for about a free workshop for people facing home foreclosures. Maysville, Kentucky, goes as far as to create events on Facebook for civic activities, then posts those events to its page; fans can then see the events and RSVP, allowing the city to get a better idea of how many people are going to show up. So does San Carlos, California. You can set your page to include the Events tab, as Durham County, North Carolina has done — this way, fans can see a chronological list of everything happening.

9. Multimedia: In our random sampling of local government pages, we didn’t see many that made heavy use of photos, videos and other multimedia to increase engagement. We suggest simply reposting the countless, user-generated pieces of content being generated — search Flickr, YouTube and other sites for interesting content to keep people engaged.

10. Applications: We also didn’t see many pages making use of applications. Using any of the third-party polling applications available on Facebook (accessible through the admin interface of pages), Facebook polls can be a quick and easy way to solicit feedback from Facebook users. Or, you can do what Fairfax County did, which was create a survey on its web site asking for feedback about its Facebook page, then link to the survey via an update to its page.

Local government leaders should look at these questions as a reflection of the new opportunities pages provide. As with any aspect of democratic government, Facebook pages are a work in progress for the entire community — not every attempt to use them will work according to plan, but making the effort is the best way to figure out what works best.

For more, see: The Facebook Marketing Bible: 50+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook

Facebook has been working on Jabber support for Facebook Chat for a while, but it appears the service may be closer to launching. IM server company Process One says their bot has just detected Facebook’s deployment of the XMPP stack on chat.facebook.com.

Facebook has previously said the Jabber interface to Facebook Chat will allow users to:

• Chat with friends inside Facebook from the client of their choosing, like Google Talk
• See which of their friends are online and view their profile pictures
• Set their status

For developers, this could mean that Facebook’s Chat Invite API could become more powerful, as more Facebook users would be able to receive synchronous app requests even if they’re not on Facebook.com.

Wendy’s has a new interactive campaign called Real Time based around their Bacon Deluxe burger, and the quick-serve restaurant is relying on Facebook and Twitter users to spread the word about their latest bacon-centric offering.

The Facebook part of the ad campaign is accessible from a new “Bacon” tab on the Wendy’s fan page, and offers users a chance to proclaim their love for Bacon in their news feeds. To further spread word of the campaign, many of the items on the Wendy’s menu that feature bacon are available as free branded virtual gifts that users can give their friends. The Real Time campaign web site also incorporates Connect, with a feature that gauges users’ “realness” before posting it to their news feeds with a link inviting friends to test their own level of “real.”

Most of the features of this campaign link to a Wendy’s Twitter account with the handle UrBaconMeCrazy, which currently has close to 500 followers. Twitter is also featured heavily in the main interface of the Real Time site, with the ability to follow those with posts about Wendy’s, bacon, and some seemingly random topics that pop up on the page.

Users are also encouraged to share their stories through photos and videos, and Wendy’s is handing out free burgers for a year (in the form of a $200 gift card) to one submission every day. However, Wendy’s has yet to post any of the videos directly to its Facebook page; currently there isn’t even a tab or place for videos on the fan page.

The burger chain is currently trailing many of its quick-serve competitors by a wide margin — its 210,00-plus fans are far fewer than the 1-million or more that some restaurants enjoy (although it’s better than Burger King’s lack of a Facebook presence). The interactive and engaging nature of this campaign, plus the fact that it deals with a popular Facebook topic like bacon, should help to boost the popularity of the page.

While church-focused Facebook applications have been around for years, now real-life churches across the country are spreading their messages online, giving more people access to worship services and helping the churches reach a broader number of people.

A recent article by the Associated Press highlighted several churches that have increased their online presence, with several churches embracing Facebook as an effective way to reach people. These churches offer everything from video clips to live comments during online services, and Facebook users are definitely taking advantage of their offerings.

LifeChurch.TV has established a large following on its fan page, with almost 12,500 followers checking in to view the extensive list of videos, find out about upcoming events, and take part in faith-based discussions. Their presence on Facebook and other online outlets is matched by big numbers in the actual pews, as LifeChurch.TV is much more than just a virtual congregation — the church operates more than a dozen locations from Arizona to Albany.

The Central Christian Church is another online congregation utilizing Facebook to connect with more people. It uses Connect to allow Facebook users to participate in conversation during a number of online services it offers each week. Developed by Media Social, the media player features comments and the ability to update your status, as well as tabs for “Live Help” and “Live Prayer.”

It’s also important to note that some companies have been busy using Facebook for faith, for years. Perhaps the best example is MyChurch, which first started developing simple church applications in 2007, and now offers a full web site that uses Facebook Connect to help connect people around real-life churches. The company was also an FB Fund winner this past summer.

Having an online following has been beneficial to both the churches and those who frequent their pages and sites. Many people may not have the time or access to a traditional church, and online communities such as Facebook are designed to develop social groups with similar interests, or in this case, beliefs. These communities allow the churches to spread their word further, offer services at hours that may not be practical for brick and mortar establishments, and develop a volunteer network to further grow the congregation.

Last week, at Facebook’s “roadmap edition” of the Facebook Developer Garage, the company announced a series of large changes to the Platform (19 to be exact). Today, the company just released an FBML Bookmark button, and posted a few more details on the new “Counter” API. Here are the details:

1) FBML Bookmark

Many developers have devoted large chunks of their canvas pages to try to get users to bookmark their app by clicking the “bookmark” button in the bottom menu bar of the site. Today, Facebook released an FBML and XFBML tags that developers can use to put the button anywhere on their canvas pages. This should increase bookmarking rates.

When users click the button, they’ll see the following popup:

Facebook adds, “We may experiment with changing the wording on this button (for example, ‘Add to Home page’) when the bookmark location moves, but enabling users to easily return to the applications that they love will still be a core part of their experiences with applications.”

2) Counter API

Facebook hasn’t said much about the Counter so far, other than developers will have the option to display a number on a user’s application bookmark on the home page “to indicate to a user that they should take an action in your application,” and that “when a user clicks through to the application, the Counter will be reset to zero.”

Today, Facebook added that the counter “will likely be located beside all applications on the Application and Games Dashboards as well,” and that the Facebook Platform team is “still designing exactly how Counters will be displayed beside non-bookmarked apps. Stay tuned.”