Facebook this morning released an update to its Facebook Connect JavaScript SDK that includes basic XFBML support and an optimization layer for FQL queries. Developers interested in building Connect JavaScript apps with XFBML for simpler rendering of Facebook elements will now be able to do so with just a few lines of code.

Separately, Facebook’s David Recordon announced that a prototype implementation for the OAuth WRAP specification for FriendFeed has shipped. Facebook is working to move Connect over to OAuth over the next year. Bret Taylor has posted a few notes on his blog as well.

Adidas is celebrating its upcoming Star Wars originals line with a new Facebook Connect integration that also uses Google Earth. The application pulls in your profile image and location, then sends the Death Star to Earth to deliver… a branded message from Adidas.

Once you’ve logged in through Facebook, your profile information is integrated into a brief film featuring Darth Vader and the Death Star, which targets your location to deliver an Adidas-branded laser blast. The integration is similar to those we’ve seen from brands like AT&T and Blackberry, Doritos, ABC and the Discovery Channel, using images and personal information from your Facebook profile directly in the video, but this application also goes one step further. Using Google Earth, the laser blast from the Death Star actually targets your general area (assuming your location and address are included in your profile).

The Google Earth integration is what makes this application somewhat unique, but its execution is a little sloppy. In several attempts to send the laser blast to my and my friends’ locations, the end result was never really on target. This part is neat, but could have been executed better; as several comments on Mashable pointed out, Verizon currently has a similar app that uses Google Street View to “Drop A Droid” directly in front of your home.

Where the application does succeed is in its simplicity and fun factor, which should translate into a lot of both Adidas and certainly Star Wars fans plugging in their information and the information of their friends, giving the brand a lot of data for future promotions and email blasts. Of course there are also links to the actual product line, which features Adidas classics with a Star Wars twist.

The car with the most fans on Facebook got a little more popular late last week when some embargoed specifications for the upcoming 2011 Ford Mustang were leaked through a Facebook Page. Inside Line and Autoblog reported that someone in the know decided to divulge a few of the new Mustang’s engine specs, and the information quickly spread across the Web. Enthusiasts were particularly excited to learn that the iconic Ford will be returning to a 5-liter engine, the same displacement that the Mustang enjoyed for years in Fox Body form.

There isn’t anything particularly unexpected about the leaked specs, but the fact that the Mustang will once again sport a 5.0 engine was enough to rouse interest in the Mustang’s official Facebook Page. It added nearly 6,000 fans following the news’ release, bringing the total to more than 350,000.

Ford has an established presence on Facebook, and though this latest event wasn’t necessarily a company-sponsored leak (that we know of — anyone can post to the Page, and the information appeared to come from a fan), the fact that it generated so much interest on the site in such a short time period is testament to the number of Facebook users that are fans of either the company or the Mustang. Ford has been active in reaching out to social network users, most recently with their promotions for the Fusion Hybrid and new Fiesta.

The spike in interest also shows that fans of the brand are acknowledging Facebook as a source for news and information on all things Ford. The auto maker  continues to use Facebook and other social networks well, especially for their cars and trucks that are designed to appeal to demographics that are heavy Facebook users. The Page also seems to have collected its own group of Mustang enthusiasts — they’re regularly swapping pictures of their cars, and talking about their latest modifications.

Seven of the 20 applications that gained the most monthly active users this past week have holiday themes, according to AppData. Meanwhile, top games and other applications appear to have been adding fewer users than last week.

Coming in first, RockYou‘s Birthday Cards managed to beat Christmas Cards! this week by about 62,000 more users.  Christmas Cards is made using a LOLapps’ white-label app creator called Gift Creator that is used for many different gifting apps on Facebook. PetVille was the top game this month and third on the list. Zynga’s pet simulator added 26 percent, 3.4 million players, for a total of 12.9 million active users. And RockYou’s cross promotion of Zoo World, fourth, within its Birthday Cards app, couldn’t have hurt the game’s 23 percent increase in MAUs this week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Birthday Cards	28,127,948	+3,979,319	+14.15
2.	Christmas Cards!	11,652,794	+3,916,852	+33.61
3.	PetVille	12,828,490	+3,357,145	+26.17
4.	Zoo World	7,450,131	+1,685,244	+22.62
5.	Santa Yourself	2,937,722	+1,639,897	+55.82
6.	Christmas Cheer	7,179,347	+1,440,974	+20.07
7.	Best Friends Forever	2,161,542	+1,381,472	+63.91
8.	Happy Pets	11,273,768	+1,287,201	+11.42
9.	Friend Quiz	10,573,173	+1,282,038	+12.13
10.	Mobile	13,724,133	+1,222,052	+8.90
11.	@Smiles	3,153,495	+1,216,874	+38.59
12.	Christmas Greetings	1,701,019	+1,189,658	+69.94
13.	Christmas goodies	4,311,779	+1,160,788	+26.92
14.	Snowball Fight	6,654,486	+1,021,075	+15.34
15.	Quiz Planet!	8,918,252	+864,657	+9.70
16.	Fun Cards – Christmas & More!	1,767,875	+831,180	+47.02
17.	Holiday Drinks	2,232,358	+805,555	+36.09
18.	Photos I Love!	2,370,508	+744,632	+31.41
19.	Country Life	4,910,244	+682,468	+13.90
20.	iSmile	7,874,255	+681,589	+8.66

Meanwhile, Santa Yourself, a photo manipulation tool, continues to climb the chart, etching out a 56 percent increase in players last week, or about 1.6 million. And, Christmas Cheer follows behind with a 20 percent increase and a user base of 7.2 million, versus Santa Yourself’s 2.94 million monthly actives.

Other games only incrementally improved last week, but stayed in the top 20 overall. The week saw five games in the top 20 compared to Christmas’ seven apps. Happy Pets was missing last week due to a statistical bug, but returns this week at eighth, adding a healthy 12 percent to reach 11 million monthly active users. Only two other games appeared on the Top 20 this week, Snowball Fight and Country Life. Both games added users incrementally last week.  Snowball by 15 percent and Country Life by 14 percent.

Finally, the app with the highest MAU overall was Birthday Cards with 28.1 million. And the app with the highest increase in relation to its size was Christmas Greetings adding 70 percent or 1.2 million users for 1.7 million monthly active users overall.

Next week should be the culmination in Christmas and other holiday–related apps on the top 20 as we head into 2010.

New numbers, social massive multi-player online games from Japan, and holiday virtual goods: these are only some social gaming news items from the past week. Here are our headlines from Inside Social Games.

Monday, December 14th, 2009

• Taking a Look at Social MMO TinierMe
• ‘Tis the Season for… Games on This Week’s Top 20 Monthly Gainers List
• FarmVille: The Biggest Social Game of 2009, By the Numbers
• Chinese Social Game Developer Rekoo Gets $1.5 Million in Funding

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

• Holiday-Themed Virtual Goods Expand Social Gaming Revenues
• Offerpal Hires RockYou Executive to Be Its New Chief Revenue Officer
• CrowdStar Launches Social Tourism Game Happy Island, Using Only Facebook Credits
• Rumor: Zynga to Introduce Employee Stock Sale Plan as It Waits On IPO [Confirmed]

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

• Frosmo Brings Tournament Gaming to the Web, Facebook
• Social Offers Come to Adknowledge’s Advertising Bidding Service
• As Facebook Prepares Credits Rollout, Here’s a Look at the Firtual Currency in Social Games
• Christmas Facebook Games Finally in Our Top 20 Gaining Daily Active Users List

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

• Claw Up the Hollywood Social Ladder in Avastar
• Kongregate Launches Konduit Application Platform
• Hollywood Tycoons Are Made in Canada

Friday, December 18th, 2009

• A Look at Challenge Games’ Facebook Fantasy Card App, Warstorm
• Big Developers See New Growth on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Games List
• Despite User Complaints, Battlefield Heroes Reaches 3 Million Users
• Another New Playdom Game Surfaces: Wild Ones, a Social Take on Worms
• With Hit Social Game Happy Farm, Chinese Developer 5 Minutes Raises $3.5 Million from DFJ
• Social Gaming Roundup: Charitable Wizards, Smule, PlayStation Home, and More

Google Releases New Facebook App for Android – This week Google released a new version of Facebook for Android, now live on the market, that allows you to browse your friend’s profiles and photo albums with more ease. You may also share photos and leave comments on them with more ease.

YouTube Strengthens Connection to Facebook – YouTube is going social, announcing this week that, in addition to Gmail contacts, users can now connect with people with Facebook and Yahoo accounts who have synced them to YouTube through AutoShare. Some new features will accompany the change.

You can go to anyone’s channel and see how many views their uploads have received and the playlist display in searches has also changed to become “strongly more visually identified.” Turning on the activity feed allows users to see what’s been tagged as a favorite, commented on, how videos were rated, etc.

The feed is in “test mode,” according to YouTube, but is asking users to turn it on in order to push videos embedded on Facebook back to their YouTube homepages. In this vein YouTube is also encouraging users to form more groups. YouTube also added some options that are meant to streamline participation in groups.

RockYou Hacked, 32 Million User Passwords Exposed – RockYou has had some explaining to do. Security firm Imperva warned that there was a serious SQL injection flaw in their database, potentially exposing the service’s entire list of user names and passwords — and the worst has happened.

Not only were all 32,603,388 hacked, but, a full list of unprotected plain text passwords and email addressed, and also a list of partner sites, such as information for MySpace. A company rep later said that RockYou’s Facebook apps and ad network had not been attacked.

RockYou says the hack affected “older” applications — its widgets. The company has dmitted the mistake and it says changes to the company’s security system will be forthcoming.

Zuckerberg One of Newsweek’s Newly-Minted Tycoons – Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg placed third on Newsweek’s 20/10 Project’s Newly-Minted Tycoons list. Along with the likes of “The Google Guys” (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) and Jay-Z, Zuckerberg was tapped as one of the people who marked the first decade of the 20^th century.

Zuckerberg was also tapped as the most influential mogul by men aged 18-54 via a poll of millions of LivingSocial users who participated in November by picking their own top five lists on the media developer’s Facebook page.

Facebook Shuts Down Berlusconi Attacker Group – Facebook shut down a group this week, after aids to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed it “promoting violence” by supporting Massimo Tartaglia, the man who attacked 73 year-old Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Dec. 13.

The attack resulted not only in two broken teeth and a fractured nose for Berlusconi, but a Facebook fan page for Tartaglia that attracted more than 100,000 people in 48 hours after the attack. The page has since been taken down, perhaps in response to previous threats to Facebook in Italy. However, several similar groups remain online; one such discussion boasting more than 400,000 members still hosts some pretty anti-Berlusconi material (see below).

Facebook fought legislation in Italy last winter that would have allowed government authorities to shut down the site unless the company blocked content deemed inappropriate. The site has also had to previously block pages with groups like “Let’s Kill Berlusconi” and fan pages of mob bosses.

Carnival Cruises Bars its Content from Facebook, Recants – Carnival Cruise Lines retracted a policy sent out to travel agents this week that barred them from using any Carnival trademark or intellectual property on social networking sites, including Facebook, without prior written approval.

Some agent balked censorship at the policy that was to be implemented on January 1, 2010, and the company recanted this week, “It wasn’t our intent for the social media guidelines to be as far-reaching as the current wording would indicate,” said CCL spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz.

Facebook Gifts Themed Print, Charitable Donations – Facebook’s annual gift for friends and clients this year, some 4,000 in total, was a “unique and personal” 19-inch by 19-inch Facebook-themed art print. The gift also included a wooden token redeemable to donate $75 to either DonorsChoose.org, which donates to classrooms in need, or Kiva.org, which makes loans to low-income entrepreneurs.

Inside Facebook extends a big thank you to our sponsors for supporting the continued growth of Inside Facebook. Check them out below!

Surfpin is a provider of mobile and landline payments for game and application developers.

Zong is a provider of mobile payments serving the digital content, social media, and gaming industries.

SoftLayer provides managed hosting services for social application and game developers.

Deal United is a provider of virtual currency monetization solutions for social applications and online games in Europe.

LifeStreet Media is a performance advertising platform focused on social applications.

Offerpal Media is a managed offer network for social applications and online merchants.

Super Rewards is a monetization solution for applications and games running on social networks like Facebook.

Social Video Bytes is a new video ad network for social network applications.

AdParlor is an advertising network designed specifically for social networking sites.

Facebook appears to be further tightening its policies around subscription and download ads and offers. The company sent an email to third-party ad networks this afternoon, saying that any ad for subscriptions or downloads will be “required to provide full disclosure of the service being offered as well as the action(s) required of the user in order to engage with the advertised services.” The new policies go into effect at 12am PT on January 4, 2010.

Facebook already requires all ads, including Facebook Ads and offers and other ads on the Facebook Platform, to disclose their terms. However, many mobile subscription and download ads have tried to toe the line. The act of tricking users into signing up for a $10 a month mobile subscription ad has proven lucrative for some advertisers, developers, and ad networks, and kicking the habit has been hard for some, despite enforcement risks.

Here are examples Facebook gives for acceptable vs. unacceptable ad creatives under the updated rules:

Note: the example above is an ad running on Facebook’s performance advertising platform, but the same advertising policies apply to all Facebook Platform ad networks and developers as well.

A variety of advertising-related problems have occurred on the Facebook Platform over the last year. In June, Facebook banned two ad networks for using user data in a way that violated the company’s terms of service. Then, in July, it introduced a more explicit set of guidelines around what sort of ads could be shown. Then, this fall, it began cracking down more heavily on scammy offers, and banned two more ad networks.

Today’s announcement promises “enforcement action” against monetization providers and the developers they work with if ads are found to not comply by 12am on January 4, 2010.

Here’s the email:

Hello,

Here at Facebook quality and user feedback have always been important considerations for advertising. As part of our ongoing efforts to maintain a high quality user experience across the site, we’re continuing to make both quality and feedback increasingly significant factors in shaping our advertising policies.

Over the past several months, we’ve received significant negative feedback from users about recurring billing and product download practices. As a result, we’ve decided to amend our Subscription Services and Download policies within our Ad Guidelines. Going forward, all ads related to these two areas will be required to provide full disclosure of the service being offered as well as the action(s) required of the user in order to engage with the advertised services.

The new additions to the current guidelines are listed below, and we’ve also included more details on both of these policy changes in the linked collateral. Please use these as guides when delivering current ads or serving new ones in the future.

Destinations: http://tinyurl.com/ykfef5c
Subscription Services: http://tinyurl.com/yc2momv

We ask that you bring all of your ads into compliance with these new policies by 12am PST on 1/4/09. Any ads that are found to be in violation of these policies after this date will be cause for enforcement action on monetization providers as well as developers.  We encourage you to help developers provide a quality user experience and stay within the bounds of our Advertising Guidelines.  Thank you in advance for your cooperation and your support of our efforts to uphold the user experience on Facebook.

If you have any questions about these new policies, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Thank you,
Facebook Ads Team

Subscription Services (new additions)
“The ad must clearly state what action or set of actions is required to qualify for the offer.  If the user must subscribe to a service, the service and offer requirements must both be stated in the ad (e.g. “Subscription Required”)

Downloads (new additions)
“Ads that link to a site that facilitates or promotes toolbars or other non-malicious user-initiated downloads must clearly state the action the user must take to utilize the service (e.g. “Download Required”)

Facebook’s home page engagement ads are a central component of its ad product offerings to big brands, and as such the company has spent a lot of time developing and testing several different kinds of home page ads over the last couple years, including virtual gifts, events, videos, polls, and simple “become a fan” units. Most recently, it launched a product sampling home page engagement ad unit, designed to drive consumer sign-ups for things like food and cosmetics.

Today, Facebook said it has tweaked the polling and event engagement ads by adding a “become a fan” upsell to these ad units for their associated Facebook Pages after users engage with the poll or ad. Facebook says they’ll add the feature to other engagement ads in the future. The additional upsell makes sense as it allows advertisers to capture some more value after people interact with the ad.

Facebook home page inventory is not available to anyone – there are minimum spend requirements, and Facebook often packages engagement ad offerings with a targeted performance buy as well.

More Resources from Inside Facebook:

• Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009 – 2010
• The Facebook Marketing Bible: 50+ Ways to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook
• Inside Facebook’s Best & Worst Facebook Marketing 2009
• The Facebook Global Monitor: Tracking Facebook in Global Markets

Facebook has just announced that its third “f8″ developer conference has been scheduled for April 21-22 in San Francisco. No venue has been announced yet, but it’s the first time the event will officially take place over two days.

f8 is a great way for developers to connect and those interested in the Facebook ecosystem to learn more about what’s happening. Facebook has also used the event to make major announcements in the past. Facebook initially announced the Facebook Platform at the first f8 in May of 2007. In July 2008, it announced Facebook Connect. Facebook didn’t hold an event in 2009, instead opting for a larger event in 2010.

f8 2010 could see more announcements around Facebook’s Credits virtual currency, which the company has been gradually rolling out to developers to power virtual goods purchases in Facebook apps and games, identity and the “Open Graph” API, which Facebook has only discussed briefly, or mobile, where Facebook has been growing by leaps and bounds.

Check out the f8 Facebook Page here. We’ll be there in full force, and look forward to meeting more of you in April!