The History Channel is promoting its Ice Road Truckers series through a new game on Facebook. Fans of the show get to drive their own rig and earn money, as well as challenge each other in a bid for the high score. The application’s developers have also built in plenty of opportunities for those playing the game to purchase episodes and DVDs of the series.

The game puts Facebooks users behind the wheel of their own big rig, where they pilot the 18-wheeler across frozen highways to deliver their loads, dodging obstacles along the way. Completing deliveries without causing too much damage to the truck nets users cash that can be used to purchase more fuel, repair any damages and upgrade the rig’s features to improve engine power, traction, braking or load capacity.

Users can challenge their friends to see who can rack up the most points, giving the Ice Road Truckers game a viral element that will help spread word about the television series; there’s also an option to allow The History Channel to post updates in the users’ news feeds. Users also have the option of linking to Amazon and iTunes directly from the game to purchase DVDs and episodes of the series.

The official Facebook page for the Ice Road Truckers TV series currently has 40,000 fans, and has seen steady growth. The page itself is fairly active with user posts, and it offers videos of the program and links back to the History Channel’s Web site for even more content. However, the administrators post sporadically, and there isn’t yet any mention of the game application in the wall posts.

Facebook’s US traffic growth had a big finish last year, according to web measurement companies comScore, Quantcast, Compete and Nielsen. For the month of December, each of these firms showed growth in the millions of new monthly users from November. Here’s a closer look at each one, plus data on Facebook’s international traffic.

ComScore:

Facebook gained 9 million monthly unique visitors during the month, to reach 112 million monthly uniques in total (double where it was at a year earlier). Meanwhile, social network competitor MySpace continued to drift down and microblogging service saw slow growth.

Quantcast:

While neither Facebook nor MySpace and Twitter are directly measured by it, Quantcast shows similar trajectories. Facebook grew to 117 million in the US, while MySpace and Twitter gradually fell.

Compete:

Meanwhile, Facebook grew by around 4 million new users to 132 million monthly unique visitors, as we covered when Compete released December stats earlier this month.

Nielsen:

The company reports nearly 110 million unique visitors, close to what comScore has.

Facebook’s own advertising tool shows the service reaching nearly 103 million monthly active users, with a gain of 4 million. Why is this number lower? One reason, it appears, is that the advertising tool shows data from more than a month prior.

Each measurement service has different methodologies — Compete, for example, may somehow measuring Facebook Connect integrations on other sites, thereby pushing its numbers higher than the others. But the overall trend is pretty clear in terms of US Facebook traffic: December was a big month, concluding a big year.

Worldwide, we only have data from comScore and the advertising tool. But the numbers are even higher. Comscore shows a monthly increase in December of nearly 31 million, reaching a whopping 469 million monthly unique visitors. Facebook announced it had grown to 350 million monthly active users at the start of December; Facebook’s advertising tool showed that it had grown from 337 million in November to slightly more than 350 million by the end of December, according to our Global Monitor. ComScore’s international numbers may be high due to more general difficulties in measuring traffic in some parts of the world.

ComScore’s Andrew Lipman also took a closer look at the numbers in a blog post yesterday. From his post:

NutshellMail, an fbFund REV company, debuted a useful feature for page admins this week allowing them to create an automated newsletter for their fans by adding an “Email Newsletter” tab to their pages with the company’s Facebook app.

This newest addition to NutshellMail’s features allows fans to opt-in to the newsletter with featured content from a page, per a company press release.

The new feature is designed to be easy to set up, use and maintain, and encourages subscribers to comment, like, share or post directly back to Facebook pages through the email newsletters. Although Facebook recently debuted a reply by email function, NutshellMail has offered the same feature since May of 2009.

The automated newsletter is similar to NutshellMail’s primary service, allowing users to compile social network updates from Facebook and others into a “snapshot email” which is sent to a primary email address on a schedule determined by the user —anywhere from once a week to hourly. Frequency, content and other settings for this snapshot email may be adjusted by users, who may also reply to notifications directly into Facebook and other networks via email.

In June of last year we spoke to NutshellMail’s co-founders David Lyman and Mark Schmulen, who said the allure of their company was that it allowed users to enjoy the perks of social networking without having to slog through piles of notifications.

“With Facebook, it’s easy to get annoyed of email notifications and most of them remain unread. By consolidating activity on Facebook – and even Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn – we deliver email digests to users when and how often they want them. As a consequence, our email open rates are high,” they said.

NutshellMail released a similar application for Ning — the social platform allowing people to create their own social networks around causes, brands or interests that passed the two million mark this week — enabling public networks there to create an email newsletter for their site.

There’s a certain balance to this week’s list of emerging apps still under a million monthly users, taken from AppData: among its several foreign language offerings, there are two in Chinese, two in French and two more in Turkish.

The pairs don’t stop there, either. Note Polls and Poll Daddy Polls, which are neck and neck in the third and fourth spot.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Calendario de Amigos	833,208	+605,733	+72.70
2.	Akinator	530,743	+341,237	+64.29
3.	Polls	660,152	+331,383	+50.20
4.	Poll Daddy Polls	711,520	+325,182	+45.70
5.	開心寶貝	708,918	+281,729	+39.74
6.	你問我答	526,650	+277,260	+52.65
7.	Birthday	249,147	+159,868	+64.17
8.	What’s your Actual Age?	684,404	+146,153	+21.35
9.	Temple of Mahjong 2	374,338	+128,089	+34.22
10.	Sanalika	214,568	+125,929	+58.69
11.	Show Some Love!	509,697	+118,468	+23.24
12.	Blessings†	133,408	+118,404	+88.75
13.	Oyun	175,425	+115,549	+65.87
14.	The Pink Ribbon	310,943	+114,206	+36.73
15.	Spot The Difference	422,603	+109,866	+26.00
16.	Friends of FarmVille :)	109,258	+106,412	+97.40
17.	Dr. Phil’s Personality Test	571,547	+103,954	+18.19
18.	Band of Heroes	742,508	+98,763	+13.30
19.	Doorbell	980,468	+90,286	+9.21
20.	What is the symbol of your personality?	429,818	+83,413	+19.41

Last week we called for Poll Daddy to take the lead based on its success across the broader web, and it does still have more MAU. But Polls has slightly more daily active users, and doesn’t appear ready to give up the contest. It has also grown more strongly since the beginning of January, as seen in the chart below.

Moving down, Birthday and What’s your Actual Age?, coming in at seven and eight, obviously share a theme as well. But the next app of real interest is The Pink Ribbon, which plays off the popular breast cancer symbol. Whether this app is affiliated with any aid organization is questionable, but it’s not a good sign that it asks users to download a toolbar and give personal information up for marketing studies.

And don’t miss Friends of FarmVille :), which follows in the footsteps of the slightly larger apps FarmVille Cash and FarmChat. The idea behind them all is to help Farmville players coordinate better and gain more levels in that game.

Zynga managed to get one app of this sort shut down (Farmville Gift Sender), but the developers of the others are apparently learning to walk the line and avoid copyright violations, while still riding off Farmville’s success. But Zynga shouldn’t get too upset at these feeder apps — their growth is little more than a symptom of Farmville’s continuing success.

As part of the Developer Roadmap Facebook announced in October, Facebook announced new Applications and Games “dashboards” all users will soon see by default in their home page bookmark menu. The dashboards contain new ways for developers to publish content to users that don’t fit into the exact concepts of feed stories, notifications, or invitations.

Today, Facebook has officially turned on the dashboard API sandbox so that developers can begin testing them, but hasn’t set a specific date for when the new dashboard will go live beyond “the coming weeks.”

The Dashboard News API

With the new dashboard, Facebook is introducing the concept of “dashboard news.” By default, the dashboard will show the 3 games or apps you used most recently, as well as 3 games or apps your friends are playing. Within each of these listings, Facebook says it will show the 2 most recent “dashboard news items,” in addition to the counter for that app.

What’s a “dashboard news item?” Good question. According to Facebook, there will be 2 types of dashboard news items: global and personal.

• Global news items are sent to all your application users when you call dashboard.setGlobalNews.
• Personal news items are sent to users you specify when you call dashboard.setNews.

In other words, it sounds like Facebook is intending that application developers use “personal news items” as a partial substitute for user-to-user notifications, as these are indeed a new app-to-user channel. However, unlike notifications, 1) there is no unified inbox, and 2) only the two most recent news items are shown, meaning the read rate and conversion rates could be lower. For example, if you send a user two “personal” news items, and then publish a “global” news item, the first personal news item you sent will apparently be lost forever.

In addition to the Dashboard News API, the new games and application dashboards will include counters, allow user mentions, and show friends’ recent activity in games and other apps. We’ll keep tracking all the changes on Facebook’s developer roadmap over the coming weeks and months.

After having rented out data center space in Silicon Valley and elsewhere for years, Facebook is now building its own data center in scenic Prineville, located in central Oregon. It’s a symbolic step for the company, which started out on an $80/month shared server just under six years ago.

Facebook has been working to drive down costs associated with hosting, including through the development of various back-end software programs. Combined with the growth of its advertising business, this move should help Facebook continue to achieve operating profitability.

The data center is Facebook’s first solely owned and operated one, and like those in the region belonging to Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other tech companies it will benefit from cheap and reliable power coming from dams on the Columbia River, as well massive tax breaks and the high-desert eastern Oregon climate. More on the data center’s technology, from the company blog post today:

Prineville is located in Crook County, which had 17.4 percent unemployment in November, as The Oregonian covers — it has been heavily impacted by timber industry troubles due to the falling housing market and stricter environmental regulations. The new center will create 200 short-term construction jobs and 35 jobs once the center is completed. That’s not much for the area, but certainly better than nothing.

And, for Facebook users, the center will allow new computing and storage capacity, meaning a faster and more reliable user experience.

While Silicon Valley is home to many of the largest advertising offers companies, an increasing number are popping up overseas — and aimed at those markets. Israel-based SupersonicAds came out of stealth last April, and has been expanding in Europe. It has most recently been testing video advertising within its offer walls, and it is also eyeing expansion to more regions.

A few offer companies have been experimenting with video offers recently, including gWallet and, in some sense, Social Vibes. In SupersonAds’s tests, it ran videos for advertisers like Adidas in Spain, and Flip in the United Kingdom. The ads appeared as pop-outs from within the company’s offer walls in apps, as you can see from the screenshot in Honesty Box for Spain Adidas.

Offers, generally, ask users to complete some form of purchase, survey or other task in exchange for virtual currency. Once they earn the currency, users can buy virtual goods in games and other applications.

Video ads are “a no brainer” for SupersonicAds’ technology team, according to Assaf Vaknin, the company’s director of business development: The team worked at video site MetaCafe for years and has experience running social video campaigns. The ads increased revenue, he says, and the number of first-time offer takers — especially people who were otherwise uncomfortable taking offers that did things like ask for personal information — although he’s not providing more details on the results.

SupersonicAds has generally been focused on top European ad markets, so besides the UK and Spain, countries like France and Italy. Around 60% of its clients are social network application developers, not just on Facebook, but also on MySpace and smaller European social networks, Vaknin says; around 40% are casual and browser-based games.

In terms of inventory, it works with local display advertisers country and language-specific markets, and also pulls in direct response ads from online ad networks. Vaknin makes clear that it is contact with Facebook over ways that it ensures offer quality. The company uses filtering technology and a dedicated monitoring team to verify the quality of ads before running them, he says. Offer companies and social game developers have been criticized — fairly — for being loose with what ads they run. Many ads tricked users into sharing information or paying for services that they did not actually want — a secret $10 per month mobile ringtone subscription being an iconic example. Especially after press criticism and platform company pressure, offer companies have been working to clean up their content and provide more valuable ads to users.

SupersonicAds isn’t focused on running ads for US users, it is working to run more ads for developers with European users; it is also looking to expand internationally, especially to growing markets in Asia, and large Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. While many of its ads have been from direct-response affiliates, it is also pushing its display sales in the countries it focuses on.

And, while many of its developer clients are located outside of Europe, it is also trying to work out deals with new, more local studios as they emerge. Existing European clients include browser-based game developer Upjers from Germany, Nealab Techologies in Italy (creator of Italian Facebook dating app Incontra Gente) and app and game developer Feerik in France.

Vaknin also notes the potential of other, neighboring markets. Eastern Europe is seeing a boom in social networks and gaming as more people in the region get broadband internet access. Another potential market is Turkey, which is one of the biggest Facebook-using countries in Europe and the Middle East — but a market that no one has figured out how to monetize well yet. Users there, as in many other countries, are not as used to paying for virtual goods or taking offers. Overall, however, companies like SupersonicAds, and a variety of rivals, appear to be well-positioned to take advantage of Europe as well as other emerging markets.

Palm Harbor Homes — a Dallas-based company that sells, finances and insures manufactured homes — ran a promotion on Facebook this month aimed at recruiting potential buyers by awarding one iPod Nano a day for five days. It’s an example of a local business experimenting with Facebook as a new way to drive sales.

The goal of the campaign was not simply increase the number of fans on Palm Harbor’s Facebook page. Rather, the idea was to recruit the fans that would be most likely to purchase a Palm Harbor modular home, said Ryan Helmstetler of the North Carolina-based The Sales Factory, which ran the campaign in the State of Texas from January 5 to 10.

The strategy was to target potential buyers on Facebook using demographic and geographic factors and have them enter their personal information in order to have a chance at the iPod in the Palm Harbor Sweepstakes. That information was then sent to sales centers in Texas, which followed up with the potential customers, Helmstetler explained.

Facebook is an ideal medium to implement this direct marketing, he said.

“It’s more about getting fans that generally accept your product or are interested, generating leads that can turn into sales,” Helmstetler said. “Doing that through traditional media, you’re forcing that message. Facebook allows us to target to people who are accepting of those ads.”

Palm Harbor’s Facebook page grew from 329 to 1,465 fans during that week, but Helmstetler is quick to point out that these numbers represent potential customers — not simply idle fans.

This Facebook strategy is less expensive than pursuing traditional media campaigns, he said, but the social network has proven results because, “we’re able to see results immediately based on how many fans and leads we get in real time.”

At the end of the campaign at least one fan contacted through the Facebook page initiated the process of purchasing a modular home, Helmstetler said, noting that such success will likely prompt a repeat of the sweepstakes on a quarterly basis. In case you’ve heard of The Sales Factory before, the company also helped with the Texas Pete campaign.

Microsoft recently announced a new application on their Office Blog to help Office users discover the full functionality of programs like Excel, PowerPoint and Word. The company is using Facebook Connect to make the learning process an interactive game. Ribbon Hero is an add-on for Vista and Windows 7, and Microsoft also seems to be using this opportunity to promote the Office 2010 Beta.

Ribbon Hero is designed to help Excel, PowerPoint and Word users become more confident when using the programs, as well as explore the subtle nuances and hidden features that many casual users may not know exist. The game challenges friends to see who is the most adept at the Office suite.

Once users have connected with Facebook, they’ll be able to invite friends to participate in a series of tasks to earn points in challenges and measure their progress against friends and anyone participating in Ribbon Hero; once reaching certain milestones within the challenge, users also have the option of sharing their progress through status updates. Those wanting to challenge friends will need to be running Vista or later with Microsoft Office 2007 or later, but in order to achieve a perfect score, they’ll have to download the Office 2010 Beta.

The ribbon Hero application is just the latest nod from software giant Microsoft that it is interested in tapping into the connectivity of Facebook. Late last year, we saw its success with the Xbox Live integration, and it will be interesting to see how Microsoft continues to incorporate Facebook in its product offerings.

Facebook Page administrators are starting to some new features go live. One is the ability to see the number of impressions per post, and the number of likes and comments per impression. The other feature isn’t launched yet — Facebook has just started asking administrators to identify themselves by industry.

The post measurement feature first got mentioned within a recently leaked presentation. But here are the first live screenshots we’ve seen, on online personal finance service Mint’s Page. Of course, these numbers are only visible to Page admins, not fans or other users.

Jeff Widman of BrandGlue.com works with Mint and provided the screenshots as well as a few observations. His company specializes in helping brands get more visibility in Facebook’s home page news feed. “I’m still playing with it, but now I can double-check things that I’ve previously only guessed at,” he says, “like how much the [news feed] algorithm weights individual items versus weighting the fan page itself (i.e., does Facebook have a general PageRank weighting like Google, or does it weigh each post entirely on its own?)”

In some cases, he also notes, Pages are seeing many more impressions than fans. With Mint’s Page, for example, it has around 45,000 fans but a single post has more than 53,000 impressions. The 8,000 difference could be fans coming from the Page wall instead of their news feeds. But “it’s also a little uncertain where those 8,000 extra visits are coming from,” Widman adds, “as the Insights package shows less than half the 8K page visits since that post appeared. Perhaps it’s counting each time someone sees the News Feed? So multiple Facebook visits in a single day appear as multiple impressions?”

Overall, the new post-specific data should help Page owners better optimize what to post to their fans. The other change — Facebook’s request for admins to provide industry information, suggests more is coming. From a company note today:

Selecting your industry will enable the Facebook Ads team to provide you with more relevant support. In the future, we hope to offer industry-specific resources including more robust best practices guides and case studies. The more we know about our advertisers, the easier it’ll be for us to provide the most useful information.