Over the last couple weeks, Facebook has updated the timelines on its Developer Roadmap for upcoming changes to application invites. Today, Facebook posted another update, now estimating that application invitations will be transitioned to a new tab in the Inbox sometime in May. Previously, the roadmap indicated invites would be moved sometime in March.

In addition, the timeline given for updates to the share dialogs was also changed from March to May, and the timeline for deprecating requests was changed from “Early/mid 2010″ to “Mid 2010.”

As a reminder, Facebook is planning significant changes to the way app invites and requests work: requests, as they’re known today, will be deprecated, but invites will still exist, though they will now be accessed from the Inbox. Here are the current mockups from the Facebook developer wiki:

Obviously, developers are paying very close attention to the ways Facebook changes the invite interaction flow, which could in turn significantly affect conversion rates and application retention. We’ll have more soon.

Facebook Pages actually can boost sales, a recent study Rice University in Houston, Texas, recently concluded. Fans of these Pages are, overall, more loyal to a business, spend more and are likelier to spread the word. The study on the Houston café chain Dessert Gallery was done by their consultant Emily Durham, founder of Houston-based consultancy Restaurant Connections, and Utpal Dholakia, an associate professor at Rice who studies online marketing.

“In a nut shell: Facebook fans visit more, they spend more during their visit, they have a higher attachment to that brand,” Dholakia tells us.

Dessert Gallery is a Houston-based café chain with two locations, that’s been around since 1995; the company’s Facebook Page went up in June of last year and currently counts 654 fans. Dholakia points out that, while there has been a lot of anecdotal evidence as to Facebook’s effects on revenue streams, this study had an element of control, as it looked at Dessert Gallery’s customer feedback before — and then after — the Facebook Page was used as part of the café’s marketing.

Dholakia and Durham surveyed Dessert Gallery’s customers via its email list of about 13,000 in June 2009 before the Facebook Page was up and running, and then surveyed the same list in October, after it had grown to about 14,000. The survey in October was also advertised on Facebook. The initial evaluation queried basic store evaluations and shopping behaviors and received 689 responses; three months later, the second evaluation asked similar questions, but also about the Facebook Page, and received 1,067 responses.

Facebook fans, it turned out, are excellent customers.

According to Dholakia’s research, after three months Dessert Gallery’s Facebook fans: made 36% more visits each month, spent 45% more dining out dollars there, spent 33% more at the café’s locations, had a 14% higher emotional attachment to the brand and had a 41% greater psychological loyalty towards the café. Facebook fans also generated more word-of-mouth marketing than non-Facebook fans.

But, Dholakia points out, there are several reasons why this is the case.

First, customers that became fans of Dessert Gallery’s Page were already more interested in the café to begin with and so the Page became sort of a self-selected pool of hard-core customers. However, once the Page began promoting the café’s specials, this group of customers became even more likely to participate or make purchases. Facebook is an excellent and low-cost niche marketing tool, and should be used in conjunction with other media — not as a substitute for a substantive marketing plan, Dholakia tells us. Note: You can read all about using Pages and other Facebook marketing methods in our Facebook Marketing Bible.

“You’re not going to get every customer to participate on Facebook. A select group of people are going to be influenced by the Facebook marketing you do,” he tells us. “But you can’t rely just on Facebook itself.”

Dholakia said a more advanced statistical analysis of the customer responses is in the works to control for the fact that data was self-reported and should be available within a month.

[Dholakia photo via Rice University Public Affairs]

In its latest move to expand its performance advertising program, Facebook is offering what it tells us is “thousands” of new cities in its self-serve advertising tool, meaning advertisers can more narrowly target users across the United States and around the world. From social game developers to the various large and small businesses already using the service, the information could help them boost their returns on investment.

Facebook isn’t giving a full list of which cities have been added, but you can check out the cities in your area here for yourself. We’ve been covering how these ads can be particularly valuable for local businesses who only need to reach people in their area. We expect this update to be especially valuable for them.

The change may not seem that big. But in our recent analysis of Facebook’s revenues for 2009 and 2010, we reported that local advertising is a significant way that Facebook is making money already, and one of the most promising areas for it to expand. Improving targeting for local ads should have a meaningful effect.

Western Europe is beginning to cede some ground to central and eastern Europe, in terms of growth, according to our latest Global Monitor report. While there are still relatively unsaturated western markets like Germany and Spain making headway, others like the United Kingdom and Iceland have slowed or stopped growing this month. Meanwhile, Poland and Romania, among others, are quickly adding Facebook users.

As a whole, Europe is now up to 129 million users as of March 1st, a 5.1% increase from February. That’s slightly slower growth than during the previous month, but there’s no reason to think that the region as a whole is slowing down, as total penetration is only up a single point to 20 percent.

The top grower over the past month was Germany, followed by Italy. Last month it was Turkey, whose internet population is both geographically and culturally related to the European continent.

As to why Turkey’s growth is slowing, the easy answer is that its market penetration is fairly high. Out of the ten countries listed above, it is at the top in terms of penetration, at 27.5 percent. Big markets tend to top out somewhere between 35 and 40 percent.

In coming months, expect Germany to continue appearing as a top grower; its penetration is still just under 10 percent, but Facebook appears to have gotten a good foothold against native social networks like StudiVZ. Germany’s strong 15 percent growth rate has held steady for two months now.

What you’re not seeing here: a great many of Europe’s smaller countries, by number of internet users, that are nevertheless rapidly sending people Facebook’s way. That includes Hungary, which almost made it into the top ten above, as well as Estonia and Ukraine. We cover growth, penetration and more stats for almost 100 countries in our full monthly Global Monitor report.

Small businesses have begun seeing how Pages, performance advertising and other components of Facebook can build their businesses. The results appear promising so far, prompting Fan Appz to launch a new service this week for these companies.

About 1.5 million of Facebook’s 3 million fan Pages belong to local (typically small) businesses, according to Facebook’s statistics. Industry sources have also told us that small and local business advertising makes up a good portion of those using Facebook’s performance advertising system.

Fan Appz is one of a number of companies that provide services for Page owners. The company’s do-it-yourself application allows users to create activities for their fans that revolve around a specific brand. Since the company’s launch last fall, it has provided both a free version and an agency/enterprise version for larger companies, such as the NBA and NASCAR, and this week it added a third service to this list for smaller businesses, Fan Appz Professional.

The free version of Fan Appz is an application allowing Facebook users to create Page-specific top 5s, polls and quizzes, although Siegal points out that these feature ads. Fan Appz has also provided an agency/enterprise version to larger clients, such as the NBA, that includes additional features like a virtual gift store, fan merchandise store or the ability to run a sweepstakes with the app.

Siegal tells us that Fan Appz’s newest service, Fan Appz Professional, is intended to meet the needs of small and medium businesses incorporating elements of the free and agency/enterprise versions to help these businesses utilize Facebook to better engage their fans. Professional costs $50 a month and includes ad-free elements of the free version — top 5s, polls and quizzes — while augmenting the service with the ability to create customized coupons, coupon codes and other promotions.

Fan Appz Professional may be an alternative to official Facebook promotions, as Siegal tells us. ”There are a lot of things you can do that don’t come with the baggage,” he says. “Our sweetpstakes format and our rules, we’ve taken to Facebook and had them approved.”

The free version of Fan Appz currently has more than 160,000 users, according to AppData, our independent service for tracking Facebook application traffic. Siegal says the service is used all over the world in a variety of languages.

He adds that Fan Appz Professional is designed to help small and medium businesses take advantage of Facebook’s marketing potential without having to launch an official sweepstakes or promotion, which requires spending at least $10,000 in advertising with the company.

We cover guideline restrictions, and what they mean for marketers at all levels, at greater length in the Facebook Marketing Bible.

Purchase this report The Facebook Global Monitor – Current Edition Buy Quarterly Subscription: $495 USD OR Buy Annual Subscription: $995 USD

Today, Inside Facebook has released the March 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor, tracking Facebook’s growth in detail around the world. The Facebook Global Monitor tracks Facebook’s international metrics for marketers, developers, and analysts to spot trends and opportunities.

The Facebook Global Monitor provides vital data and insight to media industry executives, global marketing and communications firms, analysts, and developers for whom Facebook’s rapid international expansion poses significant opportunities or threats.

For those interested in learning more, click the purchase link above. The price is $495 for a quarterly subscription, or $995 for an annual subscription. Future monthly updates will be delivered directly to your inbox. You can reach us at mail AT insidefacebook DOT com with questions at any time.

Each month, the Facebook Global Monitor provides the latest comprehensive data on the expansion of Facebook’s audience in nearly 100 global markets. In addition, the Monitor provides alerts on breakout and cooling markets, as well as our latest in-house projections on Facebook’s growth in each country 30 days, 90 days, and 12 months into the future.

See the full table of contents of the first newsletter below. All reports are based on primary research by Inside Facebook using data from Facebook, and each section is designed to elucidate key actionable trends.

We believe big opportunities exist for developers and marketers to reach and engage the Facebook audience in these rapidly emerging and expanding markets. Cheers to continued growth in 2009!

The Facebook Global Monitor

Tracking Facebook in Global Markets

March 2010

Contents

I. Introduction: The Year That Facebook Went Global

II. Global Market Report

1. Audience Size Today

2. Fastest Growing Audience

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

3. Market Penetration Today

4. Largest Market Penetration Increases

• Last 12 months
• Last 90 days
• Last 30 days

III. Emerging Market Analysis

1. Growth Projections

• Next 30 days
• Next 90 days
• Next 12 months

2. Technical Alerts

• Breakout Markets: Last 90 Days
• Cooling Markets: Last 90 Days

IV. Regional Summaries

1. Africa

2. Asia / Pacific

3. Europe

4. North America

5. South America

V. Country Updates

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. Austria
4. Bahamas
5. Bahrain
6. Bangladesh
7. Belgium
8. Bolivia
9. Bosnia & Herzegovina
10. Brazil
11. Bulgaria
12. Canada
13. Chile
14. China
15. Colombia
16. Costa Rica
17. Croatia
18. Cyprus
19. Czech Republic
20. Denmark
21. Dominican Republic
22. Ecuador
23. Egypt
24. El Salvador
25. Finland
26. France
27. Germany
28. Ghana
29. Greece
30. Guatemala
31. Honduras
32. Hong Kong
33. Hungary
34. Iceland
35. India
36. Indonesia
37. Ireland
38. Israel
39. Italy
40. Jamaica
41. Japan
42. Jordan
43. Kenya
44. Kuwait
45. Lebanon
46. Lithuania
47. Luxembourg
48. Macedonia
49. Malaysia
50. Maldives
51. Malta
52. Mauritius
53. Mexico
54. Morocco
55. Netherlands
56. New Zealand
57. Nicaragua
58. Nigeria
59. Norway
60. Oman
61. Pakistan
62. Palestine
63. Panama
64. Paraguay
65. Peru
66. Philippines
67. Poland
68. Portugal
69. Puerto Rico
70. Qatar
71. Romania
72. Russia
73. Saudi Arabia
74. Serbia
75. Singapore
76. Slovakia
77. Slovenia

Purchase this report The Facebook Global Monitor – Current Edition Buy Quarterly Subscription: $495 USD OR Buy Annual Subscription: $995 USD

78. South Africa
79. South Korea
80. Spain
81. Sri Lanka
82. Sweden
83. Switzerland
84. Taiwan
85. Thailand
86. Trinidad and Tobago
87. Tunisia
88. Turkey
89. Ukraine
90. United Arab Emirates
91. United Kingdom
92. United States
93. Uruguay
94. Venezuela
95. Vietnam

Footnotes & Methodology

It’s already clear that Facebook believes mobile devices are a key way for users to access its service, and the company has occasionally tested ways of making its mobile site and mobile apps more obvious. But now it’s going even further.

When some users log out, they’re now seeing a screen that says “Leaving? Try Facebook on Your Mobile,” an image of a phone and a link to “Get Facebook Mobile.” The link takes them to its mobile overview page, which includes details on ways to access Facebook via text, its mobile sites and mobile applications for specific devices.

Facebook has previously advertised its mobile offerings in a variety of ways, including in-house promotions on its home page. But it has been aggressively expanding its mobile services in the last year or so, from regular updates to apps like its popular one for the iPhone, to Facebook Connect for Mobile, to its forthcoming Zero site, designed for users on carriers who have minimal data connections.

The development and promotion efforts seem to be working, as the company recently announced that 100 million of its 400 million monthly active users currently access the service via mobile every month.

[Thanks for the tip, Jason McGowan!]

In the latest example of brand advertising integrated into social games, Microsoft ran an advertising offer for Bing within Zynga’s hit game FarmVille on Tuesday. If users became a fan of Bing’s Facebook Page by clicking on a sponsored ad on the bottom right of the FarmVille main page, they’d receive 3 Farm Cash (FarmVille’s virtual currency). The effort was apparently successful, as Bing’s page went from slightly more than 100,000 fans on Monday to more than 500,000 as of earlier today.

FarmVille has 83.1 million monthly active users, and 28.7 million daily active users on Tuesday, according to AppData. So only about 1.5% of all FarmVille users participated in the 24 hours that the campaign ran. This engagement number is pretty good, especially if you’re a page administrator looking for a quick way to get more fans, or, say, a search engine trying to educate the public about your alternative to Google.

Bing also made an effort to make the action relevant to the game’s players. The sponsored ad (here), which used SocialVibe’s brand engagement ad service, directed users to become fans of the Page, mentioning that “whether you want to buy a horse or a tree, Bing can help you decide!” Bing also posted a status update to its Page earlier today, reiterating the message — “Any FarmVille fans out there? Try using Bing to get the most out of your crops and animals.” It linked to Bing search results for “farmville animals,” encouraging players who wanted to look for more information about the game would use it instead of Google. As most Bing Facebook fans today came in through FarmVille, the update was heavily commented and liked.

Other forms of advertising within games have typically run within offer walls, which include direct payment options for virtual currency as well as advertising offers. The number of users who do any sort of payment or offer is generally low, from 1% up. But that stat typically reflects the portion of users over the lifetime of a game. This was just for one day.

It appears that users do in fact appreciate advertising, and offers in particular, when they’re easy to find and clearly valuable. FarmVille-focused blog FarmVille Freak noted the Bing campaign in a post yesterday, and polled its readers to see what they thought. The question was: “Will you be clicking the Bing FarmVille Sponsored Link?” The possible answers were “Yes, I love Farm Cash!,” “No, I hate Bing! Long live Google!” and “Maybe, would like the Farm Cash, not Bing!” So far, 68% of respondents, or more than 3,500 people, have vote for the first option. Granted, readers of a blog about a social game are probably more interested in Farm Cash than the average player, but still an interesting data point.

In any case, expect many more ads that integrate a brand goal into an incentivized action in a game. SocialVibe has already been running branded engagement ads in Zynga games, as we’ve covered; it’s currently providing all of the offers in PetVille’s offer wall, for example. Other companies are getting into providing branded offers, too, from established offer companies like TrialPay to newer ones like gWallet to traditional in-game advertising companies like WildTangent.

Although a range of companies provide analytics services for Facebook Pages and applications, and a handful offer automated purchasing of Facebook’s performance advertisement inventory, Facebook is now officially partnering with a big player in both areas: Omniture.

The Adobe-owned company provides online advertising optimization services for large advertisers, helping them figure out crucial information like which keywords for a product appeal to Google users. Customers can fine-tune many aspects of these ads, and buy them in bulk. Facebook advertising is getting more deeply integrated into this service, called SearchCenter Plus. Omniture has been active on Facebook since last year, although without an official partnership. It already offers tools for tracking traffic on Facebook applications as part of its SiteCatalyst web and mobile analytics service for advertisers; we’ve mentioned it in use by 1-800-Flowers’ Page.

Today’s announcement means that big advertisers will have the option to buy and optimize Facebook performance advertising in conjunction with the other campaigns they run through Omniture’s services. We expect Facebook’s revenue from these ads to increase considerably in the coming year, as we detailed yesterday.

There are only a few companies who help advertisers buy Facebook performance ads via the advertising APIs in beta today, like 77 Agency, Techlightenment, TBG London and Tradimax. They tend to focus on European advertisers. Omniture seems to have a good shot at bringing this form of Facebook advertising to big companies, especially in the US. If Omniture’s software helps its customers get good results, it could significantly increase the amount of money spent on performance ads. That would also mean that this form of advertising becomes more expense, increasing expenses for social gaming companies and the variety of other businesses already using the service.

Omniture doesn’t appear to be getting any sort of special access to Facebook data, or to customers, through the deal. Rather, this is about bringing Facebook getting more access to big advertisers through Omniture; it makes money here by selling access to its high-end services. Other big optimization companies competing for those customers might also try to cut direct deals with Facebook, and bring its performance ads to their services.

Omniture and Facebook say they plan to expand the relationship in the future.

Unlike the gains shown on our sister site Inside Social Games today, the growth on this AppData list of Facebook apps picking up the most new daily average users is pretty spectacular. But it does come with a few caveats about why the apps are growing.

The first and best example is the top entry, Static FBML. You should disregard FBML as an app, but consider it closely as a trend. The app has been counting people who interact with customized Pages as new users for a few weeks; those four million new DAU certainly aren’t all developers using the app directly. But there are certainly a lot of people using the Pages those developers modified.

Also, Facebook removed notifications on Monday and this could be starting to affecting traffic — we’ll be tracking the impact.

Take a look at the rest before we go on:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Static FBML	5,878,938	+4,049,935	+68.89
2.	Facebook for iPhone	15,437,989	+1,394,003	+9.03
3.	Friend Quiz	2,468,705	+1,212,463	+49.11
4.	Friend FAQ	1,624,297	+916,692	+56.44
5.	PetVille	5,278,982	+548,611	+10.39
6.	Zoo World	2,646,777	+528,548	+19.97
7.	Facebook for BlackBerry® smartphones	8,791,131	+427,618	+4.86
8.	Graffiti	578,290	+396,905	+68.63
9.	Friends Exposed	2,283,901	+394,930	+17.29
10.	Translations	372,125	+371,976	+99.96
11.	Mafia Wars	6,748,137	+311,777	+4.62
12.	MindJolt Games	3,305,651	+287,834	+8.71
13.	Friend Quizzes – Dating!	287,517	+285,323	+99.24
14.	Petites questions entre amis	390,027	+276,144	+70.80
15.	Birthday Cards	2,092,351	+241,275	+11.53
16.	Friends Quizzes	198,502	+184,861	+93.13
17.	Birthday Calendar	380,710	+174,640	+45.87
18.	Friends Emotions [Emociones de Amigos]	276,966	+169,135	+61.07
19.	Give Hearts	799,724	+156,071	+19.52
20.	Bubble Island	244,197	+149,250	+61.12

Number two, Facebook for iPhone, can for most purposes be paired with seven, Facebook for BlackBerry. But close watchers of these lists will notice that the iPhone app’s growth is much sharper than usual this week.

From the stats, it would appear that there has been a sudden increase in the number of existing iPhone users who return to Facebook daily, to 55 percent. Whether this is true, or just a Facebook reporting error, will become evident next week.

Friend Quiz and Friend FAQ round out the really fast gainers on this week’s list. Here, also, a caveat applies. It’s not that there is a technical issue affecting growth. Rather, it’s just that quiz apps rarely stay around for long, and there’s nothing particularly creative about these.

The question of how Friend Quiz and Friend FAQ are sucking in so many users is prettysimple easy to answer; they make it easy for users to click “Yes” or “No”, which immediately results in a public wall posting. The harder question is who the developer is behind the two apps (they’re actually identical). There’s no listing, and the apps load from two different anonymously-owned web addresses, Youbard.com and Epicmoo.com.

Down the list a bit is yet another friend quiz, Friends Exposed, but there’s no mystery here; Topzy is the developer. While the questions aren’t much better, at least this app lets you make up your own answer.