Facebook recently resurfaced upcoming birthdays on the home page’s right sidebar, after hiding them behind a “see more” button for the last month. Users now see a list of names of friends with upcoming birthdays with no dates or line breaks, as well as a link to their full-screen birthday list.

Prior to a month ago, the upcoming birthdays of friends had been visible on the every user’s Facebook home page since the early iterations of the site. Last month, though, Facebook rearranged the right sidebar, moving events and birthdays to the top. Users with multiple upcoming events or invitations suddenly had to click a “see more” button in order to view upcoming birthdays.

While this is a seemingly minor change, the extra step made it much easier to forget to write on a close friend’s wall on their birthday, one of Facebook’s most ingrained user behaviors.

This action had in fact become part of the social contract of using Facebook — a responsibility to one’s best friends. Facebook’s tinkering with this institution could have had repercussions on the social lives of users who had to explain why they had failed to send birthday greetings. The new display format for birthdays should reduce the possibility of this kind of faux pas.

Users, of course, have many options for finding out about upcoming birthdays. They can select to receive a weekly reminder email through Account Settings -> Notifications, or use one of many third-party reminder or auto-message applications. However, Facebook’s native birthday page does not provide a way to see past birthdays. For those seeking damage control for this last month of missed birthday wall posts, we recommend Mixin’s fdCal (formerly  fbCal) which provides a variety of calendar syncing options for events and birthdays. Sync your birthdays to a calendar of your choice, see which friends you’ve neglected, and build those relationships.

The Ford Motor Company has chosen the Ford Explorer Facebook page to give the public a first glimpse of the totally redesigned 2011 model. This breaks from the usual debut of a new model, which traditionally is made at large auto shows, and shows the auto company’s commitment to its social media marketing efforts. There is no set date for a full unveil, but teaser photos are already up on the site, as well as video of a cloaked 2011 Explorer in action.

Ford launched a dedicated Explorer fan page in mid March, at the time focused on the 2010 model. The page’s focus quickly shifted and became a source of info on the 2011 model, which has received a complete redesign, and appears to be evolving with its target market.

The Explorer became the must-have vehicle for the original soccer moms of the early 90s, but has fallen behind as other crossover vehicles have moved in to provide the space and ride height that moms loved about the Explorer without the low gas mileage and rough ride of a 4×4 truck. The 2011 model will be the first Explorer built on a car frame, giving it better fuel economy, and will feature improved safety features and incorporate touches that are more in line with the way consumers are actually using the vehicles. A video posted to the Explorer fan page shows a veiled vehicle being put through tests for the new traction system, and it’s evident that the Explorer will be much less of a truck and more of a van/crossover.

The director of Ford’s US Marketing Communication said in a recent USA Today article that we won’t be seeing images of the new Explorer parked on a cliff, yet the few teaser photos that were released today on the Facebook page give us glimpses of the 2011 Explorer dashing through forests, snowy lanes and a rocky road. Nothing too extreme, but this could be a little off-target based on the information given in the article.

While some say that revealing the new Explorer on Facebook rather than at an auto show is risky, Ford has had a lot of success with its social media endeavors in the past. The launch of the new Ford Fiesta has received a lot of buzz, with much of the online chatter generated by the Fiesta Movement, which Ford launched last year almost exclusively through a number of social networks. Ford also used Facebook and other networks to generate interest in their Fusion Hybrid with last year’s Fusion 41 challenge, and benefited from leaked information about the 2011 Mustang late last year. However, at just over 3,000 fans, the Explorer Facebook page is lagging behind many of Ford’s other model-specific pages.

The company could also be going after a chunk of the market currently held by competitors that were not previously in the same class as the Explorer, but now share similar features. Toyota’s Sienna wagon will now be more of a competitor to the new Explorer, and is an excellent example of how social network marketing is successfully reaching target demographics. The Sienna’s Facebook page enjoys a loyal and vocal following, and Toyota has scored big with the Sienna Family campaign and the recent Swagger Wagon YouTube video that has been viewed more than 3 million times since its release last month.

Following tests in recent weeks, Facebook is officially releasing a new version of its multi-friend selector for applications. The updated tool, as we’ve covered, lets developers include a two-step invite process where users first invite Facebook friends, then invite non-Facebook friends to add the app by importing their full address books from email providers like Yahoo and Google, and other services.

By making it easier for developers to bring in all of a user’s non-Facebook friends at once, apps can potentially grow faster and help bring new users to Facebook itself at the same time.

The change applies to the various selector formats that Facebook makes available, including: friend-selector, multi-friend selector, condensed multi-friend-selector and multi-friend-input.

More details on the process, from Facebook:

Similar to the multi-friend selector tested recently, selected address book contacts will receive an invitation to join Facebook with the name of the originating application included in the body of the email. If any of these contacts creates a Facebook account, the originating application will be bookmarked automatically for that user, and the user ID we passed to you initially will point to that new user.

Developers can disable the address book feature. The change is getting pushed out now.

SponsorPay, a European company that creates in-app offers that users can complete for virtual currency, has taken its first full round of venture capital. Hasso Plattner Ventures led the $5 million funding.

The company says that it has grown to 40 employees, serving 150 million users in over 100 countries. In February, it acquired its European competitor GratisPay, becoming a larger player in that region.

Other companies, like Offerpal Media and Adknowledge, continue to lead in the US. But SponsorPay has benefited from its focus on localization, it says. Each country has its own set of businesses that may advertise through offers and, sometimes, its own language, allowing significant differentiation between offers services.

The funding should come in handy for SponsorPay, as this is the year that we expect offers competition to continue to heat up internationally.

All the mobile connection apps have banded together to invade this week’s list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by daily active users. At number one, three, five and 12, the four apps added some 1.8 million new DAU over the course of the week.

Here’s the full AppData list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Mobile	8,653,622	+754,621	+9.55
2.	Quiz Monster	799,358	+741,047	+1,270.85
3.	Facebook	18,865,160	+645,386	+3.54
4.	Hello City	298,042	+289,986	+3,599.63
5.	Texas HoldEm Poker	5,756,880	+279,255	+5.10
6.	MindJolt Games	2,938,258	+243,403	+9.03
7.	My Empire	910,522	+224,404	+32.71
8.	Family Feud	1,474,872	+221,224	+17.65
9.	Facebook for BlackBerry® smartphones	10,678,977	+216,992	+2.07
10.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars	201,899	+187,650	+1,316.93
11.	phrases 4 fun	250,636	+180,628	+258.01
12.	Nightclub City	860,927	+176,004	+25.70
13.	Bejeweled Blitz	2,578,300	+168,308	+6.98
14.	HTC Sense	1,191,066	+146,615	+14.04
15.	Mafia Wars	4,808,424	+111,647	+2.38
16.	LivingSocial	266,660	+110,305	+70.55
17.	The Hardest Game of the World	107,498	+102,205	+1,930.95
18.	Status Shuffle	702,699	+92,249	+15.11
19.	Games	545,480	+86,862	+18.94
20.	Gossip	77,751	+77,435	+24,504.75

There’s one mobile app that’s missing, of course: Facebook for Android. As we covered yesterday, Facebook’s reporting on the app has been bugged; it has over six million MAU and is likely nearing four million DAU.

Quiz Monster, a long-lived quiz creation app, appears to have begun promoting itself again; it has experienced heavy growth over the past couple of days, accounting for all of the gains you see above.

Also take note of the several games in the top 10. City building games, represented by Hello City and My Empire, are still going strong on Facebook; these two are likely to gain many millions of users over the coming month. We’ve covered the rest of the games in more depth over at Inside Social Games.

To get to any more interesting entries, we have to skip down quite a bit to number 16: LivingSocial, a sharing and deal-finding app. LivingSocial experienced major MAU gains a month or so back, but collected very few DAU, probably because its app was just redirecting to the company’s homepage. But it appears to have put some of its old features back into the app, and is enjoying rising DAU as a result.

Orange, the lead brand of France Telecom, has a new Facebook application out called VoxCards, Using text-to-speech recognition technology, it lets you send virtually any type of message to your friends in French, or at least in an outrageous French accent.

Though the application is in French, it’s pretty easy to figure out (Google Translate helps a lot too). Users are able to access a drop-down list of any number of odd and quirky characters. Most of the options are fictional, such as the robot Rob HO-X22Z36PO or the yeti Joe Monster, but there are a few celebrity voices as well. Likely, those outside of the francophone world won’t recognize them, but some examples include the voices of Fred and Omar from the show Omar et Fred.

Each avatar comes with their very own unique set of animations and very distinctive caricature-style artwork. From the overly sultry female characters, to wannabe rappers, to the fictional King Stone’s smoke-producing hat (use your imagination), each one is more or less unforgettable.

From here, players can choose from a set of pre-determined messages or replies that range from the bizarre – J’ai été attaqué par des renards tout à l’heure (I was attacked by foxes earlier) – to the curious – Je suis un vrai Pitbull, je vais te sauter dessus! (I am a true Pitbull, I’ll jump on it!), said by a “sexy” looking female avatar in a bikini.

Of course, while amusing, these are hardly personal, so the user is given the opportunity to write their own personal message, up to 250 characters, themselves, and the chosen avatar will, in their own unique voice, speak it. Truthfully, it doesn’t work perfectly, and certainly not as well as the pre-made messages, but it still does the job decently well. Furthermore, VoxCards’ text-to-speech does a pretty impressive job with other languages.

As the app was created in French, all the characters have a thick French accent and will pronounce anything you type in such a manner. However, if you type a language (so long as it is using the Latin alphabet) such as English or Spanish, it will still nail a fair number of the words. Nevertheless, it does sort of become a game of trial and error to see what will work, pronunciation-wise, and what won’t.

What adds a kick to these voice messages is also the fact that they don’t get sent to a message box but can either be posted directly to your wall or a specified friend’s wall. And as an added bonus, VoxCards takes a look at your friends profiles and lets you know whose birthday is coming up; in case you want to send them an amusing birthday greeting.

As far as anything negative goes regarding VoxCards, the only real qualm is the animation is a bit jittery, and speech to lip movement doesn’t synch up at all. To be fair, however, the latter is something one only typically sees in major video games and software such as Rock Band or Guitar Hero.

All the same, VoxCards is still a very cool way to send your friends personalized messages through Facebook. The text to speech works surprisingly well, and decently well in other languages beyond French. Moreover, even if it doesn’t work for the language you’re trying, it’s still quite fun to figure out what will, and the characters are so unique that it’s unlikely anyone will forget them, or this app, any time soon.

Currently, VoxCards is earning upwards of 200,000 monthly active users. On a final note, the promotion for Orange itself is limited within the app. All that really exists are a few banner ads advertising an Orange tablet, the RadioMee iPhone application, the site Memory-Life, and a few other random items; nothing terribly unique – perhaps this is more of an experiment by the company, rather than part of a strategic marketing effort.

Over the past couple of months, Google’s Android mobile operating system has made significant headway, both in the public and in the tech world, with reports showing Android sales catching up to the iPhone. Yet we’ve also seen multiple sources note that Android has not succeeded on Facebook.

That judgment has been based on the stats for Facebook’s Android smartphone app. At right, you can see Facebook’s own monthly active user measurement for Android, which led to the confusion. By appearances, the Facebook for Android app has only 68 monthly active users.

We’ve checked in with Facebook about the Android app, and gotten the real story: the mobile app has over six million MAU. In combination with the HTC Sense app, which is mostly used on phones with Android as an underlying platform, Android has well over seven million MAU on the social network.

This is significant not only for Facebook, which wants to encourage smartphone use, but as a measure for the overall smartphone market, in which sales numbers often must be estimated. Let’s see how the Android apps stack up against competing phones:

There’s actually a distinct possibility that Android has even more users on Facebook than we’re estimating, because Mobile, which you see above with almost 20 million users, is a catch-all app for feature phones. Any number of Android users could have set up to use this app instead.

So, going strictly be the numbers above, Android appears to be at least a fifth the size of the iPhone.

Seeing the true user numbers for Android gives new perspective to Facebook’s recent decision to release an Android software development kit. When Android was initially released, Facebook didn’t do anything with the fledgling operating system, and an executive even reportedly insulted Android. But for several months, Facebook has had an inside view onto the platform’s growing significance.

One more interesting data point to note: judging by the HTC Sense app, Android users tend to spend more time than any other smartphone group on Facebook. This AppData graph is for DAU as a percentage of MAU, which measures how many users come back daily:

That 70 percent DAU / MAU beats the iPhone’s 52 percent or the BlackBerry’s 59 percent by a significant stretch. It could be that Android users tend to be average consumers who use Facebook often, while the BlackBerry is used by the business crowd and iPhone users have a broader sampling of other apps to use, like Foursquare.

Unfortunately, the Android app appears to be buggy in more than just its stats; users have been complaining about connection problems for several weeks. But with such strong user numbers, we wouldn’t be surprised to see both Facebook and Google put more emphasis on working together in the future — at least in this limited context.

[Editor's Note: The following stats are excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Click here to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Today, we present recent findings on demographic breakdowns in Facebook’s top country markets around the world.

For years, we’ve observed Facebook capture the US market, demographic by demographic. We know that in the US, Facebook has slightly more female than male users, and that the site boasts a large percentage of users in the middle of the age spectrum, with plenty of users over 25. But that’s just the US — and other markets look quite different. Now, with over 70% of Facebook’s nearly 500 million users in countries outside of the US, it’s time for the savviest marketers and developers to start digging in to demographic data for Facebook’s many other important markets.

The country market data outlined below is a selected sample of the full data overview, available through Inside Facebook Gold.

The United Kingdom

In the UK, Facebook’s second largest country market, we see a pretty even split by gender. Women outnumber men by just 2.2%.

For age demographics, the 26 – 34 age group rivals the 18 – 25 age group, and holds true across both genders. In the UK, there’s also a substantial number of users of both genders in the 35 – 44 age range, though women lead this age group by 2 percentage points.

43.5% of Facebook users in the UK are under 25. This is a substantial number, but of course the flip side is that well over half of all Facebook users in that country are over 25. In the US, 39% of Facebook users are under 25. Overall, across age and gender, it’s clear that the UK and the US share similar demographic profiles (see the most recent US demographic data we released last week).

Indonesia

In Facebook’s third largest country market, a completely different picture emerges.

Among Indonesian Facebook users, there are substantially more men than women, with men leading by 18.4% overall. Indonesian Facebook users trend younger, too. 45.2% of women are between the ages of 18 – 25, and 31.8% are between 13 – 17.

For men, 45.9% are between the ages of 18 – 25 and 23.5% are between 13 – 17.

Overall, users under 25 make up 72.5% of all Facebook users in that country, with more women in the younger categories than men.

But, men make up most of Facebook’s Indonesian users. What age group are do most of them fall into? A large percentage of men fall in to the 26 – 34 age group, with a sharp dropoff after that.

Notably, older demographics barely register a blip, with users over 35 making up just 8.9% of the total userbase.

Turkey

Like Indonesia, Facebook’s Turkish userbase is comprised of vastly more men than women. Of that country’s total Facebook population, 64.4% are men, while women make up just 35.6%. Turkey’s Facebook users are young, too. Among women, 18 to 25 year olds make up 40.5% while 13 to 17 year olds make up 23.2%. The total percentage of female users under the age of 25 is 63.7%. In Turkey, though, a significant number of female users are in the mid-range of ages, too, with 23.4% of female users falling in to the 25 to 24 age group. After that, the numbers decline sharply, with only 12.8% of the female userbase over the age of 35.

Among Turkish men, the younger groups are also big part of Facebook’s audience, but less so. 18 to 25 year olds make up 38.9% of the audience, while 13 to 17 year olds make up 17.6%. The 26 to 34 contingent is slightly larger with men, reaching 26.7%. 16.9% of the male total are over the age of 35.

Overall, Turkey’s Facebook demographics trends strongly male, but are more evenly split across age groups. Well over half of the total audience is under the age of 25, but the 25 to 44 age range makes a strong showing too.

France

When we get to France, the demographic data again resembles what we’re seeing in US. There are slightly more women than men on Facebook, but the difference is just a few percentage points. Male and female groups show nearly identical age distribution, and total audience numbers are distributed evenly across age groups in general.

A considerable 49.9% of Facebook’s French users are under the age of 25, but of course that also means that those over 25 make up 51.1%! In the US, Facebook is a mature market in many sense, with 38.2% of all users over the age of 35. While Facebook in France is not quite there, the site does appear to be popular with that age group. 25.7% of all French Facebook users are over the age of 35.

Of Facebook’s top 15 country markets around the world, the youngest country is Indonesia, which, as mentioned above, is also the company’s number 3 market globally. The country with the largest percentage of users above 35 is the United States, followed by Canada, the UK, and Spain.

More data at Inside Facebook Gold

The full data overview includes demographic breakdowns for all 15 of Facebook’s leading markets. It’s available as part of Inside Facebook Gold, our data membership service that also includes stats on Facebook’s global traffic growth, top app demographics, language adoption rates, user behavior, and more.

[Editor's Note: The following stats are excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Click here to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Today we’re taking a look at Facebook’s growth in the pan-Asian region during May 2010, with data from our latest Global Monitor stats. There’s one country that stands head and shoulders above the rest: Indonesia, which added a whopping 2.4 million new monthly active users in May to become Facebook’s third-largest country with 22.4 million MAU overall.

Indonesia actually had a shot at becoming number two, but was foiled by the United Kingdom’s strong growth in May. But the UK is at 44.4 percent penetration; few countries ever pass 50 percent. Indonesia, by contrast, is still only at 10.8 percent penetration.

It seems increasingly likely that the archipelago country, with 227 million inhabitants, will stand second only to the United States by the end of 2010. That should happen despite the relatively low penetration of Facebook among older inhabitants; past the age of 34 very few Indonesians have signed up for the social network, and it has one of the largest 18-25 age groups we’ve seen.

We cover Indonesia’s demographics in more detail here. Meanwhile, if we zoom out to take the greater Asia Pacific region into account, we can clearly see it becoming a major force on Facebook. The Philippines and Malaysia, both in the same area, respectively added 902,580 and 671,220 new MAU to reach total penetrations of 15.2 and 24.8 percent — leaving plenty of room to grow.

Coming in at fourth is Australia, which for the purposes of regional measurement we include with Asia. The island continent did quite well in May, adding half a million new MAU to Facebook. But like the UK, its penetration is already quite high. For now, most English-speaking countries seem to be trending upward, but all are likely to find new upper limits to their penetration before long.

India, at number five, disappointed in May. In our previous monthly look at Asia, which measured April’s stats, India came in at the top of the pile, leading us to speculate that it could lead the region for a time. It certainly has the population to do so, but the country’s growth has remained volatile in terms of Facebook growth. It also added a half-million new users, but in the general scale of things, that’s not so impressive; its penetration remains unchanged at 0.8 percent.

Take a look over the bottom half of the list, and you’ll mainly see much smaller countries with higher internet connectivity rates. The exception is South Korea, which does have a high population. But this hyper-connected country has remained fairly intractable to Facebook; even now it has only 714,540 MAUs on Facebook. Here’s the chart:

Measured as a whole, the Asian region’s growth rate fell slightly in May to 7.3 percent, with its penetration rising slightly to 2.7 percent. The total audience in the region is at 100 million, about a fifth of Facebook’s total.

As always, this data is drawn from our full Global Monitor report, which measures growth for six world regions and almost a hundred countries, as well as offering forward projections. It’s part of our Inside Facebook Gold independent analysis service.

If 2009 is remembered as the year that casual gaming stormed social platforms, 2010 is quickly becoming the year that the industry started to mature. Facebook is getting more involved in the monetization ecosystem, last year’s hit games are fighting for their lives, and new developers and games are climbing the leaderboards. At the same time, the M&A ecosystem is alive and well, as larger players are consolidating smaller studios and teams, and large media companies and traditional game developers continue to plot their social gaming strategies.

Get the Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495 $1,995 USD* OR Buy Single Report: $995 $695 USD* * Pre-order discount ends June 21, 2010. All pre-ordered reports will be delivered on June 21, 2010.

That’s why we’re excited to announce today a new original study in our Inside Virtual Goods series that is exclusively focused on spending and usage patterns in the social gaming market, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience. It will be released on Tuesday, June 22, but is available for discount pre-order now.

Most of the studies on player spending and usage patterns in social games over the last year have actually been conducted by industry vendors. Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience is our exclusive independent look at the virtual goods spending and behavior patterns of social game players on Facebook — data you won’t find anywhere else.

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience gives you an inside view of the market at this critical juncture in the intersection of social networking and online games.

We have surveyed nearly 2,000 players of social games on Facebook from around the world and across the demographic spectrum. Inside Virtual Goods: Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience is the most in-depth independent survey of player behavior and spending patterns in the social gaming market.

What We Cover

1. Spending Habits and Payment Methods in Top Games – It’s easy to compare games based on audience numbers, but which games monetize better? What payment methods do players use most often in top games? We investigate how spending patterns compare across top social games.
2. Frequency of Play and Methods of Game Discovery - As Facebook cuts down on developer access to viral channels, designing an engaging and viral game is becoming both increasingly important and challenging. We investigate which games people play most frequently, and which methods of social game discovery are most effective for top games.
3. Demographic Differences by Region, Age, and Gender – While the social gaming market is becoming increasingly global, the audience is also becoming increasingly diverse by age and gender. How do different segments of the audience differ in terms of spending and usage patterns inside social games? We take an in depth look.
4. Brand Recall for Social Games – How important are brands, and how well can users identify developers of top games? We investigate brand recall amongst social game players.

See the full table of contents below:

Table of Contents

I. Methodology and Respondents

1. Introduction

• About Inside Virtual Goods
• About the Authors
• Survey Objectives

2. Research Methodology

• Target Population
• Respondent Acquisition Method
• Survey Structure
• Potential for Bias

3. Survey Respondents

• Description of Total Respondent Population
• Total Number of Respondents
• Overall Breakdown

II. Overall Results

4. Favorite Game

• Distribution of Favorite Game
• Frequency of Play
• Favorite Game Discovery
• With Whom Do You Play?
• Spending on Favorite Game

5. Payments

• Frequency of Payment Methods

6. Play Patterns, Spending, and Brand Recall for Top Games

• Frequency of Play in Top Games
• Spending in Top Games
• Aided Brand Recall for Top Games

III. Demographic Differences in Usage Patterns and Monetization

7. Age and Gender Differences

• Who are the Social Gaming “Whales”?

8. Regional Differences

Appendix

• Survey Questions

More Data, More Actionable Insights

In 2009, social games began to show what kind of value can be created on top of social networks. 2010 will be an even more important year.

Social gaming, powered by virtual goods, is this year’s industry to watch. If you’re involved, or are considering jumping in, Inside Virtual Goods will be one of your most important tools.

One year of original data and exclusive in-depth reports delivered on a quarterly basis is $2,495 and contains:

• A detailed overview of the current state of the industry
• Specific estimates on market size by segment
• Diagnosis of key opportunities and issues by segment

Get The Annual Membership

Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495 $1,995 USD*

OR Buy Single Report: $995 $695 USD*

* Pre-order discount ends June 21, 2010. All pre-ordered reports will be delivered on June 22, 2010.

Although the report will not be released until next Tuesday, June 22, we are offering a special pre-order discount for those who purchase now. A one year subscription is $1,995 until June 22, at which point the price will go to US $2,495. The one year subscription includes three quarterly updates on key developments in the space, including future editions of our annual reports, Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2009-2010 and Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2010.

Or, you can download just this report. The pre-order price is $695 until June 22, at which point the price will go to US $995.