The first few years of Facebook’s existence has already been closely scrutinized in court and in the media. This fall, there’s even a feature-length movie coming out about one version. The common theme is that, during late 2003 and early 2004, founder Mark Zuckerberg was both working on his own Facebook precursor sites while talking or even working with rivals. But now all of those stories could be getting updated, if claims in a new court case against Facebook turn out to be true.

During his sophomore year at Harvard, in late 2003, Zuckerberg became famous for launching a site called Facemash. A college version of Hot or Not, it scraped students’ names and photos from university sources, then asked students to rank each others’ photos for attractiveness.

Aaron Greenspan, meanwhile, had launched a student web portal of sorts called houseSYSTEM, that he says he discussed with Zuckerberg in great detail over the course of the fall. By the end of the year, Zuckerberg was also doing contract work for HarvardConnection, a site intended to serve as a student portal, per an oral contract agreement. Greenspan has up to this point laid claim to the earliest date, having launched his houseSYSTEM site on August 1st of that year.

The new court case implies that Zuckerberg was actually working on “The Face Book” back in the spring of 2003, apparently before any of the others.

A wood-pellet company owner named Paul Ceglia is suing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in New York federal court, claiming that the two had an agreement whereby Ceglia would get a large ownership portion of a Zuckerberg project called “The Face Book.” The two signed the agreement on April 28, 2003.

Ceglia was a designer at the time, looking for Zuckerberg’s help on a separate project, and happened to sign on for a good chunk of Facebook stock as part of a contractor agreement. Or so the story went in New York today, as Bloomberg reports:

[Ceglia lawyer Terrence Connors] told the judge that Ceglia was a Web designer trying to develop a project called “StreetFax” in the spring of 2003. Ceglia’s plan was to put millions of photos of streets into a database and charge insurers money to access it.

“What he needed was a coder,” Connors told the judge.

Ceglia solicited bids to do the work. The lowest bidder was Zuckerberg, then a Harvard freshman. Zuckerberg said he would do the job for $1,000, Connors said.

“But I’ve got a project of my own,” Connors said Zuckerberg told his client. “I’m developing an online yearbook for Harvard kids now, but I’m thinking of expanding it.”

The contract was intended to cover the coding work on StreetFax and Ceglia’s investment in Zuckerberg’s “fledgling project,” Connors said. “Who knew then that it would turn into what it is today?”

VentureBeat has taken a closer look at the documents submitted by Ceglia. Although riddled with typos, and in parts not clearly phrased — it refers to Ceglia being granted ownership of the software language that Zuckerberg was to use, for example, rather than the code — it would give him most of Facebook’s shares. From VentureBeat:

The contract itself says that Ceglia agreed to pay Zuckerberg $1,000 for StreetFax and $1,000 for another project called PageBook. The contract also mentions an expanded project called The Facebook to be completed by January 2004, saying “an additional 1% interest in the business will be due the buyer for each day the website is delayed from that date.”

Ceglia attached a $1,000 receipt from his checkbook, dated six months after the contract, as evidence that he paid Zuckerberg for his work. But it wasn’t the full $2,000 amount and the agreement doesn’t describe what happens if there is a default.

Facebook, for its part, has not yet completely denied the specific claims. In court, one of the company’s lawyers confirmed that Zuckerberg did have a contract with Ceglia, but also said that there are “many substantial questions surrounding the authenticity” of the particular document provided by Ceglia, and was “unsure” such as whether Zuckerberg had actually signed it.

The company’s general statement on Ceglia’s claim sounds confident, in any case: “We believe this suit is completely frivolous and we will fight it vigorously.”

Whether or not the document is real, Ceglia’s case has other problems, beyond some of vague phrasing. For example,  his claim is more than six years old, seemingly disqualifying it under New York’s statute of limitations. And his document oddly has Zuckerberg using the term “Facebook” nine months before Zuckerberg actively began using the term. Legal experts have noted both as major issues. And Ceglia himself has been in trouble with the law recently, getting arrested for failure to fulfill wood pellet orders after having taken their money — maybe he was just having business problems, but the timing makes his Facebook suit (and character) look more suspicious.

Given the many frivolous lawsuits brought against major companies, only to be summarily dismissed, one wouldn’t be surprised to see the judge relegate Ceglia’s claims to the same category. But if the document does somehow turn out to be authentic, Facebook’s legal team will no doubt contest its language, the time-lapse, and anything else it can find, and look for a quick settlement. We have a hard time seeing Ceglia’s desired outcome — 84% ownership of Facebook — ever happening.

And, if the claim is found true, there’s another twist coming: the Harvard Connection (now ConnectU) team and Greenspan will need to explain how Zuckerberg was working on his idea many months before they say he stole it from them. Sure, ConnectU’s long-running lawsuit is mostly done, and Greenspan has moved on to other projects, but ConnectU’s version of events appears slated for a retelling in The Social Network, the new movie coming out on October 1st of this year. The new headlines about the Celia case — which, to our knowledge is not addressed in the movie — might confuse the movie’s plot, or at least its audiences.

If Ceglia’s case turns out to be somewhat true, but not true enough to give Ceglia anything like the stock he wants, the result could be an odd sort of public relations win for Facebook.

Wildfire is launching a Groupon or LivingSocial Deals-style application on Facebook this week, called Group Deals. It’s designed to allow brand Page administrators to set up group promotions on a Facebook Page within a matter of minutes, then get their discount offers shared among friends.

Group Deals works for Facebook Pages and via Facebook Connect like the others — group discounts require a minimum number of participants in order to be profitable for the business, and Facebook provides distribution to make that happen.

Wildfire’s product costs at least 99 cents a day to run, and provides a variety of pricing and customization capabilities. Setting up a Group Deal on Facebook via the Wildfire social application wizard is designed to be fast and simple, requiring three parameters: the value of the deal, the critical mass of takers needed for the deal to activate and the time period during which the deal will be valid.

Brands may also link a Group Deal to an e-commerce service  on their web site.

PayPal will administer the transactions on Facebook. Part of this integration allows buyers to receive reminders to recruit friends to the deal, be notified if the deal activated and also provide buyers with instructions on how to redeem a deal.

Wildfire raised $4.04 million earlier this year, right after it had rolled out a sweepstakes service on Facebook after partnering with Publisher’s Clearing House. For more information about social promotions on Facebook check out the Inside Facebook Marketing Bible.

Facebook’s performance advertising system offers deep targeting and a large audience, but doesn’t have adequate controls or analytics for running large scale advertising campaigns. To allow third-parties to solve this problem, Facebook released an ads API last fall upon which sophisticated tools and services can be built. While some companies offer a licensed tool for ads managers to use themselves, and others provide full-service ad campaign execution, one who does both is TBG Digital.

Company Profile

TBG Digital is a London-based digital advertising agency founded in 2001 by Simon Mansell. The company provides cost per acquisition managed spend advertising campaign services on Facebook and across the internet. It  recently released the ONE Media Manager, a self-service ad campaign management tool which it licenses to agencies and brands, for them to use internally to help increase ad efficiency. The tool allows ads operation managers to quickly create thousands of ad variants and edit targeting and bids on the fly from a one-screen interface. By allowing fewer employees to control more campaigns more effectively, ONE Media Manager helps users maximize the opportunities of the Facebook ad platform.

TBG was bootstrapped in 2001 by Simon Mansell, now CEO. It previously specialized in search and display advertising, but have since adapted to the social advertising space. TBG Digital has 70 employees, with roughly half working on Facebook-related teams as ads managers or engineers. Mansell began developing ONE Media Manager 14 months ago in an effort to increase its service business’ efficiency, believing Facebook would create a third-party tools industry much the way Google did. TBG became one of first few Facebook ads API alpha testers, and the only non-tech company, allowing it a first-to-market advantage among digital advertising firms.

Including self-serve and full service, the company has over 150 clients running campaigns through ONE Media Manager. Since opening a San Francisco office a few weeks ago, it has signed 14 clients in the US, the company says.

TBG specializes in direct response, with clients from industries such as telecommunications, financial services, retail, gaming, and social applications. Direct clients include Jet Blue, EA Games, Dell, and Experian. TBG licenses ONE Media Manager to Havas, Aegis Media, Groupon and other ad agencies, consulting firms, and in-house marketing departments. It earns a percentage, and clients spends an average of $200,000-$300,000 a month, with a range from a bare minimum of $50,000 a month up into seven figures. ONE Media Manager has helped run up to 2 billion ads per day. Mansell says the service works best for companies looking to run large scale, but niche-targeted campaigns, especially those with an urgent call to action. He explains that while TBG is more expensive than some competitors, as you pay for its knowledge and investment in technology. He adds that its rate is rarely an issue with clients.

Product Review

The ONE Media Manager product uses a single screen interface showing information about each ad on a separate row of a live pivot table. All additional features, such as the campaign builder, creative gallery, and ad scheduler appear as pop ups overlaid on the table. Users begin by using the Campaign Builder to select an account and max bid, name the configuration, add a tracking URL, upload an image, and set targeting parameters and creative. A preexisting campaign configuration can also be chosen, sparing users from having the manually clone campaigns to change a single detail. Different permutations of parameters and creatives are combined to allow quick creation of thousands of ad variants, though there is no visualization of the ad creation tree.

Once ads are created, tabs allow users to view different default sets of columns of data about them. The Ad Details tab includes ad and campaign names, client, activity status, title, body copy, image name and preview, link URL, as well as basic performance info on impressions, clicks, and spend. The Stats tab shows more detailed performance data, including max bid, suggested minimum and maximum bid, CTR, CPC, effective CPM, conversions, clicks to application (measures lead generation), impressions, clicks, spend and dates running. Users can view data sets such as “clicks > 1” or “campaign name contains housewives” using a powerful filter. Performance data can be sliced by entering a date range, or by using handy preselects such as last week, month, or year. The default sets of column are customizable and reorderable, allowing users to create personalized views of their campaigns.

An advantage of ONE Media Manager’s pivot table format over more graphic-based representations is that changes can be easily applied to large swaths of ads. This is crucial since thousands of experiments can yield only a few strong ads. A user can pin a successful image or targeting parameter to multiple ads simply by dragging over them, making it easy to utilize the fruits of multivariate testing by editing all of a campaign’s ads to mimic its best performers. To prevent errant clicks from screwing up live campaigns, a save & sync button pushes out confirmed edits only.

By integrating third-party analytics pixels such as Atlas or Dart and linking them to ONE Media Manager, users can take advantage of the “bid to CPA” options, allowing bids to change to reflect fluctuations in CPA. Patrick Toland, head of the TBG San Francisco office, explained how ads run during the 9-5 work day often have better CPAs because people are tempted to goof off at work, and CPAs are lower after work because people want to communicate quickly and move on to leisure time. By bidding to CPA, a user’s bids would lower in the evenings if their CPA drops, preventing overbidding. A bid strategy can be set with options for follow minimum, bid to mean, bid to maximum, or bid by CPA.

The “Uploader” tab contains a few additional features including support for the Facebook performance ad bulk uploader, the predecessor to ads API tools, facilitating creation of campaigns in Excel but monitoring and editing in ONE. The tracking URL uploader allows a large set of tracking URLS to be entered into ONE simultaneously, and the Results uploader allows you to integrate old campaign results to help guide decisions. ONE also supports placing multiple Facebook ads accounts under a single client umbrella, allowing users to bypass limits on how many ads a single account can run.

One serious shortcoming of ONE Media Manager is the lack of any type of native analytics. Campaign results of a single ad or across all ads for a date range can be exported to Excel, but there is no way to view data graphically within the interface. This makes it difficult to quickly deduce trends, especially across more ads than can be seen on one fold of the manager. The system also lacks optimization suggestions AIs available in products like Alchemy, which make suggestions such as which poorly performing ads to pause. The only times you’ll see graphics are in the image gallery for viewing active ad images, and the ad preview, letting you see what a combined set of creative elements will look like on Facebook.

However, the graphic-light style contributes to ONE Media Manager’s biggest strength: speed. Using a customizable single screen interface, and a “pin to” system allowing successful parameters to be quickly applied to many ads means power users can manage more accounts than with other tools. This advantage requires great familiarity with the tool, though, meaning full-service clients employing TBG’s own full-time account ad operation managers will see more benefits than less familiar tool licensees. Overall, TBG’s ONE Media Manager is best suited for those with the money to pay for managed spend service, or those with a dedicated ads management and analytics team which can use the tool to its full effect, perform their own analytics, and don’t need automated suggestions.

Looking Forward

In the future, TBG plans to add an intelligent alerts system which notifies managers by email or text when certain circumstances occur, such as if a campaign isn’t getting a certain number of impressions a day or if total spend reaches a certain level. It is planning integrations with Mosaic and Acorn to allow users to auto-target certain consumer profiles. TBG is working on a mobile interface, and an offline campaign management option over Adobe Air so users can edit ads when they’re offline, then sync when they have an internet connection.

A few improvements CEO Simon Mansell would like to see Facebook make include allowing more timely and frequent retrieval of ad stats and improved time zone management. He also says TBG’s clients frequently ask about the potential for conversion and post-impression tracking.

Mansell sees the ads API industry as being in a “very nascent” stage. He says currently TBG and others ads API companies are focusing on improving efficiency, but that developing more automation and artificial intelligence is the next step.  Toland believes one of the biggest challenges for companies working off of Facebook APIs is constant change on the back end. TBG can rapidly respond to changes, though, because their London ads operations team notice when something breaks immediately, helping the company fix the tool before it becomes an issue for the ONE Media Manager licensees.

You’ve probably never heard of Pencake Limited, but the Hong Kong-based developer is the largest non-social gaming developer on Facebook — at least by monthly active users, as it now has 36.2 million, according to AppData. Why? It’s a quiz application developer, with more than 100 titles (and perhaps many more) in a variety of languages, that has managed to grow despite Facebook’s efforts to tune down these sorts of apps.

Founded in 2008, the company describes itself as a “marketing solutions provider” that makes custom quizzes, contests and other campaigns for other companies. Its web site currently lists a number of Asian brands as well as others like Microsoft and Olay as clients.

Pencake is most visible due to a series of core applications: Element Analyst, Friends Interview, Star of the Day, Five Friends Analyst, Gifts Creator, and Create Your Quiz.

Create Your Quiz alone sits atop the Pencake list with over 22.3 million monthly active users (followed distantly by Element Analyst Creator at 2.7 million). This has led to the creation of lots of quizzes, with each localized in over 20 languages, including Chinese, Spanish, Russian and French. This method of growth on the Facebook platform is not anything new. In fact, the Gift Creator and Create Your Quiz apps ought to ring a bell for long-time Facebook users.

Facebook has been making a few changes that have made these sorts of applications more visible. It has started associating many child quiz apps with the parent apps, which both shows these apps to be much bigger than they appeared before. More importantly for growth, it condensed multiple news feed stories from apps into single entries in news feeds, meaning that users had to click to see all of the news feed stories about the app.

Pencake has been, according to other developers, an especially aggressive quiz-maker, having been accused of many acts of spam on the Facebook developer forum (in fact, the company appears to be admitting to spamming in the Hong Kong press). However, when we asked the company, founder Terry Tsang said that it has stopped these practices, that it has been talking to Facebook, and that it continues to improve its apps. We’ve seen some user complaints, but we expect Facebook will take action if there are more problems.

The platform has been defined by developers pushing the limits of what Facebook offered in every way possible. The company has had to scale back many features, like third-party notifications, because developers have abused them. Given the years of back and forth on platform design and regulation, it’s surprising to see a company like Pencake get this far.

[Image credit: Facebook Developer Forum member xiaoten]

Today, Facebook began to allow multiple personal accounts to be granted permission to access a single advertising account. Previously, an advertising account or campaign could only be accessed by a single personal account. This prevented cooperative management or transfer of control of an ad account, and led many advertisers to technically violate the Facebook terms of service by creating fake, generic personal accounts whose login info could be shared or reassigned.

[Update, 7/21/10: Some readers tell us that they're not getting access yet. Here's what commenter Aaron says he heard from Facebook support: “Unfortunately it’s still not ready and I don’t have a time frame as to when it will be available. I really apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we try to get it rolled out to advertisers.”]

The new addition has been one of the features most heavily requested by advertisers, we’ve heard, and will pave the way for orchestration of complex advertising campaigns by multiple managers working in parallel.

The original owner of an ad account may now “Add a User to This Ads Account” and assign them an access level, including “General User” with full control, or “Reports Only” which merely allows for monitoring of results but not editing of campaigns. In the text, Facebook reassures managers that adding others to a shared ads account won’t give anyone else access to their personal profile or other ads accounts they operate. This relieves privacy concerns, both personal, and for companies who share an ads account manager with other businesses.

Managing large ad campaigns, especially without an API tool provided by Alchemy, ONE Media Manager or another third party provider, can be an incredibly involved process, often more work than a single person can handle. By allowing managers to share the work, ads accounts can have someone managing around the clock, or have specialized experts for tasks such as ads creation, targeting, or bid management. Without this new feature, fake accounts were often created so if a manager left a company, their ads account could be reassigned. This violation of the the Facebook TOS opened these accounts up for suspension, which could cause a disastrous halt of advertising campaigns (although it’s not clear how often Facebook enforced the issue against advertisers). By making shared ads accounts possible, Facebook increases stability and confidence in the ads platforms, solidifying it as serious component of any digital advertising campaign.

Bob Marley made a surprise appearance on our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages this week, compiled by our PageData tool, which counts the number of fans added to a Page each week. It took between 942,800 and 438,000 fans to make the list this week and most were entertainment-related, although there were a few outliers and some official Page consolidation.

Top Gainers This Week

Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Family Guy	12,657,886	+942,791	+8.05
2.	Facebook	13,345,516	+802,944	+6.40
3.	House	10,110,166	+796,383	+8.55
4.	Vin Diesel	11,678,073	+744,534	+6.81
5.	The Twilight Saga	9,652,222	+704,959	+7.88
6.	Bob Marley	6,614,497	+691,025	+11.67
7.	Linkin Park	8,353,779	+681,533	+8.88
8.	Starbucks	10,459,408	+620,257	+6.30
9.	Shakira	5,012,217	+602,038	+13.65
10.	Cristiano Ronaldo	8,325,181	+589,347	+7.62
11.	Oreo	6,663,826	+518,367	+8.43
12.	Red Bull	6,477,214	+517,411	+8.68
13.	Adam Sandler	5,178,013	+503,794	+10.78
14.	Justin Bieber	7,635,942	+500,912	+7.02
15.	David Guetta	5,151,761	+484,568	+10.38
16.	Taylor Swift	7,359,368	+478,310	+6.95
17.	The Simpsons	3,801,326	+464,770	+13.93
18.	Metallica	6,645,584	+459,318	+7.42
19.	Drake	4,302,610	+448,626	+11.64
20.	Barack Obama	10,909,764	+438,000	+4.18

First place this week was “Family Guy,” a popular Fox show that added 942,800 fans to grow to 12.6 million. Medical drama “House” took third place, adding 796,400 fans to total 10.1 million and “The Simpsons,” another Fox show, came in at number 17 by adding 464,800 fans to come out with 3.8 million.

There was also a group of big brands on the list this week.

Facebook came in second place, adding about 803,000 fans to pass 13.3 million; this week Microsoft launched a Facebook capability for its Outlook products. Starbucks, which was the first brand to earn 10 million Likes, added 620,300 fans to grow to 10.4 million this week. Starbucks is promoting an in-store coupon special for customers.

Oreo came in at 11, adding 518,400 fans to reach 6.3 million and is currently asking fans across the world to pose with its products to win a spot as the Page’s profile photo for fan of the week. Red Bull followed in twelfth place, adding 517,400 fans to hit the 6.4 million mark.

Movie- and celebrity-related Pages made up a chunk of the list, too.

Vin Diesel came in fourth, adding 744,500 fans to his Page last week to grow to 11.6 million with steady growth. “The Twilight Saga” followed at number 5, adding 705,000 fans to grow to 9.6 million, mostly by posting movie-related news.

Football (soccer) megastar Cristiano Ronaldo took tenth place, promoting himself with vacation photos and his endorsement advertisements, adding 589,300 fans to reach an 8.3 million audience. Comedian Adam Sandler’s Page seems to have benefited from official Page consolidation at number 13, as his Page grew by 504,000 fans to 5.1 million after not having been updated for a year. President Barack Obama, arguably a celebrity, also made the list at number 20, adding 438,000 fans to come in just under 11 million at 10.9 million Likes.

Finally, there were the musicians, who pretty much owned this list.

Bob Marley came in sixth, seemingly due to official Page consolidations, as there was huge growth on his Page but nothing spectacular happening on his Page to warrant 691,000 new fans. His Page totals 6.6 million. Linkin Park followed at number 7, adding 681,500 fans to grow to 8.3 million. Shakira took ninth place, adding 602,000 fans to pass 5 million mostly, it seemed, due to promotion of her World Cup song “Waka Waka.”

Then there was Justin Bieber, who came in at number 14, adding 501,000 fans to reach a base of 7.6 million. At number 15 was David Guetta, who added 484,600 fans to reach 5.1 million total, apparently partly because of his promoting a new collaboration with rapper Flo Rida. Taylor Swift followed at 16, adding 478,300 fans to her 7l.3 million total. Metallica at 18, adding 459,300 fans to a total of 6.6 million by promoting a music tour. Finally, Drake took the number 19 spot, adding 448,600 fans to now boast 4.3 million via promotion of his new album.

The last time Facebook announced its total worldwide traffic, it said it had 400 million monthly active users. That was February, three months after it said it had reached 350 million. Now, five months later, the company is planning to announce that has gained 100 million new users to reach the half a billion mark.

These traffic announcements may happen irregularly, but we’ve been tracking them all the way back to the company’s founding. As you can see from the graph below, growth has been consistently up and to the right. So is it straight on to 1 billion in the next few years?

That’s possible, especially if the company’s focus on low-penetration countries like Russia, South Korea and Japan work out (it is banned in a fourth, China). It is localizing apps and services for those places, and encouraging third-party developers to do the same.

Meanwhile, as we’ve covered, Facebook’s core markets are starting to look more mature.

Using Facebook’s advertising tool, we’ve been tracking country and demographic data, and we’ve observed rises and dips within countries and regions even as the worldwide traffic total has grown. In places where Facebook grew first — the US, and some European countries, especially — we’ve observed more weak months as the service has penetrated more of the total population. The fact that so many people are on Facebook means that there aren’t many more people left who can join.

Other issues may also play into this, too, like holiday months, Facebook redesigns and heavy media coverage of controversial issues like privacy. For example, the US, which has the largest Facebook population in the world, had a decrease in growth during June, according to our Inside Facebook Gold report. It’s not clear why the US slowed down. One reason is likely its high 41.4% penetration rate — we haven’t seen many countries grow beyond this mark. Another reason could be the company’s May privacy issues, or perhaps summer vacation, given the drops we saw coming from 20-something demographics.

Overall, though, we have yet to see any consistent flattening or declines. Countries with high penetration rates still seem to grow, overall, and privacy issues, redesign concerns, and other brand issues have faded into the background.

So, whether from new countries or old, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently said that he thinks the company can reach a billion users. He shared more about that, during a recent talk at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

“We know that a country has tipped when local-to-local connections outnumber local to foreign,” he said, as The Financial Times reported. “It is a long-term thing we are probably not going to win in six months, not in a year… things look promising in three to five years out.”

He also explained that while there was “no chance” Facebook would reach 1 billion MAU this year, but “it is almost a guarantee that it will happen,” according to The Guardian. He explained: “If we succeed [in innovating and remaining relevant] there is a good chance of bringing this to a billion people… it will be interesting to see how it plays out.”

Facebook won a victory in the latest of its string of ownership-related lawsuits on Friday, when a New York federal court judge struck down a restraining order preventing the company from transferring its assets.

We wrote about New York resident Paul Ceglia last week who is suing Facebook and founder Mark Zuckerberg. Ceglia claims to have signed a contract with Zuckerberg in 2003 for a web site that resembles what is now Facebook and claims to be owed 84% of the company. The case itself is odd for a number of other reasons, like the timeline not fitting into the state’s statute of limitations (why wasn’t the issue brought up earlier?), and the plaintiff being previously charged with grand larceny for not providing customers with $200,000-worth of pre-ordered wood pellets in 2009.

The restraining order restricted Facebook from moving its assets. Facebook had the case moved to federal court and, although it continues, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Arcara in Buffalo said that the order was “impermissibly vague and overbroad.”

Votigo, Inc. is a social media promotions company offering a range of services, including solutions for Facebook and Twitter, as well as widgets and different APIs applicable to a variety of other platforms.

Initially Votigo focused on user-generated photos/video contests, interactive sweepstakes and online promotions, but Facebook has increasingly become a focal point of the company’s business.

Founded in 2006 by Mike La Rotonda and Jim Risner in the Bay Area to help businesses better engage customers, the company has raised $1.27 million from Headwaters Holdings and several angel investors. The company also has an office located in Hyderabad, India. We spoke with Risner recently as part of our occasional series of Facebook page management company profiles.

Inside Facebook: What products and services does your company provide to clients using Facebook? What types of clients are you aiming to reach?

Jim Risner: We focus primarily on promotions (user-generated video, photo, and essay contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, and coupons) built as applications that can be added to a brand’s Page. We are full-service, but we also license our self-service tools and APIs. Our solutions come with content moderation tools and (other) features that help users spread the word about the promotion.

We tend to work mostly with larger brands and agencies like Ford, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines, Sharpie, KOHLs, and Shutterfly. Agencies we work with include DraftFCB, Ogilvy, Wunderman, and Arnold Worldwide, but we have solutions that work for small to medium sized businesses and agencies as well. The types of companies that use our solutions really ranges anywhere from CPG to automakers to large retailers to technology companies. Most companies are realizing the power of Facebook and building community around their brands. Promotions are probably the best way to do it. What we do isn’t limited to one type of company or category.

IFB: Can you share some highlights of how your company has helped clients meet their goals using Facebook?

JR: It’s not uncommon to see Likes or fan bases grow anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 in a few weeks to a month. Right now we have over 250,000 monthly active unique across our live promotions on Facebook. We also look at total user engagement. So things like the number of views, number votes, number of comments, number of shares, number entries and so on.

IFB: Overall, can you share metrics on the scope of your business?

JR: We work with over 100 different brands and agencies in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Halfway through this year we’ve already doubled our revenue from last year. The size of our team has tripled since this time last year. We are profitable and growing. We are fortunate to have a lot of repeat clients as well.

IFB: What metrics do you use to determine the success of a given campaign?

JR: Success of a campaign really comes down to the client’s goals for that particular promotion. Sometimes it’s all about the fans, sometimes it’s about collecting great video content, or overall brand awareness, engaging existing customers and attracting new ones. So it really varies from campaign to campaign. I think the most common goal right now for brands on Facebook is acquiring new “Likes” (fans). But once you get the fans you need to continue to engage them. So many of the brands we work with will run several promotions throughout the year.

IFB: What have been your biggest challenges building on Facebook platform? What mistakes have you made and learned from there?

JR: The biggest challenge has been keeping up with the changes to the Facebook Platform. I can’t think of one particular mistake we’ve made, but we all make mistakes and as long as we learn from them that’s what really matters.

IFB: Beyond your own efforts, what Facebook changes have noticeably helped your company?

JR: Being added by Facebook as a Preferred Developer Consultant has been the biggest change that has helped our company in this particular area. We’ve seen a sharp and steady increase in people contacting us to create their next promotion on Facebook.

IFB: On the other hand, has Facebook made any recent changes that have noticeably hurt your company?

JR: Not really. We expect change and we’re eager to leverage any new changes that can help our clients succeed in growing their fan base and building their brands on Facebook.

IFB: If you could ask Facebook to make a single change, what would it be?

JR: Since our clients are primarily focused on Pages we would like to see more functionality in Pages including being able to leverage Social Plug-ins on them. basically right now you can’t really do anything on the pages, so just being able to leverage more the functionality for client request because they’re static pages. you have to click thru to the app before you can really start pulling in user info and seeing what they  like or recommend or tapping into any of the social info that you can capture within the app. So, those pages are fairly static.

IFB: How does your work on Facebook relate to your work on other platforms?

JR: Our promotions run across any social network, microsite, or blog. Our microsites include Facebook Connect and publishing features that allow users to post to their Facebook Wall when they do things like enter a contest, comment on someone else’s entry, or vote. Users can Like a brand’s Facebook Page from the microsite. We also have a really cool Twitter Sweepstakes solution that includes a fully branded site. I think more and more Facebook is becoming just as it is in the entire Internet world it’s becoming kind of a primary focus for us so it’s definitely  helping to drive the innovation, it’s really kind of in the last year or so kind of come even more to the forefront of what we do. Even though we offer solutions across the board, whether it’s a microsite or whatever, Facebook is becoming the go-to promotion platform. So for our clients the focus especially as of late is all about Facebook.

IFB: Do you have any specific plans that you can share?

JR: We are very focused on our Agency and Publisher tools and APIs right now. Making enhancements in that area is probably highest on our list. Making things a little bit easier to use, flow better, just making it all-inclusive and very modular so a client can just easily go into the self-serve tool and run it. After that we’re looking at ways to integrate mobile.

As Inside Network has grown over the years, we’ve received an increasing number of inquiries from companies working on Facebook and social gaming to post listings for open positions.  Today, we’re excited to announce the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

When you place job listings on the Inside Network Job Board, they’ll be distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts highlighting new job listings, as well as through widgets you see here on the sites. That way, you can be sure that your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming world today.

We’re offering a special launch discount code for new listings placed this week on the Inside Network Job Board. Just use the discount code “INSJOB30” by this Friday, July 23rd, to receive a 30% discount on all jobs you post.

Several companies in the social gaming place have already posted jobs. Check out these jobs posted by A Bit Lucky, a social gaming startup based in San Mateo, CA, wooga, one of Europe’s largest developers of social games, Slide, one of the earliest companies on the Facebook Platform that has moved heavily into social games, and Playfirst, a large casual game developer that is also moving heavily into social gaming.

• Analytics & Product Manager (San Mateo, CA)
  
• Marketing & Community Manager (San Mateo, CA)
• Lead Game QA-Build Engineer (San Mateo, CA)
• Senior Backend Engineer (Mateo, CA)

• Senior Software Engineer – iPhone & iPad Games (San Francisco, CA)
• Senior Product Manager / Director, Social Gaming (San Francisco, CA)
• Software Engineer, Data Warehouse (San Francisco, CA)
• Software Engineer, Social Games, PHP (San Francisco, CA)
• Senior Software Engineer – Web Engineer (San Francisco, CA)
• Software Engineer – Social Games in AS3 / Flex (San Francisco, CA)

• Product Manager (Berlin, Germany)
  
• Senior Flash Developer (Berlin, Germany)
  

• Jr. Web Developer (San Francisco, CA)
  

Stay tuned over the coming weeks and months to find out about cool job opportunities at the most exciting companies in the industry!