The past few weeks have been dominated by quiz applications, and this week is no different, as you can see below on our list of Facebook’s fastest-gaining apps by daily active users. Create your Quiz, Entrevista tus Amigos and Element Analyst Creator have all used the quiz mechanic to good effect to gain hundreds of thousands of new DAU; the last of the three stands out only for its newness.

Here’s the AppData list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Create your Quiz	2,781,238	+1,559,650	+127.67
2.	FrontierVille	5,984,845	+594,505	+11.03
3.	Entrevista tus Amigos	1,971,931	+500,274	+33.99
4.	Element Analyst Creator	448,955	+447,771	+37,818.50
5.	Windows Live Messenger	1,716,740	+404,584	+30.83
6.	開心 Lounge Bar	405,471	+400,164	+7,540.31
7.	PetVille	2,890,066	+284,888	+10.94
8.	Pet Society	2,769,562	+270,161	+10.81
9.	Facebook for BlackBerry® smartphones	10,724,900	+237,546	+2.27
10.	Frases Diarias	1,446,009	+236,539	+19.56
11.	Texas HoldEm Poker	5,353,074	+190,502	+3.69
12.	Millionaire City	706,365	+175,815	+33.14
13.	HTC Sense	1,649,541	+158,046	+10.60
14.	Baking Life	821,542	+143,877	+21.23
15.	Office Wars	126,396	+126,294	+123,817.65
16.	建立你的測驗	115,435	+113,195	+5,053.35
17.	Fashion World	521,040	+98,979	+23.45
18.	Nightclub City	868,738	+70,475	+8.83
19.	EA SPORTS FIFA Superstars	744,830	+69,225	+10.25
20.	Resort World	233,015	+67,076	+40.42

Ever since Facebook changed the way quiz apps report their stats, we’ve been able to see just how much the quiz category dominates over all other non-game apps. The key seems to be the viral mechanic within these apps, which is by no accident quite similar to that found in games.

There are a couple of variations: Create your Quiz and Element Analyst Creator both allow users to create quizzes, which post the result to the wall of the user taking them, while Entrevista tus Amigos is a friend quiz, which asks a given user question about their friends (more on the differences here).

What they have in common, with each other and with Facebook’s games, is constantly urging users to make wall posts and invite friends. Given the massive success of the biggest quiz apps, it’s surprising that the developers of other non-game apps don’t spend more time figuring out similar mechanics.

FrontierVille, a game with no shortage of its own incitements to make wall postings, is at number two; as always, we discuss the games more over at Inside Social Games. The next non-game app, and perhaps the only other one worth pointing out this week, is Windows Live Messenger, which has been on a tear with international users for the past two weeks as a superior replacement for Facebook’s own chat functionality.

Facebook has been busy meeting with large developers on its platform, trying to get them to sign deals to exclusively use its virtual currency, Credits, in their applications. So far, it has CrowdStar and LOLapps using Credits exclusively as the direct payment method, with rivals like Zynga participating but also using alternatives.

Now, there’s another big developer joining the exclusive list: RockYou. The company said say in a post about using virtual currency in its big social game, Zoo World. Here’s the key part: “RockYou is NOT doing away with Wildlife Point items to be replaced by Facebook Credits ($0.10 each). But all CASH purchases will require facebook credits within a year (Facebook requirement).”

> Read the full story on Inside Social Games.

Late last week, Facebook said that its profile box deprecation process, which it originally announced a few months ago, would begin this week. According to that post, application profile boxes would no longer be able to be added to user profile pages starting this week, and starting in “early August,” application boxes would be booted from the profile page altogether.

Today, Facebook got a little ahead of schedule, as it actually removed application boxes from profile pages altogether for a few hours. They’re now back – but despite some user complaints, they’re still slated for permanent removal soon.

Facebook’s treatment of application integration with the profile page has been an interesting story over the years since the Platform launched. Initially after the Platform opened in 2007, profile boxes became an extremely powerful way for applications to spread “virally.” At that time, app boxes could be installed on user profile pages in either a “wide”format on the right side of the page, or a “narrow” format on the left side of the page.

Since then, however, Facebook has taken significant steps to change the way apps have presence on the profile. Facebook removed the “wide” format option, and height-limited the “narrow” format option, instead encouraging developers to get users to publish News Feed items and install tabs for their applications. While this hurt distribution for many apps that were primarily designed to be viral profile widgets, Facebook actually largely viewed allowing profile boxes so much profile real estate as a danger for the long term growth of the service.

Why? Ultimately, Facebook believed that allowing too much flexibility in profile design would affect user engagement. As a result, while other sites like MySpace allow relatively deep customization of the profile page for “self expression” purposes – everything from background images to color palettes – Facebook has instead chosen to make the stream the consistently dominant element of the profile page. It’s almost as if Facebook views profile boxes as a mistake, that they’ve had to gradually undo over the last couple of years.

So, just as one final note to developers: all profile boxes will be removed soon.

On the heels of a recent Facebook Pages integration with Docs.com, Microsoft has again Facebook-ized its products by allowing Outlook users to access the social network from their email inboxes with the new Outlook Social Connector.

Mashable reported that Microsoft has integrated both Facebook and Windows Live Messenger into Outlook’s 2003 and 2007 versions via a new plugin, which will also allow integrations for MySpace and LinkedIn.

Facebook and Microsoft reportedly worked in tandem to ensure the plugin worked well. One privacy-related feature is that the plugin will only pull information from email contacts connected to a Facebook account. In other words, if you and most of your friends use Outlook primarily at work but have a personal email attached to your Facebook account, you may not see as much Facebook-related information with the Outlook Social Connector.

The new integration gets  information live from Facebook, allowing users to see profile photos and news feeds of contacts in their Outlook inbox as they are published on Facebook. So, for example, when you’re reading a friend’s email in Outlook you will also be able to see their status updates, photo uploads, posts, and other activities.

Users may not, however, Like posts or update statuses, for example because the plugin only pulls information from Facebook. That’s in the plans eventually, according to Mashable, but for now the only thing Outlook users can publish to Facebook from their inboxes are friend requests.

[Images via]

Facebook launched a Known Issues Page last month in an attempt to give users the “most up-to-date information about bugs and other issues on the site.” So far the Pages has 260 Likes and has already covered a handful of system-wide issues.

The Page is fairly simple and includes little other information than status updates about network problems and some screen shots of the same. Some of the issues described on the site so far include problems with chat, uploading photos, messages and saving changes to user profiles.

Site administrators make sure to not only report problems, but announce when they’ve been addressed. There are also links to report problems.

In an effort to combat rumors that the site will charge users for access, Facebook has updated the language on the account sign-up form on the front page to read, “It’s free (and always will be)”. Despite Facebook spokesman Larry Yu directly addressing concerns last month by telling CNN, “We have absolutely no plans to charge for the basic service of using Facebook,” some users still believe the company is looking to pull a bait-and-switch.

While many in Silicon Valley are focused on other Facebook issues, like privacy, security, and the implementation of Credits, much of the public appears to be more worried about being forced to pay direct fees. Some of our readers might find this surprising, but the change to the front page underlines how serious Facebook takes the fears.

As users invest time and energy in their accounts by forming connections, uploading photos, and manicuring their digital identity, the possibility of losing access if they don’t pay becomes more frightening, to them. Facebook’s advertising and virtual goods business models are based on the idea of the product being free and as widely distributed as possible.

The myths have been perpetuated over the years by a series of chain emails, wall posts and status messages which often listed a specific date when the site would cease to be free and a price such as $3.99/month. In some cases, clicking the link to a supposed protest group actually led to a page of inappropriate images and gave access to a user’s computer to hackers.

Unfortunately, many users shared these traps before clicking, or after having their accounts hijacked, spreadthe misinformation. Facebook responded with a blog post in 2007 stating “We are not going to start charging you to use Facebook” and “So the next time you see a…chain anything, report it to our User Operations team, and tell all your friends to ignore it.” In February 2010, a similar message claiming Zynga’s FarmVille would charge a subscription fee circulated, which the game developer quickly denounced.

Groups protesting the concept of the site charging its users continue to emerge, though. Facebook has shut down some of these groups, while others have changed their names to things like “Facebook is and will always remain free to use” to help debunk the myths. By adding “(and always be)” to the existing statement that “It’s free,” Facebook hopes to firmly halt speculation about the future and assure users that they’ve made a sound investment of their time.

Assorted types of entertainment-related Pages took over our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages this week. Everything from fantasy movies to musicians to soccer stars and SpongeBob SquarePants was on our list this week. It took between 1.2 million and 592,000 new fans to make the list this week.

The statistics used to count the number of fans added to each Page were gathered from our PageData tool.

Top Gainers This Week

Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Harry Potter	1,267,502	+1,232,725	+3,544.66
2.	Lady Gaga	10,425,332	+1,153,117	+12.44
3.	Facebook	12,542,572	+1,131,893	+9.92
4.	Michael Jackson	14,634,326	+1,079,729	+7.97
5.	The Twilight Saga	8,947,263	+1,047,070	+13.25
6.	Family Guy	11,715,095	+1,046,100	+9.81
7.	Cristiano Ronaldo	7,735,834	+1,045,592	+15.63
8.	Tyler Perry	2,497,530	+857,632	+52.30
9.	House	9,313,783	+850,979	+10.06
10.	Vin Diesel	10,933,539	+834,701	+8.27
11.	Starbucks	9,839,151	+779,661	+8.61
12.	Eminem	5,539,299	+764,544	+16.01
13.	Justin Bieber	7,135,030	+743,167	+11.63
14.	Linkin Park	7,672,246	+719,249	+10.34
15.	Taylor Swift	6,881,058	+689,831	+11.14
16.	SpongeBob SquarePants	4,797,023	+683,967	+16.63
17.	Shakira	4,410,179	+659,725	+17.59
18.	Barack Obama	10,471,764	+653,641	+6.66
19.	Red Bull	5,959,803	+604,662	+11.29
20.	Megan Fox	8,350,152	+591,736	+7.63

Topping the list was “Harry Potter,” adding most of its 1.26 million fans in the past week with the addition of 1.23 million. Another film geared towards younger audiences, “The Twilight Saga” took fifth place on the list, adding 1 million fans to grow to 8.9 million; the latest installment of the franchise, “Eclipse,” recently debuted in theaters.

A few big name brands made the list this week. Facebook’s Page came in third, adding 1.1 million fans to grow to 12.5 million. Starbucks at 11, adding 779,700 fans to grow to 9.8 million and Red Bull at number 19 with the addition of 604,700 fans to the Page’s 5.9 million.

There were television shows, too. “Family Guy” came in sixth, adding over 1 million fans to a base of more than 11.7 million; the popular show was recently nominated for an Emmy award. Medical drama “House” took ninth place, adding 851,000 fans to get the Page to 9.3 million; this show was also nominated for Emmys. Then there was the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants,” which took sixteenth place, adding 684,000 fans to come in at a 4.7 million total.

Musicians made up about a third of the list this week.

Lady Gaga came in second place, adding 1.1 million fans to round out a 10.4 million fan base; she’s on tour and has appeared on television shows. Michael Jackson’s Page took fourth place, adding 1 million fans to grow to 14.6 million total fans. Then there was rapper Eminem in twelfth place, adding 764,500 fans, growing the Page to 5.5 million; he’s been promoting a recently released album.

Justin Bieber followed at number 13, adding 743,200 fans to his current batch of 7.1 million fans; the teen crooner has been promoting singles, music videos and touring. Linkin Park followed in fourteenth place, with 719,300 new fans on a Page of 7.6 million; growth seems partly attributable to the beginnings of promotion for an album to be released in the fall. Taylor Swift came in at 15, adding 689,800 fans to come out with 6.8 million. Finally, singer Shakira took number 17, adding 659,700 new fans to a Page of 4.4 million, probably mostly due to being the author of the official FIFA World Cup song.

About a fourth of the list this week was composed of famous people who aren’t named Lady Gaga.

Portuguese football star and hunk Cristiano Ronaldo took seventh place, adding 1 million fans to grow his Page to 7.7 million. He’s had a busy few weeks, playing in the World Cup, announcing the birth of a son and starring in Armani underwear ads. American playwright/actor/moviemaker Tyler Perry appeared on the list this week at number 8, adding 857,600 fans to a total of 2.4 million; there were huge jumps of several hundred thousand on July 8 and 9, hinting at an official Page consolidation.

Jack-of-all-trades Vin Diesel came in at tenth place, adding 834,700 fans to come in just under 11 million this week; he recently announced plans for a new movie production. President Barack Obama added 653,600 fans to his official Page, growing it to 10.4 million and starlet Megan Fox rounded out the list at number 20 with steady growth, adding 591,700 fans to surpass 8.3 million.

In a post to the developer blog today, Facebook outlined steps developers can take to help increase their international reach. It explains how translating apps into multiple languages, posting country-specific updates, location-aware tabs, and contact importation through the multi-friend-selector can help with app growth, which in turn helps Facebook’s own expansion into international markets.

One resource the post cites is Translations for Facebook Connect, a framework whereby users can help developers translate their apps into different languages. Additionally, the post recommends taking each culture’s norms, trends, and holidays into account to craft updates that resonate. Developers can set different content to be displayed to users in different locations by using the  new fb_sig_country request header in custom tabs. This way devs can offer country-specific content for countries where they have large audiences while providing a generic version for all other nations as not to alienate the rest of their users.

Also highlighted in the post is the multi-friend-selector which Facebook released for applications in June to assist with viral app growth, as well as their own. It allows a user to import contacts from many popular email services and send them invites to the app. Those who follow the link in these email invitations are prompted to create an account where the app will be bookmarked on their home page’s left sidebar.

Invites to play games are a major way in which Asian social networks have grown, like Japan’s Mixi, where application invites sit atop a user’s home page. Facebook can piggyback it’s own growth on that of apps by prodding developers to use the mult-friend-selector to generate email invites. These app initiated sign-ups may be the key to sustaining recent rapid growth in Korea as well as breaking into stubborn markets like Japan.

Interestingly, the post lumps together Korea, Russia, Germany, The Nederlands, Brazil, India, and Japan as countries where “Facebook is growing rapidly”, despite these nations having very different growth patterns. For instance, Germany’s Facebook growth is the fastest in Europe, while The Netherlands sits much lower in the pack.

Complete data on total language audience size, language demographics, and top languages for Facebook’s major global markets is available through a membership to Inside Facebook Gold. Learn more or join at Inside Facebook Gold.

In case you missed the Chatroulette fad, a new Facebook application, VChatter, allows you to have a similar experience — if you’re willing to take the same sorts of exposure risks.

Beyond Chatroulette, the experience of using VChatter is similar to using Skype or any other video chat service, but on Facebook. VChatter was founded by Will Bunker, Hiltesh Parashar and Dan Owen to, according to their  Facebook Page, “revolutionize” social video interactions.

Traffic has been on the rise, too. According to AppData, the app currently has about 975,100 monthly active users, and it has had between 101,000 and 83,000 daily active users during the past week.

The installation process asks for permissions like most, then takes you to a screen divided into four  sections: Your friends list, your chat video, a place to chat by typing and the video of the person with whom you will chat.

Unless you have someone already waiting to chat on Facebook, you can press the “Chat Next Shuffle” button and the app will find you an app user with whom to chat. You can also invite friends both on and off Facebook to chat.

Unfortunately VChat seems to have similar pitfalls that Chatroulette did, namely some who use the app seem to have ulterior motives. On a recent Sunday half a dozen chat attempts yielded one woman and mostly men, several in various states of undress, looking for…romance?

Perhaps in an attempt to remedy this unstated use of VChatter, the app called for a VChatter Virtually Real Party last weekend to allow users to make new friends all over the world (presumably not involving self-exposure).

Ultimately, VChatter as a tool for meeting unknown people on Facebook seems like a good idea, provided other people have the same idea. After all, there’s nothing like putting a face to a name when you meet someone. But if what you’re looking for is simply to video chat, it doesn’t seem like VChatter offers much more than other video chat services.

Facebook in the United Kingdom is set to allow users between the ages of 13 and 18 an opportunity to report inappropriate behavior to government child welfare authorities at the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP).

Specifically, Facebook is debuting an application to these users via an announcement on their home pages that will walk them through the installation process. After the app is installed ,the user’s home page will note that they “are in control online.”

UK users can also learn more about the opt-in application on the CEOP Facebook Page, which educates users about online safety.

The Click CEOP button from the app allows users to both access Facebook’s resource page for bullying and other online problems, as well as report abuse directly to CEOP.

The so-called “panic button” became an issue in the UK after the rape and murder of a 17 year-old English girl by a 33 year-old sex offender posing as a teenage boy on Facebook in November.

Facebook’s Vice President of Facebook for Europe, the Middle East and Africa told The Guardian: “We know from speaking to offenders that a visible deterrent could protect young people online. There is no single silver bullet to making the Internet safer but by joining forces with CEOP we have developed a comprehensive solution… and backed this with an awareness campaign to publicize it to young users.”

The Click CEOP button will allow users to report or block others for nudity, racism, bullying or unwanted contact. According to the latest figures from Inside Facebook Gold, the UK currently has 26.5 million users.