Google and Verizon have proposed net neutrality legislation that would exempt wireless networks from most neutrality regulation and pave the way for a separate, premium internet fast lane — and Facebook is not on board. Spokesman Andrew Noyes said in a statement to reporters today that “Facebook continues to support principles of net neutrality for both landline and wireless networks.”

Wireless neutrality is important to Facebook because it wants an even playing field on which to send data to its 150 million mobile users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg signed a letter to the FCC last year urging them to uphold net neutrality, joining Twitter CEO Evan Williams, Digg founder Kevin Rose — and Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt.

“Preserving an open Internet that is accessible to innovators — regardless of their size or wealth — will promote a vibrant and competitive marketplace where consumers have ultimate control over the content and services delivered through their Internet connections” said Noyes, Head of Public Policy Communications, who Facebook hired last October. The company likely worries that some sort of wireless deal between Verizon and Google could lead to its data being throttled or access getting a lot more expensive. The proposal presented to the FCC would legitimize such as deal.

Google’s Android handset operating system has taken hold with all the major carriers since 2007 when the company spoke out regarding the need for a neutral wireless network. Google’s stronger relationships with the carriers, brought about by the OS and handsets, could help it secure accelerated speeds for access to its web services. This could lead to a slowdown of Facebook mobile data, a scary prospect considering their upcoming duel with Google’s potential competitor to Facebook, Google Me.

While the proposal calls for the first “enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices” for the existing broadband internet, it also excuses a potential parallel, premium channel of the internet from following the same rules. “Our proposal would allow broadband providers to offer additional, differentiated online services…[that] might include health care monitoring, the smart grid, advanced educational services, or new entertainment and gaming options.” Carriers could prioritize innovation on this more monetizable channel, stifling improvements of the open internet which Facebook would likely continue to operate on.

The FCC is currently developing a report on how to improve internet access that will integrate “broad public input” said Chairman Julius Genachowski. Blogs and policy watchdogs have fervently denounced the proposal (see Techmeme for the full discussion) meaning if public opinion continues in this direction, Google and Verizon might not get their way.

Earlier today, Facebook temporarily blocked URLs shortened with the Ow.ly domain used by HootSuite, possibly in response to a worm distributed in an Ow.ly link. The worm’s shortened URL contains the Facebook query string “?=www.facebook.com/photo.php” which could fool users into thinking they were visiting a Facebook page. All Ow.ly links on Facebook, legitimate and malicious, temporarily led to Facebook’s blocked abusive site error page.

When asked to comment, Facebook said “As we recently explained in a blog post, spammers sometimes try to hide their malicious links behind URL shorteners like Tiny URL or bit.ly, and in rare cases, we may temporarily block all use of a specific shortener.” The post says that “When we’re notified about one of these sites, we immediately add it to a block list and prevent Wall posts or messages that link to it.” While preventing users from reaching dangerous sites through Facebook is critical, blocking honest links by disabling a entire shortener creates negative experiences too.

While Facebook users should be wary of depending on shortened URLs which can break if that shortener dies out, many still use them to track clicks to links they post in their status updates. The Baptist Press Facebook Page posts Ow.ly shortened links to its news site in each of its updates, all of which were broken by Facebook’s block. Facebook must confront the question of where to draw the line between protecting users and offering them consistent, reliable service.

[Update: The problem has been resolved and Ow.ly links are once again posting to Facebook.]

Facebook has long said that it is prioritizing engagement over pageviews, and the latest evidence of that has arrived, in the form of its new photo album layout. You can now view up to 200 photos on a single page, ten times the previous 20 photos per page you could see in the previous layout. You don’t need to click through consecutive pages of an album this way, you can just keep scrolling down the page.

The company officially announced the change today (although we and many others have been seeing the change for weeks) and noted a couple other benefits to the new design. One is that additional photos on the page only load as you scroll down, so the change won’t slow down your browser; another is that the thumbnails are slightly larger, making the page easier to browse.

Photos have already been getting some upgrades lately, including the tag-a-friend option and larger sizes, and we expect more to come.

Eminem became the second living musician to hit pass the 10 million fan mark today when his Page grew to 10.2 million Likes. Lady Gaga made headlines across news outlets when she became the first living person to pass 10 million fans on Facebook — just ahead of President Barack Obama — and Eminem is following in her footsteps.

Page Leaderboard – Musician

Eminem’s Page has been on our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages consistently over the past few weeks, most recently he headed the list with a gain of almost a million fans in the span of one week. The Page has been active since 2009, so as we noted, this recent growth was probably mostly because the first hit single from his new album, “Love the Way You Lie” has received radio play and the music video premiered. The video features another Top 20 regular, Megan Fox who has 11.5 million Likes, and popular musician Rihanna, who has 7.2 million Likes on her own Facebook Page.

Because the activity on Eminem’s Page has been pretty limited, only updated once a week if at all at some points, it would seem that most of this growth comes from outside of Facebook. In other words, Eminem’s popularity on the radio and with his music video is driving the growth on his Facebook Page.

For Facebook Pages that see massive fan growth like this, that usually seems to be the case. Take Lady Gaga, President Obama, Michael Jackson and Vin Diesel are also examples here. Although Lady Gaga, with 15.4 million Likes, and President Obama with 12.3 million frequently update their Pages, it’s doubtful that updates about health care reform or music awards are driving this growth. Again, it seems that forces external to Facebook are responsible for growth on these Pages.

This becomes even more clear when you look at Michael Jackson’s and Vin Diesel’s Pages.

Jackson’s Page counts 18.3 million Likes, second only to Texas Hold’em Poker, and Vin Diesel has 13.8 million Likes, hitting the 10 million mark shortly after Lady Gaga did. Michael Jackson isn’t alive, but his Page is frequently on our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages and the updates on the Page are sparse and usually related to merchandise. Vin Diesel, on the other hand, does update the Page once or twice a week, but these updates are mostly attractive pictures of himself and brief information about his current projects; it’s actually been a while since he was in a blockbuster film.

Which is to say, something that’s not Facebook is driving the growth on these Pages.

Despite the particular success of Eminem and others on Facebook, the Pages do have in common several strategies crucial to driving fan growth which are outlined in the Inside Facebook Marketing Bible. Most Pages are regularly active, for example, and post information pertinent to people who would be Liking the Pages in the first place. But ultimately, it seems that good products provide good results — even when it comes to Liking Facebook Pages.

Facebook has introduced threaded comments for news feed stories showing multiple friends who share the same link — along with the associated Likes and comments. This type of feed story first lists which friends shared a link, the preview of that link’s content, then separately shows the context, comments and likes of each original posting of the link. Users can see who’s context is most provocative or who has the most active network by comparing the likes and comments of different friends’ posts of the same link.

In this screencap, Manas, Vivek, and Jayesh have all posted the same link. Below the link’s preview, the likes and comments for each of their individual posts are listed. At the bottom, you can see Jayesh said the video reminded him of a warm memory of his friend. This sentimental context got 4 likes, while Vivek’s more cynical context got no likes.

Threaded comments for multiple posting of the same link, and the aggregated birthday wall post feed story we covered Monday, are new ways Facebook is helping users stay aware of trends in their network. Showing separate feed stories wouldn’t illuminate the full impact of a link or the full out-pour of appreciation for a birthday girl or boy. If this type of story aggregation got more sophisticated, users could see posts of different links about the same topic brought together to show different perspectives about one important world event.

We’ve been covering Facebook’s upcoming location-based service for months. Today, CNET says location APIs will be coming in a few weeks, potentially sooner.

Location-based application developers are already using Facebook’s platform to let people sync accounts with Facebook, and share check-ins back to Facebook. What this new API will specifically enable is not yet known, although rumors about it have been popping up since earlier this year. At this point, Facebook appears to want to connect third-party check-ins with profiles and Pages.

Facebook has also reportedly partnered with location-focused business directory Localeze, the same company that powers conversion of addresses or coordinates into named locations for Twitter. Facebook could use Localeze’s directory to match addresses, and coordinates coming in through the API with businesses that have Facebook Pages.

There are also some clues about how that interface might look. Code on the touch.facebook.com iPhone mobile site surfaced in April indicating a “Places” tab could provide friend location information on user profiles, Pages, and in mobile apps.

Owners of official Pages, if they have a real world location, could claim their “Place” and get a Places tab added to their Pages, like the tabs Facebook created for Questions, but showing public check-in data to that location. This allows check-ins to user-authored locations or locations who don’t have a Page yet to occur, then when a Page claims its Place, there will already have been check-ins made to it. Note that Facebook documentation has been showing Page owners how to add their own location information for months.

For any business or other organization that somehow relies on a physical location, this would immediately make Pages more interesting — you can imagine seeing all of your friends who have checked in to the local donut shop, for example, whether they are on Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Yelp or any other check-in service. Given Facebook’s expansion into mobile, you can imagine Facebook providing this aggregated data on a real-time mobile map, too, making it more convenient for you to see where your friends are while you’re on the go.

Aggregating check-ins to a central viewing location would solve the problem of social graphs splintered across location services, and remove the need for users to cultivate networks in each.

It is also possible that Facebook would offer its own check-in service, in addition to third parties — McDonald’s is reportedly one of the initial partners for some form of app-based Page check-in service.

In another sign of how the product might look, a “Facebook insider” told at least one location startup to consider switching to the “Like” button theme versus a thumbs-up one, according to the CNET report. Doing so, of course, would match Facebook’s existing uses of the word “Like” to indicate that someone is a fan of a post, comment, Page, or web page or site.

Overall, Facebook can use the location API to make itself the center of location services, similar to how it leveraged its social features to make itself indispensable to many developers and marketers. And, by collecting information about where a user and a user’s friends check-in through the API, Facebook can show highly targeted ads on the Places tab and elsewhere, possibly even syndicating local ads, including group-discount coupons, to these third parties. The API could provide any third party with valuable new location data, but also give Facebook leverage to own the relationship with local advertisers.

Finally, CNET confirms the previously-reported acquisition of Hot Potato, a service that provided location features, but also a range of other social conversation products, for $10 million; it’s not clear if the company will be working on location or other Facebook products though. Facebook, meanwhile, tried to buy Foursquare for $120 million at one point, but walked away after the startup asked for more.

Here’s Facebook’s only official comment on its location plans: “We are working on location features and product integrations, which we’ll be launching in the coming months, and we’ll share more details when appropriate.”

Facebook’s official Page now has a Korean version, featuring how-to guides to the site and a directory of Korean Pages, all in Korean. The Page could help spur growth in South Korea by giving fellow Korean Facebook users a common place to find each other, and explaining the site’s features and uses to those without knowledge of another language.

The Page’s updates have been a combination of translations of posts made to the English-language Facebook Page, and country-specific links to Korean blogs and celebrities. Its directory of “Other Pages” lists Korean news outlets like Chosun.com, local commerce sites like TicketMonster, and Korean musicians Beast.

South Korea has long been a holdout from widespread Facebook adoption, primarily because other social networks gained a significant presence in the advanced digital market while Facebook was focusing its attention elsewhere. Local social network Cyworld, founded in 1999, had 18 million users, more than 1/3 of the country’s population, in 2006.

However, Mark Zuckerberg says the country is a primary target in 2010, a claim supported by this translation. Facebook for iPhone’s June 2010 update included a Korean localization. The company is also hiring sales engineers for a small, unannounced office opening in South Korea.

Meanwhile, the country’s Facebook population has grown by more than 75% in the last three months, with 1.26 million monthly active users as of last month, according to our Inside Facebook Gold data.

Conquering South Korea could be significant for Facebook’s revenues as well as total user base. The country is known for its enthusiastic gaming, with Cyworld pulling in $7 a year per user in 2006 through the sale of virtual goods. As Facebook now makes 30% on the sales of goods bought with Facebook Credits, expanding in South Korea and getting those users addicted to Facebook’s top-tier social games could prove very lucrative.

Full data on Facebook’s audience growth throughout Europe and in countries around the world is presented in the July 2010 edition of the Facebook Global Monitor report, available through Inside Facebook Gold. An Inside Facebook Gold membership also includes data on language growth, audience demographics by country, and user behavior stats for the Facebook business ecosystem. To learn more about membership, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

[Editor's Note: The following article presents analysis from Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data membership service tracking Facebook's traffic growth and demographic landscape in global markets.]

Now that Facebook has crossed the 500 million user mark and Google appears serious about building its own social platform, the stakes continue to grow for all parts of Facebook’s business: user growth and engagement, Platform growth and Credits, and advertising growth. As Facebook seeks to maintain focus and execution speed across the company, what will be the key themes for the company during the second half of 2010?

The virtual goods economy is continuing to grow on the Facebook Platform, and Facebook’s Credits rollout is continuing to shift market dynamics – we expect things to look quite different in six months.  At the same time, Facebook is still deriving the vast majority of its revenues from its advertising business, despite the slow rollout of advertising platform tools to developers. Meanwhile, Facebook’s “Open Graph” efforts are just getting started. 

We analyze these specific developments as part of four key themes affecting Facebook and its ecosystem of developers and brands this week at Inside Facebook Gold. To learn more, or to join, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

Web analytics provider Webtrends today announced its acquisition of self-service and full-service web, mobile, and social app creator Transpond. Webtrend clients can now use Transpond, rebranded as Webtrends Apps, to build, publish and measure performance of content, engagment, and conversion-centric apps for platforms including Facebook, MySpace, iPhone, Android, Facebook Connect websites, and mobile optimized sites. The acquisition combines with its existing analytics, segmentation, and optimizations services to allow Webtrends to carry clients through the entire digital marketing process.

Creating applications using Webtrend Apps is relatively simple and requires no coding experience. Users of the self-serve tool can edit the content of pre-made templates for content apps that allow syndication of video, blogs, images, and Twitter; engagement apps like polls, quizzes, user generated content publishers, and landing pages; and conversion apps like coupons, location-based deals, and gifts. The two-pane app editor lets users change content, settings, and styles on the left while seeing the results on the right.

Once finished building, users can publish demo versions of their apps with a 100 impressions/day cap for free, making it easy to see how an app looks and feels in use. Publishing Facebook apps for the first time is a complicated process, but Webtrends takes users through it step by step to ensure things like canvass page URLs and API keys are set up properly.

Companies willing to pay more for professionally built apps can have Webtrends Apps’ full-service team develop apps for them. Pricing for a year of self-service vs full-service for each app type is $1,500/$8,000 for content apps, $3,000/$10,000 for engagement apps, and $4,500/$12,000 for conversion apps.

Bundled with their Facebook apps is a Facebook analytics tool Webtrends released in February that improves on deficiencies of Facebook’s native Insights. It allows clients to see up to date statistics about custom Page tabs and applications such as time on site and what content was shared, as well as integrate Facebook analytics into their web-wide analytics solution.

Webtrends saw brands from all industries looking to make custom apps, but found existing developers to be too slow, complicated, and overworked. The acquisition of Transpond makes Webtrends a good start-to-finish solution for companies trying to break into Facebook or other app platforms. While the apps themselves are relatively basic, the ability to create, publish, and track them with just one set of tools offers simplicity those new to the app scene will appreciate.

Music dominated our list of Top 20 Facebook Pages this week, taking up almost half, while the rest of the list consisted of big name brands and entertainment-related Pages. Our list is genereated by our PageData tool, which counts the number of fans added to a Page each day. Making the list this week required anywhere from 477,400 to 840,000 new Likes.

Top Gainers This Week

Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Eminem	9,813,796	+839,971	+9.36
2.	Facebook	15,850,128	+773,874	+5.13
3.	South Park	10,319,212	+760,309	+7.95
4.	YouTube	10,593,652	+759,480	+7.72
5.	Lady Gaga	15,144,827	+756,844	+5.26
6.	Family Guy	14,816,058	+684,980	+4.85
7.	Vin Diesel	13,584,045	+654,615	+5.06
8.	Coca-Cola	9,923,260	+634,799	+6.83
9.	Michael Jackson	18,142,782	+577,237	+3.29
10.	Linkin Park	10,119,211	+563,783	+5.90
11.	House	11,949,940	+553,488	+4.86
12.	George Lopez	1,952,029	+544,180	+38.65
13.	Starbucks	12,074,884	+533,552	+4.62
14.	Megan Fox	11,292,324	+530,799	+4.93
15.	Bob Marley	8,515,131	+529,093	+6.63
16.	David Guetta	6,705,888	+522,006	+8.44
17.	Lil Wayne	9,561,537	+514,866	+5.69
18.	Justin Bieber	9,067,247	+501,089	+5.85
19.	The Twilight Saga	11,239,201	+495,033	+4.61
20.	Shakira	6,526,689	+477,427	+7.89

At the top of the list was Eminem, who added 840,000 new Likes to the 9.8 million on his Page, which showed steady growth; this rise is most likely because he debuted a new video for his song “Love the Way You Lie,” which features Rihanna and Megan Fox. The song has also seen good play on the radio. Consequently, Fox was also on the list this week, adding 530,800 Likes, totalling 11.2 million, and also promoting the new video on her Page.

Lady Gaga wasn’t far behind at number 5, adding about 757,000 new Likes to the 15.1 million on her Page after performing as one of the headliners at the Chicago music festival Lollapalooza. Michael Jackson was ninth, adding 577,200 Likes to edge over 18 million. Linkin Park, which has released a single and will release an album next month, was tenth, adding 563,800 Likes to arrive at a total of 10.1 million. Bob Marley’s Page was at number 15 and added 529,000 new fans to grow to 8.5 million.

DJ David Guetta was at 16, adding 522,000 new Likes to grow to 6.7 million; he’s been promoting his single with Flo Rida and other music-related events on the Page. At 17 was Lil Wayne who posted some new activity on his Page this week to his 9.5 million fans, adding 514,900 — the rapper also gave an interview from jail this week. Teen crooner Justin Bieber was at number 18, adding 501,000 Likes to nudge past 9 million total; he’s been promoting his songs, videos, singles, apperances and other Bieber-related activity on his Page. Shakira came in at number 20, rounding out the list and the musicians, adding 477,400 Likes to now boast a toal of 6.5 million; she’s been promoting new tour dates, interviews and her album.

Big brands, tech or otherwise, held onto the middle chunk of our list.

Facebook was second, adding 773,900 Likes to grow to 15.8 million. YouTube’s Page was fourth, adding 759,500 Likes. Coca-Cola’s Page came in eigth, adding 634,800 Likes for a total of 9.9 million; the company’s been promoting a Guitar Hero “fanhancer” mini game on the Page. Starbucks rounded out the brands on the list at number 13, adding 533,600 Likes to its 12 million total.

Entertainment took up another big chunk of our list, as per ususal.

“South Park” came in third, adding 760,300 Likes to grow the Page’s audience to 10.3 million. “Family Guy” was at number 6, adding 685,000 Likes to reach a total of 14.8 million; the show’s creator has been actively promoting the show on interviews posted to the Page. Vin Diesel took seventh place, adding 654,600 Likes to reach 13.5 million; he’s been posting pictures and updates of his upcoming projects.

The medical series “House” was at number 11, adding 553,500 Likes to come in just under a total of 12 million; Page admins have been posting news items about the upcoming seasons’ plot line. Comedian George Lopez was at number 12, adding 544,200 Likes to a 1.9 million total; this seemed to be a Page consolidation, as 521,000 Likes were added in a single day last week. “The Twilight Saga” took ninteenth place, adding 495,000 Likes to total 11.2 million this week; as usual, the Page promoted the films’ stars, merchandise, news and awards.