When multiple friends separately check in to a Place, users may now see an aggregated Places checkin story in their news feed. Users will see one friend’s full checkin complete with name, those tagged, Place, optional description, timestamp, comments and Likes, then all that data except the Place the checkins have in common for each additional friend.

This new story makes users aware of locations that are trending amongst their network, and lets them see different perspectives on the Place as well as who’s checkin gets the most Likes or interesting comments.

The ordering of friends in the aggregated story is not chronologically based on the time of the checkins, but appears to order friends by who you interact with the most. Aggregated checkin stories are not comprehensive, and may leave out some friends who also checked in to the same Place at roughly the same time. Users can click the comment button or speech bubble icon to unfold the aggregated story and see comments on the clicked checkin.

The news feed is the only way users can view past checkins of friends to different Places on the standard Facebook web interface. Users can see current checkins via the Happening Now section of the events home page, view checkins to a single location on Places pages, or get detailed data on current and past checkins using the PlacePop app, but the news feed is still the primary way users learn of checkins on the web interface.

Aggregating stories helps Facebook prevent the news feeds of users from being cluttered with similar stories. This is especially important for Places since not all countries or mobile devices have access, and those without access are more susceptible to feelings of ill will towards Facebook for flaunting the feature. Aggegated checkin stories also benefit users as they make it very apparent that something interesting is happening at a Place, and they may want to go explore.

Ads run on Facebook which point to an off-site location now show the domain URL below the headline and above the image. By notifying users of the main domain URL (the root of the URL that doesn’t include the suffix which points to a specific page within a website) they’ll be sent to if they click the ad, users are less likely to be duped into visiting sites they’re not interested in. Ads pointing to Pages, apps, and other sites within the Facebook canvas do not show their display URL.

For years Google AdWords has presented domain URLs of ads, and the enhanced user experience this offers may have inspired Facebook to follow suit. Forcing ads to be transparent will assist Facebook in creating a perception of itself as safe zone on the internet. The change will help alleviate a user’s worries about whether the site they’re clicking through to is irrelevant, objectionable, or malicious.

However, as a significant portion of Facebook’s advertising inventory is used by developers to market their apps, there is still considerable volume of opaque ad content on the site.

This change will benefit users, and also could lead to a higher conversion rate for ads since there will be fewer uninterested clicks. By adjusting its ad product, Facebook is naturally weeding out unscrupulous advertisers and creating a better user experience.

[Thanks to Amit Lavi and Nana Gilbert-Baffoe for the tip.]

Update: Facebook has informed us that it is “constantly looking for new ways to improve the user and advertiser experience on Facebook and have begun a test that shows the domain URLs for ads pointing users off of Facebook.”

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

Older users outside Facebook’s core demographics among teens and twenty-somethings are starting to catch up and power its growth in some of its biggest emerging markets, according to data from Inside Facebook Gold. Last week we wrote about India, but we’re seeing the same trend in Facebook’s largest Latin American market Mexico.

Users aged 35 to 44 grew 12.7 percent from August to September, beating the country’s overall growth of  7.2 percent. Younger users have led the way and now older age groups are starting to pick up as they do in other markets, though Mexico still skews significantly younger than the average across Facebook’s top fifteen country markets:

Numerically, teens and early twenty-somethings still dominate Mexico’s Facebook population with two-thirds of the social network’s users. This month, Facebook grew across the board in all age groups. Middle-aged users led, while younger users followed. The weakest category was among the very oldest users aged 45 to 65.

Mexico is one of Facebook’s fastest-growing markets behind India and is the company’s strongest country in Latin America, followed by Colombia and Argentina. It’s also a key global market, not only because of its close ties to the U.S. and the Latino population here, but also because it is the world’s largest Spanish-speaking nation. The country is on pace to pass Canada as Facebook’s second-biggest market in North America by the end of the year and become Facebook’s sixth or seventh largest market overall with an estimated 19.7 million users in three months.

Compared to other emerging markets, Mexico is fairly mature as the social network has about 50 percent penetration among the country’s Internet users, or 15.3 million users out of 30 million Internet users. But with nearly 90 million mobile subscribers, it’s possible that Facebook could expand much farther if it focuses on cellphones as it has been doing in other emerging markets with 0.facebook.com, a low-bandwidth version of the site.

The data cited in this article comes from Inside Facebook Gold, our research and data service covering Facebook growth around the world. To learn more, or to sign up for the data service, please visit Inside Facebook Gold.

With an up-to-$750 million acquisition of Playdom by Disney, an up-to-$400 million acquisition of Playfish by Electronic Arts, the acquisition of Tapulous by Disney, and hundreds of millions of dollars in venture investments, virtual goods are impacting businesses across the media landscape. Virtual goods, and the companies that create them, may be bringing the largest disruption entertainment, communication, and e-commerce infrastructure businesses have seen in years.

Inside Network is proud to announce the release today of a new original research report by Justin Smith and Charles Hudson that presents a comprehensive examination of the size and future of the virtual goods market in the United States, entitled Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2010 – 2011. This is Inside Network’s second annual edition of the US Virtual Good Market report. The big picture? The US virtual goods market will reach $2.1 billion overall in 2011.

Where will the virtual goods market go in 2011 and what are the biggest opportunities left unclaimed? How will existing players fare as Facebook continues to reshape the social gaming landscape, and larger and more sophisticated players enter the market? Inside Virtual Goods: The US Virtual Goods Market 2010 – 2011 provides deeper insight into monetization, development, and the key questions facing the space in 2011 than you’ll find anywhere else.

Get the Annual Membership Get Annual Membership (Includes Report + 3 Additional Quarterly Issues): $2,495 OR Buy Single Report: $995

About the Report

Inside Virtual Goods is a new report researched and created specifically for entrepreneurs, investors, and analysts interested in the growth of this exciting new category of online commerce that is fueling the growth of games-as-a-service businesses. During a research phase spanning the last few months, co-authors Justin Smith and Charles Hudson have spoken with dozens of executives and entrepreneurs from all parts of the ecosystem in order to form what we believe are the most detailed estimates, analyses, and predictions for 2010 and 2011.

We focused and organized the report around the following areas:

1. Social Networks, Applications, and Games - The explosion of the virtual goods market on social networks is one of the biggest stories of 2010. We delve deeply into the trends, stats, key players, opportunities, and challenges facing the space this year and next.
2. Casual MMOs and Virtual Worlds - Virtual worlds and casual MMOs continue to grow as a meaningful share of the virtual goods opportunity in the United States. Our study breaks down the key drivers for success in this segment, trends in monetization and engagement, and the prospects for the future.
3. MMOs and Free-to-Play Online Games – Developers in the MMO / MMORPG space have been among the earliest adopters of the free-to-play model. We explore why free-to-play MMOs are succeeding, revenue and user trends, and the key issues facing this space as we head into 2011.
4. Console Games – The console market is one of the most interesting new areas where microtransactions are beginning to establish a meaningful foothold in the market. Our study looks at the key opportunities and challenges facing this emerging space going into 2011.
5. Mobile Games – Mobile application developers that have been early adopters of the free-to-play model are now seeing significant growth in 2010. Our study breaks down the key opportunities and challenges facing this emerging space going into 2011.

Each section contains:

1. A brief history on the evolution and growth of this space in the US, including a description of key players.
2. Estimates on the size of the US virtual goods market in 2010 in that area.
3. A diagnosis of the key opportunities and issues facing the growth of that space, including our outlook and projections for 2011.

In addition, prior to delving more deeply into each market segment, we’ve provided an overview of the emerging payments ecosystem that is growing to serve these new businesses. Traditional e-commerce infrastructure providers only offer a partial solution, and the virtual goods payments layer is currently in a major state of flux. In the report, we describe the variety of solutions that have been brought to market to date, and the key challenges facing the industry from a payments perspective as a whole.

For more details, check out the full table of contents below.

The annual membership, which includes the report and three additional quarterly updates, is USD $2,495. Alternatively, you can obtain just this report for USD $995.

The annual subscription brings you a total of four comprehensive reports comprising months of original research. Recent reports have covered:

1. The Future of Social Gaming. Social games make up over half of the US virtual goods market. This report provided detailed coverage of exactly how this industry has managed to thrive, who its most valuable players are, and deeper insight into monetization, development, and customer acquisition than you’ll find anywhere else..
2. The Spending and Usage Patterns of the Social Gaming Audience. Who are the millions of users whose time, money, and engagement have made social games into household names and their developers into technology industry celebrities? This report presented the only independent, original research into user profiles, behaviors, and attitudes toward social games and virtual goods.

We are looking forward to continuing to cover the evolution of the space over the coming year. We look forward to hearing from you!

Table of Contents

Get the Annual Membership

The annual membership, which includes the report and three additional quarterly updates, is USD $2,495. Alternatively, you can just download this report for USD $995.

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

OR Buy Single Report: $995

List of Related Companies: 6waves, A Bit Lucky, Acclaim, Activision, AdParlor, Aeria Games, Amazon, Applifier, Appstrip, Artix Entertainment, Bebo, Bigpoint, Blackhawk, Boku, Boomerang Networks, Booyah, Challenge Games, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, Digital River, Disney, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Frogster, Gaia Online, Gala-Net, Gambit, Gameforge, GMG, Google, GratisPay, gWallet, HeyZap, Hi5, IMVU, InComm, iovation, Jagex, Kabam, Kontagent, Limasky, Lolapps, Meez, Metaplace, Microsoft, MindJolt, MySpace, News Corporation, Nexon, ngmoco, Nintendo, Offerpal Media, OMGPOP, Outspark, Papaya Mobile, PaymentPin, PayPal, PeanutLabs, Playdom, Playfirst, Playfish, PlaySpan, Rekoo, Riot Games, Rixty, RockYou, Rovio, Scoreloop, Second Life, SGN, Six Degrees Games, Slashkey, Slide, SocialGold, Sometrics, Sony, Sony (Free Realms), Sparkplay Media, SponsorPay, Sulake (Habbo Hotel), Super Rewards (Adknowledge), SupersonicAds, SurfPin, Tapulous, Tencent, TheBroth, ThreatMetrix, Three Rings (Puzzle Pirates), TokenAds, TrialPay, Turbine, Viacom (MTV), Viacom (Neopets), Viximo, WeeWorld, Wooga, ZipZapPlay, Zong, Zynga

When Facebook closed a private beta of a conversion tracking tool earlier this month that would have allowed advertisers to see whether users actually visited their website or made purchases later on, it raised questions about the effectiveness of the social network’s ads.

But engineers on the product say confusion among users led to the product shutdown, according to a page on Quora, a question-and-answer site founded by Facebook’s first CTO that’s popular with many of its employees.

Speaking on his own and not officially for the company, software engineer Cliff Chang wrote:

Basically, there are a lot of small reasons we got rid of it, but the main driving reason was that our advertisers were bad at using it. Some hilarious percent of people who generated pixels never received a single impression on them, and of those that did, a lot of them just threw them directly on their landing page. This was probably our fault in making the product hard to use, but this resulted in a lot of operational overhead for our user support.

Chang said he wrote the code to turn the product off. He added that few advertisers used the product properly outside of agencies that were already using competitive products. Without the tool, advertisers now have to calculate their own ROI or use a third party tool.

Another intern who worked on Facebook ads, Amar Anand, said that conversion tracking wasn’t really appropriate for Facebook’s style of advertising, which focuses on consumers earlier in the buying cycle. In contrast, Google’s ads target consumers when they already have a decent idea of products and services they want and search for them.

“Instead of conversion tracking tools, tools that measure brand lift and brand engagement are much more relevant to the Facebook ads product,” he said.

He wrote:

Facebook ads will still drive sales and brand recognition, but ad clicks will not drive those sales in the short term.  Someone looking through photos of their friends is not going to simply see a Sony ad, click on the ad, and then buy a TV.  They may be compelled enough to like Sony’s fan page and read about updates, contests, and promotions from Sony and then be convinced to buy a Sony product down the line.  But ad clicks on Facebook will not lead to many direct response sales.

Of course if Facebook or other third-party tools can’t definitively prove that the site’s ads eventually lead to increased purchases or sales, even if it’s in the very long run, enthusiasm from marketers about the social network’s performance ads may wane.

One Facebook advertising client, Taylor McKnight, who works with music site HypeMachine and two other startups, expressed some skepticism about Facebook’s ability to deliver conversions. He said he used the tool for a few weeks and didn’t see any conversions, so he stopped using the product.

“I literally laughed out loud when I saw they discontinued conversion tracking a week later,” he said.

Facebook announced a few changes to its platform yesterday, that have been showing up in recent weeks. Here’s a quick look.

It has begun providing developers with real-time updates for page updates, as well as object updates including location, timezone, relationship status and significant other. Developers can also now subscribe to check-in data, the same as other objects, provided that the user has granted permission. These updates allow developers to update their cached data without having to poll Facebook’s servers, helping to improve their user experience and overall reliability.

The Live Stream video plugin has also gotten an upgrade, making it more like other social plugins. Users can check a box to share their updates with everyone else watching the stream in real-time, and they can also choose to not share their comments with friends on Facebook. The company has also allowed multiple Live Streams on a single web site, providing a URL that will link status updates to the appropriate page.

Finally, and as has been appearing for a number of weeks, articles that your friends Like are now appearing in the Facebook search typeahead interface, not just in your news feed.

Half of our top 20 growing Facebook Pages this week was taken up by musicians, which has become fairly normal. Our list of growing Pages comes from our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes added each day. Aside from musicians we had a handful of big brands, such as Oreo and Cola-Cola, as well as movie-related Pages like “Harry Potter” and some popular TV shows which premiered their fall seasons this past week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	Fans	Gain	Gain, %
1.	Eminem	14,265,457	+648,162	+4.76
2.	Facebook	19,536,135	+579,324	+3.06
3.	YouTube	14,112,387	+561,496	+4.14
4.	The Simpsons	7,917,059	+498,188	+6.72
5.	Lady Gaga	18,740,031	+468,790	+2.57
6.	Rihanna	9,620,507	+461,777	+5.04
7.	Katy Perry	9,075,144	+459,505	+5.33
8.	Linkin Park	12,926,102	+449,053	+3.60
9.	Justin Bieber	12,137,085	+429,204	+3.67
10.	Coca-Cola	12,480,905	+416,080	+3.45
11.	South Park	13,382,111	+413,443	+3.19
12.	Shakira	9,135,549	+383,674	+4.38
13.	Bob Marley	10,812,387	+340,083	+3.25
14.	David Guetta	9,147,916	+338,550	+3.84
15.	Family Guy	17,769,141	+333,687	+1.91
16.	Google Chrome	2,316,617	+332,909	+16.78
17.	Lil Wayne	12,178,730	+331,789	+2.80
18.	Oreo	10,120,682	+326,485	+3.33
19.	Harry Potter	2,555,454	+324,130	+14.53
20.	Megan Fox	13,903,781	+323,267	+2.38

There seemed to be some Page consolidation going on toward the end of the week, most Pages on our list this week saw increased growth in the latter part of the week. It took between 648,200 and 323,300 Likes to make the list this week.

Topping the list of musicians this week was Eminem, who didn’t have any activity on the Page in the past week, but added about 648,200 Likes to grow the Page to 14.2 million. Lady Gaga was the next musician in fifth place; she has been adding tour dates and also has been doing some political activism. Gaga’s Page grew by 468,800 Likes to 18.7 million.

Rihanna came in sixth place, adding 461,800 Likes to a Page with 9.6 million; she’s been shooting and releasing music videos. Katy Perry followed at number 7, adding 459,500 Likes and passing 9 million total, having appeared on “Saturday Night Live” and a skit for “Sesame Street” that didn’t air because of concerns over her revealing outfit, but did go viral online. Linkin Park was eighth, adding 449,000 Likes to come in just under 13 million. Justin Bieber followed at 9, adding 429,200 Likes to reach 12.1 million.

Then there was Shakira in twelfth place, who added 383,700 Likes, passed 9 million fans, is currently touring and just released a single. Bob Marley’s Page was next at 13, adding 340,000 Likes to hit 10.8 million total. DJ David Guetta’s Page added 338,600 Likes to take fourteenth place and come out with a total of 9.1 million. Lil Wayne rounded out the musicians at number 17, having added 331,800 Likes to pass 12.1 million and he just released a new album.

After the musicians there were some big brands.

There was Facebook in second place, adding 579,300 Likes and passing 19.5 million, amidst some big news last week, such as a big games-related announcement, a huge service outage and a $100 million donation by CEO Mark Zuckerberg. YouTube was in third place, adding 561,500 Likes to tip over 14 million.

Coca-Cola was in tenth place, adding 416,000 Likes to creep up to 12.4 million. Google Chrome benefitted from what seemed to be some large Page consolidations, adding 332,900 Likes to hit 2.3 million without any updates to the Page. Then, Oreo’s Page is still promoting fan photos as the profile pictures for the Page; the company added 326,500 Likes to hit 10.1 million.

Movies and TV-related Pages made up the rest of the list.

There was “The Simpsons” in fourth place, the show premiered Sunday and added 498,200 Likes to reach 7.9 million. “South Park” was at number 11, adding 413,400 Likes to make a 13.3 million total. “Family Guy” was fifteenth, adding 333,700 Likes to its 17.7 million; this show also premiered Sunday.

The trailer for the next installment of the “Harry Potter” movies was released that week, launching the Page to our list, having addd 324,100 Likes to reach 2.5 million total fans. Megan Fox rounded out the list at number 20, adding 383,300 Likes to the 13.9 million total without any updating to the Page.