Recently, we launched the Inside Network Job Board – dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities in the Facebook Platform and social gaming ecosystem.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at MetroGames, Playfish, Posit Science, EA, and Storm8.

• PR / Marketing Specialist (San Francisco, CA)
• Business Developers (San Francisco, CA)
• Business Development Manager (San Francisco, CA)

• Manager, Customer Insights & Research (contractor) (San Francisco, CA)
• Senior Product and Marketing Analyst – Playfish (San Francisco, CA)
• Senior Manager / Manager, Product and Marketing Analytics (San Francisco, CA)

• Game Developer — Social Game for Brain Fitness at Posit Science (San Francisco, CA)

• Ad Product Development Manager – Online, Social & Mobile (Redwood City, CA)
  
• Sr. Director, Digital Marketing – EA Sports (Redwood City, CA)

• Senior Social Game Artist (Redwood City, CA)
• Senior Social Game Designer (Redwood City, CA)

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games through regular posts and widgets 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 industry today.

Facebook has added a spam filter to the walls of Pages. Appearing as a separate wall tab which is only visible to admins, the filter automatically removes posts to the Page’s wall which are likely to be spam. These include those that link to spammy websites and requests for users to Like, install, or send a friend request to a specific Page, app, or profile. The feature has been in testing since September, but has now been rolled out to all Pages.

A major problem for Pages is that in order to allow open discussion and increase engagement, admins have to allow those who Like the Page to post to its wall. However, this gives spammers the opportunity to damage the perception of a Page by filling it with malicious or profiteering links or objectionable content. This can cause users to Unlike the Page or stop engaging in conversation there.

In a newly updated Help Center article about administering Pages, Facebook explains how it is combatting the problem:

Facebook is now helping Page admins ensure that the most valuable content posted by users on their Page wall is more visible to anyone viewing the Page. We are now offering automatic content filtering on Page walls that will ensure that posts soliciting spam are removed from public view as well as ensure that posts containing good content remain more visible.

Page admins now have a “Spam” tab on their Page’s wall, visible when an admin clicks “Options” in the top right corner of the wall. Along with the standard options to view only the Page’s post, only user posts, or both together, admins will be able to view a feed of all comments Facebook automatically filtered as spam. Admins can delete individual posts in the filter, or unmark them as spam, returning them to the user comments feed.

Not addressed in this new anti-spam feature are spam comments to a Page’s posts. Even the posts of Facebook’s own official Pages have their comment reels quickly filled with links to unrelated Pages which are trying to accumulate more Likes. For instance, a user posted a link to a spanish-language “I Hate Doing Homework On The Weekends” Page on Facebook’s Page’s latest post of a video which comforts victims of bullying. Some Pages select not to expand comments on stories in an attempt to obscure this spam, but there is no way to disable commenting on a Page’s posts or prevent comment spam without manually removing each spammy comment.

By creating better systems for fighting spam on Pages, Facebook can make them a safe place for brands. This encourages brands to make their Facebook Page a more prominent part of their web presence, leading to more brand advertising revenue for Facebook.

[Update: Facebook has rolled out this feature to all Pages.]

[Thanks to Eti Suruzon and GoRumors.com for the tips]

The 25 most Liked Pages on Facebook are mostly for musicians, movies, television shows, games, sports and big brands. It’s not surprising that entertainment comprises almost the entire list, because entertainment generates lots of positive attention by nature.

What’s more surprising is that an older Facebook game, Zynga’s Texas Hold’Em Poker, has continued to lead the list — it also did the last time we wrote about the top 25, this past summer. Readers will note that many other familiar names also appear. Take a look below for more.

Our PageData tool, which counts the number of Likes added to a Page each day, shows the 25 most popular Pages range from 12.1 million to 25.5 million fans. That’s up from our previous post, which showed a range of 4.68 million to 19.4 million. The growth is likely due to Facebook’s overall surges, its efforts to promote Pages, and the increasingly active efforts of marketers on Facebook.

For marketers interested in how to grow their Pages and engage with fans, be sure to check out our Facebook Marketing Bible. And without further ado:

The Top 25 Facebook Pages

1. Texas Hold’em Poker – 25,556,954

2. Facebook – 23,617,053

3. Michael Jackson - 22,424,494

4. Lady Gaga - 21,329,592

5. Family Guy - 19,898,829

6. Eminem - 17,927,089

7. YouTube - 17,851,856

8. Vin Diesel - 17,476,665

9. The Twilight Saga - 16,351,385

10. Starbucks - 16,094,792

11. Megan Fox - 15,985,737

12. South Park - 15,805,546

13. House - 15,635,112

14. Linkin Park - 15,416,063

15. Coca-Cola – 15,239,135

16. Barack Obama - 15,188,088

17. Mafia Wars - 14,365,947

18. Lil Wayne - 14,286,610

19. Justin Bieber – 14,096,502

20. Cristiano Ronaldo – 13,717,437

21. Bob Marley – 13,119,885

22. Dr. House – 12,759,255

23. Taylor Swift - 12,540,359

24. Rihanna – 12,471,742

25. Oreo – 12,193,790

It’s interesting to note that many of the Pages from our post during the summer reappear on this list. Big brands appear to have cemented their lead through a combination of growing early, and consistent marketing.

They include: Facebook, YouTube, Starbucks, Coca-Cola and Oreo. Zynga’s Texas Hold’em Poker and Mafia Wars were the only two games on the list.

President Barack Obama remains the only politician on the list.

Musicians made up about a third of the list — nine Pages belonged to musicians or groups — and then there were TV and movies.

“Family Guy,” “The Twilight Saga,” “South Park,” “House” and “Dr. House” were all popular and frequently appear on our Top 20 Pages posts, which show those with the most weekly gains. There are movie stars’ Pages making the list, notably Vin Diesel and Megan Fox, as well as super stars, like Portuguese football (soccer) star Cristiano Ronaldo.

To learn more about growing your brand’s audience and engagement through Facebook Pages, check out the Facebook Marketing Bible, our comprehensive guide to marketing your brand on Facebook.

The November 2010 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible: The Comprehensive Guide to Market Your Brand, Company, Product, or Service Inside Facebook is now available!

The Facebook Marketing Bible has enabled thousands of marketers, social application developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs to navigate and get the most out of the increasingly sophisticated marketing opportunities on Facebook.

The web edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible is comprised of detailed resource pages, comprehensive how-to guides, and case studies analyzing today’s most successful marketing and advertising campaigns on Facebook.

In addition, Inside Network is pleased to announce that through November 30th all customers who purchase the Facebook Marketing Bible will also receive a free $25 Facebook Ads advertising credit, courtesy of Facebook (see terms).

Now that Facebook has crossed the 500 million active user mark, there’s never been a better time to reach your target audience through marketing on Facebook.

The November 2010 edition includes updates on the following topics:

• Facebook Places, the company’s recently launched location-based feature that presents new marketing opportunities for businesses both on and offline.
• Facebook Groups, a new way for users to connect and collaborate with others who share their interests and affiliations, and new ideas for marketing with Groups on Facebook.
• Facebook Questions, and how this new user-facing feature can offer a new ‘no-cost’ marketing channel for brands, advertisers, and developers.
• Facebook’s Open Graph and Social Plugins, the features and code that brings “instant personalization” to your website off Facebook.
• Facebook’s latest advertising guidelines updates and what they mean for advertisers throughout the ecosystem.
• Recent performance stats on Facebook’s Open Graph and social plugins, and a look at the influence of the Like button and social plugins on site traffic and engagement.
• Plus, comprehensive walk-throughs of Facebook’s tools for advertisers, web content publishers, and Page administrators.

Learn more about the November 2010 edition of the Facebook Marketing Bible at FacebookMarketingBible.com.

Table of Contents excerpted from the full November 2010 Edition

Building Your Brand through Facebook Pages

• The Profile Page – A Walk-Through
• Facebook Pages and Public Profiles
• Strategy: 4 Reasons Why Marketers Should Choose Pages Over Groups
• Strategy: How to Promote Your Page in 6 Steps
• 10 Key SEO Strategies Every Facebook Page Owner Should Know
• Vanity URLs for Facebook Pages
• SMS Subscription Service for Pages
• Adding Custom Modules to Your Page

Growing your Facebook Page Audience

• The Basics of Status Updates for Pages
• Increase Engagement and Insight through Status Tagging
• How to Grow Your Page’s Audience through Page Invitations
• How to Grow Your Page’s Audience through Fan Badges
• Demographic Targeting for Status Updates
• Updating Facebook Page Status Via Text
• Receive Page Status Updates Via Text
• How to Export Your Facebook Page Updates to Twitter
• Facebook Learning from Twitter, Pages Getting Better
• Branded Virtual Gifts on Facebook Pages for Viral Advertising

Designing Your Facebook Page

• The Wall Tab for Making Pages Dynamic and Viral
• How to Choose a Landing ‘Tab’ for your Facebook Page

Advanced Strategies for Facebook Pages

• 8 Best Practices for Retailers on Facebook
• Marketers Actively Bidding for Generic Facebook Pages
• How Page Owners Can Restrict Content for Underage Users

Tools and Analytics for Pages

• Facebook “Insights” Metrics Dashboard for Page Managers
• Using Third Party Tools to Manage Your Facebook Page

Facebook Groups

• Strategy: What About Spamming Existing Groups?
• Quick Note on Groups and SEO
• Facebook Groups for Brand Marketing

Facebook Events

• Facebook Events – A Walk-Through
• Facebook’s Events API
• Quick Note on Events and SEO
• Events from the Home Page

Facebook Questions and Places

• Facebook Questions – A Walk-Through
• How Marketers Can Get The Most Out Of Facebook Questions
• How Marketers Can Use Facebook’s New Location Features
• Facebook Places – A Walk-Through
• Facebook Places for Advertisers
• Facebook Places for Brand Marketers
• Facebook Places for Developers

Performance Advertising Fundamentals

• Facebook Ads: Read Before You Get Started
• Facebook Ads – A Walk-Through
• The Facebook Ads Manager
• Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Page Ads
• Facebook Self-Serve Ad Types: Event Ads

Ads Targeting on Facebook

• 10 Powerful Targeting Methods Facebook Ads Every Performance Advertiser Should Know
• Friends of Connections Targeting
• Facebook Ads: Language Targeting
• 4 Connection Targeting Tests Every Advertiser Should Run
• From Keyword Targeting to People Targeting: Understanding Performance Advertising with Facebook’s Tim Kendall
• Time Scheduling

The Facebook Open Graph, and APIs for Web Publishers

• Facebook Questions – A Walk-Through
• How Marketers Can Get The Most Out Of Facebook Questions
• Implementation Options: Like Button
• Facebook CTO Bret Taylor Discusses the Open Graph
• Facebook for Websites or Facebook “Connect”

Policies, Privacy, and Guidelines to Watch

• Promotional/Sweepstakes Policies for Facebook Pages
• The Future of Sharing on Facebook: A Hybrid Public/Private Model
• Facebook’s Guidelines for Promoting Pages Outside Facebook

The Facebook Marketing Bible is available at FacebookMarketingBible.com

Phrases is back, following a brief period in which Facebook partially suspended service for the giant quiz and quote app. As you can see on our weekly AppData list of fastest-growing Facebook apps by daily active users, Phrases’ DAU plunged to almost zero before recovering to previous levels over the course of the past week.

Here’s the full list:

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Phrases	7,225,715	+7,180,093	+15,738%
2.	Windows Live Messenger	7,893,983	+1,116,519	+16%
3.	Formspring	884,020	+344,668	+64%
4.	The Autism Spectrum Quotient Test	343,134	+334,697	+3,967%
5.	Ravenwood Fair	261,694	+261,687	+3,738,386%
6.	The Fortune Teller	645,520	+198,312	+44%
7.	Are YOU Interested?	1,062,670	+185,091	+21%
8.	Millionaire City	2,484,353	+171,260	+7%
9.	Crime City	413,817	+166,257	+67%
10.	恐龍王國	182,139	+163,702	+888%
11.	Social Fun	187,040	+163,324	+689%
12.	Meet new people at Badoo, flirt, chat, date!	308,971	+146,003	+90%
13.	SmileyCentral	416,502	+114,761	+38%
14.	CSI: Crime City	119,878	+113,667	+1,830%
15.	FrontierVille	7,441,658	+105,959	+1%
16.	TripAdvisor – Cities I’ve Visited™	515,962	+85,347	+20%
17.	لعبة الحقيقة	102,169	+78,446	+331%
18.	Bejeweled Blitz	4,532,769	+77,305	+2%
19.	World War	213,876	+73,875	+53%
20.	My Empire	437,680	+73,426	+20%

Windows Live Messenger has been going gangbusters recently, adding around 15 percent a week to its previous DAU count. As we’ve pointed out before, Messenger’s growth is really a story of Facebook’s international reach, with existing Messenger users choosing to integrate the two services in ever-greater numbers.

Formspring, a question-and-answer app mainly used by teenagers is doing quite well, as it has on the web. Below it, The Autism Spectrum Quotient Test appears to be a version of a real psychological profiling test, unlike most of the fluffy quizzes usually seen on Facebook.

Ravenwood Fair is the hot new game on Facebook, featuring cute animals in a scary forest; it has grown massively over the past week. Developer LOLapps recently became famous for the wrong reasons when Facebook briefly suspended all of its apps (more publicly than with Phrases) but it’s recovering well now.

Finally, Meet new people at Badoo, flirt, chat, date! is worth some notice, if only because it’s yet another Hot or Not-style dating app finding huge success on Facebook — just a few places below Are YOU Interested?, which has had its own success with the same model. The two look a bit different, but are functionally similar enough that they’ll have to fight over users.

While social games have dominated the Facebook platform, the birthday calendar niche has continued to do well. An app with that exact name — Birthday Calendar — from BigDates Solutions, currently has a respectable 8.85 million monthly active user count, with 368,00 daily actives, according to AppData.

It also has a new strategic partner, in the form of the giant greeting card and toy maker, American Greetings.

In the calendar app niche, psuedo-rival Hallmark Social Calendar already has a strategic partner and investor: as the name suggests, Hallmark. Those companies inked the funding, co-branding and content deal nearly a year ago, and Hallmark has since introduced its own content to the app.

The plan appears to be similar for BigDates Solutions, a company with a variety of other email marketing services as well as an iPhone version of the app.

We were tipped off about the deal, because at least some of the app’s emails and the email domain are being hosted by American Greetings. After we followed up, a BigDates Solutions spokesperson informed us that while it has not sold the app itself, it has signed a strategic agreement with American Greetings, and the two companies will cooperate on the next iteration of the app, with greeting card maker including its content. Look for it in December.

While calendar reminder apps of this sort have been around for years, and have for many people in the industry slipped under the radar, this deal goes to show that real value has been created, that traditional brands are adapting to take advantage of.

Investors hoping to get some exposure to Facebook through Mail.ru Group’s forthcoming initial public offering are getting access to just a share of Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies Ltd.’s holdings in the social network.

“We just renamed the Russian operations of DST into Mail.ru Group and that is the business that is now going public. It has some small stakes in international for legacy reasons,” said DST partner Alexander Tamas. “DST Global will not go public and continue to make investments into global Internet companies going forward.”

While Mail.ru says it has a 2.38 interest in Facebook, DST-Global is the entity that owns the  remaining part of the firm’s estimated 10 percent stake in the social network.

DST is an investment firm run out of Moscow and London that has bought stakes in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon over the past two years often without demanding many of the trappings late-stage investors traditionally ask for like board seats or liquidation preferences.

VTB Capital, one of the firms running the books on Mail.ru’s IPO, says the company’s holdings in Facebook make up about $720 million of the company’s $5 to $5.4 billion valuation, according to a report in Moscow-based business newspaper Kommersant. The Zynga stake is valued at $74 million. That would imply a valuation of $30.3 billion for Facebook and $5 billion for Zynga. VTB based its valuations on trades earlier this year in the over-the-counter market.

Most of Mail.ru’s value comes from its Russian Internet properties, including the country’s two biggest Russian language social networks, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, along with its IM clients, ICQ and Agent.  It also has minority holdings in Qiwi and vKontakte, which it is using the initial public offering to buy an extra 7.5 percent stake in.

Bloomberg reported earlier today that Mail.ru received bids for all of the shares it offered. The final price for the stock should be set during the first week of November. Shares are currently being offered at between $23.70 to $27.70 each.

Plastic Jungle, a gift card exchange where consumers trade in unused gift cards for cash, e-commerce store credit, or Facebook Credits, today launches a partnership with PayPal allowing users to fund their PayPal account by selling gift cards to Plastic Jungle. The exchange is also transitioning to an all digital transaction system where users can redeem their cards online instead of physically mailing them in. This digital system will go live on the Facebook app in a few weeks, allowing users to instantly convert unused gift cards into Facebook Credits.

According to Plastic Jungle, 5% to 8% of all gift card balances are not redeemed, representing $30 billion in unused balances, with an average of $300 in unredeemed cards per American household. The company hopes to introduce efficiency and liquidity to the gift card economy, helping get cards into the hands of users who will spend them, and hopefully more, at a retailer’s sites and stores.

PayPal Apps beta users can now type in a gift card’s number and pin and instantly have the card’s value deposited into their PayPal account. Previously users had to initiate the transaction online, then print a mailing label and send the card to Plastic Jungle where it would be verified and the value deposited into their account. The new integration utilizes PayPal’s Adaptive Payments APIs, and will launch with support for gift cards from 50 different retailers.

This instant conversion capability will soon be available on the Facebook application, giving users another way acquire Facebook Credits for use in social games and elsewhere. Users aren’t taxed for converting cards to Facebook Credits, and are given the same value that they would have received in cash.

There’s currently no option to share a card redemption or purchase with friends, as Plastic Jungle has been concentrating on making the transaction flows as lightweight as possible. Plastic Jungle is considering sharing functionality, and is talking with social game developers about the potential for tie-ins. Plastic Jungle chief executive Bruce Bower tells us that customers redeeming cards for Facebook Credits have skewed more towards young males than those who redeem for cash, who skew more towards older female students and stay-at-home moms.

Initially, some retailers were worried that participation would damage perceptions of their brands. Plastic Jungle conducted studies showing that users appreciated the flexibility of being able to convert a brand’s cards, and the transactions positively influenced their perception of that brand, Retailers are now eager to join the exchange. Plastic Jungle guarantees the gift cards it sells, offering a much more reliable secondary market for gift cards than eBay and Craigslist which are rife with fraudulent cards.

While the company wishes it could receive more promotion and attention from Facebook, Bower says that Plastic Jungle is happy that Facebook is focused on establishing partnerships so their are places to spend Facebook Credits. This creates market demand, which in turn creates a need for Plastic Jungle. Bower said his company is confident that Facebook Credits will succeed, and the only question is whether the payment platform “will swallow up all transactions in the space”.

Pre-paid gift cards have been around for years, and social gaming companies began offering them since 2009 — Facebook has followed suite as it has expanded Credits this year. It introduced its own, Credits-branded cards to retailer Target at the beginning of September.

Today, it is expanding the cards to electronics and appliance retailer Best Buy and top retailer Walmart.

The significance is that users have another way to buy Credits — while they’re doing relevant activities like shopping for a new computer to use Facebook and social games on, possibly. Facebook has more generally tried to offer as many payment options as possible for Credits, as additional volume means more revenue for third party developers, and for itself, as it takes a 30% cut of Credits fees.

Today at its developer conference in San Francisco, PayPal is announcing new payment products designed for virtual goods. It will allow developers to sell virtual goods within games in as little as two clicks, instead of taking users off to another page, and will include the eBay-owned company’s existing pricing for small purchases: 5 percent of the total, plus $0.05 for purchases under $12.

Facebook is also involved. PayPal says that “Facebook will integrate PayPal’s new digital goods payment flow to make PayPal the way to make purchases on Facebook.” PayPal is already a main way for users to buy Facebook Credits and advertising, so we’ll be updating the post with more details on how that integration will work.

Given that Credits will be the exclusive paid virtual currency for games and other applications on the Facebook.com developer platform, however Facebook integrates PayPal now will directly affect all developers.

PayPal is broadly focusing on social, mobile and local, company product development vice president Osama Beider said on stage at the event today. The focus comes as these markets have exploded, helping to drive PayPal’s own revenue — and spur a variety of alternative payment competitors.

The company is also launching an embeddable widget, that the company is showing off via Facebook Page e-commere startup Payvment. On stage, the two companies showed how a Page owner — or any other web developer — can quickly add the code to embed this widget.

In terms of mobile, the company is similarly introducing a two-click payment system that can work across apps and platforms.