Facebook is updating its Comments social plugin. The new version allows users to vote comments up or down, view threaded replies, and see the primary network or employer of other commenters. Facebook says it is testing the new plugin on the Facebook Blog and Facebook Developer Blog, and that the update focuses on “features around authenticity, social relevance, ranking, and distribution.”

By improving the plugin’s feature set and interface, Facebook can attract more websites to integrate it and pull market share away from other third-party commenting plugins such as Disqus and IntenseDebate.

Social plugins were launched at f8 to give websites a way to easily integrate different Facebook functionalities. These plugins include the Like Button, Activity Feed, and Recommendations, as well as the newer Live Stream and Facepile. Over 2 million sites have now integrated Facebook’s social plugins, providing them growth in traffic, engagement, and time-on-site.

The updated Comments plugin allows user to see a green up-vote arrow and a red down-vote arrow next to comments. Once clicked and after the page is reloaded, the votes are added or subtracted from the vote count next to a commenter’s name. Users will see the percentage of total votes a comment has received that were up-votes if they hover over the commenter’s name. Therefore if a comment says it has 5 votes and and 100% quality score, and you down-vote it, it will show that it has 4 votes and and 80% quality score. Comments are not sorted by vote counts or quality score.

Comments now include a reply button which opens a threaded reply when clicked. This allows commenters to carry out sub-conversations within the comment reel. Users can check a box to post new comments they make to their profile, but comment replies won’t be posted. To give users some context about their fellow commenters, names are accompanied by that user’s network or employer and position.

Developers can visit the documentation page for the Comments social plugin to customize settings and receive their embed code for placing the plugin on their site. The plugin can be seen live on the Facebook Blog.

Facebook’s Comments plugin has the most third-party competition of any of its plugins. Since comment reels on websites are usually filled with interactions between people who aren’t friends, integrating the social graph isn’t essential and developers without access can still make highly functional comments plugins. Therefore, it’s important that Comments integrate voting, as well as other features standard to other comment plugins such as flagging for objectionable comments, comment sorting by different parameters, and even syndication of comments to other social platforms including Twitter.

Facebook looks to be expanding its Vietnam operations and financial planning this week, as we take a look at the Facebook Careers Page.

First off, a Corporate FP&A position which seems to be based in Palo Alto, CAlif. is being advertised for someone who will be “responsible for all aspects of corporate and consolidated level financial planning and analysis.” The position requires one to work on quarterly and monthly reporting and analysis, make analysis on budget vs. actual, monthly trends, as well as help with the corporate financial planning calendar.

A bachelor’s degree in finance, 10 years of financial analysis experience and the ability to thrive under pressure are a few of the requirements and responsibilities listed for the position.

Next is a contract position in Vietnam called Manager, Policy and Growth. This person’s background has to be pretty specific. Not only does the person need to be fluent in both English and Vietnamese, but they must have a background in tech and social media, business strategy and legislative and regulatory issues.

The posting stresses that the person filling the Hanoi-based position have “experience in government relations work and navigating government agencies along with an extensive network of contacts in the government and the technology space.” Interesting, considering how the government in Vietnam has responded to Facebook’s presence in that country — it has reportedly tried to block it.

This 12-month contract position will be involved in driving user acquisition programs, identifying growth opportunities and represent Facebook in meetings with government officials in Vietnam.

For more Facebook-related jobs, check out the Inside Network Job Board.

The new Skype version 5.0 for Windows allows Facebook users to sign in and update their status, browse their news feed, or view their phonebook, more or less as has previously been reported. Users can click on “SMS” or “Call” buttons next to user names in the feed or phonebook to contact them via Skype.

The partnership benefits Skype users by allowing them to conveniently view their Facebook content, Skype Limited by increasing user retention and time-on-app, and Facebook by driving users back to its site and apps. Facebook may also make money directly off the partnership if it receives a cut of paid Skype calls.

Once Windows users have downloaded, installed, and run Skype 5.0, they’ll see a a Facebook tab next to their Skype Home and Profile tabs. There users can log in to Facebook and grant Skype’s app the necessary permissions. They are also informed that their Facebook friends won’t be automatically added to their Skype contact list, and Facebook friends won’t see their Skype profile or online status.

Once logged in, users see the status update publisher, and their news feed. Users can post a simple status update, but not a rich link story such as through the Facebook canvas publisher. Users can Like and comment on feed stories, but clicking on user profiles, Pages, links, or rich media stories such as videos will open that content in their default internet browser. Next to each user, buttons show that user’s phone number, which links to Skype call and SMS interface.

Users can also view a “Phonebook” tab which shows them an alphabetical list of all their friends along with buttons to see their numbers or call them via Skype.

The Facebook client in Skype shows no advertisements, so Facebook may be taking a cut of paid Skype-to-phone calls initiated through the client. Either way, Facebook gains by by offering its content within apps with dedicated user bases because it will drive these users back to Facebook. For instance, Likes and comments to a status update a user posts through Skype will generate notifications that can only be viewed on Facebook’s dedicated interfaces.

Aiming to expand along with its advertising clients efforts on Facebook and elsewhere on the web, social media services company Involver is announcing today that it has raised an $8 million third round of funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners. The San Francisco company provides a suite of applications for Pages, such as polls and coupons, and a tracking and publishing software called AMP that allows clients to share then monitor status updates, tweets on Twitter and other communication.

Although advertisers and marketers have been using Facebook for marketing for years, the interest, especially among brands, “exploded at the beginning of this year,” cofounder and chief executive Rahim Fazal told us yesterday. The reason, as he described, is that many of the companies who have previously used Facebook have found some initial success, leading them to up their investments as well as inspire competitors.

While most companies began by focusing on customer acquisition — getting more Page fans — they have evolved to try to improve engagement, and in some instances monetize on the site. Many originally envisioned Facebook as a place where all three of these functions could happen, but Fazal says many of his clients have found that Facebook works better for them as part of broader campaigns. Some might use Facebook to gain fans, then use email to re-engage them and a company web site to allow them to make a purchase, for example (group deals company Groupon has used Facebook especially well to acquire users, which Fazal says has inspired a range of marketers to think more broadly about how to use Facebook). Other companies have focused on specific strategies, such as pushing free samples of products or running an engagement-focused publishing calendar on their Pages.

Involver claims to have 100,000 customers, including Facebook, The White House, and brands like Foster Farms and Sony/RCA Records, and claims to reach a total of around 200 million “fans” — although like most of its competitors, including Buddy Media and Context Optional, the company tends to be quiet about who its clients are and what they’re specifically doing. See our recent interview with Fazal for more details on what it’s been doing on Facebook.

And, while it’s continuing to focus on Facebook, the company, which has grown to more than 60 employees, is also looking at expanding its services into other parts of social media, including Twitter and mobile applications. See our recent interview with Fazal for more details on what the company has been up to.

Existing investors Western Technology Investment and Cervin Ventures also participated in the latest round; previous rounds totaled around $3 million.

The Pandora Bracelet Designer application lets users design a high quality silver or gold bracelet with accompanying precious and semi-precious charms right on Facebook. Once your bracelet is complete there’s a variety of ways to interact with your design, ranging from sharing on Facebook or Twitter to purchasing the bracelet in a Pandora store.

It’s a good example of how a higher-end retailer is using Facebook to create a social buying experience.

The experience seems to be resonating with users, too. We wrote about the Pandora app and its rapid growth last week when it made our list of emerging Facebook apps, when it grew by 145,160 users; currently our AppData service shows it has about 418,000 monthly active users.

Copenhagen-based Pandora is a multi-national designer, manufacturer, marketer and distributor of gold and silver jewelry. The company’s app allows for what seem to be mostly female Facebook users to create their own bracelets, share their designs, comment and Like other designs, even say something personal about their bracelets and makes the next step helping users find ways to purchase their dream bracelet. The bracelets, due to being made from genuine materials, are priced in British Pounds and run several hundred dollars each, depending on the design.

Basically, after installing the app on your Page, you select what type of metal you want for your bracelet, you can choose either silver, gold, black silver or a combination of these. All of the photos are extremely high quality and the transitions between app functions are smooth. Then, you select the length of your bracelet (which can also increase the price significantly).

Users then select the desired number of charms — made from gold, silver, stones, beads, glass and in the shapes of balls, ovals, etc. — or select a specific type of stone. You can add emotions or virtues to your bracelet design (e.g., red for love) that also suggests potential charms you might want to add.

Once your design work is complete, you can preview your design, the app tells you the price, you name your bracelet, can write a little bit about your bracelet design and opt to be notified when other users comment or Like your design. You can make more than one design, all of which can be shared on Facebook, Twitter or with Facebook friends.

Elsewhere in the app are groups where people discuss each others’ bracelets.

At the end of the app is a chance to buy the bracelet, although not really. You may print the page, download a PDF of your design or find a store via Google Maps. There is a stream of the most popular designs, bracelets, and charms.

Virtual goods monetization service company PlaySpan is the latest partner for Facebook Credits, following a long string of others, most recently Sometrics. Announced as part of a larger expansion of the virtual currency today, PlaySpan will begin providing 20 more payment options within the main Credits purchasing interface in the coming months.

As part of a broader set of virtual goods services, the company has been building up a portfolio of payment options to make it easier for users to buy a publisher’s virtual goods using local providers.

This deal helps Facebook quickly make it easier for users to pay in the international markets where PlaySpan has worked to develop payment partnerships.

Brazil online payment card Boleto Bancario, Europe-focused retail card Paysafecard (which is separately beginning a push in the US) and the broadly international online Wallie card will be among the new payment providers available for Credits purchases.

The product itself is called UltimatePay, and it is appearing already for some international users within the Credits interface — in lieu of the existing, credit card-focused interface. See screenshots to compare. Terms of the relationship between the companies weren’t disclosed. However, given that Facebook is pushing Credits to be the exclusive paid virtual currency within social games and all other applications on its platform, and given that Credits partners typically get a percentage revenue share, we expect this deal to bring significant new revenue to PlaySpan and its featured partners.

[PlaySpan screenshot via ReadWriteWeb.]

Facebook friend relationships and Likes will shortly begin appearing in Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the companies announced today. In addition to the 1,000 other factors that Microsoft says it uses to determine results, there will now be items on the results Page showing friends and Liked Pages that are related to search queries.

These social additions could improve the value of Bing to users, helping them find information about people or other things — restaurants, clothes and other goods — based on existing Facebook data. See our coverage from earlier today for more details on the product.

The bigger story, that many are observing, is that Microsoft and Facebook are collaborating to compete with Google on its home turf. While that is clearly the case today, the situation for these companies is more complex.

Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook back in 2007 at a $15 billion preferred stock valuation, and it got a strategic partnership as part of the deal. While the valuation was widely questioned at the time, Facebook’s valuation has now potentially more than doubled (according to limited sell-side data from some secondary markets), and Microsoft is in position to work out product relationships like the Bing one today. It has already been pushing out Facebook-related updates, actually, such as when it began surfacing Facebook public status updates in June.

On the other hand, Google has had limited access to Facebook data, most notably introducing public Page information to results back in February. Although user names, photos, friend relationships and Likes are all public information, Facebook controls how third-parties, including search engines, collect it for their own purposes. It blocks most third parties from scraping the site (at least as best it can) while it works out deals with partners like Microsoft. So Google has relied on its own social data, as well as more from Twitter and other partners, to help personalize search results.

If the additions today — or any future ones — significantly improve search, then Google will feel even more pressure to try to collect its own social data, or cut a deal to get Facebook’s.

Not Just About Search

But what are Facebook’s long-term plans for its data and search engines? As chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said today at the launch event, “We’re trying to build a platform, so fundamentally, this is not about working with a single company. Over the long term, we would love to work with everyone.”

To rephrase that line, whatever Facebook’s relationship with Microsoft, and whatever interest it has in disrupting Google, what it really wants to do is make itself an indispensable social layer on top of everything else. Doing so essentially makes companies like Microsoft and Google developers on its platform, meaning one day they could need Facebook and its data more than Facebook needs them.

And, search may be the main way that users spent the past decade navigating the web, but Facebook intends for social software — whether through a search engine, the news feed on its own site, or anywhere else — to win in the future.

So making Bing more social just ups the pressure more on Google to figure out social data on its own, whether its own entertainment-driven social destination or social features that improve its other products. Google needs high-quality data on its own, not just to help it personalize search, but to help it displace Facebook’s importance to users and to other developers.

Google’s real fear of Facebook is not that it helps a competitor deliver somewhat better search results, but that Facebook itself displaces Google as the average user’s home page. Once Facebook or Facebook-connected applications are where people engage with the web, Google itself becomes less necessary.

In a big push to bring more developers on-board with its virtual currency, Facebook said it now has the capacity to add three or four times as many partners to the Credits program as it did before. Credits is now offered in more than 50 percent of game sessions logged on the social network.

The company, which earns a 30 percent cut of all transactions in Credits, has been working aggressively to make its virtual currency a universal payments option across the platform. Before today, developers only had limited access to join the Credits program and there was a lengthy waiting list.

Facebook is also adding more 20 more payment options for users to buy Credits through a partnership with PlaySpan.

After testing Credits for more than a year, the social network is pushing to have it adopted by all developers on the platform. So far, it’s being used by more than 75 developers in more than 200 games, assisted by recent long-term deals with Zynga, Crowdstar, RockYou and LOLapps among others. That’s up from the 150 games figure Facebook reported as recently as last month.

Deb Liu, a product marketing manager for Facebook Credits, said that a universal currency will encourage users to spend more on digital goods because they won’t have to switch between different currencies offered by separate games.

“Users don’t want to go in one game and question buying currency because they have to think about it for the next one,” she said at the Virtual Goods Summit in San Francisco. “That’s a tax on our ecosystem, in terms of the mental energy needed to make a purchase.”

Liu said the company will focus on reducing payment friction and finding more ways for users to buy Credits during the next few months.

A few Facebook developers from social gaming companies Arkadium and Digital Chocolate shared best practices for using the virtual currency.

Arkadium co-founder Jessica Rovello said that the company had more success in pricing premium virtual items in Credits only.

“When you’re able to pay in soft currency, users will do whatever it takes to get the item for free,” she said. “They’ll play for a month. But if you only offer it in Credits, people will pay if they feel the item is valuable.”

Rovello said to set price anchors, or offer a new virtual good as a standalone item for a short period of time and then offer it in a bundle so users feel like they’re getting a deal. She also said to keep content fresh by retiring items and constantly introducing new inventory. She said never to offer any evergreen items, or goods that never expire in a game. If a good expires on a weekly or monthly basis, users are more likely to return to the game.

[Editor's Note: The data cited in this article is excerpted from Inside Facebook Gold, our membership service tracking Facebook's business and growth around the world. Please see Inside Facebook Gold to learn more about our complete data and analysis offering.]

Gender inequality in Facebook’s Islamic markets is expressing itself in the social network’s demographic makeup too. The Group of 20 nations, which includes 19 of the world’s biggest developed and emerging markets along with the European Union, have a virtually even gender breakdown between men and women. 

Meanwhile, Facebook’s biggest Islamic countries sometimes have two male users for every female.

Countries that lack a state religion like Lebanon, tend to have more even gender make-up, while Islamic states like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have the most unequal gender divides.

Asian Islamic countries are also more balanced than Middle Eastern ones. The numbers suggest an environment in which women have much more restricted access to the web and to the education and literacy skills needed to participate in online communities.

There are also extreme cases like Afghanistan, a relatively new market to Facebook, where men outnumber women by more than 6 to 1. Iraq mirrors this phenomenon with nearly 3 men for every woman. But these are outlier cases that could be skewed by the presence of American military personnel.

As Facebook seeks its next 500 million users, it’s turning to the developing world and Muslim majority countries are coming to play a significant role in this growth. Indonesia and Turkey are the social network’s third and fourth biggest markets and Indonesia is expected to overtake the United Kingdom for second place sometime in the next year.

That said, there are also large Muslim markets where the social network is blocked including Iran, Syria and on occasion, Pakistan and Bangladesh, according to the OpenNet Initiative, a project tracking Internet censorship from four universities including Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford. Facebook is also confronting a possible ban in Turkey, where the country’s transportation minister Binali Yıldırım, suggested last week that the social network could follow YouTube onto the country’s banned sites list.

Additional demographic data on the countries mentioned in this article, as well as audience growth data for over 160 Facebook country markets around the world, are available at Inside Facebook Gold.

Today, Facebook and Microsoft are partnering to bring Facebook instant personalization to the Bing search engine. Bing powers Facebook’s internal search, and now Facebook is helping to personalize Bing’s web search.

With the new integration of Facebook data, Facebook users searching for people on Bing will now be able to see friends or friends of friends who match their query in search results. In addition, Bing’s web search results will now also display friends’ Likes.

Previously, Facebook helped Bing Social to index public updates from Pages and personal profiles.

How Bing Instant Personalization Works

Those logged into Facebook and who have instant personalization enabled will see an instant personalization notification bar upon visiting Bing. This alerts users that their search results will be personalized, and gives them options to learn more or forego instant personalization. Users will see the notification the first five times they visit Bing. Users can remove instant personalization all together, or deny Bing access to their data through Facebook’s privacy controls.

If users search for a name, and they are connected directly or through a friend to someone with that name, they’ll see that person’s name, profile picture, their network, and whether they are a friend or who their mutual friends are in a special “People on Facebook” module. Users will also see buttons allowing them to send the person a Facebook message, or add them as a friend if they haven’t already.

Trying to find people online can be difficult, especially if that person has a common name. Users end up trying to use a number of complicated search terms to find the right “Bob Smith”. However, users are often connected to the people they’re searching for via their existing social graph. Bing will now surface these connections, allowing users to identify the person they’re looking for by their photo and connections. This functionality is similar to what is available in Facebook’s internal search bar, but the social results are shown alongside traditional search results.

When users search for web pages, results will be accompanied by the names and profile pictures of friends who’ve Liked the object listed in that result. These social recommendations help users find links which are especially relevant to them. For instance, users will see news articles Liked by their friends which include the search query.

Microsoft Explains Motives, Ongoing Improvements, and Future Implementations

Bing’s Ce Liu explained that today’s partnership is “about understanding user intent” to help users “make more informed decisions faster.” Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi continues, explaining that until now “Search has been one size fits all. Our research shows that 4% of all searches are for people, but only 20% of those searching for people are satisfied with the results.”

We asked whether social search results will always appear when they match a query. For instance, would searching for “Brian Wilson Music Beach Boys” always first show you friends or friends of friends who happen to have the name Brian Wilson? Liu said “It depends on how the algorithm understand your intent, but a data-driven, ongoing learning process” will improve the experience. Microsoft will be closely watching what users click so Bing can determine if “it makes sense to bring up social context.”

Microsoft declined to share any information about money changing hands around the deal. Looking to the future, Mehdi explains that Microsoft is seeking to sort social recommendations by who is an expert on the subject a user is searching for. “If I’m looking for a restaurant, we can figure out if someone is an expert by if they’ve checked in to that restaurant, or added photos of it.”

Mark Zuckerberg’s Thoughts on Instant Personalization

Mark Zuckerberg said that when he started Facebook in college he was interested “not in just helping people share information and organize information, but information around people. What we’re focused on now is working with companies who are scrappy, who are underdogs who are doing things other companies aren’t. Over the next 5 years, we expect almost every industry will be disrupted by someone building a product which is socially integrated.”

Zuckerberg says Facebook chose Microsoft because they were tackling problems no one else in search was looking at. He’s very optimistic that “social integration will do for search what social integration has done for games and photos and events.”

Regarding expansion of instant personalization to other search engines, Zuckerberg said “We’re trying to build a platform. It’s not about working with a single company. Over the long term we’d love to work with everyone, but the reason Microsoft is such a good partner is fundamentally tied to their innovation, market position and what they’re trying to accomplish.” This likely refers to the fact that since Bing is looking to gain market share, they’re willing to try new approaches. “How much had the search interface changed in the last eight years before they came along?”

Zuckerberg also fielded questions about what user data is sent to Bing from Facebook through instant personalization. “There’s a lot of misconceptions about this. When you go to another site with instant personalization enabled, that site gets to see who you are, and no other information about you. The site can then query Facebook for any public information about you. People have this notion that you go to a site and Facebook sends all your information to that site. That’s not true.” The current iteration won’t include asking for permission to access a user’s private data. “Search is so much about a lightweight experience and speed. At first [Bing instant personalization is] not focused on asking users for any extra information, because there’s lots of public information we can use to improve queries.”

Along with mentioning that Facebook is working on something to do with maps, Zuckerberg hinted at eventually opening the instant personalization program to all developers. “Anyone can go to your profile and view your public information. Why shouldn’t applications be able to do that to give you an awesome experience? We view this as the future of how all applications are going to work.”

Those interested in watching the presentation from home can view a recorded stream.