This week’s AppData list of emerging Facebook apps, defined as those still under a million monthly active users but growing fast, includes an unusually wide variety of apps, a trend that seems to be driven by the many foreign-language offerings.

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	GodsWar Online	748,651	+366,237	+96%
2.	寵物戰爭	646,130	+362,838	+128%
3.	Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★	729,028	+333,434	+84%
4.	Likes Likes	980,796	+330,777	+51%
5.	TheFacepad	578,954	+311,505	+116%
6.	Что твои друзья думают о тебе?	481,027	+304,054	+172%
7.	Friends photomontage	408,053	+297,017	+267%
8.	My Friends in 2010	860,451	+271,115	+46%
9.	Newspaper Clips	337,141	+247,485	+276%
10.	CineGratisYa	319,560	+231,851	+264%
11.	Photo Sticker	411,790	+212,818	+107%
12.	朋友大配對	202,712	+189,406	+1,423%
13.	Dragons of Atlantis	844,590	+170,897	+25%
14.	Miscrits: World of Adventure	656,708	+165,891	+34%
15.	All My Friends	291,185	+163,914	+129%
16.	Bingo Island	641,438	+162,517	+34%
17.	SpeedDate	456,207	+155,634	+52%
18.	Puzzled Hearts	575,943	+154,205	+37%
19.	Age of Champions	549,200	+140,180	+34%
20.	Tagged	777,608	+135,021	+21%

The top three apps, GodsWar Online, 寵物戰爭 and Texas HoldEm Poker – Deluxe ★★★★★★ are all games by Chinese developers — respectively a massively multiplayer game, a pet fighting game, and a card game. We’ve seen Chinese-language games do quite well in the past, but there’s a newer trend of English-language games by Chinese companies doing well with a broader international audience.

Likes Likes is the first non-game app, and one that we’ve seen before under various names; it gives users a list of clever sayings that they can “like” on their profile. It’s followed by TheFacepad, an iPad Connect app that, as we’ve also noted before, is getting traction but doesn’t seem to be keeping its users around. Its stickiness, or percent of MAU that returns as daily actives, has dropped to 11 percent.

There’s a problem with AppData’s language display on number six, which is properly called Что твои друзья думают о тебе? The reason for the bad display is simple — Russian-language apps are extremely rare, with only a few million Russian-speaking users, so we hadn’t had a chance to see the problem before. The app, a simple friend quiz, seems to be doing quite well anyway.

Friends photomontage and My Friends in 2010 are fairly self-explanatory. Far more interesting is Newspaper Clips, which allows users to create their own fake newspaper clip using a friend’s profile. The result, which actually looks pretty good, is saved to your photo gallery, with the option of tagging your friend in the image.

Facebook is displaying a new “Updates” sidebar module which shows some users unread messages sent to them by Pages. Users will see the Updates module in the right sidebar while viewing their own profile and other sections of the site. They can choose to view an update, mark it as read, or ‘x’ it to reveal another update. These updates are usually filtered into the Other folder of the inbox of the new Messages product.

The Updates module and counters will help prevent users from missing important Messages that Facebook had hidden in attempt to reduce noise in the primary inbox.

Since the Other folder doesn’t show red notifications upon a user receiving Messages that are routed there, it can be easy to forget the folder entirely. We discussed how the lack of an overt notification mechanism was one of the main deficiencies of the New Messages product, but Facebook has now moved to counteract the problem in an unobtrusive way.

Before the New Messages product was implemented and the inbox was split, Facebook began showing an Unread Messages sidebar module to similarly surface skipped content. By analyzing which updates users view, mark as read, or remove from the module, Facebook may be able to improve the Messages filtering algorithm to keep the best Page updates in the primary inbox.

As more businesses and users join Facebook, and malicious parties follow them, the site’s ability to filter out spam will become increasingly vital to maintaining a high quality experience. Simultaneously, Facebook will need to continue protecting users from losing good content to overly aggressive filters through products like the Updates module.

Moontoast, an app developer with ties to Nashville record label Big Machine Records, launched an ecommerce application for musicians called Impulse this week. Instead of trying to duplicate existing full-featured tools, Impulse attempts to complement these solutions by allowing artists to sell downloads and eventually merchandise directly from their Facebook Page through a 15% revenue sharing program with Moontoast.

The app’s lack of subscription or start-up fees and the chance to cut out more expensive middlemen like iTunes make Impulse attractive to both starving bands and major labels. However, Impulse could become redundant if the more comprehensive musician apps focus on ecommerce.

To use Impulse, artists register through Facebook Connect and upload their songs to Moontoast’s website where they are hosted for free. Musicians can then set prices, select to only give users a 30 second preview of songs, include album artwork, and customize their app’s color scheme. It’s free to add a header image that brands the app — something that BandPage charges for. Since Impulse doesn’t offer many extraneous features, it’s quick for artists and managers to set up and add as a tab to their Facebook Page.

When users click on the tab, they’ll see a landing page explaining that the app lets them buy and listen to music. Since Facebook had scheduled to migrate away from FBML tab applications at the end of 2010, Moontoast built Impulse as an iframe app. Unfortunately the migration has been delayed, meaning users are currently directed away from the artist’s Page to a separate application. This also prevents the app from requiring users to Like the artist’s Page in order to listen to songs.

Once on the Impulse app, users can listen to songs, scroll through different music products, and add items to a shopping cart. The “add to cart” button doesn’t change when clicked. Since only a small numeral appears next to the cart icon, it can be difficult to tell if an item has been successfully added until the warning about a duplicate add appears. When users go to checkout, a PayPal popup appears allowing them to enter payment details without losing their place on Facebook.

Purchased downloads or organized through the Impulse Tracker, which lowers the frequency of requests for replacement downloads.

Users can share the application, an album, or an individual song to their news feed, though there’s no option to post directly to the wall of a specific friend or invite friends to the app. Songs play in-line from feed stories which direct users back to the artist’s app, generating leads.

The 11-person, Nashville-based Moontoast is funded by The Martin Companies and several country music stars including Wyonna Judd and Ben Paisley. The company was founded to create ecommerce and engagement widgets for some of Big Machine Records’ artists including Taylor Swift. The developer’s client services team is courting major and indie labels in an effort to sign on more artists.

Moontoast’s roadmap includes adding a merchandise store, allowing artists to offer free downloads in exchange for a user’s email address, and an enhanced analytics tool which builds on the basic data on sales artists can currently access.. Once the Facebook app has been more fully developed, the company is hoping to create Impulse widgets for embedding on other social networks and sites, allowing musicians to make changes to their app which are pushed to their presences across the web.

Moontoast’s cofounder and CTO Marcus Whitney told us he thinks musicians shouldn’t abandon their MySpace profiles like RootMusic is recommending, as they still have good search engine rankings. Instead, they should keep updating them, preferably by syncing them with other presences the way Moontoast is hoping to allow.

For now, Moontoast’s Impulse is an easy way for artists to avoid using popular online music stores that offer music by other artists that can distract fans. However, many music listeners have already added a credit card to stores like iTunes and Amazon, and might have to endure the friction of inputting payment details to PayPal before they can make purchases.

More troubling for the app is that comprehensive tool suites by ReverbNation and RootMusic already offer much of Impulse’s ecommerce functionality, or soon will, leaving little need for an extra Page tab. Artists want a one-stop shop for at least their Facebook marketing need, if not the entire web, rather than a partial solution they’ll have to augment with other services. Impulse must evolve into an undeniably superior ecommerce app if it doesn’t want to be squeezed out of the market.

This week Facebook added about 25 jobs to its Careers page, where company posts job openings and descriptions. The jobs posted had a wide range of specialties and geographies, including everything from an Associate, Ad Operations in Palo Alto, California to Head of Sales Marketing in Hamburg, Germany to Director, Online Sales and Operations, Asia Pacific in Singapore.

The Data Center Contracts Manager and Site Selection position that was added will be crucial to helping Facebook open more of its own data centers in the future. The description notes the candidate will help execute the “long term data center strategy,’ support site selection, participate in contract negotiations, work in planning, oversee existing data center performance” along with other responsibilities.

A Head of Sales Marketing in Hamburg is being sought to work on marketing communications for all of Facebook’s advertising products across the company’s agency and advertising base. Facebook wants someone with lots of experience to fill its Palo Alto-based Manager, Packaging and Programming position. The person to fill this job should have 12-plus years of marketing experience with at least 5 in digital media to help develop the company’s delivery of marketing to brands and consumers.

The Singapore-based Director, Online Sales & Operations, Asia Pacific is set to help Facebook “lead our emerging markets strategy in Asia Pacific. This person will be responsible for developing a go to market plan and hiring teams of great people to support Facebook’s advertisers.”

The Sales office seems to be expanding rapidly in 2011 from the looks of the dozen jobs posted in that department this week. There’s a Director of Business Development job based in Palo Alto, several Ad Operations positions in Palo Alto and Austin, Account Manager jobs in Palo Alto, Milan and Hamburg, an Agency Team Lead and Online Sales Operations in Palo Alto also. A Manager of Agency Sales job opened up in Australia to help the company, “managing media agency sales relationships, agency trading and revenue growth” in that country.

There were some new posts in Software Engineering — Data Scientist #1012001, Software Engineer # 1101001 and Software Engineer, Partnerships — as well as a couple accounting jobs.

At least six positions at the Dublin office were removed from the page. Everything from a Training and Development Manager, Online Sales and Operations to a Credit and Collections Analyst – Contract to marketing and analyst positions appear to have been filled at this European office, which we noted last month is set to expand over the next year.

Other jobs removed this week include recruiting, data center, legal, marketing and sales positions. The Recruiting Coordinator for the Facebook Internship Program and a Recruiting Coordinator – Contractor in Hyderabad, India disappeared as well. Two Virginia-based data center positions were filled, Data Center Technician and Data Center Tech (Data Eradication). A Business Operations Manager position and Credit and Collections Manager and about 10 other marketing, sales and operations positions were gone from the Page too.

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

January 25th | San Francisco

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011, our second conference on the future of monetization on social platforms, is less than two weeks away! Space is very close to sold out, so we strongly encourage you to register today:

Join us in San Francisco on January 25th for our one-day summit featuring industry leaders from every corner of the social app and game ecosystem. Executives and leaders from Facebook, Google, leading social networks, mobile platforms, social game and app developers, media companies, virtual goods and payment services, and investors will all be there to tackle the most pressing issues facing the industry in 2011.

We’re expecting a full house for the event — make sure your spot is reserved and register now.

Who’s Speaking?

We’re honored to present the following confirmed speakers at Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011:

	Bret Taylor CTO, Facebook		Eric Chu Group Manager, Android Platform, Google
	Kristian Segerstrale Co-founder and CEO, Playfish (now part of EA)		Vish Makhijani SVP Business Operations, Zynga
	Kevin Chou Co-founder and CEO, Kabam		Peter Relan Executive Chairman, CrowdStar
	Rick Thompson Co-Founder, Playdom (now part of Disney), and Investor		Jason Oberfest VP Social Apps, ngmoco:) (now part of DeNA)
	Rex Ng Co-Founder and CEO, 6waves		Deborah Liu Commerce Product Marketing, Facebook
	Sean Ryan EVP and GM Games, News Corp		Bill Gossman CEO, hi5
	Anil Dharni Co-founder, Funzio; Founder, Storm8		Paul Bettner GM, Zynga with Friends
	Jens Begemann Co-founder and CEO, Wooga		Dennis Ryan EVP Worldwide Publishing, PopCap Games
	Eric Goldberg Managing Director, Crossover Technologies		Carey Kolaja Senior Director, Digital Goods Operations, PayPal
	Raph Koster VP Creative Design, Playdom (now part of Disney)		Atul Bagga VP Equity Research, Games, ThinkEquity
	Manu Rekhi GM Games and Platform, MySpace		Martin Essl Strategic Software Partner Management, Sony Ericsson
	Matthaeus Krzykowski Founder, Xyologic		Asokan Thiyagarajan Dir. Platforms & Tech. Strategy, Samsung
	Justin Smith Founder, Inside Network		Kim-Mai Cutler Lead Writer, Mobile & Social Applications, Inside Network
	Eric Eldon Editor, Inside Network

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 – January 25th in San Francisco

Social applications first emerged in 2007, and are today maturing into a global media ecosystem. With the launch of the Facebook Platform, followed by platforms from MySpace and other social networks, developers worldwide could leverage the social graph to create new kinds of social experiences never before possible.

Now, three and a half years later, what started out as sheep throwing and vampire biting has quickly become a profitable billion-dollar industry, punctuated by numerous major acquisitions by the world’s leading media companies and developers. But now, new challenges are emerging, affecting big players and new entrants alike.

Inside Social Apps will investigate the latest trends and challenges for social applications, and look at what’s to come for developers throughout the space – including the growth of virtual goods and social applications on mobile devices.

What are the biggest uncertainties and opportunities facing the future of social games and applications in 2011, and who is leading the way?

Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 takes place January 25th, 2011 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, and brings together the world’s leading entrepreneurs to weigh in on the future of social app and game monetization.

Inside Social Apps will be a one-day summit led by Inside Network’s Eric Eldon and Justin Smith, and will take in-depth investigative approach to the day’s discussions. At Inside Social Apps, Inside Network will work alongside founders and executives of the top social networking, social gaming, mobile social gaming, payments, and virtual goods infrastructure companies to analyze the most important issues affecting the industry. Inside Social Apps is geared towards developers on Facebook, iPhone, Android, and emerging online social platforms.

Inside Social Apps will be a content-rich day of critical discussion, followed by an evening and nighttime of casual networking.

Register Now

The countdown has begun and Inside Social Apps InFocus 2011 is just two weeks away! We’re expecting a full house for January’s event; to make sure your spot is reserved, please register now.

From all of us at Inside Network, we hope to see you on January 25th in San Francisco at Inside Social Apps!

Facebook livestreamed the Webinar for Social Good yesterday, aimed at helping non-profits and social good organizations get the most out of the platform. The webinar was hosted by Facebook’s Charles Porch, who works in consumer marketing for the company, and included three non-profit workers, and Facebook Pages associate Morin Oluwole, and featured Porch’s tips for non-profits using Facebook.

Non-profit participants included Esther Choi, deputy director of interactive marketing for UNICEF, Chelsea Bocci, community marketing director for Kiva and Carolee Hazard, founder of The 93 Dollar Club. The women answered questions from people watching the livestream and also gave their top three tips for successful Page marketing for non-profits. We’d written on this topic previously ourselves.

Here are some of the suggestions. When marketing on Facebook, incorporate fans who already created Pages or Groups into your official site. Include fans as much as possible in organizational activities, such as competitions and voting, diversity content between educational/inspiring content and promotional posts and don’t be afraid to experiment to see what works.

UNICEF’s Choi said her top three tips were: keep it real, keep it regulated (organized, planned) and keep it ROI-centric, meaning invest in your return, but also think about the long-term. Kiva’s Bocci repeated the need to balance promotional content with other types of information, involve fans in personal ways and respond to fan posts on the Page. Founder of The 93 Dollar Club Hazard said to always remember that powerful stories go a long way on Facebook, be authentic and true and don’t put out too much information.

Oluwole also gave tips and answered questions during the webinar before Porch gave his Top 10 tips.

These included create a voice, program your Page, use visuals, push information and also pull a response, highlight your supporters, engage with other groups to tap into their audiences, get creative with Facebook features such as Places, use Insights to get to know your fans and market your presence on Facebook. To access to the webinar visit Facebook Live.

Redbox, a company that has just under 25,000 automated movie rental locations across the country, has launched an interesting application allowing Facebook users to interact with movies. The Movie Awards Facebook App located on the Award Show tab on the Page allows users to make their own movie award picks, invite friends to play and “compete” with movie critics to receive a “score” once the shows air.

The app is sponsored by Orville Redenbacher’s Gourmet Popping Corn and people who win through the app may be eligible for a free year of movie rentals, in addition to the app’s badges that are awarded through different app actions. For example, locking in your selections garners you the “Golden Lock” badge, which then posts to your news stream.

The Movie Awards app runs from the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards on January 14 to the Golden Globes on January 16 and then the Oscars on February 27.

Using the app is pretty self-explanatory. There are three tabs for each of the awards shows, a user clicks on one tab, and then makes selections from a list of films for Best Picture or Best Actress, for example. Once these selections are made you may “lock” your choices, post to your Wall, invite friends to play and then Redbox asks you if you’d like to rent some of their movies. Later you can come back to see how your choices fared compared to critics’ choices.

What’s really interesting about this application is the idea that Facebook and these types of apps can act as an accompaniment to television content. What’s more, the countdown feature on the Movie Awards app adds urgency to the game, suggesting to users that they will want to check in regularly to see their scores, as they are competing against “expert” film critics.

Another example of this type of TV content accompaniment is Hitpost, which is a mobile app set to launch later this month that will allow users to take pictures of the sports game you’re watching with your iPhone or Android and share them.

For more information about the innovative ways marketers are using Facebook to reach their target audiences please see our premium service, the Facebook Marketing Bible.

Facebook held a press conference today to announce the launch of 53 AMBER Alert Pages that will dispatch bulletins about missing children via the news feed. Facebook will donate 50 million advertising impressions to promote these Pages. The news follows our discussion yesterday about the value and potential future of Facebook as an emergency information distribution medium.

Each US state, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands now has its own AMBER Alert Facebook Page. A national Page provides links to each local Page on a tab app developed by Page management company Involver, which Facebook previously used to power its Security Quiz and Stories apps, among others. There, users can also download copies of the quarterly AMBER Advocate newsletter.

Concerned citizens can Like their local AMBER Alert Page to begin receiving news feed updates when a local child goes missing. Since these updates are sent to the news feed, users will see them whether they’re using a web or mobile interface to access Facebook.

Chris Sonderby, Facebook’s Lead Security and Investigations Counsel, explained how the viral nature of Facebook will increase the effectiveness of the updates:

“[Users] will receive notification of an AMBER Alert…in their news feed. They in turn can share that information with their friends in a way that immediately spreads the word that a child needs our help, especially in those crucial first hours following an abduction.”

During the question and answer period of the conference, Sonderby explained how Facebook updates would be posted by the Pages for different states if abductors were suspected to have traveled. This reduces the limitations imposed by having separate local AMBER Alert Pages.

Ernie Allen, the head of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, defended the opt-in nature of the Pages, explaining “we are very sensitive to people considering this as spam. It’s a better way…than to do it automatically and offend a bunch of people who say “we don’t want to receive all of this.’”

Allen concluded the conference by saying “this is a great example of private /public partnership [and] a great model for solving many of the nation’s most serious problems.” We agree, and expect that the success of the Facebook AMBER Alert Page system will lead to creation of similar Pages for distribution of civil and natural disaster emergency information.

Facebook has reinstated the “What’s on your mind?” status update prompt to the home page and other places where the publisher is shown. Facebook had hidden the prompt from some users for the past six months, requiring a content tab from the publisher to be clicked before the appropriate question or option to upload media was displayed. Now users will always be greeted by the “What’s on your mind?” call to action when visiting Facebook, which should lead them to contribute content more frequently.

Encouraging users to post status updates is key to keeping the news feed fresh for everyone. If users visit the site and don’t see new content, they’re less likely to return as frequently.

Facebook released statistics last year stating that 60 million users update their status every day during February 2010, and now says that 30 billion pieces of content are uploaded every month, or roughly 50 per user per month. Since it’s much easier to spontaneously update one’s status than to ask a question, upload a photo or video, or post a link, providing a visual reminder to post these updates should increase shared content numbers.

Making status updates the default tab of the publisher is simply good design. While the expanded prompt will push down a user’s news feed or wall a few pixels, it removes a barrier to one of the most common forms of engagement on Facebook. The ever-present call to action should convert more users from spectators into participants, making Facebook more interesting to browse and keeping the daily active user count growing.

The Inside Network Job Board is 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 Digital Chocolate, Cie Games, TheBroth, NaturalMotion, and Ubisoft.

• Senior Web Developer (San Mateo, CA)
  
• Graphic Designer (San Mateo, CA)
  

• Senior Java Developer – Social Games (Long Beach, CA)
  
• Senior Flash ActionScript Developer – Social Games (Long Beach, CA)
  

• Product Manager (San Francisco, CA)
  

• Designer – Social Games (Oxford, UK)
  

• Web Operations Architect (San Francisco, CA)
• Analytics Engineer (San Francisco, CA)

Anonymous:

• iPhone Programmer (San Francisco, 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. 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.