We’ll be covering detailed best practices in preparation for the March 1st migration to the new Pages in the Facebook Marketing Bible, our guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

Today Facebook launches a major redesign and expansion of functionality of its Pages for businesses, brands, media, and public figures. The Page layout will now match the December user profile redesign, with a left-hand navigation menu replacing the tabs above the wall. Page admins will also be able to login as their Page, giving them access to Facebook and email notifications about activity on their Page, and other options.

Page admins will begin seeing a preview and tour of the new features today, and will have the choice to voluntarily upgrade until March 1st when all Pages will be automatically migrated to the redesign.

New Layout

Users now navigate between a Page’s wall, info, and third-party tab applications using a menu of links on the left side of the Page beneath the profile picture. The menu permits longer tab names and between eight and nine tab apps above the fold. To reorder tabs, click “More”, then “Edit” and drag and drop any of your tabs except “Wall” and “Info”. Only Pages with more tabs than spaces above the fold can edit the order of their tabs.

As tabs are no longer front-and-center, the redesign could reduce the frequency with which users visits tabs other than the default landing tab.

Similar to the redesigned user profile, Pages have a Photostrip above the wall that displays the latest photos the Page has tagged itself in. However, the five thumbnails appear in a different order upon each reload, preventing Pages from creating a continuous banner out of the Photostrip. The profile picture is slightly reduced in size from 200 x 600 pixels to 180 x 540. The About blurb has moved from the wall tab to the info tab.

Users will see a mutual friends and interests panel on the top right displaying the friends who also Like the Page, and the Likes the user and the Page have in common. Pages will have the option to Like other Pages, not just favorite them, and feature “Page Owners”. Links and profile pics of these Likes and admins can be made visible below the navigation menu and reordered through the new “Featured” section of the Edit Page admin interface.

When Pages update, their default landing tab will be reset. Admins should be sure to reselect the tab they want visitors who haven’t Liked their Page to see first. If Pages use a welcome tab with some sort of arrow pointing to the Like button at the top of the Page, they’ll need to modify the tab’s design as the Like button has moved slightly.

Admins can edit their Page’s category by going to the Basic Information tab of the Edit Page admin interface.

Relevant Posts Wall Filter

Page admins can select between an “All Posts” and a Page posts only default tab for the wall. All Posts is broken up into “Top Posts” and “Most Recent” tabs.

Top Posts, which displays first when All Posts is set as the default view, shows users posts Facebook thinks will be the most relevant. Recent posts by friends, posts by other users in same language or country, and posts that have received a lot of Likes and comments will bubble to the top.

Most Recent shows a reverse chronological, real-time stream of posts by the Page and its fans. Users can click to view Most Recent when viewing Top Posts, but admins can’t set Most Recent as the default view.

Users will see a Page’s wall display the same tab as it last showed. So if they switch from Top Posts to Most Recent, leave the site, then come back, they’ll still see the wall display the Most Recent tab. This persistent wall state works the same way as the Top News and Most Recent tabs for the news feed, which similarly maintain state between visits.

Admins can click the “Hidden Posts” link beneath wall in the navigation menu to view a feed of posts they or Facebook’s spam detectors have filtered out of public view. Admins can select to unhide posts from this feed.

Admins Can “Use Facebook as Page”

Page admins can choose to “Use Facebook as Page” from the Account drop-down menu in the top right corner of Facebook. Admins will then see a special version of the site chrome where they can post and comment around the site under their Page’s alias, though not on user profiles a Pages can’t have friends. Since Pages can now Like other Pages, admins see a news feed of updates from Liked Pages.

The notifications drop-down in the top navigation bar shows the latest user posts and comments to the Page the admin is using. The friend request drop-down shows how many Likes their Page has received since the admin last used the site as their Page.

In response to frequent requests, Facebook admins can now turn on email notifications to alert them to activity on their Page through the “Your Settings” tab of the Edit Page admin interface. These emails could be overwhelming for popular Pages that receive thousands of posts and comments a day, but will certainly help smaller Pages stay attentive to their fan community. Hence, smaller Pages default to having notifications turned on, while larger Pages default to off.

Developers: No API Changes, but Tab Apps Can Now Use Iframes

The Page redesign does not affect the Page APIs, so developers don’t need to worry about their applications breaking. The expanded tab name space in the new navigation menu means developers can try using longer, more descriptive titles for when their application is installed as tab.

However, the Facebook Developers Blog has just announced that Pages can finally feature iFrame tab applications. Facebook announced the option in August as being slated for Q4 2010, but today says it has postponed the implementation until March 11, 2011. We’ll have more details in a forthcoming post.

Some Pages and Places briefly experienced a bug that caused the width of their tab applications to be smaller than it should be, cutting off the right edge of the app. Facebook has now fixed this bug.

An Upgrade, Not Just a Redesign

As users have grown familiar with the new profile over the last two months, it should be easy for them to acclimate to this redesign, which was accidentally pushed live for a few minutes in December. As well as creating a more consistent browsing experience, Facebook has granted many requests from the Page admin community. The only potential downside is that the less prominent placement of links to tabs could reduce their use.

Of all the beneficial changes, the Top Posts wall filter in particular will make sure users see high quality content each time they visit a Page. This will bolster confidence in brands and businesses that users directed to their Page will have an enjoyable, engaging experience. This will in turn lead them to spend more on Facebook ads that drive traffic to their Pages, generating more revenue for Facebook.

Page admins looking for updated best practices for the redesign should see the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to brand marketing on Facebook.

Update 3/2/2011: Facebook has made several changes to Pages since the redesign, including providing a reverse chronological “Most Recent” view of the Page wall, which some admins requested. It has also increased the number of Page tab apps that appear above the fold in the navigation menu.

Facebook now allows Page admins to set up a keyword moderation blocklist and enable a profanity blocklist that filters wall posts and comments by users into the Page wall’s spam tab. Admins can configure the list from the Manage Permissions tab of the Page admin interface.

The addition will reduce the need for automated and human-powered third-party moderation systems, and could therefore slow the growth of the Page management and moderation industries.

A Help Center article linked to from the moderation blocklist says that posts and comments including the blocked words will be hidden from public view. The profanity filter explains that “Facebook will block the most commonly reported words and phrases marked as offensive by the broader community.” Admins can set the profanity filter to strong, medium, or none, though Facebook does not provide a list of exactly what words will be filtered under each setting.

If admins want to make an exception, they can click the ‘x’ next to the post or comment in their Page’s spam tab and click “Unmark as Spam” to return it to public view.

Facebook has been aggressively improving its spam identification and prevention systems recently. It implemented the Spam tab on Page walls in October. Then last week it began making spam comments on Page posts appear gray to admins for easy removal, and hiding them from other users.

Many of these features are commonly included in Page management and moderation software by companies we’ve profiled including Parature, Buddy Media,Context Optional and more. Some brands even pay for around-the-clock human Page moderation during PR crisises.

By offering these features free of charge, Facebook may hurt moderation software sales and put human moderators out of a job. This is one of the dangers of working on a rapidly evolving platform. Companies providing products or services that are too close to the core of Facebook risk having their functionality replicated and offered for free.

Page admins — learn more about specific tools and advanced strategies to work with new features like keyword moderation at the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Facebook’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

[Thanks to Amit Lavi for the tip.]

Facebook is seeking partner engineers and a new finance staffer to work with Credits this week, as per the new postings on the Facebook Careers Page.

Further evidence of Facebook’s Credits push comes in the form of a job posted this week, Finance Operations Project Manager of Facebook Payments and Facebook Credits. This position will be based in Palo Alto, Calif. and the company is seeking an experienced person with a background in accounting, finance or business with at least eight years of experience. The candidate will be the “key liaison and coordination point” for all financial operations related to Facebook payments and Credits. It looks like this person will play a role in implementing all finance operations and systems related to payments and Credits.

A Partner Development Manager in Hamburg, Germany will work to help Facebook develop, manage and maintain strategic relationships with partners in Northern Europe. Specifically this includes media, gaming, e-commerce and mobile partners, with the goal being to build the  Facebook ecosystem in the region.

Facebook is seeking a Culture and Communications Lead/Manager to ensure that the company’s corporate culture grows stronger via initiating company-wide conversations about “who we want to be.” The candidate will partner closely with HR and according to the post work on “how our culture can grow and scale; and building and implementing company-wide programs that reflect those conversations.” This will also include stewarding/developing the company’s narrative and stories. There are no specific requirements as far as education and experience for this candidate, rather, a need to be be creative, proactive, communicative and understand Facebook culture.

The posts that were added this week on Facebook’s Page include:

• User Interface Engineer, Communication Design
• Recruiting Lead – Facebook (Palo Alto)
• Developer Support Engineer
• Manager, Developer Support Engineering
• Web Developer (Internal Tools)
• Law Enforcement Relations Lead, APAC (Singapore)
• Administrative Assistant – Sales Support (Chicago)
• Data Analyst (Dublin)
• Policy Enforcement Specialist, Online Sales Operations (Austin)
• Account Manager – Czech (Dublin)
• Account Manager – Portuguese (Dublin)
• Partner Engineer
• Sales Manager (Los Angeles)
• Account Manager – Temporary (Milan)
• Ad Operations Manager (Dublin)
• Technology Lab Engineer
• Partner Engineer
• Operations Engineer 1102001
• Strategist, Market Solutions – CPG (New York)

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

Facebook has been adding and removing needs at some key positions in the past week.

Specifically, the company removed the Privacy Counsel position from its page, as well as the Global Product Marketing Manager of both Games and Platform, a Manager of Policy Communications gig and the Global Marketing Manager of the Facebook Platform position. We also hear that Alon Sobol, former VP Products at Mig33, was hired as Head of Mobile Partnerships based out of Facebook’s Singapore offices.

New hires per LinkedIn:

• Andy Mitchell – Manager Strategic Media Partnership, formerly VP of Business Development of The Daily Beast.
• Frankie Rae Callahan – Training Principal at Facebook, formerly Associate Principal at Google.
• Eugene Zarakhovsky – Software Engineer, formerly a Senior Director of Technology in iLike at MySpace.
• Cenk Medeni – Analyst, formerly of YoungGuns Agency.
• Benjamin Joffe – Developer Intern of User Interface Engineering, formerly a Front End Developer at Yahoo.
• Linda Teng – Market Strategist, was a Web and Mobile Developer at Xtreme Mobility, Inc.
• Charlton Gholson – Agency Account Manager, formerly of Rubicon Project as a Yield Management Specialist.
• Lindsay Turner – Technical Recruiter, formerly University Relations Manager at Apple.
• Marisa Elizabeth Zuiderweg, Recruiter at Facebook, formerly Talent Manager at ReputationDefender.
• Serden Eren – Platform Operations Analyst, previously a Sales Engineer at Medyasoft.
• Kathleen Huber – Safety Ambassador, formerly a User Operations Intern.
• Alison Purvis – Contractor in User Operations.
• Maria Arriaza Relinque – Account Manager in Spain.

Other new hires:

• Alon Sobol – Head of Mobile Partnerships for Facebook in Asia based in Singapore, formerly Vice President of Products for Mig33.
• Keith Schact – Product Manager, formerly ran a Facebook games and apps company called Crafted Fun.
• Tiffani Jones Brown – Facebook Content Strategy and Communication Design team, formerly of Things That Are Brown.
• Matt Brown – Matt Brown, Facebook Content Strategy and Communication Design team, formerly of Second and Park.

Recent vacancies, per LinkedIn:

• Katherine Nelson – formerly Engineering Recruiting at Facebook, now Recruiting at Mozilla.
• Adam Caplan – formerly Business Process Analyst at Facebook, now Technical Project Manager at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Prior listings removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

• Privacy Counsel
• Global Product Marketing Manager, Games
• Global Product Marketing Manager, Platform
• Manager, Policy Communications
• MBA Intern, Platform Operations
• Global Marketing Manager, Facebook Platform
• Associate Manager, Ad Operations (Dublin)
• DSO Account Manager (Hong Kong)
• DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Singapore)
• Web Developer – Marketing
• Automation Tools Engineer
• Background Check Coordinator – Contractor
• People Services Representative – Contractor
• Recruiting Lead International Team
• Decision Support Analyst
• Network Engineer, 1101002
• Developer Site/Support Engineer
• Manager, Developer Site & Support
• Partner Engineering, Mobile (SMS and Mobile Sites)
• Partner Engineering Mobile
• Measurement Researcher (Palo Alto)
• Partner Innovation Specialist
• Analyst, Internet Marketing
• Sales Coordinator/Administrative Assistant

Who else is hiring? The Inside Network Job Board presents a survey of current openings at leading companies in the industry.

Facebook’s Cory Ondrejka, who recently joined the company last fall as part of the Walletin acquisition, appears to be stepping up as the platform’s advocate of HTML5 — a central piece of the company’s mobile strategy going forward. Facebook wants developers to choose HTML5 over building native iOS or Android apps, so the company can sidestep relatively closed intermediaries like Apple when it wants to roll out new platform functionality or bring products like Credits to mobile games.

Ondrejka is giving a talk tonight about game performance with HTML5. During a recent hackathon, he and others developed JSGameBench — a way of exploring high-performance gaming using HTML5. The program draws moving, animated sprites as fast as possible at 30 frames per second against a background with both axis-aligned and rotated sprites.

They used JSGameBench to test browser performance at drawing the sprites — Microsoft’s Internet Explore 9 came out on top followed by Google’s Chrome 10, with more than 1,000 sprites per frame. Ondrejka said that 50 sprites per frame is generally the lowest amount needed for good game performance.

Right now, Facebook has weak penetration among top mobile developers with only half of the best-selling iOS apps of all-time having some sort of connection to the platform. Even if an app has a Facebook integration, only a minority of users elect to use it over logging in a different way. Top iOS developer Pocket Gems, for example, said three weeks ago that it has had 18 million downloads so far and is making well over $1 million a month. Yet, we only pick up a little over 217,000 monthly active users logged into the company’s top game Tap Zoo through Facebook on AppData. On Instagram, we pick up 333,826 monthly active Facebook users, even though the company says MAUs are at least twice as high.

On top of that, Apple is stepping up enforcement around in-app payments, a move that would complicate any plans to bring Credits to mobile devices. Getting its core community of developers to choose HTML5 over native apps would give Facebook better access to downstream revenues and a cut of virtual goods transactions on phones.

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 6waves, Disney, Digital Chocolate, Nextive, Bulbstorm, NaturalMotion, and Ubisoft.

• Business Development/Business Manager (San Francisco, CA)
• Online Marketing Manager (San Francisco, CA)

• Lead Action Script Programmer for Disney (Redmond, WA)
• Senior Action Script Programmers for Disney (Redmond, WA)

• Product Manager (San Mateo, CA)
• Product Manager (San Mateo, CA)

• iOS Developer (San Francisco, CA)

• Account Development Representative (Phoenix, AZ)

• Designer – Social Games (Oxford, UK)

• Web Operations Architect (San Francisco, CA)
• Lead Programmer (San Francisco, CA)
• Analytics Engineer (San Francisco, CA)
• Games Metrics Analyst (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.

Facebook has added the ability to point ads created through its self-serve tool to a specific landing tab of a Page. Previously, advertisers could only set a Page’s default landing tab as a destination. The change will allow advertisers to run multiple ad campaigns for different tabs simultaneously.

By giving advertisers more options of where to send traffic, they’ll be able to produce better results and will spend more on Facebook. It will also increase the importance of tab applications, benefiting the growing Page management industry.

The addition follows Facebook bringing the new Sponsored Stories ad unit to the self-serve ad tool earlier this week. These options will likely become available in through the Facebook Ads API, which allows developers to build tools for programmatically creating, targeting, bidding, and monitoring Facebook ads. Investors and large marketing companies are betting that the Ads API will produce huge revenues, and added complexity in the self-serve tool will push more advertisers to seek professional Ads API tools and services.

Similarly, funding and acquisitions in the Page management space have accelerated, as brands seek to engage and monetize their fans with tab applications. The ability to send users to different tabs compare will increase the demand for Page management companies that provide tab apps.

When advertisers visit the self-serve tool and select a Page they admin as the ad’s destination, they’ll see a Landing URL drop-down menu appear. They can select from any tab installed on their Page, including Facebook’s in-house apps like Photos or Discussion Board, or third-party apps for sweepstakes, email sign-ups, games, and media content.

Pages can now set a default landing tab for everyone that finds their Page, such as a general welcome tab that encourages users to click the Like button. They can also send users to a more specific landing tab based on an ad’s content through a URL or this new advertising option. The feature could result in admins setting up different, especially relevant landing tabs for each demographic they’re trying to reach, and pointing ads targeted at those demographics to the appropriate tab.

A wealth of new strategies have been unlocked by the simple addition of Page landing tabs as an ad destination option. This shows that Facebook still has much more to offer advertisers than is currently available.

We’re taking Inside Facebook on the road!

Inside Network is excited to announce a spring happy hour series to bring together the community of developers, investors, and entrepreneurs who read our news and research.

Drinks are on us during this series of relaxed, early-evening happy hour mixers. We’ll be there to meet readers, and help you get to know each other, and everyone is welcome.

Join us at the following upcoming events in your city:

Washington DC
When: 6 pm – 9 pm Tuesday February 15
Where: Cedar in Penn Quarter
RSVP here

Barcelona – Mobile World Congress
When: 5 pm – 8 pm Tuesday February 15
Where: La Clara, 3 blocks from Fira Montjuic – Barcelona conference center
RSVP here

New York City
When: 5 pm – 8 pm Thursday February 17
Where: Cibar near Union Square
RSVP here

More Events — Details Coming Soon

Berlin – late February
San Francisco – March
Palo Alto – April
San Francisco – May

Global payments technology company Visa has announced an agreement to acquire online game monetization-as-a-service provider Playspan for $190 million cash. The acquisition will allow Visa to start taking a cut of virtual good market, which will grow from $1.6 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion in 2011, according to our Inside Virtual Goods report.

Founded in 2006, Playspan helps developers by allowing users make in-game payments and buy Credits through Facebook’s integration of its UltimatePay product that accepts 85 local payment methods from 180 countries. Developers can integrate the pop-up UltimatePay lightbox that shows users relevant payment methods based on their location and more.

Playspan sells pre-paid Ultimate Game Cards in retail locations so users can purchase virtual currency and goods without a credit card. The company also powers custom virtual goods storefronts, lets publishers create their own virtual currency or subscription products, and provides analytics. Its services work across web and mobile interfaces and all game types, and its publisher partners include Disney/Playdom, EA/Playfish, IMVU, and Ubisoft.

To date, Playspan has raised $46 million over several rounds from Easton Capital Group, Menlo Ventures, Vodafone Ventures and others. Thanks to the acquisition, early investors will see a sizable return, though late round investors may only double their money.

Playspan will join electronic payment security company CyberSource that Visa recently acquired in the payment technology giant’s growing digital and mobile ecommerce division.Visa could lends its reputable brand name to Playspan’s products, increasing user trust. Our survey on user preferences for social game payments showed that Visa was a highly preferred payment method, and was significantly more preferred and recognizable than Playspan’s Ultimate Game Cards.

Visa seems determined not to be left behind as more purchases move from brick and mortar retail stores to digital storefronts, games, and online media. Playspan’s technology and industry experience will help Visa stay relevant, and Visa will provide the monetization service more legitimacy.

Inigral raised $2 million in funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation  – the foundation’s first investment in a for-profit company. Earlier investors Retro Venture Partners and Founders Fund also put $2 million into the Series B round.

The total $4 million will go towards Inigral’s Schools Facebook app, which keeps college students from dropping out by connecting them with like-minded classmates.

We previously profiled the Schools app, which colleges can license and distribute to newly admitted students. The app helps the students meet friends with similar interests, find campus groups and organizations to join, and connect with alumni. Users can Like dorms, majors, and departments, each of which has a unique page within the app. It can serve to replace the Yahoo! groups or even old Facebook groups that colleges or students would set up to meet future classmates before orientation.

Inigral has been developing on the Facebook Platform since 2007, and is a Preferred Developer Consultant. Eleven higher education institutions, including Arizona State University, Hofstra, and the Academy of Art University have licensed Schools through a tiered pricing model from $10,000 to $150,000 a year depending on school size, profit or non-profit status, and need.

While other apps have tried and failed to help students in a similar way, Schools is the only one devoted to Facebook and that has gained traction with both schools and students. Recently, 1,600 ASU admits signed up and formed 18,000 new friendships before the first day of classes.

The Gates Foundation believes in the app’s mission and execution. Senior program officer for Education, Postsecondary Success Greg Ratliff said “leveraging social media…is a promising approach toward improving college completion rates in the United States.” Facebook benefits from Inigral’s success as well, since the app fuels the site’s growth by fostering new friendships — something Facebook itself pushes through its People You May Know and Find Friends features.

Inigral’s CEO Michael Staton tells us the money will go towards building out the product for a major update in March, including features that help students find peers who’ve been through similar life experiences like a teen pregnancy.

It will also go towards soliciting universities with at risk student populations that the Gates Foundation is looking to assist with Pell Grants. Inigral will also participate in a longitudinal study by the Gates Foundation that looks to identify if there is a causal relationship between the use of social networks like Facebook and completing a post-secondary degree.

Staton explains that “there’s a lot of effort going into the academic support side, but not a parallel level of effort going into making sure students have a support network of friends to help them overcome obstacles.” This funding will help right the imbalance. Like Causes, Inigral’s Schools demonstrates how the Facebook Platform can be used for social good.