Fontself is a new Facebook application and stand alone website that allows users to create their own fonts, or even use their own handwriting, when chatting, using email or blogging. The app is available for email clients, Facebook, Yahoo, Myspace, Netlog, Blogger and in html format in many languages, including: English, German, French, Dutch, Spanish and more.

Once a Facebook user installs the app, there are dozens of fonts from which to choose during chat. The app only works, of course, if the user is chatting. Initiating a chat using Fontself immediately curtails the native Facebook chatting, but does post a link to the app so friends may join the user. Most of the fonts provided by Fontself include accompanying emoticons that match the style of the font.

If you are the only one using Fontself, you can use all manner of fonts and emoticons, but the person you’re chatting with may not. The display on the Fontself app shows up with whatever fonts are being used, but the other users’ text is just plain. Users of Fontself may use the fonts provided, or create their own.

Installing the app on Facebook is easy enough, but the road to creating one’s own font may be cumbersome. First, you must use Facebook Connect or otherwise register for the website and create an account. You name your font, then are taken to a screen with a big grid; the grid turns out to be a piece of paper the user must print out and transfer the new font onto. In other words, the way you create a new font with Fontself is you print a piece of paper, write the corresponding symbol in your new font in each square, scan it and upload it to Fontself, then edit the font and then finally you can use it.

This seems pretty cumbersome, but there are dozens of custom-made fonts available for perusal on the Fontself website in case you want to . The company also recently released a Fontself Mobile app.

Facebook continues to focus on staffing its overseas offices, according to jobs posted to the Careers Page and LinkedIn. Jobs in Dublin, Austin, Texas, São Paulo, Brazil, Hong Kong and Singapore were added this week, as was an interesting position for Manager of Mobile Analytics. The company is looking for someone “obsessed with data” to fill this job, based in Palo Alto, Calif., to really innovate in the mobile analytics arena; this person will mine data and extract insights, must have a math or science degree, 5 or more years of experience and be a “data junkie.”

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Manager, Mobile Analytics
• Partner Engineer – Platform (Paris)
• Law Enforcement Response Analyst, French (Dublin)
• Business Intelligence Developer 1103001
• Business Operations Manager
• Financial Analyst – Information Technology
• Lead, Data Warehouse Operations
• Outbound Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Strategic Partner Development, Entertainment
• Outbound Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Fraud Analyst (Dublin)
• Fraud Specialist (Dublin)
• Operational Data Analyst (Austin)
• Payments Analyst
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Sao Paulo)
• Agency Account Manager – Direct Response / SEM, Online Sales Operations (Austin)
• Online Operations Training Specialist (Austin)
• Agency Team Lead, Online Sales Operations (Austin)
• Account Executive, Commercial Development (London)
• Sales Associate (Sao Paulo)
• Sales Development and Program Manager (New York)
• Sales Development and Program Manager (Palo Alto)

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Data Analyst, Platform
• Tools Developer, Network Engineering
• Data Engineer
• Lead, Data Warehouse Operations
• Linux Systems Administrator
• Web Application Engineer
• Power Engineer
• Storage Hardware Design Engineer
• Hardware Engineer
• Network Engineer
• Team Lead, Online Sales Operations (Austin)
• Technical Recruiter – Contract
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Singapore)
• Partner Engineer – Mobile (Hong Kong)
• Sales Associate (Singapore)
• Sales Associate (Sao Paulo)
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Sao Paulo)
• Intellectual Property Paralegal
• Agency Team Lead, Online Sales Operations

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

Facebook seems to have hired many people this week, if the number of jobs posts that disappeared from the Careers Page is any indicator. LinkedIn also posted a number of hires this week, mostly in administrative and operational positions. Listings that were removed include: Lead Data Center Technician, Technical Program Manager of Mobile Operators and more.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

• Jill Juarez – Executive Assistant, formerly an Executive Assistant/Office Manager at Madrone Capital Partners, LLC.
• Cindy Ogor – Recruiting Coordinator, formerly Legal – Adminstration at David Bernstein Law Firm.
• Ethan Avey – Analyst of User Operations, previously a Stoves Tester at The Darfur Stoves Project.
• Javier Martinez-Zaporta – now Payment Analyst, previously a Fraud Investigator at Sportingbet.
• Eric Sylvester – Executive Assistant to CIO at Facebook, formerly an Executive Assistant to CFO, CEO/Office Manager at iRhythm Technologies, Inc.
• Shuangtiao Huang – Software Engineer at Facebook, previously a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft.
• James Harris – Support Representative, previously an Inside Sales Account Manager- IBM Technical Services at Direct Alliance.
• Ron Goforth – Account Manager, once an Outside Sales Representative at Stage 3 Motorsports.
• PJ MacGregor – Global Customer Marketing, once a Senior Vice President/Creative Director at Leo Burnett.
• David Doty – Global Service Desk Manager, Corporate Service Desk Operations Manager at LTX-Credence.
• Kathleen Loughlin – Platform Marketing, previously Corporate Communications at Facebook.

Recent departures, per LinkedIn:

• Alison Purvis – once a Contractor in User Operations, now Market Research Administrator at EmSense Corporation.
• Rahul Mukerjee – was a Technical Recruiter.
• Adrianna Morici – worked as a Recruiting Coordinator.
• Jason Haase – once an Account Management.
• Irene Poltronieri – formerly an Analyst of User Operations, now Global Customer Operations Representative at LinkedIn.
• Richard Stiller – formerly a Consultant.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

• Recruiter – Contractor (Sao Paulo)
• Lead Data Center Technician
• Technical Program Manager, Mobile Operators
• Business Intelligence Engineer #1010002
• Accounting Manager
• Controller – Facebook Payments
• Order to Cash Revenue Associate – EMEA (Dublin)
• HR Manager – Contract (Dublin)
• Performance and Compensation Programs Manager
• Tools Developer, Mail Systems
• Manager, Developer Support Engineering
• Strategist, Market Solutions – Technology (Palo Alto)
• Analyst, User Operations – Portugese (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations – Russian (Dublin)
• Analyst, User Operations – Swedish and Norwegian (Dublin)
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations – Danish (Dublin)
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Singapore)
• Sales Operations Manager EMEA
• Sales Training and Program Manager (Palo Alto)

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

Facebook recently launched a “Use Facebook as Page” feature for Page administrators that allows them to assume the identity of their Page so they can Like, post, and comment around the site. However, this has enabled a new spamming technique, whereby Pages can Like the posts or comments of other users and Pages to create links back to themselves.

Since there is no option to remove Likes or ban those who Like any Facebook feed item, a victim can’t delete the links, and their only option is to report the Page as spam and wait for Facebook to address the issue. Like spam has not become a significant issue yet, but holds an opportunity for malicious parties until Facebook creates a solution.

Facebook has introduced several new wall post and comment  spam prevention systems lately, automatically hiding posts containing suspicious links and turning suspicious comments gray to alert admins. Like-spam via Pages, though, only recently became possible, and therefore Facebook may not have recognized the risk.

Until the launch of Use Facebook as Page as part of the February 2011 Page redesign, only users could post and comment on the walls of other Pages, and they could be removed and banned from Pages. There is no option for an admin of a Page to ban another Page for Like-spam. The ban option only becomes available if the malicious Page posts or comments.

We’ve heard a few reports of Like spam, particularly by Pages whose name hocks a service, such as “We Fix Slow Computers”, even though this form of Like-spam has only been available for two months. Facebook needs to provide Page admins a way to ban other Pages from Liking content on their wall before it becomes a more popular method of driving traffic to spammy Pages.

[Thanks to Bryan Person for the tip]

To learn about tools your can Page can use to fight spam, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible’s Service Provider Directory, a guide to the companies offering marketing and technical services to brands and organizations of all sizes on Facebook.

Webtrends Apps has released a new tool for Facebook advertisers that allows them to sync an ad campaign, a Facebook app, and an in-app action to create a conversion funnel. However, advertisers can only track the correlation between ads and in-app actions, not causality. At this point, it’s more relevant to smaller advertisers running fewer ads who want a general idea of the value ads are driving, rather than advertisers looking to optimize larger campaigns.

Webtrends acquired self-service and full-service web, mobile and social app developer Transpond in August, and rebranded it Webtrends Apps. Its last notable release was the addition of a drag-and-drop app creation interface and an integration with the Facebook Ads API in December.

To use the conversion funnel tool, Webtrends Apps users who are advertising for their apps log in through Facebook Connect and select the single ad campaign they want to track. They then select the app the ad links to and choose an action to track, such as a Facebook Share or the user switching tabs in the app. The funnel view then appears in the Webtrends Apps dashboard. The tool can be linked to the Facebook Ads API.

However, the system doesn’t employ tracking URLs or ad IDs. The only way to assess causality is for developers to create unique instances of their apps for each ad campaign, splintering an app’s userbase and potentially cluttering the navigation menu of Pages running the app in a tab. Otherwise, advertisers can create funnels for each ad they’re running, and watch to see if clicks to the ad correlate to in-app actions.

The new product will have to compete with sophisticated app conversion tracking-focused advertising services including Nanigans and AdParlor. These services install tracking pixels in apps and employ unique referral URLs to track conversions without requiring clients to create separate instances of their apps.

While light-weight with no coding necessary, the Webtrends campaign funnels too strictly limit advertisers to be an effective way of tracking any sizable or multi-channel ad campaign.

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 Zynga, RealNetworks, Inside Network, Games Cafe, NaturalMotion, and 6waves.

• Data Analyst (San Francisco, CA)
  

• Senior Social Marketing Manager (Seattle, WA)

• Operations and Sales Support Coordinator (Palo Alto, CA)
  

• Senior Flash Game Programmer (Calgary, AB)
  

• Game Metrics Analyst (Oxford or London, UK)

• Software Integration Engineer, Social Games (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.

This week Facebook redesigned the email notifications users receive when they’re sent a friend request. These emails now show stats about the request sender, including their friend, photo, wall post, and Group count, helping users identify spammers since they usually have few friends and little content. The emails also now include a link to “See All Requests” for batch request management.

Previously, requests only showed the name, profile picture, and mutual friend count of a friend request sender. If users answered requests via email and didn’t visit the sender’s profile, it would be difficult to tell if the person was a real acquaintance or a spammer looking to publish scams to their news feed.

Facebook has made several other moves this year to reduce friend request spam. In September it began preventing users from sending suspicious friend requests to people they are far removed from on the social graph. In January, it introduced a “Mark you don’t know him/her” response option to friend requests. Facebook limited the amount of friend requests that could be sent by those receiving too many of these marks.

Facebook’s Chief Technology Officer Bret Taylor said at our Inside Social Apps conference in January that Facebook had reduced spam by 95% in the last year, partly in thanks to these spam prevention features. However, Facebook has to be careful not produce false positives and accidentally block legitimate friend requests between two people that met in real life, even though they’re distant on the graph or one user has sent some unsolicited requests before.

These new email notifications bring a summary of what a user might manually check a profile for to determine if a friend request was spam. This should help reduce the number of spam friend requests that are accepted, and therefore keep the site cleaner and safer to use.

Horoscopes, phrases, videos and basketball made up the majority of our list of top 20 Facebook apps by daily active user this week. Dating, music, photos and security apps were also popular. Our list is compiled using AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook, and covers apps that gained the most users in the past seven days.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	DAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Daily Horoscope	1,839,822	+750,928	+69%
2.	Daily Horoscope	962,558	+637,547	+196%
3.	Mafia Wars Game	2,688,709	+409,468	+18%
4.	BandPage by RootMusic	1,255,748	+368,221	+41%
5.	Badoo	4,410,004	+350,916	+9%
6.	Phrases	1,688,685	+296,582	+21%
7.	Norton Safe Web	216,443	+176,729	+445%
8.	Monster Galaxy	804,490	+163,921	+26%
9.	Günlük Burç Yorumları	227,429	+133,090	+141%
10.	Phrases (new)	410,486	+117,110	+40%
11.	Frases Diarias	716,271	+107,779	+18%
12.	VidyoTV Video	153,058	+102,253	+201%
13.	Diamond Dash	94,956	+94,939	+558,465%
14.	My Photos	298,128	+93,746	+46%
15.	Persian’s Daily Clip	133,435	+89,629	+205%
16.	CBSSports.com Brackets	96,733	+88,405	+1,062%
17.	Monopoly Millionaires	642,588	+86,126	+15%
18.	Friendly for iPad	768,112	+71,717	+10%
19.	Bracket Challenge by Citizen Sports	77,231	+68,102	+746%
20.	Videoloji	199,651	+67,215	+51%

The horoscope apps seem to be very popular with Turkish audiences. Daily Horoscope with 750,900 new DAU this week asks users if they’d like to publish the horoscope to their Wall , while the other Daily Horoscope with 637,600 DAU publishes a horoscope daily to your Wall, too. The Turkish version of this latter app, Günlük Burç Yorumları, posts daily horoscopes to your Wall and also asks users to invite dozens of people with the same zodiac sign to the app. This app grew by 133,000 DAU this week.

Phrases apps grew in non-English speaking countries this week. Phrases saw 296,600 DAU coming out of the Philippines, Mexico, France and Italy. Phrases (new) grew 117,100 DAU this week. Neither app was accessible in the U.S. and both provide users with phrases they can post to the stream. The Spanish app that performs a similar function, Frases Diarias, grew by 107,800 DAU this week allowing users to Like or share phrases by famous people, or create their own.

Video apps were also popular with Turkish users. There was VidyoTV Video which grew by 102,300 DAU; the app posts videos to the stream when the app is used and allows viewers options to also share videos. Persian’s Daily Clip grew by 89,600 DAU and starts off by asking users to invite 20 friends to use the app; you subscribe to a daily video clip post on your Wall and the app automatically posts one upon use. Videoloji grew by 67,200 DAU and creates news feed stories by posting videos daily, also allowing users to share and Like them.

Basketball was on the list this week, too, due to March Madness, the NCAA college basketball tournament. CBSSports.com Brackets grew by 88,400 DAU; the app allows users to make bracket picks and share to the stream. The more involved, Bracket Challenge by Citizen Sports, saw 68,100 DAU this week and involves a $5,000 grand prize, syncs with an iPhone app, and includes trivia questions that users can post to the stream and alerts on your bracket.

Friendly for iPad grew by 71,700 DAU; the app is a popular Facebook application for iPad, since there is no official app. On Facebook clicking “Download App” takes users to the Apple store, where they may download the app.

Rounding out the list was BandPage by RootMusic, a music app for musicians and fans, which saw 368,200 DAU. Badoo, the dating app, is still growing with 350,900 DAU this week; the app utilizes a Q&A of a users’ friends to generate attention in the feed. Norton Safe Web saw 176,700 DAU and generates a news feed story when it scans your feed for malicious links; users may also enable auto scan for regular scanning. Finally there was My Photos, with 93,700 DAU, which posts a photo from your Facebook photos daily to the stream.

The following is an excerpt from the Facebook Marketing Bible, the comprehensive guide to marketing your company, app, brand, or website using Facebook. The full version of this article, available through a Facebook Marketing Bible subscription, includes a guide to choosing whether to use the verb “Like” or “Recommend” in your button, what button color scheme will match best with your site, advantages and disadvantages of showing users the faces of friends who’ve clicked a Like button, and exactly what signals are summed to determine the Like count that a button displays.

This is the first installment in a three part series detailing how to use the Like button. Subsequent installments will cover how to choose the Open Graph meta tags that will give your Like buttons the ability to publish news feed stories to users, and strategies for implementing Like buttons on a variety of sites ranging from news publishers to brand websites to social games.

The Like button is an embeddable plugin for third-party websites and Facebook apps. When clicked by a Facebook user, it publishes the piece of content the button is attached to to the user’s wall and the news feeds of their friends. In many cases it also causes the Liked object to appear in the user’s profile and allows the owner of the button to publish news feed updates to the user in the future.

Facebook offers several different implementations of its Like button social plugin. Here we’ll discuss the advantages and disadvantages of different stylistic options, and provide a guide for choosing the Like button implementation that will drive the most clicks and thereby generate the most referral traffic for your website.

Like Button Creation and Implementation Steps

To create and install a Like Button:

1. Visit the Like button documentation page
2. Input the URL of the website page or piece of content you want the Like button to represent
3. Use the configurator in Step 1 to choose style options for your Like button
4. Click the “Get Code” button
5. Copy the iframe or XFMBL code
6. Paste the code into your website’s code
7. Return to the Like button documentation page
8. Use the configurator in Step 2 to select Open Graph tags in order to describe the website page or piece of content your Like button represents
9. Click the “Get Tags” button
10. Copy the tag codes
11. Paste the tag codes into the <head> of your website

Like Button Options

URL to Like: Use the URL of the entity you want the Like button to represent. You can embed the button on multiple website pages, such a both a ecommerce product page and a directory of products. However, his URL should the one dedicated to what the button represents, such as the product page.

Layout Style: This determines the size and amount of social context that appears next to the button. There are three options

• Standard – displays social text to the right of the button and the profile pictures of friends below of applicable. Minimum width: 225 pixels. Default width: 450 pixels. Height: 35 pixels (without photos) or 80 pixels (with photos). The widest, and all around largest Like button, and the only one that can display the names and faces of a user’s friends who have already clicked. Best for sites with ample empty space, or which dynamically resize, such as blogs. Its large size makes it especially noticeable, and the faces of friends creates a compelling personal social recommendation to click. For most sites that have space for this button, this is the best layout option.

• button_count - displays the total number of likes to the right of the button. Minimum width: 90 pixels. Default width: 90 pixels. Height: 20 pixels. The shortest and all round smallest Like button. Best for sites displaying large quantities of Like buttons on a single page, or that are trying to integrate the button into a short header of a news article. With no protruding elements, it is the most elegant Like button, and is therefore the best choice for those trying to minimize Facebook’s presence or impact on their site’s design.

Access the full Like button style guide including tips for choosing between Like and Recommend terminology, pros and cons of showing the faces of friends who’ve clicked the button, and more marketing best practices at the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s industry leading resource for marketing and advertising on Facebook.

Facebook is testing a new type of ad unit called “Related Adverts” that that targets users based on the words they use in their status updates and wall posts, the company has confirmed with us. Though currently only appearing to a very small audience, if this service became publicly available it could create a wealth of new targeting options for advertisers on Facebook.

A new sidebar module called “Related Stories” that shows relevant posts from friends based on the content of a user’s wall posts has also been introduced. This module, though not connected to “Related adverts,” could suggest compelling content for users to discuss with their friends.

Currently, Facebook’s self-serve ad tool only allows advertisers to target based on demographic characteristics, such as their age, gender, education level and the Pages that they Like. Advertisers have not been able to create their own ads targeted based on the words users write in their status updates or wall posts.

Facebook has been testing other new ad designs recently, including one that ask users which they prefer of the displayed ad set. It also recently released a new ad unit called Sponsored Stories that convert news feed posts by users into ads shown to their friends, and began allowing ads to point to a specific tab of a Page. For an in-depth walk-through and strategies for to drive the maximimum number of clicks and return on investment from these ads, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing and advertising on Facebook.

While this Related adverts test is only appearing to small number of users, and it could be quickly scrapped, the potential for new targeting parameters should excite advertisers. This type of data could help them serve ads based on what a user is currently thinking and posting about, and therefore might be interested in purchasing. This could close the historical gap between advertising on social networks where opinions are formed, and search engines, where users go directly before making a purchase, which is seen as closer to conversion and therefore more valuable in some cases.

Though the data would likely only be available in anonymous, aggregate form, some users may wish to opt out. A minority of users already leave their profile’s demographic information blank to reduce Facebook’s ability to target them. If Facebook decides to expand the test it will need to be careful in how it decides to frames the data usage to users and what, if any, opt out options it will provide. Otherwise, it could see users trying to convince their friends not to post status updates or wall posts

Years ago, Facebook offered a public tool called Lexicon that compared the frequency of words contained in wall posts from across the total Facebook population. Facebook took this powerful keyword analyzer down, leaving a note that it might return in a new form. Maybe this new ad unit is it.

[Thanks to Paul Miller for the tip]