When users view the profiles of their friends, they’ll now see an online status indicator next to that friend’s name. Similar to the Facebook Chat panel, a green dot means the user is actively online, a grey crescent moon means they’re online but idle, and an empty grey circle means they’re offline or have turned off Chat. Showing the online statuses of friends so prominently on profiles will remind users of the option to Chat, increasing usage of a feature that can boost time-on-site.

Facebook has experimented with where to display online status on the profile. At different times, it has has shown a link to initiate a Chat beneath the profile picture, and an online status indicator in the top right corner of the profile. Most recently prior to the current design, users would see a gray Chat button in to right of the profile.

Now the different online status indicator icons appear next to a friend’s name, or the name of the profile tab a user is currently viewing. When hovered over, icons reveal text labels denoting their meaning.

Facebook’s Messages product formats direct communication between users as Chat if a recipient is online, and as a Message if the recipient is offline. The online status indicator no longer signals what medium the sender should use, as this is irrelevant, and instead it signals through which medium will communication be received. In this case, the indicator will help inform senders whether or not they should expect an immediate response.

However, this same information is implicitly conveyed if a user clicks to send a Message to an available friend and is directed to the Chat window, or tries to Chat an unavailable friend and is notified that their Chat will be delivered to the recipient’s Message inbox.

Therefore, the prominent placement of the online status indicator is probably an attempt on Facebook’s part to increase the number of Chats and Messages sent. Now when a user clicks through to a friend’s profile from a photo or news feed update, they’ll immediately be shown whether they can instantly communicate with that friend. In this way, the green icon serves as an invitation to Chat.

Facebook only launched Chat in 2008, years after Gmail, MSN, and AOL established themselves as instant message platforms. Until mid 2010, there were significant stability issues with Chat that left a negative public impression that the feature is still trying to recover from. The move of the online status indicator may be Facebook’s announcement that Chat is ready to become a more central part of the service’s experience, and that users shouldn’t forget about it.

Facebook held a live webinar called “Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers” earlier today. In it, the virtual currency’s product marketing manager Deb Liu announced that Credits has been adopted by more than 550 games and apps from over 275 developers, and that Credits accounts for over 85% of the transactions on the Platform.

Liu also mentioned that Facebook would soon “substantially increase the number of countries that can receive payouts via PayPal,” and noted that more incentives would soon be available to developers who use Credits as their premium in-game currency (although she didn’t provide further details). Facebook also published a step-by-step guide to adopting Credits today, including an engineering flow diagram illustrating how a Credits transaction is processed.

These new stats, payout countries, incentives, and documentation should serve to draw more developers to Credits, especially ones based in South America or Asia, as Hong Kong is the only nation of those two continents where payouts are supported.

On July 1st, 2011, all Facebook games must use Credits as their exclusive payment method, and those who use Credits as their exclusive premium in-game currency will have access to incentives including Frictionless Payments, Buy With Friends, and the getBalance API. The new incentives Liu discussed would join this suite.

Facebook cited that over 350 games and 150 developers were using Credits by January, but those numbers have now grown by 200 and 125 respectively. These stats provide social proof that developers are switching to and sticking with Credits, which should help onboard those developers still delaying the inevitable.

Last month, Facebook announced support for several additional currencies and payment methods, including many in Asia. However, Facebook currently only allows payouts in North America, Europe, and Hong Kong, likely discouraging developers from Asia who can’t afford to set up a branch in one of nations that are supported. Liu said that additional payout countries, which could include Singapore and Taiwan since they have many app developers, will be added in late May or early June.

The new documentation published today showed developers how to register an app for Credits, generate the pay dialog with the JavaScript SDK, build the callback.php, set the location of an app’s callback, and complete a transaction. The callback.php flow diagram should help developers understand how a request is passed from a user to them to Facebook and back.

Facebook seems to understand that problems with the July Credits transition could seriously harm its relationship with the developer community. The migration to 30% taxed currency is already a touchy subject, and as such, it’s doing everything it can to preempt issues through blog posts, forum responses, and even live question-and-answer periods.

In the latest twist to the latest lawsuit from someone claiming partial ownership of Facebook, Paul Ceglia has refiled his case from last year — and produced a new string of emails with company founder Mark Zuckerberg that Ceglia claims indicate that he owns up to 50% of Facebook. Ceglia has also convinced one of the largest law firms in the world, DLA Piper, to represent him.

The emails themselves make the case look far more interesting. Until the news broke last night, the most notable recent movement was a judge siding with Facebook a few weeks ago, forcing the case to be heard in a district court instead of a local New York one as Ceglia had wanted.

Given that in the US legal system, defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty, the onus is on Ceglia to convince the courts of his case. And there are still some big questions remaining for him to answer, which we’ll get into below.

For those who haven’t already been following the matter, see our coverage of Ceglia’s case last year, Business Insider’s breathless examination of the latest emails today, additional reporting on the matter from The New York Times, and more discussion on Techmeme — as well as Above The Law’s more skeptical take. ZDNet has a copy of the latest filing, for those who are interested.

Does DLA Piper’s Involvement Lend New Credibility to Ceglia’s Case?

DLA Piper is a large and relatively prestigious law firm and many observers today take its involvement, and its strong statement supporting Ceglia, to indicate that the case has substance. But we are less credulous about DLA Piper’s motives here — law firms represent clients in order to make money, not necessarily to champion the truth. Clearly, the firm is taking on some risk: if it turns out that Ceglia’s claims are completely false, the firm will look bad at picking and vetting clients.

However, given that Facebook has acknowledged that at least some of the documents are real, there is all sorts of room to get an outcome that doesn’t result in complete failure.

The most immediately achievable benefit is marketing. DLA Piper is now appearing in every story about the lawsuit around the world, and in most coverage it is being framed as the expert counsel who is standing up for a jilted entrepreneur against a company that many people have mixed feelings about. Anyone who doesn’t like Facebook, or who wants to go up against a company like Facebook, might now be more likely to turn to DLA Piper than before.

The more obvious benefit is money. Facebook has already shown itself willing to settle with plaintiffs claiming founder ownership, in the case of the Winklevoss twins. While the twins were ultimately lost a variety of appeals (as of yesterday), they were able to land $65 million. That amount was a settlement that Facebook agreed to years ago, when it had much less money.

Facebook has shown it is willing to pay to make problems go away. Even a small win on DLA’s part could mean either cash or stock in Facebook, depending on what the firm can get for Ceglia, and what its representation terms are with him. Meanwhile, demand for legal services has been dropping around the world due to the recession, and it’s possible the firm is more generally willing to take risky cases in order to make money than just a few years ago.

And in case you want more evidence that law firms are interested in representing smaller, possibly suspect clients against bigger ones, just look back to how the world found out about the $65 million agreement between Facebook and the Winklevoss twins: The Winklevoss’ law firm (at the time) advertised the amount of the win as part of its promotional literature to new clients.

If DLA Piper wins any significant amount of money, expect it to promote it as loudly as the terms of the case allow.

Some Questions for Ceglia

There are important unanswered questions around the emails themselves. DLA Piper is saying that Ceglia has a case, but so far we haven’t seen evidence proving that the newly-introduced emails are real, rather than after-the-fact fakes. We just see plain text, and the firm’s word that the emails are real. Beyond technical confirmations — such as whether there are records of the emails on Zuckerberg’s side — bigger questions also remain for the plaintiff.

1. Why did Ceglia wait so long to file the case, in the first place? Facebook has been growing quite publicly since it launched. It’s been making headlines since 2006 amid possibilities of high-priced acquisitions. Considering that he would have had the nasty email exchanges still fresh on his mind, Ceglia would have had every reason to take Zuckerberg to court at any point before 2010.

2. Why did Ceglia not produce the latest round of emails last year, in his original case? Given the scope of what Ceglia hopes to get, that he didn’t use these key pieces of evidence before is even more surprising than the fact that he waited so long to file. There are also some unexplained changes between the original case and the refiling. He started off asking for 84% of Facebook, based on a contract that he said at the time gave him an additional 1% of the company every day that the project was delayed past January 1, 2004. Now he’s only asking for 50%. The latest court documents from him say that he had waived the 1% increase in February of 2004. Why did he try to get 84% last year, when his own evidence supposedly contradicts this claim? The difference, after all, is 34% of Facebook, which amounts to billions of dollars.

3. Where is the evidence that Zuckerberg accepted the payment for “The Face Book”? Ceglia has to our knowledge only provided proof of payment for $1000, which may have been for work on a “Streetfax.com” site that the two had agreed Zuckerberg would work on. Only Ceglia’s latest batch of emails show Zuckerberg making explicit mention of taking the money Ceglia provided for “The Face Book” — meanwhile, the new suit doesn’t appear to include more proof of any payments sent and received.

4. Why would Zuckerberg agree to such an obviously bad contract? He had previously built a music recommendation service in high school that he could have sold for more than a million dollars — instead he didn’t, and went off to a very expensive college with numerous employment opportunities. For someone with entrepreneurial experience, who had had far more money offered to him, why would Zuckerberg give up so much of any project he was working on for so little money? Ceglia’s emails show Zuckerberg looking for very small amounts throughout the course of 2003, yet other accounts of Facebook’s early days show Zuckerberg having relatively good access to funding via cofounder Eduardo Saverin.

Conclusion: Let’s Wait and See

On its face, the new emails make Ceglia’s case look far more credible than it had, as does DLA Piper’s involvement. Yet Ceglia is still very far from showing the world why he should be awarded up to 50% of Facebook, and his firm is a far from objective partner.

While the ins and outs of the case are interesting, especially for investors, the users, developers, and marketers currently using Facebook should not make any changes to plan around the idea that Paul Ceglia could one day be co-owner of the company.

Facebook today released several updates to the newest version of its Comments Box social plugin for third party websites that will increase the referral traffic it drives, and give sites API control so they can export, analyze, and re-order comments. The plugin can now publish a full news feed story with an image when users post comments, and users can log in using their Hotmail account.

These distribution, flexibility, and access updates significantly increase the plugin’s appeal, and should lead to more installs on top of the 50,000 websites that have already integrated it.

Facebook originally launched the Comments Box social plugin in February of 2009, but released the greatly enhanced current version on March 1st, 2011 that included comment ranking by relevancy, the option to login with a Yahoo! account, enhanced moderation tools and the option for users to syndicate their comments to their own Facebook walls.

Login with an AOL account was soon added, and it was discovered that the plugin included live code for Twitter and Google logins despite those not being user-facing options. Despite early adoption by websites such as TechCrunch and our own, many publishers had reservations since they couldn’t export and archive comments, and users couldn’t login anonymously.

New Features

The new updates should convince some more of these hold outs. The Graph API can now be used to search and export comments. Facebook says this will allow websites to “highlight the most interesting comments, perform analysis on the comment stream, reward top commenters, search through existing comments, and use comments to improve SEO on their site.” The exporting feature is crucial for sites who want to reserve the right to switch away from Facebook’s plugin without losing comments made within it.

When users opt in to Facebook syndication of their comments, the resulting news feed story will include an image and description of the site. This means the story will appear much larger and more compelling in the feed, driving more referral traffic to sites hosting the plugin. This traffic boost is lucrative enough to outweigh other concerns or the effort to migrate to the Comments Box.

Other updates include the addition of Hotmail as a login provider, which will open up commenting through the plugin to more of those without a Facebook account. A new dark color scheme will make the plugin fit better aesthetically with darker sites. Permalinks, accessed through a comment’s timestamp, will let users share their comments through email or other social media sites like Twitter, and also make moderation simpler.

There are still some deficiencies, but these are in-part tied to the nature of an authenticated identity comment plugin. For instance, moderators can not edit user comments, which can be useful for when someone makes a good point but that is peppered with objectionable language. However, the ability to edit someone’s comments, which are sync’d to their profile, coud raise security and authenticity issues.

Sites using the original version of the plugin can easily update by adding ‘migrated=1′ to their site’s <fb:comments> tag. All old versions will be forcibly migrated on April 29th, re-ordering existing comments using the new relevancy ranking. Sites using custom CSS may need to make some tweaks as since that customization option is no longer supported.

Gaining Traction

Even before these updates, the Comments Box plugin appears to gaining traction. Facebook tells us that amongst the 50,000 properties that have integrated the plugin are music sites Vevo and Grooveshark, video distributors Funny Or Die and Metacafe, image hosts Photobucket and Imageshack, games by WildTangent and Y3, reviews site Hotels.com, and news sites the San Jose Mercury News and the LA Times.

By moving to facilitate data portability and manipulation, Facebook has lowered the risk of experimenting with the plugin, allowing websites to see for themselves whether the plugin increases the volume and civility of their comments and drives referral traffic as Facebook claims.

Facebook Ads API tool provider Blinq Media has been selected as global ad agency Havas Digital‘s preferred Facebook advertising partner. Blinq will provide custom white-labeled ad management systems and training to Havas Digital, which serves over 400 clients in more than 40 countries.

Havas Digital chose Blinq Media’s Ruby-on-Rails solution because of its streamlined workflow, its ability to quickly adapt to new features released by Facebook, and its transparent billing practices. Blinq is also able to offer Havas Digital its own API key. Havas Digital can leverage information on its spend volume from the key to gain preferred access to support from the social network, and to court new clients.

Blinq Media Iterates Quickly

Blinq Media was founded in 2008 by Dave Williams, who previously founded search marketing firm 360i. Blinq’s 25-employee team includes many former employees of Page management company Vitrue and others with experience developing on Facebook’s rapid-release timetable. Blinq’s other agency clients include giants WPP and Publicis.

Williams told us that since his team built the Blinq Ad Manager Ads API tool using Ruby-on-Rails, it can integrate new Facebook advertising features, such as Sponsored Stories, into its client offering in days or weeks, opposed to months like some of its competitors. Advertising clients want access to the cutting edge features, giving Havas Digital a competitive advantage. Blinq Media also uses the MongoDB open source database system to be able to quickly retrieve data for campaign optimization.

Along with its own API key that helps Havas Digital strengthen its relationship with Facebook, the agency will have its own data store. This ensures its data isn’t commingled with that of other Blinq clients, and that it can perform its own optimizations.

Havas Digital Needs Speed and Efficiency

Havas Digital tested other tools from less agile search-focused ad services with Facebook tacked on, and pure technology companies that don’t use their own tools, but settled on Blinq. Because of the agency’s scale, it needed a tool that allowed its account managers it to efficiently jump between ad creation, bid management and reporting so they can spend more time being strategic and optimizing. Previously, the agency used TBG Digital’s Ads API tool ONE Media Manager.

The agency’s Global Director of Product Development Rob Griffin told us its Facebook spend “is already in the millions and I only see that exponentially growing 3x, 5x, 10x, 20x.” This projected growth makes it important to have Blinq’s transparent billing system, where Havas Digital can see exactly how much Facebook makes and Blinq makes.

Griffin concluded “Blinq has best tech of those tested, showed massive performance lifts and efficiency gains, offering big benefits for our clients and our agency, so they’re our preferred partner.”

There were hires all around this week, from business development to interns, on our new weekly post covering hires among non-gaming companies on the Facebook platform. In particular Buddy Media hired a Director of Business Development and General Manager of Lifestyle brands. Nanigans hired a Vice President of Client Partnerships, TBD Digital hired a Managing Director of France and two VPs of Business Development and Vitrue hired a General Counsel, as well as a Director of Business Development.

If your company is hiring new people or making a notable promotion, please let us know. Email mail (at) insidefacebook (dot) com, and we’ll get it into next week’s post. Also, please note that information about most new hires, below, comes directly from company updates from LinkedIn.

Looking for new opportunities? Check out the Inside Network Job Board, which shows the latest openings at leading companies in the industry.

Here’s this week’s list of hires:

AdParlor

• Sarah Watson, Account Manager – formerly an Intern Marketing Coordinator at T Magazine.
• Dustin Keller, Designer – previously a Web/Graphic Designer at SteadyRain.
• Prashanth Mohan, Account Manager – formerly the Development Manager at Management and Economics Students’ Association.
• Vitaly Pecherskiy, Account Manager – previously a Financial and Research Analyst at Oriyon Corporation.

BranchOut

• Christopher Henty, Marketing Associate – formerly at Project Manager, Recruitment Chair at Cornell Business Review.
• Andrea Kalsow, Marketing Associate – previously a Teaching Assistant at Saddleback Valley Unified School District.
• Emma Markley, Marketing Associate – formerly an Intern at Makena Capital.
• Michael DeVerna, Product Manager (Virals/Analytics) - formerly Director of Products at Pagefad.
• John Petroff, Marketing Associate

Buddy Media

• Stephanie Sprangers, Vice President of Strategic Brand Accounts - formerly Vice President of Business Development at InterMundo media.
• David Dowd, General Manager of Lifestyle Brands - formerly the CEO/Founder of ViewPlay Media, LLC.
• Drew Stern, Director of Business Development – formerly a Senior Manager of New Product Development at American Express.
• Rebecca Bonell, Manager of Client Loyalty Team - previously an office Manager & Executive Assistant at Lead Financial Group.
• Jamar Parris, Senior Engineer – previously a Vice President, Application Architect at BNY Mellon.
• John Friese, Front End Engineer -formerly a Graphic Designer/Production Support professional at Sign-a-Rama.

Context Optional

• Grahame Lesh, Comunity Genius – formerly the Marketing Manager at Tripping International.
• Belen Torres-Gil, Account Manager - previously a Program Coordinator at Stanford University.

Involver

• Richard Rich, Sales Executive – formerly the Director of Marketing at Webtab, Inc.
• Jed Wheeler, SML Trainer & Developer – previously the Founder & Editor in Chief at Vallejo Free Press.
• Adam Steinharter, Recruiter - formerly a Contract Recruiter at Adchemy.

Kontagent

• Ryan Tankoos, Enterprise Sales Executive EMEA – formerly a Business Development Manager at Global Collect.
• Taehoon Kang, Software Engineering – formerly did the same work at Soompi Media, LLC.
• Justin Hypes, Business Development – previously Director of Business Development at MSDonline.
• Art Santos, Business Development – formerly at Senior Director of Business Development at heyzap.com.
• Dave Paola, Software Engineer - formerly a Software Developer at the Department of Civil/Environmental Engineering.

Nanigans

• John Dobrowolski, Vice President of Client Partnerships – formerly the VP and Brand Alchemist at SCVNGR.
• Ron Searls, Ad Operations Manager – previously a Software Developer at Incipient.

Spruce Media

• Jason Leveille, Software Engineering – formerly Lead Developer at Blue Atlas Interactive.
• Scott Bain, Director of Advertising Delivery -previously the Mobile Marketing Manager at Neverblue.

TBG Digital

• Ben Miles, Senior Account Manager – previously a Key Account Manager at Shopping.com.
• Ed Cox, Client Services Manager – formerly a Digital Media Analyst at Fairbrother Lenz Eley.
• Bruno Vannod, Managing Director France – previously a Solution Sales Specialists Director at Microsoft Advertising France.
• Mike Lee, Vice President of Business Development – formerly an Agency Development Manager at Yahoo.
• Chris Phenner, Vice President of Business Development – formerly EVP of Business Development at Thumbplay, Inc.

Vitrue

• Michael Rideout, Director, Business Development – previously President and Founder at Rideout Media Group, LLC.
• Harris Troutman, General Counsel – previously a partner at FSB FisherBroyles, LLP.
• Amy Barbieri, Mid-Market Sales – previously a feature producer for Jezebel Magazine/Modern Luxury Media.
• Eric Schwertzel, Business Development – New York City, previously Vice President of Business Development at Netbiscuits.
• Kevin Race, Senior Project Manager – formerly a Project Manager at Trivantis.
• Erika Admundson, Strategic Services Manager - once a Marketing Strategist at MKTG Inc.

Work4 Labs

• Libby Te, Office Administrator at Work4Labs – previously a program leader at YMCA.
• Vincent Vo, Business Development & Strategy Intern

The most recent Facebook Developer Blog’s update announced the ability for developers to pull information about the viewport their application is being displayed in and scroll to a specific point. Pages can now grant access to their per-post impression data to applications. Facebook also recounted recent changes we’ve previously covered including the inclusion of titles, images and descriptions in posts published by Like buttons, and the introduction of a preview of these posts seen when buttons are clicked.

The JavaScript SDK now includes new functions for iframe canvas apps. FB.Canvas.getPageInfo returns information about the height, width, and length of user’s window viewport and the application’s iframe viewport. This information can help a developer configure their app’s viewport to create the optimal viewing experience. FB.Canvas.scrollTo allows developers to scroll to a specific point in the app’s canvas by specifying pixel coordinates.

Viewport configuration will be especially useful as users move to using Facebook from a variety of devices with different screen sizes and resolutions. For instance, it can help developers show their dialogs in the right place. Viewport capabilities have become a standard part of mobile browsers through the use of viewport meta tags.

Applications that have receive the read_insights permission from a Page’s admin can now pull per-post impressions from the stream FQL table. This will allow third-party analytics tools to help Page admins determine what timing and content produces the most user engagement.

The Platform Update also included some details about how Facebook’s platform team spends their monthly “roach motel” day where they address the backlog of developer-submitted bugs. Along with trying to reproduce bugs and file them to be fixed, the team also writes watir tests. These Ruby libraries systemically test Facebook’s webpages by clicking buttons, following links, and filling in webforms.

Facebook is close to signing a deal with leading Chinese search engine and web conglomerate Baidu to introduce a version of its site in China, according to a new rash of rumors that broke out late last week and continued to appear through the weekend.

Facebook is dismissing the rumors today, with sources close to the company saying that no deal is in place. However, Facebook’s official statement on the matter makes it sound like one could be coming: “We are currently studying and learning about China, as part of evaluating any possible approaches that could benefit our users, developers and advertisers,” a company spokesperson tell us.

Founder Mark Zuckerberg said last fall that Facebook couldn’t ignore China, and instead would figure out a way to work with government censorship and business regulators to figure out how to gain access. He took a trip to China over the winter holidays that included meetings with high-profile internet executives in the country, where possible partnerships were reportedly discussed.

Other tech companies, notably Google, have had trouble doing business in China due to censorship and business restrictions placed on them by the government. While many other parts of the world are experiencing dramatic social and political changes due to internet access — notably in the Middle East, over the last several months — China has gotten more restrictive with what its citizens are allowed to view.

We’ve covered the saga, most recently examining the strange stop-and-start growth that Facebook has been experiencing in China, as well as in China-controlled Hong Kong, and in Taiwan.

Facebook shot up from around 100,000 to over 600,000 users over January in China, even though it has been blocked in the country for years. It has lost many of those users over the past couple of months, though, and as of today only has under 400,000 monthly active users. It had already been big over in Taiwan, but it similarly surged from 8.7 million to 11.8 million over January, but has also fallen. Today it has 9 million monthly actives, not much more than where it’d been at the start of the year. Hong Kong, with around half its population on Facebook already, has meanwhile apparently maxed out with 3.6 million monthly actives.

Why the random growth? Maybe just a bug, maybe some odd unsanctioned workaround by users in China, or maybe some early tests of official Facebook integrations? See our previous coverage for more analysis of Facebook’s challenges and possibilities in China. The above data is derived from Inside Facebook Gold, our stats and analysis service for Facebook data.

Tomorrow, April 12th at 11am PST, Facebook will stream a webinar explaining why developers should migrate to Facebook Credits as their payment method, and featuring a technical demo of how to handle the migration. For those few developer who are not familiar, Facebook is requiring all apps using paid currency to make Credits the exclusive option by July 1st, 2011. As the event tomorrow shows, the company is trying to get as many developers as possible to migrate early to ensure a smooth transition this summer.

Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers will air on the Facebook Live Page, and then be archived on the Page for future viewing. Developers can submit questions to the webinar’s Facebook Event ahead of time, or use the Livestream-powered app’s question interface to pose questions during the session.

Facebook announced in January that developers would have to migrate to Credits as their exclusive payment platform by July. 22 of the top 25 game developers have already migrated, including Zynga, Disney/Playdom, and EA/Playfish. To encourage hold-outs concerned with the 30% cost, Facebook launched a page of statistics and testimonials recently that touts increased revenue and decreased costs as reasons why the migration will be good for developers. Facebook also announced a new set of rules surrounding in-game offers and rewards that will go into effect alongside the migration.

Developers who use use Facebook Credits as their premium in-game currency rather than requiring users to buy proprietary premium in-game currency with Credits can access a number of special incentives including Frictionless Payments, Buy With Friends, and the getBalance API. These allow developers to earn more money through quick, small transactions and group deals for virtual goods, as well as learn how many Credits a user currently has in the account.

Navigating these rules and incentives can be tricky, so rather than wait until the deadline when delays can cost developers money, Facebook is seeking to address questions now. By signing major developers early and assisting attentive developers with this “Migrating to Facebook Credits for Developers” webinar, Facebook should receive fewer frantic support emails or claims of negligence come late June.

The New Yorker magazine has made one of its articles available only to those who have Liked its Facebook Page. The test of a Like-gate for text-based content is a break from more popular distribution methods such as making articles free online, freemium (charging for only some content), and paywalls that require a paid subscription.

If Like-gating of certain articles successfully draws Likes and generates increased Facebook referral traffic for the publication’s website, other text-based content providers might consider adopting the model as well. The New Yorker’s Page, which reportedly had 200,000 fans earlier this morning, has already acquired 4,000 more Likes.

The article “Farther Away” by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Jonathan Franzen will be available to fans of The New Yorker’s Facebook Page for one week. Otherwise it can only be accessed with a paid digital subscription to the magazine’s website, and presumably in its print edition. The “Fans Only” Page tab app hosting the article also includes a Facebook Comments Box social plugin through which users can publish links to the article to their news feeds, drawing additional users to the promotion.

Facebook began formally allowing applications and Pages to gate content behind Likes in late 2009. Since then, Like-gates have proven useful for some popular musicians as a way to exchange their songs or music videos in exchange for Likes.

However, the model requires strong user demand for the content, otherwise user won’t be willing to sign up for future news feed updates to access it. Content providers with weak brands, or those who Like-gate less compelling content may see users refuse the value exchange.

The New Yorker has built a strong brand around Sunday read-style long form text content, and is therefore a good candidate for the program. Franzen also has his own following that might be willing to Like the Page rather than pay to access his work. The New Yorker’s Page has a relatively low fan count compared to its general popularity, increasing its need for Like-driving campaigns, and indicating there may be many Facebook users with an interest in the publication who have yet to Like its Page.

Since Pages hosting Like-gated content can only distribute links to those who’ve already Liked them, these types of promotions need to be paired with a method of drawing non-fans. Many brands use Facebook ads pointing to their Like-gated content, but The New Yorker has wisely chosen Facebook’s Comments Box and Recommend button.

When users scroll to the bottom of the Franzen article, they can choose to leave a comment for other readers to see, but a checkbox defaults those comments to be published to the user’s stream. This leads their friends back to The New Yorker’s Fans Only tab where they too might decide to Like the Page and share their comments. A Recommend button also allows users to distribute the article without adding a comment. By using these two social plugins, The New Yorker can drive non-fan traffic to the app without paying for advertising.

This combination of free Facebook promotional mechanisms is a savvy move for The New Yorker. It strikes a balance between giving content away and making users pay, focusing on a long-term strategy of gaining Facebook fans to which the magazine can distribute its links and potentially convert into paying subscribers later.

As internet users have grown accustomed to accessing content for free, they may be more willing to provide publishers a way to contact them rather than paying with dollars, as with Google’s One Pass and The New York Times paywall. Media publishers should closely watch The New Yorker’s fan count and consider whether they have the right brand and content to try Like-gating.

For more information on how media websites and Pages can integrate Facebook’s social plugins to increase referral traffic and drive Likes, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing using Facebook.