Turkish video applications were prominent on our list this week, as were apps measuring your relationships with your Facebook friends. There were apps for bands, for Chase’s Community Giving program, a French app for musical greeting cards, a Page tab app and a photo app. The apps on our list grew from between 130,900 and 534,000 monthly active users this week.

The list of top 20 emerging apps was compiled based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook and covers apps that grew the most in the past week, ending at between 100,000 and 1 million monthly active users.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Video İzlemek	537,402	+533,950	+15,468%
2.	Auto Hustle	508,729	+307,602	+153%
3.	Videolar	287,834	+280,780	+3,980%
4.	VideoPort	995,659	+274,993	+38%
5.	Compatibility With My Friends	961,389	+271,202	+39%
6.	Super Mario 3	521,583	+244,308	+88%
7.	BandRx	582,980	+211,419	+57%
8.	Social Statistics	748,461	+189,448	+34%
9.	My Tab	584,817	+188,641	+48%
10.	Battle Pirates	293,844	+159,591	+119%
11.	Chase Community Giving	402,523	+156,244	+63%
12.	N.O.V.A. Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance: ELITE	316,192	+155,938	+97%
13.	Bizim Çiftlik	920,538	+155,070	+20%
14.	UFC Undisputed Fight Nation Game	754,023	+154,817	+26%
15.	Dromadaire	314,324	+150,309	+92%
16.	Friends Who Always Be There For Me	465,741	+144,637	+45%
17.	Puzzle Saga	780,583	+141,520	+22%
18.	Pawn Stars: The Game	900,701	+133,291	+17%
19.	Pixable	664,711	+131,195	+25%
20.	VideoGezegeni	261,260	+130,852	+100%

Turkish video apps were big on the list this week, there were four in total. Video İzlemek grew by about 534,000 MAU, Videolar by 280,800 MAU, VideoPort by 275,000 MAU and VideoGezegeni by 130,900 MAU. Each app allows a user to watch, share or Like videos, comment on them, although VideoPort automatically generates a feed story when you watch a video.

Compatibility With My Friends grew by 271,200 MAU. The app calculates your compatibility with your Facebook friends based on Likes and comments, publishing a feed story with the results, as well as a photo with a link to the app. A similar app, Social Statistics, grew by 189,500 MAU; the app gives the user’s posting frequency, influence with friends a a Wall post summary for the past month.

Page tabs were on our list. BandRx is another music app for bands, which grew by 211,400 MAU; the app promises to help bands create their presence on a Facebook tab. Then My Tab allows Page administrators to create custom tabs for their Pages; the app grew by 188,600 MAU.

A few photo apps also made our list. Friends Who Always be There For Me grew by 144,600 MAU; the app compiles Likes on your photos and statuses to tell you who your strongest Facebook friends are. Then Pixable, with 131,200 MAU, promises to be the best way to view Facebook photos; you can receive a daily photofeed, see top photos f the day, be notified of your friend’s activity and more.

Then there was Chase Community Giving with 156,200 MAU; the app allows users to vote on charities to receive grants from the company. There are ample opportunities for users to share with their friends. The French Dromadaire is a virtual and musical greeting card app that allows users to watch and share cards. The app grew by 150,300 MAU, partly because every time you watch a video, a feed story is generated, as well as if you decide to post to your Wall or that of a friend.

Some Facebook users are now seeing several changes to Facebook’s advertising analytics tool in what appears to be the start of the roll-out of a major update. The changes to the Ad Manager include the addition of data on ad reach and average frequency (number of times a user has seen the same ad); a funnel showing targets, reached, and social reach; and a line graph of clicks and social actions generated by an ad.

Facebook appears to be refocusing the tool on new, social key performance indicators such as post-impression conversions in the form of Page Likes and app installs, and moving away from older online advertising metrics such as CPM, which isn’t even readily shown in the updated tool.

Those to whom the update has been rolled out are offered a tour of the new features and the option to download the “Guide to the New Facebook Ads Manager” when they first visit their ads manager. It explains the new data columns in the campaigns view including:

• Reach – the number of unique individuals who viewed an ad
• Frequency – the average number of times a single person viewed an ad
• Social Reach – the absolute number of people who saw the ad with social context (names or pictures of friends who connected with the ad’s destination)
• Connections – social actions taken by users within 24 hours of seeing an ad, including Page Likes, application installs, and Event RSVPs

A new “Audience” funnel shows how many users were within the ad’s targeting parameters, how many saw the ad, and how many saw it with social context within the last 28 days. This, as well as the frequency data, helps advertisers determine if an ad has exhausted its targets and either needs its creative rotated or its targeting switched to prevent the same ad from being shown too many times to the same user.

A “Response” line graph displays the clicks and connections produced by the ad campaign in the last 28 days. This can help advertisers determine if they’re paying for clicks from the right users. A large gap between clicks and connections shows the campaign isn’t performing well, even if clicks or click through rates are high.

In-line ad management allows advertisers to see an ad’s creative, targeting, and individual performance from the campaign view. Some data fields that appear to have been removed from the tool include cost per thousand impressions (CPM), and daily CTR. Facebook has also removed the “actions” and “action rate” columns which measured actions taken from directly within an ad, and replaced them with “Connections” which measure post-impression converison.

The update answer several requests from advertisers, including the ability to see ad frequency and conversions. Highlighting social actions triggered by ads will show the strength of Facebook’s social ad units including Sponsored Stories. By moving away from data common in search and display advertising tools, Facebook is improving the social advertising analytics experience while driving home that fact that this is a radically different advertising platform than what’s available anywhere else on the internet.

To learn Facebook advertising strategies, including how to use Facebook’s new Sponsored Stories social ad unit that the new Ads Manager was designed to track, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

[Thanks to Dan Birdwhistell for the tip and screenshots]

RootMusic’s BandPage, the most popular musician profile Facebook Page tab application, has just announced an update with new features for both free and paid clients. The new options will allow artists to customize their app, and gate music streams and downloads behind actions including Likes, email signups, and tweets. This lets musicians properly brand themselves, collect valuable contact information, and gain viral exposure through their BandPage.

RootMusic launched BandPage in February 2010 and it has since grown steadily to provide profiles for over 150,000 artists. Now with a total daily active user count of 1.2 million and a monthly active user count of 22.7 million, BandPage is the fifth largest application on Facebook behind several Zynga games and a rather spammy quiz app, according to our application traffic growth tracking service AppData.

The company raised a $2.3 million funding round in January and another $800,000 round in March to help it hire engineers and scale to accomodate its massive traffic. While still the frontrunner in the space, ReverbNation’s Band Profile added Like-gating and custom design options to its free Facebook app in in March, which made it a slightly more powerful option than BandPage for those unwilling to pay, until now.

With this update, musicians with a free BandPage Basic account can use the “Tools” button on the right of the app editor to require users to Like their Page to download or stream music. This can be an effective fan acquisition strategy for artists with a strong existing brand or valuable content to offer in exchange for a subscription to their news feed updates.

BandPage Basic account holders can also add an image as the banner of their app and use simple color sliders to control the look of the skeleton of their app — two options that were previously reserved for paying BandPage clients. They can also link their banner to a URL, and add a “Join mailing list” button to the banner. BandPage is now a better free option for managing a Facebook presence than ReverbNation’s Band Profile, which doesn’t have as sophisticated of gating tools and clutters its interface with too many options.

BandPage Plus clients now have access to these Like-gating and customization options and more. They can require users to sign up for their email list or send a tweet in order to unlock song streams and downloads. This means bands with email or Twitter at the core of their marketing plan can use their Facebook Page to drive engagement through these other mediums instead of worrying about their Like count.

A re-sizeable video player can be made a BandPage Plus client’s banner, and two different banners can be shown to fans and non-fans. Musicians could therefore use their non-fan banner to explain that visitors must Like their Page to access their new music video, then reveal the video front and center via the banner to those who choose to become fans.

These updates strengthen BandPage’s position as the replacement for MySpace music and the destination for learning about a musician on Facebook. However, many Facebook Pages find that the majority of their engagement occurs through the news feed, not on their Page’s tabs. Therefore, going forward RootMusic may need to focus less on the Page and more on its widgets that can be shared to the news feed if it wants to retain its supremacy on Facebook.

Facebook has just announced an expansion of its partnership with social game offer provider TrialPay on its DealSpot product that gives users Facebook Credits in exchange for watching branded videos. We covered in detail Facebook and TrialPay’s initial partnered around DealSpot earlier this year, but now Facebook will be presenting the option to earn Credits for video views around the site in its sidebar modules. Video providers Sharethrough, EpicSocial, SocialVibe, and SupersonicAds will be the first companies to have their videos shown in Facebook’s sidebars as well as games via DealSpot.

Facebook says the goal of the expanded partnership is to help game developers monetize a higher percentage of their users by educating users about how to earn and spend Credits and getting more of them to carry a balance of the virtual currency.

To initiate the DealSpot flow from within a game, users click on an icon skinned by the developer to say “Earn Free Credits” or something similar. This will open a video player which users click to start. At the end of the video, Credits are deposited into the user’s account, and they are given the choice of following links to websites or Facebook Pages for the advertiser, or filling out an optional poll. They can then spend their Credits in that game or any other that supports Credits as a payment system — which will be all games on the Facebook Platform starting July 1st when Credits become mandatory.

While over 350 games now use Credits, only those that use Credits as their premium in-game currency can use this version of DealSpot. As on July 1st, 2011, developers that don’t work with Facebook’s approved offer providers (TrialPay is currently the only one) can only serve offers that don’t require identifiable information, such as videos, and they can only reward users with virtual goods, not virtual currency or Credits.

Advertisers could previously go through TrialPay’s DealSpot to present videos as well as traditional paid purchase offers to users within games. But now, advertisers will also be able to gain views of their videos through Facebook’s DealSpot sidebar modules which will appear around the site to users who play games.

Sharethrough, one of the video provider launch partners for this extension of DealSpot, reports that video ad campaigns within Facebook games significant increase brand awareness. Initial tests of DealSpot prior to this expansion which included paid purchase offers showed that DealSpot earned nearly twice as much revenue for developers than their offer wall, which only gives users the option to earn Credits once they’re already trying to purchase a virtual good. This shows that users that typically weren’t interested in making purchases can become paying customers if given the option to earn Credits during normal, free gameplay.

Prior to DealSpot, if a developer wanted to offer users virtual currency or gifts in exchange for watching a branded video, they had to inefficiently set up relationships with video providers one by one. The partnership between Facebook and TrialPay aggregates these providers so developers only have to deal with TrialPay, making it easier for them to earn money without hiring a large sales team.

By making it easy for users to earn Facebook Credits and participate in the Platform’s virtual economy without have to pay real money, Facebook Credits Product Manager Deb Liu tells us the site hopes to “get 3, 4, or 5 percent more users to have Credits in their balance”, which would be a significant increase. The partnership could help developers make more money and make Facebook a more attractive Platform to develop on.

Once Facebook users have tagged a friend in a post or comment by typing the @ symbol or part of their name and selecting the name from a drop-down menu, they can now shorten the tag by deleting parts of the friend’s name. Previously, users had to leave the full name or the tag wouldn’t appear as an active link and trigger a notification for that friend. Facebook has also rolled out an improved version of automatic friend tag suggestions when users type a friend’s name with a capital letter but don’t use the @ symbol.

Tag shortening allows users to keep posts with tags shorter, increasing the likelihood that they’ll be read instead of skimmed by. It also prevents overly formal tags from interrupting otherwise informal posts or comments.

Facebook extended its tagging feature from photos, where it had proved incredibly viral, to allow tagging of friends, Pages, Events, Groups and more in status updates in September 2009. In March, Facebook enabled tagging in comments. The Facebook for Android app allows users to tag friends in posts, but the option isn’t available in the Facebook for iPhone app, other native mobile apps, or on m.facebook.com.

Facebook tested automatically showing the tagging drop down when users capitalized the first letter of a word in August, but the feature annoyed users who often weren’t trying to tag a friend. Facebook software engineer Tom Occhino now tells us this feature has been fully rolled out, but we’ve discovered it has been fixed to only show tag suggestions when users type five or more characters of a friend’s name, or type a whole name that is less than 5 characters. This should help expose the tagging feature who were mentioning the names of friends in posts but not actually tagging them.

When users tag a friend in a post, it appears highlighted. Users can now delete the end or beginning of the tag, such as the first or last name, but the remaining parts of the name will still appear highlighted, and will show up as links once the post is published.

If a friend has more than two names, a tag can be shortened to any adjacent names, meaning users could leave the first and middle name, or middle and last name, but they can’t just remove the middle name. Note that only tags of friends can be shortened, tags of Pages — tags of Pages, Events, Groups and other Facebook properties will become inactive if a user tries to shorten them.

Users sometimes skip text-heavy posts when reading their news feed, so the ability to shorten tags should increase engagement with tagged posts.

Facebook often strives to mimic communication in the physical world when designing its products. When mentioning a friend in conversation with mutual friends we often use only part of their name, but use the full name when speaking to those unfamiliar with that person. Now, the same option to choose how much of a name is mentioned depending on context is available in post tagging.

Update 3/5/2011 3:45pm PST: Facebook has also rolled out an improved version of automatic friend tag suggestions when users type a friend’s name with a capital letter but don’t use the @ symbol.

Facebook looks to have made some interesting hires this week, according to its LinkedIn and Careers Page posts. As far as hires, the company added employees in its engineering, sales and recruiting teams. A couple of big departures included Marcel Laverdet and Jim Midgal, the former Director of Business Development. Postings that disappeared from Facebook’s Careers Page included some seemingly top posts: Head of Mobile Partnerships, the Palo Alto, Calif. headquarters Recruiting Lead and a Manager of Mobile analytics.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

• Adam Campbell – a recent graduate who is now Software Engineer.
• Helen Fu – now an Analytics (Growth) – Intern/Co-op.
• Leyla Khorasani – formerly an Account Executive, now a Sales Associate at Facebook.
• Aaron Kirchner – now a Recruiter at Facebook, formerly worked in a similar field at Two Sigma Investments.
• Avinash Lakshman – formerly a Software Engineer, now a Research Scientist at Facebook.
• Nitin Malhotra – now works in Recruitment at Facebook, formerly an Associate Consultant – ITES Practice at Manpower India.
• Janett Riebe – previously worked on Facebook’s Specialist, Hate/Harassment Team now on the India Landing Team.
• Omer Zach – now a Software Engineering Intern at Facebook, formerly a Veodia intern.

Recent departures, per LinkedIn:

• Sarah Abbott – formerly a Public Relations Associate at Facebook.
• Marcel Laverdet – former Software Engineer.
• Jim Midgal – previously the Director of Business Development.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

• Head of Mobile Partnerships
• Outbound Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Analyst, Business Operations (Commerce Analytics)
• Recruiting Lead – Facebook (Palo Alto)
• Outbound Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Product Marketing Associate 1104001
• Manager, Mobile Analytics
• Site Operations Engineer
• Analyst, Online Sales Operations – Spanish (Dublin)
• Manager, Platform Operations (Dublin)
• French Branding Sales Specialist (Dublin)
• German Branding Sales Specialist (Dublin)
• Account Executive, CPG (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Entertainment (Austin)
• Account Executive, Entertainment (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Gaming (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Local (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Services (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Travel (Austin)
• Account Executive, Travel (Palo Alto)

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

Facebook appears to be looking for a couple of people to head up its recruiting and intern programs, according to job listings posted at the Facebook Careers Page — as well as a Visiting Professor. Other jobs posted included marketing, engineering and sales positions in Palo Alto, Calif., Austin, Texas, Dublin, Ireland and New York City. Engineering jobs were also abundant on the jobs posted to the company’s LinkedIn feed.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Director of Recruiting
• Intern Program Manager
• Site Operations Engineer
• Design Sourcer-Contract
• Agency Marketing Manager (New York)
• Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Software Engineers, SWE1103B (Seattle)
• Visiting Professor
• News Feed Analyst
• Agency Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Palo Alto)
• Compliance Manager (Palo Alto)
• Fraud Analyst (Palo Alto)
• Account Executive, Agency (Austin)
• Account Executive, Local (Austin)
• Manager, National Sales (Palo Alto)
• Sales Manager (Palo Alto)
• Agency Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Palo Alto)
• French Branding Sales Specialist (Dublin)
• German Branding Sales Specialist (Dublin)

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Marketing Communications Copywriter
• Sales Marketing Manager (NY OR Palo Alto & Toronto)
• Product Marketing Manager, Ads
• Agency Marketing Manager (New York)
• Sales Associate (Sao Paulo)
• Account Manager, Online Sales Operations (Sao Paulo)
• Contractor, User Operations Spanish Analyst (Palo Alto)
• Software Engineer (Seattle)
• Software Engineer, Products
• Network Engineer
• MySQL Database Engineer
• Site Operations Engineer
• Software Engineer, Commerce Infrastructure
• Software Engineer, Infrastructure Engineering
• Software Engineer, Tools
• Application Operations Engineer
• Business Process Engineer, Service Management

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

Facebook has begun notifying admins of old groups that much of the content of these community discussion spaces will be archived — in other words migrated to the new Groups feature. However, group members won’t be ported unless the Page is eligible to upgrade instead of archive. Facebook is recommending admins save their old group content before the upgrade or archive, though it doesn’t specify how.

When Facebook launched the new Groups feature in October, it stated that old groups could not be upgraded to new Groups, and that no additional old groups could be created. It soon began the deprecation process for old groups, burying their bookmarks and navigation interface. However, last week alongside the launch of the Send button, it announced some relatively small, active old groups would receive the option to be upgraded into new Groups and keep their members.

Now when admins visit their old groups that don’t qualify for an upgrade, they’ll see a prompt at the top of the screen explaining the archiving process. Old groups will have their photos, wall posts, discussion threads (which will become wall posts), and group descriptions migrated, but not their “recent news”, group officer titles, info box, group network, or members.

Admins of archived old groups will have to re-add their current members, so therefore they should manually copy down the names of their members to facilitate the invite process if they want to reactive the group.

A Help Center article linked to in the notice explains the different migration process for those admins who receive the option to upgrade their old groups. They’ll see an “Upgrade This Group” prompt at the top of the old group, and members will also be able ask the admin to carry out the upgrade. All the same content will be ported over as is with old group archiving, except group members will automatically be added to the new Group.

There is no way for old group admins or members to request the upgrade option instead of the archive option. Facebook may have already decided which old groups will receive which option, so it may be futile to try to ramp up activity in an old group in hopes of attaining the upgrade option.

Overall, Facebook has done a good job of giving advance notice of the deprecation process for old groups and clearly explaining how it will be completed. It could better explain that “saving” old group content really means writing it down or copy and pasting it, though.

With key content being preserved to avoid a backlash, the only thing users have to gripe about is not having their members ported. And since new Group content can trigger notifications and appear in the news feed, it makes sense for Facebook not create an opportunity for spammers by forcibly adding users to the new version of a group that hasn’t been active in years.

[Thanks to Jim Hanas, Director of Social Media at Sonnet Media for the tip]

Advertisers on Facebook that use the self-serve ad tool now have access to a creative library that includes all the combinations of images, headlines, and body text they’ve previously used in ads. These creative sets can be renamed or pulled into new ads, and creative sets can be uploaded without associating them with a particular ad.

The creative library will help to improve the efficiency of A/B testing, running multiple campaigns, and rotating creative, assisting smaller advertisers without big enough budgets to use third-party Ads API tools.

Facebook has offered a “Create Similar Ad” feature for some time that lets users duplicate a previous creative and targeting set. However, advertisers might not always want to have to undo all their targeting parameters just to use the same creative. Starting an ad from the creative library gives advertisers a clean targeting slate.

When advertisers visit the self-serve ad tool, they’ll now notice a “Select Existing Creative” link in the top right corner. When clicked, advertisers can select from any creative set they’ve previously used. They can search for specific creatives by name, though not by words in headlines or body, which might be useful. They can also filter to see creatives assigned to specific campaigns or that aren’t associated with any campaign.

To access the full-featured creative library, advertisers can either visit http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/creative.php or click the “Creative Library” bookmark in the Ads & Pages manager’s left sidebar. This opens a list of all existing creative sets, lets admins edit the names of the sets, preview how they would look in an ad, start a new ad using one of the sets, or upload a creative set without assigning it to a campaign. More information about the creative library can be found in the Facebook Help Center.

By using ad creatives from the library that have already been published, advertisers may be able to expedite Facebook’s creative approval process that can cause a delay between a few minutes and a few days between when ads are submitted and published. It’s not exactly clear at this time how the approval process treats creatives from the library, though.

To truly take advantage of Facebook advertising, buyers must multivariant test creative and targeting combinations and shift budget towards the best performers. To do this at scale, advertisers need to use the Facebook Ads API, but signing with one of the Ads API tool or service providers can require a big budget. For smaller advertisers, the creative library will make testing of a few dozen combinations easier, helping them come closer to compete with those able to test thousands of variants.