Facebook Ads API full-service provider AdParlor today will launch its new self-serve tool called Pulse designed specifically for ad agencies. The tool permits for granular control over ad campaign management, and can be licensed in AdParlor-branded or white-labeled form.

The API lets third-party companies build advanced tools and service that let big advertisers test and run a large number of campaigns efficiently. Social game developers were some of the first heavy users of the API, and those companies have been AdParlor’s core clients to date. But now, with the growth of Facebook as an advertising platform in the US, AdParlor is looking to bring in more brands, which is what the update is about today.

Pulse will allow AdParlor, which specializes in social game and performance advertising, to scale its business and serve a wider range of media buyers.

AdParlor launched its managed spend, cost per acquisition-based Ads API service in mid-2010. Its advanced optimization algorithms helped maximize return on investment for clients, and by November it was running advertisements for 7 of the 20 fastest growing games on Facebook.

In March 2011, AdParlor signed a deal to exclusively handle Groupon’s millions of dollars in Facebook advertising. The company now also counts SEGA, and ad agencies Publicis and Omnicom as clients, and manages over 15 billion impressions a month, making it one of the most popular Facebook Ads API services or tools on the Platform.

However, AdParlor’s CEO says that “Large digital advertising agencies are looking for more control and transparency over the campaigns they are running”, so it developed Pulse. The company charges Pulse clients a percentage of spend. There’s no minimum spend, though AdParlor is approving inquiries to use the tool on a case-by-case basis and a large spend probably helps.

The full-service option is better for companies without in-house media buying teams, while Pulse allows clients to manipulate targeting and creative themselves instead of just receiving performance reports. Though Pulse is self-serve, AdParlor account managers will train Pulse clients and make recommendations on campaign management.

Agencies can use Pulse to hone in on target markets through CPM and CPC ad campaign multi-variant testing, and ad landing pages can be multi-variant tested as well.Agencies can also optimize for cost per fan, as many large brands that advertise through agencies are seeking to grow their Facebook fan base. A robust user management module lets clients give different employees ands brand representatives different permissions

Through the white-labeled version of the tool, umbrella agencies can offer AdParlor’s ad management system to their sub-agencies or clients that want more control. Advertisers use their own Facebook ads account, and can use their own Ads API key, allowing them to be recognized by Facebook for their high spend.

The AdParlor-branded tool can also be used by affiliates and Facebook-integrated websites with performance targets. Both versions support Facebook’s social ad units including the new Sponsored Stories, as well as conversion tracking through a detailed native reporting and visualization system to measure ROI. Reports can be exported in .csv format as well.

We’ve seen a growing demand for Ads API tools and services from leading ad agencies over the last few months as the major brands who employ them turn their attention towards social advertising. Havas Digital recently agreed to use a tool developed by BLiNQ Media. Facebook is also courting agencies, having recently launched Facebook Studio as a destination site where they can learn Facebook marketing best practices.

AdParlor is now leveraging the brand it has built around top-notch optimization technology to grow its business through Pulse while allowing its managed full-service team to remain focused on clients that need assistance.

Facebook now provides more distribution options when users click the “Share” button third-party sites as well as Facebook photos, Pages, and rich media news feed stories. In addition to being able to publish to one’s own wall and the news feed, or via a private message, content can now be posted to Facebook Groups or a specific friend’s wall.

The expanded distribution options show Facebook’s growing drive to get users to share more frequently by letting publish to those who’ll find a piece of content most relevant, rather than cluttering the feeds of all of one’s friends. It effectively ports the functionality of the new Send button to all existing Share buttons.

Previously, Share buttons Facebook defaulted to publishing to one’s own wall — which in turn triggers news feed stories for friends. They also offered the option to switch to sending a private Message by using a small link in the lower left hand corner of the publisher.

Now, the top of the Share publisher shows a prominent drop-down menu allowing users to choose from posting content “On your own Wall”, “On a friend’s Wall”, “In a group”, or “In a private message”. The last three options provide a typeahead for selecting which friends or Groups will receive the post. The Share links appear across the Facebook site on photos, photo albums, Pages, user profiles, Notes, Events, and news feed stories.

Facebook has been providing more selective sharing options over the past few months. It launched Groups in October to make it easy to share to a specific set of friends. It then launched the Send button at the end of April so users could share content from third-party sites to Groups, via Messages, or by email.

Web publishers, especially niche content producers, are realizing that users may be more likely to share if they don’t have to broadcast content to all their friends at once. Since the launch of the social plugin, 25,000 sites have integrated the Send button.

Now content that lives within Facebook, has already been shared there, or that display’s Facebook’s now deprecated “Share” button can transmitted directly to those who’ll find it most compelling. Since Groups and wall posts generate notifications, publishers should be excited about the potential for their content to be shared in ways that might receive highly qualified clicks, even if fewer impressions.

Strategies for how your website can use Facebook’s social plugins, including the new Send button, can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing through Facebook.

Giveaways, photo contests, Mother’s Day and talking birds were part of the campaigns featured this week in our Facebook campaigns post. Two alcohol companies utilized free giveaways to grow their fan bases and engage users on Facebook, a charity tried to steer users celebrating Mother’s Day to a greater cause and a talking bird chatted with users about German phone products.

We’ve excerpted two of the campaigns below. You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of dozens of other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

Camarena Tequila Cinco de Mayo Sweepstakes

Goal: Page Growth, Engagement, Network Exposure, Product Purchase

Core Mechanic: On Cinco de Mayo, the Camarena Tequila company gave away a prize every five minutes for 24 hours on its Facebook Page.

Method: Starting on Thursday at midnight and running for 24 hours until the next midnight (Friday), Camarena Tequila gave away a prize every 5 minutes. Prizes included beach towels, sunglasses, coasters and similar prizes. The promotion was Like-gated, thus increasing the Page’s fan base with the promotion, and fans could enter the promotion every five minutes if they didn’t win the first time.

Impact: The Page grew by thousands of Likes during the period of the promotion, as well as appeared in the news feeds of thousands more. The promotion was simple, instantly gratifying and left users with a pleasant brand experience. Overall, giving away sunglasses and coasters (plus postage), is a cost effective way to promote your brand on Facebook, considering the amount of exposure the Page received; currently the Like count stands at 19,600.

Gigaset’s Talk to the Bird Campaign

Goal: Engagement, Network Exposure, Brand Loyalty

Core Mechanic: A series of video spots featuring a talking bird using the Gigaset phones, and also a livestream that allowed users to “talk” to the birds.

Method: The campaign included three commercials in which users can watch the bird “talk” using products by Gigaset, a German phone manufacturer. Then, users are encouraged to talk to the bird themselves by participating in the app, which streamed them with a live macaw parrot to the rest of the app’s users, then this video was uploaded to the Facebook Page for other users to see. The campaign lasted for seven days.

Impact: The Gigaset Page is just under 3,000 Likes currently and more than 100 users uploaded their “chats” with the bird to the app during the course of the May 2 through May 9 promotion. The campaign is interesting because it’s the users who are the focus of the app — not the product. The promo allowed users to both interact individually, and collectively, with the promotion.

How are top brands in the industry designing their Facebook marketing campaigns? See the Facebook Marketing Bible for detailed breakdowns of dozens of Featured Campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

A varied collection of Facebook applications made up our list of top apps by monthly active users this week. There were page tabs and badges, two music apps, a photo and quiz app, birthday cards, the Cupid dating app, a Turkish video app and Yahoo’s app.

Apps on our list grew from between 377,400 and 2.1 million MAU during the past week. The list is compiled using AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook, and covers those that gained the most users in the past seven days.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	Gardens of Time	6,197,645	+2,154,407	+53%
2.	iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa	5,212,685	+1,649,345	+46%
3.	Zombie Lane	5,645,982	+1,576,756	+39%
4.	60 Photos	3,085,885	+1,450,172	+89%
5.	BandPage by RootMusic	23,083,168	+1,080,896	+5%
6.	Gourmet Ranch	5,479,174	+1,035,618	+23%
7.	Quiz Taco!	12,468,190	+978,901	+9%
8.	Diamond Dash	7,195,224	+921,723	+15%
9.	Birthday Greeting Cards	1,088,540	+909,447	+508%
10.	Bubble Saga	3,349,498	+853,485	+34%
11.	Welcome Tab for Pages	2,694,410	+788,197	+41%
12.	friend.ly	5,017,212	+675,132	+16%
13.	Badges	1,511,653	+556,282	+58%
14.	Band Profile: Profile Pages for Musicians	9,042,414	+495,344	+6%
15.	Cupid	7,332,396	+434,298	+6%
16.	BOSS維加斯	1,483,689	+428,664	+41%
17.	Video İzlemek	537,495	+407,533	+314%
18.	Yahoo!	14,272,624	+406,171	+3%
19.	Tavla	1,087,255	+380,556	+54%
20.	Mynet Çanak Okey	2,958,897	+377,360	+15%

Two Page administrator apps were on our list. Iframe + Static FBML + Welcome Tab = iwipa with 1.6 million new MAU this week and Welcome Tab for Pages with 788,200 MAU. Both apps allow users to customize a landing tab for Pages either with social media content or in different programming languages. There was another Page tool, Badges, which grew by 556,300 MAU and creates a “badge” for a Page that users can share to their stream from a Page tab.

Two music apps on the list  grew significantly, too. BandPage by RootMusic grew by more than 1 million MAU mostly in the United States, then Band Profile: Profile Pages for Musicians grew by 495,300 MAU. We wrote recently about the updated RootMusic app, which includes Like-gating, more customizations, music streaming, more opportunities for downloads and branding, as well as other features.

The rest of the list included a photo app, 60 Photos with 1.4 million MAU, which allows users to see and rate friends’ Facebook photos, publishing a feed story each time. Quiz Taco with 978,900 MAU is a quiz app for your Facebook friends that publishes feed stories every time you answer a question. Birthday Greeting Cards grew by 909,500 MAU and seemingly allows users to send birthday cards to friends, but asks you to buy an in-app currency first.

The friend.ly Connect app grew by 675,100 MAU. Cupid the dating app grew by 434,300 MAU mostly in the US, United Kingdom and India; the app asks you dating questions about your Facebook friends, publishing a story to their Wall. Video İzlemek is a Turkish video app that grew by 407,500 MAU allowing users to view, share and Like videos. Finally, Yahoo’s Facebook app grew by 406,200 MAU.

Check in later this week for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Here are all the latest headlines from around Inside Network this past week.

Inside Mobile Apps

Tracking the convergence of mobile apps, social platforms, and virtual goods.

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

• Emerging Paid iOS Apps: Non-Gaming Apps Rise On The Charts
• Protect the Stars on iOS in Celebrity Bodyguard
• Monday Mobile Roundup: RIM, Mobile Payments, Lawsuits, & More

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

• EA to Acquire Australian Mobile Game Developer Firemint
• Emerging Top-Grossing iOS Apps: Any Music Downloader, MMORPGs & Books Rise
• Glu Forsees Slower Revenue Growth on Uncertainty Around Apple Offer Wall Policy
• Ponies: More Violent Than Most Think in Unpleasant Horse on iOS
• King.com Games Gain Growth Through Cross-Platform Play

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

• Wednesday Mobile Roundup: iTunes Competitors, BlackBerry, Google, & More
• Android Revenue Still One-Eighth to One-Tenth of iOS, Glu Says
• Emerging Top Free Apps on iOS: Office Jerk, Talking Ben, Planetary  HD
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Sharkius Games, Idel Games, Loot Drop & More
• Security Specialist Says He Was Able to De-Anonymize Device IDs of OpenFeint Users
• Firemint’s Acquisition Price Was Less Than $25 Million, EA Says
• EA Says iOS Revenues Doubled in The Fourth Quarter From a Year Earlier

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

• Mobile Advertising Network Jumptap Raises $25 Million From Existing Investors
• New Hires in Mobile: Big Blue Bubble, Booyah, Gameloft, & More
• Thursday Mobile Round-Up: Yudu’s Subscription Product, Android Shipments
• Trade Nations Comes To Facebook Following Success on iOS
• Messaging Startup GroupMe Acquires Blackberry Developer Sensobi

Friday, May 6th, 2011

• Friday Mobile Round-Up: Janrain Social Log-In, Visa Mobile Payments
• Developers Still in the Dark About Apple’s Policies on Incentivized Installs, Rankings

Inside Social Games

Covering all the latest developments at the intersection of games and social platforms.

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

• Diamond Dash Slowing Down On This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• YouRiding Bodyboarding Battle Hopes For Easy Ride On Facebook With Competitive Play, Future Mobile Apps
• Bubble Saga Captivates Early Crowd, Shows Strong Growth

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

• Kabam Declares Global Warfare on Facebook’s Core Gamers
• King.com Games Gain Growth Through Cross-Platform Play
• N.O.V.A. Elite’s User Figures Blast Into Orbit Thanks to Impressive Graphics and Competitive Gameplay
• Top 25 Facebook Games For May 2011
• Zynga Games Command One Quarter Of This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by DAU

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

• Gourmet Ranch Keeps Growth Fresh With Fishing Expansion, Royal Wedding Campaign
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Loot Drop, Synapse Games, Sharkius Games & More
• EA Looking to Get More “Digital Service” Social Games Onto Facebook
• NBA Dynasty No “Rival” to NBA Legend, Despite Shared License

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

• New Hires in Social Gaming: Booyah, CrowdStar, Cie Games, & More
• Trade Nations Comes To Facebook Following Success on iOS
• Facebook Deepens Partnership with TrialPay DealSpot to Offer Credits for Watching Videos
• Farkle Pro’s Pay-to-Play Dice Rolling Sees Steady Growth

Friday, May 6th, 2011

• Traditional Video Game Titles And Tie-Ins Top This Week’s List Of Emerging Facebook Games
• Recent Zynga Filing Shows $490 Million in Funding
• Zynga, Other Social Game Developers, Using More Advanced Game-Play Tech
• Social Gaming Roundup: MyFarm Experiment, Social Startups, LOGIN Conference, & More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Sunday, May 1st, 2011

• Will Facebook Profiles Gain Richer Open Graph Integration This Year?

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

• Music, Page Tools, Photos, Zoosk and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Frito-Lay, Snickers, American Express, Carnival Cruises and More
• With 44 of the Top 100 Pages Promoting Music, Relaunched “Music on Facebook” Page Shows Site’s Renewed Focus
• Facebook Page Admins Can Offer Pre-Paid Deals Directly With ThruSocial and FaceItPages

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

• New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Kontangent, Nanigans, Syncapse, Vitrue and Wildfire
• Enrique Igelsias, Football, TV, Disney, Converse and More on This Week’s Top 15 Growing Facebook Pages
• Facebook Sponsored Stories Ads Have 46% Higher CTR, 18% Lower Cost Per Fan Says TBG Digital Test
• Causes to Bring the Big Donor Communication Experience to All Donors and Facebook Pages
• Facebook for Blackberry PlayBook Includes Core Features but Lags Far Behind iOS and Android
• Facebook Allows Users to Hide Recent Activity Story Types From Their Profile Walls
• Facebook Tech Ops Exec Jonathan Heiliger to Depart by End of Summer
• Top 25 Facebook Games For May 2011

Wednesday, May 4th, 2011

• Birthdays, Security, Badges, Mobile and Spotify on This Week’s Top 20 Facebook Apps by DAU
• The 25 Most Liked Pages on Facebook, Spring 2011
• Facebook Ads API Tool Efficient Frontier Acquires Page Management Tool Context Optional
• Facebook’s Sel-Serve Ad Tool Now Includes a Creative Library
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Blue Fang Games, Idle Games, Kabam & More
• Facebook Notifies Admins That Content but Not Members of MOst Old Groups Will Be Migrated

Thursday, May 5th, 2011

• Facebook Careers Postings: Recruiting, Ads, Engineering and More
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Engineering, Recruiting, Mobile, Sales and More
• Facebook Allows @ Mention Tags of Friends to be Shortened
• Facebook Deepens Partnership with TrialPay DealSpot to Offer Credits for Watching Videos
• Early Look: RootMusic Adds Like-Gating, Email Capture and More to BandPage
• Facebook Rolling Out Major Update to Ad Analytics with Audience Funnels and Conversion Data

Friday, May 6th, 2011

• Video, Friends, Chase Community Giving, Bands, Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps
• India, Brazil, Egypt Among Countries With Most New Facebook Users in April 2011
• Refreshed Facebook for BlackBerry Improves Integration with Native Contacts App
• Platform Update: Re-Authentication, Raised App Tester Capp
• Facebook Roundup: Govt Requests, Stock, Skype, Tablet Apps, Like & Send Buttons, Syria, Zuckerberg and More

How Facebook Handles Govt Requests – Facebook recently told Forbes.com that the company has a dedicated team of professionals supervised by two former federal cybercrime prosecutors to deal with governmental requests for user data — subpoenas, for example. The company says they do not have a streamlined process to do this, but respond when necessary to legal requests.

MOL Malaysia Owns $100M Facebook Stock – TechCrunch wrote an interesting post this week pointing to the fact that MOL Global in Malaysia owns $100 million in Facebook stock (valued at $31 a share) that came in a deal when the company sold Friendster’s patents to Facebook last year. MOL received 700,000 shares as part of the deal, which have turned into 3.5 million shares since.

2.5M Sites Have Like Buttons – SearchEngineLand reported that 2.5 million websites have Like buttons.

25,000 Websites Have Integrated the Facebook Send Button – The Facebook + Media Page posted that since the April 25th launch, 25,000 sites have added the Send button social plugin. Meanwhile, Facebook’s Engineering Team posted a note about how the company built the Send button, which allows users to share a URL to their Facebook Groups, to specific friends via Facebook Messages, or in an email.

Facebook, Google, Try to Partner with Skype – Both Facebook and Google are trying to partner with Skype, reported Reuters.

Syria Attacks Facebook – The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported this week that several ISPs in Syria have reported security warnings that are really a man-in-the-middle attack against the HTTPS version of Facebook.

Federal Investigator to Preserve Govt Facebook Posts – The head of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa, is concerned that official federal social media updates on platforms like Facebook will not be preserved for posterity. Legally, all documents created by an administration must be archived.

PowerReviews Raises $10M – Ecommerce solutions provider PowerReviews, which we wrote about last month, raised $10 million in new funding led by Four Rivers Group, bringing total funding to $37 million this week, according to TechCrunch.

Facebook Friending in Conflict Regions – The Friends Without Borders Page yesterday released an infographic visualizing data from http://peace.facebook.com/ It shows that the growth rate of friendships across conflicted borders such as Israel – Palestine has increased significantly this year.

Zuckerberg Buys Palo Alto Home – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently purchased a home in Palo Alto, California for $7 million.

Warner Bros. Acquires Flixster - Warner Bros. Home Entertainment recently acquired Flixster, a social movie discovery website, TechCrunch reported. Rotten Tomatoes, the movie rating site, was also included in the acquisition. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Booshaka Classifies Facebook Likes – Booshaka, a Facebook search company, now ranks and classifies your Facebook activity via comments, Likes and posts.

Tigerlily Raises $1.3M – Tigerlily, a French Page management company, raised $1.3 million USD this week and is set to use this additional funding to expand in Europe.

Today’s Platform Update from the Facebook Developers Blog explains a new security function for apps that allows them to ask users to re-authenticate by re-entering their password, which can be especially helpful for commerce apps. Facebook has also raised the API-created application tester limit to 500 and now allows developers to reset a tester’s password via the API. These changes make Facebook applications a safer place to transmit sensitive data, and make development on the Platform simpler.

In some cases, developers may want verify a user’s identity before they take an important action, such as making a purchase or changing their settings. This helps developers avoid customer service or billing issues stemming from unauthorized actions that may have occurred because a user’s session was hijacked either in person by someone on a shared computer, or by a hacker. It can also ensure parents aren’t charged because their kids sat down at the computer and started randomly clicking.

Now developers can add additional re-authentication parameters to an authentication request through the dialogs or Graph API OAuth system. Under auth_type the can include https to require a password to be reentered if a secure cookie isn’t detected, or reauthenticate to unconditionally require a password to be entered. Facebook encourages developers taking advantage of the re-authentication feature to protect themselves from replay attacks by adding auth_nonce, which “specifies an app-generated alphanumeric nonce” or cryptographic cookie.

In November 2010, Facebook implemented an API-controlled application tester system so developers wouldn’t have to create fake accounts that violated the site’s terms of service in order to test their apps. Developers could only create 50 testers per app, through. Facebook has now raised this cap to 500.

Facebook recently added a test user’s email and password to the response sent when they’re created to augment the  id, access_token, and login_url already included in the response. In case developers need a tester’s password, or need to change it, they can now reset the password via the Graph API. This will alleviate the need to meticulously copy down the passwords received when testers are created.

To change a tester’s password, developers can follow the sample code provided by Facebook:

  $new_password = "YOUR_NEW_PASSWORD";

  $graph_url = "https://graph.facebook.com/" . $obj->{'id'}
    . "?password=" . $new_password . "&method=post&" . $app_access_token;

  $response = file_get_contents($graph_url);
  if($response) {
    echo "Password changed successfully.";
  }

Blackberry has released a “refresh” of its Facebook for BlackBerry v2.0 beta app that improves the app’s integration with Blackberry’s native contacts, phone, and SMS apps; adds some new feature to chat and profiles; and makes it compatible with the outdated BlackBerry Device Software v5.0.

These enhancements underscore Facebook’s increasing role as an aggregator of contact information that augments one’s own phonebook.

The refreshed beta app is now available to registered BlackBerry Beta Zone users, and the new features will likely appear in the official version of the app when it’s released. The initial beta release of v2.0 added Chat. BlackBerry also just released a native Facebook app for its PlayBook tablet device. While it included an innovative dual-panel Chat interface, it lacked crucial mobile features such as Events and Places making it better as an alternative Facebook interface for use at home than a true mobile app.

Facebook for BlackBerry v2.0 can now click on BlackBerry PINs, phone numbers and email addresses they see on Facebook wall posts or profiles to open a menu of options for using that contact information with the device’s native apps. Users can add data to their contacts, call or SMS phone numbers, send an email to clicked address, or send a BlackBerry Message to a PIN. The interface works better than that of Facebook for iPhone, which automatically takes the corresponding action when contact info is clicked, rather than giving the option to save the information for later.

Facebook asks users to connect a mobile number to their account for security purposes, leading them to also display their numbers in their profiles, making Facebook a more and more reliable way to find the phone numbers of associates. This can be especially useful in emergency situations, and these new BlackBerry features facilitate this utility.

The app has also improved the Chat experience by letting users see if their conversation partner is currently typing — another feature lacking from Facebook for iPhone and some other native apps. Users can also search their friend lists to find chat partners quickly. In terms of performance, BlackBerry reports that it has improved Chat connection, shortened online contacts list loading time, and made Chat message delivery notifications more consistent.

Other minor improvements include the ability to see a friend’s friend list and your mutual friends, and easier navigation of the news feed thanks to a persistently visible cursor. Compatibility with the old BlackBerry Device Software v5.0 that was released in late 2009 means those with older devices can use the latest Facebook features.

It’s impressive to see BlackBerry one-upping in some way the Facebook for iPhone app.  While it still lacks some major features present on the iOS app including Groups, the company’s mobile development team appears to be focusing on deepening the Facebook integration with BlackBerry’s core value proposition — contact organization.

Continuing trends we’ve seen growing over the past year, Asian and Latin American countries gained the most Facebook users in the world during April, with India leading the way, according to data from our Facebook traffic measurement service, Inside Facebook Gold.

There are now nearly 25 million Facebook users in the country of 1.16 billion people, an increase of 1.78 million from the start of last month. Facebook appears to be reaching the wealthier, more networked parts of the country — its mobile efforts, like the free Zero data service, could help it grow across much more of the country in the years to come.

Having reached around half the total populations in Europe and North America, Facebook had slower growth in these regions. The US only grew by a couple hundred thousand users, many fewer than the millions Facebook had been adding every month for most of the past year. It lost users in Canada in the United Kingdom, although we’ve fluctuating gains and losses recently, and it’s not clear what the trend is.

Looking further down on our list of the ten countries with the most Facebook users, Southeast Asia is heavily represented, with the Philippines and Indonesia each gaining more than a million users, and Thailand appearing higher than it usually has — the country has been slower to move from other social networks to Facebook than many of its neighbors. Brazil leads Latin America with, 1.21 million more, but Mexico is not far behind, and Argentina and Peru also make the list.

Finally, Egypt has continued to grow after Facebook was credited with helping protestors in the country successfully overthrow the government. It gained more than half a million new users, part of a 3-month growth rate of 38%. Turkey, as it has for years, continued to grow quickly as well.

Stats on Facebook’s top 25 countries this month are publicly viewable at the Inside Facebook Gold Stats Page.