Facebook has begun notifying Page admins that it will be removing the Discussions tab application from all Pages on October 31, 2011. The in-house app, also known as Discussion Boards, allows Pages to host simple forums. However, Facebook says “The best way to encourage conversation and feedback is through posts and comments on your wall”. It will therefore eliminate the Discussions app, despite AppData showing that it has 22 million monthly active users.

Getting conversations to happen on the wall will make them more visible, and thanks to the new Friend Activity default tab app, the change will make Pages more immediately relevant to users. This is important to Facebook as Pages are not currently getting many views, which reduces the product’s value to brands and makes them less likely to pay Facebook to advertise for their Pages. The removal of old Discussions threads could anger some users and Page admins.

Facebook launched the Discussions tab alongside Pages years ago to permit longer-form, threaded conversations about specific topics within Pages. The app had as many as 54 million MAU and 27 million daily active users in December 2010. It has since declined to 22 million MAU and 914,000 DAU.

The upcoming removal of Discussions tabs is confirmed by the Help Center document. This is linked to in the alert to Page admins about the change which appears atop some Pages. It appears that Pages can no longer install the app. Earlier this month, Facebook informed Page admins it would be removing the Send an Update direct communication tool.

Users still engaged with the app or that had important conversation on it in the past may be displeased to find their threads erased. Page admins who conducted customer service on Discussions or that had invested time into moderating threads might also be angry. At this time, Facebook doesn’t appear to offer any way to export content from the app before it’s removed.

Tips for how to moderate your Page’s wall in order to avoid customer services problems and help your business can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

Since Facebook combined the Top News and Most Recent tabs into a single, hybrid news feed last week, we’ve been watching for fluctuations in the volume of Page posts and other content types seen on the site’s home page. A study by EdgeRank Checker shows that impressions per post are down 33% but that Likes and comments are up 17%. However, there hasn’t been enough time or data since the changes to make an accurate assessment of the impact of the changes.

But if this data holds true over time, Facebook may have succeeded in making the news feed more engaging. Brands trying to reach the biggest possible audience with institutional marketing through their Pages may be hurt by the change, while those aiming to drive clicks and discussion may be helped by the new hybrid feed.

We’ve also seen steep increase in the presence of reshared content, particularly single photos. This may be due to Facebook showing the number of times a post has been reshared next to its comment count, and the increased display size of photos shared to the news feed.

Before the news feed change, Facebook users could choose between a Top News feed of the most relevant content and a Most Recent feed of other posts in reverse-chronological order. Page updates would frequently appear in the Most Recent feed. This meant more savvy users who switched between the two tabs had a place to go to absorb lots of Page update impressions, but novice users who stayed on Top News might only see the occasional Page update

The hybrid feed combines these two tabs, generally showing more popular content while minor updates are displayed as activity stories in the home page’s right sidebar Ticker. It means users who don’t act to filter their news feed may see more Page content, but more experienced users may see less. In the first days after the change, it seemed like the news feed had very little Page content in it, but that those that did appear were generally very popular and compelling.

EdgeRank Checker’s study seems to confirm this hypothesis that Page updates are appearing less frequently but that they’re being targeted better such that they reach users more likely to think they’re relevant and so leave feedback. The study looked at 1500 randomly selected posts over two time periods, from September 14th to 19th and from the 23rd to 28th, and selected to measure impressions, Likes, and comments before and after the news feed change on the same days of the week.

As the study uses both a small sample size and total time frame, the statistics should not be taken as fact. Another Page analytics company would not disclose data, saying it was too early to make an accurate comparison. However, one of our Pages was seeing increased feedback and reduced impressions that approximate EdgeRank Checker’s findings — and the size of the impact makes it worth writing about now.

EdgeRank Checker believes the difference may be in part due to Facebook causing posts to decay faster. This means the news feed is giving more prominence to recently published updates than it did before.

We believe this increased time decay may cause Page posts to quickly drop down into the “Recent Stories” portion of the news feed if they don’t see much engagement, reducing impressions. Compelling and relevant updates by Pages may be tagged with the Top Story blue corner, and therefore be given prime placement near the top of the feed, causing users to take the time to read and engage with them rather than skimming by them once they start scrolling.

Another contributing factor may be that if a user hasn’t logged in to Facebook for a few days, they’ll only see massively popular or relevant posts at the top of the news feed, and Page posts don’t usually have such as high EdgeRank score. Therefore, the top spot may be less likely to be filled with a Page update now than before, reducing impressions.

Increased Presence of ReShared Photos

The other most noticeable change we’ve seen in the news feed is the presence of more reshared photos. We don’t have data to support this claim, but single reshared photos seem to be appearing in the news feed much more frequently .There are several factors that may have contributed to this:

• Facebook added the “View Shares” count and link to news feed updates, which identifies popular content and reminds users about the option to reshare
• The ability to change to visibility of updates to Public more easily may be causing more photos to be shared publicly and therefore be eligible for re-sharing
• Photos now appear larger in the news feed, making them more eye catching and likely to be reshared
• The larger photos look great in the news feed, and Facebook may be making them more prominent to create a more instantly satisfying look and feel for the home page

The increased feed prominence of single photos makes Facebook a more powerful viral distribution platform for photo-based memes. Facebook even took advantage of this itself to spread a photo debunking the myth that it might start to charge users for access in the future.

However, the increased prominence has also given rise to spammy apps that publish photos tagging multiple friends. This is because reshares of these photos include links back to the apps that help them grow. One called My Friends DNA by Shoutflow quickly rose to 41,000 DAU but has since dropped to nearly zero, indicating it may have been temporarily shut down by Facebook.

Facebook has plenty of data on the volume of different content types in the old news feed. With time, it may try to align new content volumes with the old ones, or improve the EdgeRank news feed sorting algorithms to favor posts that are frequently Liked, commented on, and reshared, rather than simply viewed.

it will take some time before enough data becomes available to conduct accurate analysis of the impact of the news feed changes. There is a chance that Facebook has decreased the EdgeRank of Page posts, but brands and Page management companies should consider holding their concerns until more data becomes available.

Yesterday, Facebook announced updates to the Requests 2.0 including the introduction of frictionless requests that don’t require users to complete a Requests dialog. This could get users to send more Requests, helping apps gain new users and reengage existing users. However, some users might opt in to frictionless requests without fully understanding the feature’s implications, and later be surprised to find out their in-app actions have been sending Requests to their friends

It also set the deprecation schedule for FBML. Support will be discontinued on January 1st, 2012, and apps using FBML will cease to work on June 1st, 2012. Last week’s Platform Update also noted additions to the Graph API, a change to setAutoResize, and a new way for developers to have their apps indexed. Finally, tomorrow is the migration deadline for OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS.

Requests 2.0 Updates

Previously, developers had to force users through a Requests dialog every time they want to send a Request. Developers can now enable frictionless requests, which allows them to automatically send Requests on behalf of its users when a user opts to send a Request to a friend they’ve already sent one to.

If enabled, when users go to send their first request to a specific friend, they’ll see a checkbox for “Don’t ask again before sending Requests to [this friend] from this app.” Next time they opt to send a Request to that same friend from that same app, the Request will be automatically sent without interrupting usage of the app.

As Requests are an important driver of growth and retention for apps, making it easier for users to send Requests should help apps increase their user counts. Frictionless Requests may also be compatible with Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile app platform, which will allow users to send Requests that are delivered as notifications.

Facebook is also implementing a new breaking change to Requests 2.0 that will improve its performance. A new migration setting called “Requests 2.0 Efficient” is now available in the Developer app. When activated this “changes the format for request IDs in the JavaScript requests callback method.” Developers should make the change to their JavaScript and then enable the migration.

In 90 days on January 1st, 2012, all apps will be opted into both Requests 2.0 Efficient and Upgrade to Requests 2.0. Developers should make sure they’re ready to prevent breakage. New apps are now opted into both these migrations and cannot opt out. Apps are also now responsible for deleting old Requests. Details for making the migration are available in the Requests documentation.

FBML Deprecation

Facebook announced over a year ago its plans to deprecate FBML. In March 2011, it ceased to allow new FBML apps to be created. Now it has scheduled the final two steps of the deprecation.

On January 1st, 2012 Facebook will stop supporting FBML and cease to fix bugs except for those related to privacy and security. On June 1st, 2012, Facebook will remove all FBML endpoints and any apps built on the language will stop functioning. The deprecation will make Facebook app development more accessible as programmers won’t have to use a proprietary language.

The two main parts of FBML that remain useful to developers are Requests and Static FBML. Requests can now be handled with Requests 2.0, and Static FBML can be replaced with iframe apps. Several Facebook Preferred Developer Consultants offer free iframe app builders, including Wildfire Interactive. Facebook has also worked with Wildfire to offer a FBML to iframe migration tutorial. XFBML will not be deprecated.

Platform Updates

As detailed in a Platform Update, problems with FB.Canvas.setAutoResize have forced Facebook to rename the call for controlling how an app is displayed on the Canvas page. The function is now named FB.Canvas.setAutoGrow and only works for increasing the size of an app. To shrink an app, Facebook recommends using “FB.Canvas.setSize with a height parameter to set the iframe height explicitly.” FB.Canvas.setAutoResize will be deprecated on January 1st, 2012.

Mutual friends between two users can now be retrieved from the Graph API with the call: https://graph.facebook.com/me/mutualfriends/FRIEND_ID

The following information about an application can now be pulled from the Graph API:

• canvas_name
• logo_url
• icon_url
• company
• daily_active_users
• weekly_active_users
• monthly_active_users

To do so, developers can use the call https://graph.facebook.com/ANY_APP_ID

To simplify how apps are indexed by Facebook’s internal search engine, now when apps reach 10 month active users they are queued to be indexed in the next index rebuild which happens ever two to four weeks. Developers no long need use the setting page’s Submit to Search link. This will make sure apps that are gaining users aren’t accidentally left out of search.

OAuth 2.0 and HTTPS Migration Deadline Tomorrow

In May, Facebook announced that developers would eventually need to migrate to a more secure way to pass access tokens and allow users to browse their apps over a secure HTTPS connection. This followed a security issue where apps were found to be leaking permissions tokens that could give third-parties unauthorized access to user data. The migration becomes mandatory tomorrow, October 1st, 2011.

Developers must use OAuth 2.0 for authentication, encrypt access tokens, and have an SSL certificate and provide a secure browsing URL. To assist developers, Facebook has released admin.setAppProperties which allows the necessary settings changes to be made programmatically. FBML apps must also have SSL certificates and secure browsing URLs.

The following is an excerpt of an entry in our Facebook Marketing Bible. The full version contains advertising strategies for using Page Insights, tracking tags, and your business’ identity to determine when is the optimal time to run ad campaigns.

Scheduling is one of the only ways to narrow the targeting of Facebook ads without having to pay more. By running campaigns when their target audience are more likely to convert, advertisers can attain a higher return on investment on the Facebook ad spend.

Different demographics are more likely to make purchases at certain times of day, so reaching them with ads at those peak times can boost sales. Companies should determine when these peak times are, either by analyzing conversion data and thinking about the behavior of their customers, and then pause and unpause their campaigns to run ads at those times.

Here we’ll discuss findings of a study on when certain demographics are most likely to convert, then provide strategies for maximizing advertising performance through scheduling.

Conversion Rates Fluctuate by Hour and Day

Due to varying behavior patterns, different demographics of Facebook users are more or less likely to make purchases online at different times of day or on different days of the week. TBG Digital conducted a study on two billion cost per acquisition Facebook ad impressions that it ran for its clients.

The study shows that “male consumers are 42% more likely to execute an online purchase during evening hours versus female users”. The study also indicates that “users aged 50 and above were 119% more likely to purchase online in the morning than the rest of the day.”

Manual Day- and Week-Parting Strategies

The Facebook Ads marketplace does not currently offer a day-parting option — a way to specify that ads should run at certain hours and not at others. The most granularly you can schedule your ads is by day. However, some Ads API tools and services have built unofficial day-parting systems.

If you don’t use one of these tools or services, you can still manually day-part your ad campaigns. To do so, create an ad campaign and submit it to Facebook for approval. Once the ad is approved and begins to run, pause it, then unpause it at the hour you want to start running your campaign and pause it again when that time period ends. You might run ads around lunch time, in the early evening, or only on the weekends.

If you specifically target men, women, or those over 50 and are looking to drive online purchases, you can take advantage of the findings above. Otherwise, you’ll need to determine when are the the optimal hours of the day to advertise for your business.

To determine what hours of the day your Page or Place get the most Likes, you can try checking the notifications of new Likes in the “Use Facebook as Page” option. Check your Page’s Like notifications in the top navigation bar each hour while using Facebook as the Page you’re advertising for and note how many new Likes you’ve gotten. You can then determine at what hours your ads are driving the most Likes to your Page.

With these strategies you can get more highly qualified clicks that generate revenue and avoid paying for clicks that don’t help your business.

For more strategies on using Page Insights, tracking tags, and the behavior trends of your customers to determine the best time to run Facebook ads visit the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

The Guardian newspaper’s application was at the top of our list of emerging Facebook apps this week. There were also a significant number of photo apps, as well as animations, videos, German Phrases (not available in the United States), greeting cards, Page tab apps and a profile banner app.

The apps on our list grew from between 196,400 and 512,000 MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook. We define emerging applications as those that ended with between 100,000 and 1 million MAU in the past week.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	The Guardian	516,075	+512,048	+12,715%
2.	Write Your Name In Fire Alphabet	486,987	+484,263	+17,778%
3.	Friend Report Card	544,726	+453,298	+496%
4.	ANIMACIJE	424,064	+423,873	+221,923%
5.	Mini Fazenda	482,306	+344,921	+251%
6.	Dirty Dancing	650,992	+328,387	+102%
7.	My Calendar	879,641	+318,134	+57%
8.	Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?	944,351	+294,974	+45%
9.	VidyoBlue	680,509	+289,404	+74%
10.	Deine Phrases	682,545	+261,741	+62%
11.	Report Card Pick-Up 2011	306,649	+260,565	+565%
12.	My Friend Map	390,536	+257,134	+193%
13.	Sayfanıza Hoş Geldiniz Sekmesi Ekleyin	974,622	+244,019	+44%
14.	fbcustom.me	750,789	+242,579	+48%
15.	Pixable	921,515	+233,660	+34%
16.	Best Profile Pic(Enhanced)	315,593	+217,551	+222%
17.	Static iFrame	442,971	+215,178	+94%
18.	Abrazotes!	417,649	+206,389	+98%
19.	fantacalcioville	441,928	+205,027	+155%
20.	Trendkız	495,970	+196,360	+66%

The Guardian app grew by 512,100 MAU this week. The beta appears to be a set of features like popular articles and an activity stream of what your friends are reading — with the stream apparently using the new frictionless sharing feature to show friends’ reading activity without them explicitly sharing each article.

Then there were a bunch of photo apps, perhaps growing due to the larger size of photos now in the Facebook stream. Write Your Name In Fire Alphabet is an app that grew 484,300 MAU. It publishes a photo story of your name written in fire when you finish using it. Friend Report Card grew by 453,300 MAU, publishes a picture to the stream with a “report card” of your Facebook friends, tagging about a dozen of them in the process.

My Calendar grew by 318,100 MAU by publishing an entire year of a decorated calendar, asking you to invite your friends, and also publishing a photo notification of app use. My Friend Map publishes a map of your friends’ location to the stream, tagging about 10 of them; the app grew by 257,100 MAU. Then there was Pixable with 233,700 MAU which grew mostly in India and the US and Best Profile Pic(Enhanced), which grew by 217,600 MAU, by publishing your most popular profile photo to the stream, tagging the friends who Liked it.

The rest of the list was a mixed bag, as usual.

ANIMACIJE grew by 423,900 MAU and lets you publish animations to the stream. VidyoBlue is a Turkish video app that grew by 289,400 MAU and allows users to view, share, Like and comment on the videos. Deine Phrases grew by 261,700 MAU. Report Card Pick-Up 2011 grew by 260,600 MAU. fbcustom.me is a profile banner app that grew by 242,600 MAU and the Spanish greeting card app Abrazotes! grew by 206,400 MAU.

Finally, Turkish Page tab app Sayfanıza Hoş Geldiniz Sekmesi Ekleyin grew by 244,000 MAU and then Static iFrame grew by 215,200 MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned next week for our look at the top weekly gainers by monthly active users on Monday, the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.

Spotify is rolling out a desktop version of its software that includes a “Private Listening” menu option to allow users to play songs without sharing news of their activity to Facebook. Announced in a tweet by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and reported by Business Insider, the setting lets users toggle sharing off, listen to songs, and toggle it back on later.

The change comes following privacy complaints, but Private Listening could also be designed to keep users from disabling Facebook sharing permanently or being too afraid to grant the app persistent publishing permissions in the first place.

Now the question is whether other frictionless sharing apps will add a similar private browsing option. Those looking to gain trust and subscribers might implement it while those only focused on user growth might not provide such an option. The other question is whether Facebook gets to retain that data even if it’s not published to Timeline or their friends.

Facebook launched frictionless sharing at f8 last week, allowing apps to ask users for permission to publish all their in-app activity to the social network. Activity stories usually appear in the Ticker, though popular stories can end up in the news feed or profile Timeline.

The social network has since come under some scrutiny for frictionless sharing, with The Hill reporting that the ACLU and Electronic Privacy Information Center have sent a complain letter about it and other changes from f8 to the Federal Trade Commission. Getting users to share their media consumption is in the interest of Facebook’s bottom line, as advertisers will be able to target ads to users based on their activity.

Toggling Off Sharing Indefinitely Could Reduce Virality

While frictionless sharing helps users avoid having to constantly fill out sharing prompts, it also means users only have two options for sharing — always or never. On top of privacy concerns, automatic sharing is the antithesis of curation. Instead of telling friends only about favorite songs or news articles, everything one hears or reads is shared. That’s even if a user was only exploring content and didn’t actually enjoy it.

With Private Listening, Spotify is introducing a “sometimes share” option. If users know they’re about to listen to something embarrassing, controversial, or that they don’t want to endorse, they can toggle on Private Listening first. Ek even describes the option as a way to “temporarily hide your guilty pleasures”.

But will users ever turn sharing back on? The incentive to protect one’s reputation will push users to enter Private Listening mode, but the desire to help friends discover new music might not be powerful enough for them to exit it. A toggle switch hidden in the File menu that indefinitely stops sharing could significantly reduce the Spotify’s virality, which has helped it gain over 1.5 million new Facebook-connected users since f8.

A Private Listening mode is a smart addition to Spotify, but a one-time opt out of sharing could help it protect privacy and maintain virality better than a toggle switch. For example, users could click a button that would turn off sharing of listens to the next song, album, or playlist, but then turn sharing back on. This way the desire to listen to a guilty pleasure or explore new content won’t thwart future sharing of more socially acceptable songs.

Private Browsing Is for Services Built on Trust

Developers of other Open Graph-enabled apps will have to decide whether they want to add a similar private browsing option. Bigger companies with an image to maintain such as media companies like the Washington Post might add an incognito mode to their social app to avoid criticism.

Subscription-based apps and services might also see the option as a way to build trust with users and convert them into customers. The New York Times has chosen not to use Frictionless Sharing to protect the privacy of its readers, but a temporary sharing opt out could work better. More media companies are going to have to make decisions here: Facebook is rolling out a new Recommendations Bar that has an opt-in-once feature, that also starts pushing activity straight to the Ticker without asking permission.

A private browsing option could protect Spotify and other apps from a chilling effect, as Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman explains. Without it, users may self-censor their activity rather than discovering new content because their activity must be shared.

Smaller, scrappier developers that require lots of users to fuel their virtual goods or ads-based business models may be less likely to offer a private browsing option. As apps don’t have to state whether they have an incognito mode during the permissions step, these developers will have little incentive to provide the option after they already secured an install.

Depending on how frictionless sharing impacts the user experience, Facebook may need to consider a solution to the need for private activity on its side. Making developers offer an incognito mode or a private use option would be difficult since Facebook doesn’t require apps to be approved before joining the platform. Plus it isn’t really in Facebook’s interest anyway if the company wants to collect as much data as possible on users without hurting the experience.

Spotify’s “Private Listening” mode could become a best practice for Open Graph apps with something to lose. For now, developers will be closely watching Spotify’s growth to see the impact of the sharing opt-out before choosing what to do for themselves.

New Screenshots and functionality details of Facebook’s forthcoming HTML5 mobile site and application platform have emerged. Documentation of the updated mobile site and platform, externally referred to as Project Spartan, was briefly published to the Facebook Developers site last night, and TechCrunch recorded screenshots before Facebook took the pages down. We dug into the documentation and found many interesting facts about the mobile site that will impacts users and developers.

The Facebook mobile site will receive a significant redesign, users will be able to authorize and use third-party mobile apps from within the mobile site, these apps will be accessed through bookmarks shown alongside Facebook’s in-house apps, and users will have the ability to post to the news feed and send Requests/invites that are delivered as notifications.

For developers, the same SDK and APIs used for Facebook web applications will work on mobile, a new authentication mode called Authenticated Referrals will allow users who’ve already installed an app to login with two taps, and mobile apps will be optimized to work across all iOS and Android devices.

Sources at the company told us last week there would be a major mobile launch in “three weeks” but TechCrunch is reporting that the date has been moved up along with the native Facebook iPad app launch. It will likely come at either Apple’s iPhone event on Tuesday or a Facebook press event on Monday. Regardless, these updates are coming, though Facebook will surely continue to refine the mobile platform. How users and developers react will influence the power dynamic between Facebook, Apple, and Android, and could be an important determinant of Facebook’s long-term success. (We first wrote about Facebook’s HTML5 strategy for third-party mobile web apps in February, four months before it was reported in other mainstream press like TechCrunch.)

Here we’ll take a look at the biggest changes evident from the leaked documentation and what they mean:

Mobile Site Redesign

The current design of the mobile site is not especially intuitive. Users must browse to entirely separate screens to access core functionality such as notifications or the publisher. This can makes the browsing experience exhausting and cause users to spend less time on the mobile site.

The new redesign previewed in the leaked documentation and seen here shows a more persistently available top navigation bar that lets users access their notifications, Messages, and friend request with fewer clicks. The notifications button reveals an overlaid drop down rather than opening a different screen, so alerts about new activity can be checked without losing one’s place on the mobile site.

Third-Party App Access From a Bookmarks Menu

News that users would be able to access third-party Facebook apps from mobile leaked months ago, but the documentation reveals exactly how they’ll be accessed. A button on the mobile site’s top navigation bar will slide out a list of all of a user’s installed apps — both Facebook’s in-house apps such as Events and Groups, as well as third-party apps and games.

A bookmark will appear in this menu for any app a user has installed. Thanks to “bookmark synching”, a bookmark will also appear on the homepage of a user’s web version of Facebook. Users will also be able to search for new or previously installed games through the mobile site bookmarks menu. This will make Facebook mobile search engine optimization important for mobile apps looking to gain new users.

Facebook won’t require developers to use a different SDK or set of APIs on mobile than they use to build apps on Facebook.com. This means some developers will simply have to redesign their apps for mobile, rather than having to re-code them. This could help quickly populate the mobile platform with apps. More complicated apps that use flash such as games will need to switch to HTML5, though Facebook has reportedly been working with a large set of top developers to make their apps compatible with the mobile platform.

Two-Tap Login and Requests Notifications for Growth

The authorization given to a mobile app upon install will be valid on the web as well, so users won’t have to grant permissions to an app twice. Once a user has installed an app, they’ll be able to quickly log into it later with a two tap process called Authenticated Referrals – one tap to select the app, and a second to confirm they are entering a third-party app.

Along with using or playing with an app, users can publish content to the news feed through a familiar sharing prompt. They’ll also be able to send Requests to friends, such as an invite to play or a call to complete an in-app action. These Requests are delivered to friends as notifications that they can click through to open an app.

Right now, these notifications don’t look especially compelling, and therefore might inspire users to try new apps or reengage with old ones. Facebook may need to make mobile app Request notifications more appealing if it wants to attract developers to the Platform with the opportunity for strong viral growth.

Initially, the Like button social plugin will be available for use within mobile platform apps. Developers can use the button to create a lightweight sharing flow. As part of the permissions process developers will be able to request a user’s email address so they can communicate with them, or market to them, outside their apps.

Technologically, there are still some functionality disadvantages of using HTML5 mobile sites rather than native smartphone apps. For example, they only native apps can access device hardware such as the camera and GPS. Facebook will need to make up for this with virality if it wants its mobile Platform to become popular with developers.

There’s no mention in the documentation of Facebook Credits spotted earlier this year, so its still unclear how payments will be processed within mobile apps. A big part of why Facebook needed to create the mobile platform was to allow it earn money from app sales and in-app purchases, which can’t happen if its is merely a social layer within apps sold through Apple or Android’s mobile app stores.

Launching the Platform without Credits support could attract some developers who don’t want to pay Facebook’s 30% tax. However, punching credit card details into a mobile device can be especially difficult and lead to significant drop-off, so developers may actually want Facebook Credits support because it could increase sales volumes. Third-party mobile payments companies could also step in here to facilitate developer monetization.

Facebook is on the cusp of a serious turning point. If it can make the mobile Platform fun for users and attractive to developers, it could create an important new revenue stream, ride the growth of smart phones, and gain leverage against Apple and Google. If users find accessing third-party Facebook mobile app clunky and developers don’t see enough potential for viral growth, though, the Platform could fail and Facebook might get cut out of the mobile money stream.

Facebook hired a few engineers, data center staff, measurement researchers, and other staff according to the company’s Careers Page and LinkedIn feed. Account management, accounting and compliance staff may also have been hired this week.

New hires per LinkedIn and Other Sources:

• Sebastian Szmigielski, Account Manager – Emerging Markets – formerly a Senior Media Planner at OMD Media Direction.
• Duc Dung Nguyen, Software Engineer Intern – Student.
• Christine Miller, PHR, Employee Relations Specialist (contract) – formerly Team Member Relations Manager at Virgin America.
• Sandy Huynh, Recruiter – previously a University Relations Recruiter at Apple Inc.
• Piotr Zielinski, Software Engineer – formerly a Software Engineer Intern at Facebook and engineer at IBM.
• Feng Lu, Research Intern – formerly a Field Application Engineer at VIA Technologies, Inc.

Prior listings now removed from the Facebook Careers Page:

• Data Center Site Coordinator (NC)
• Data Center Capacity Planning Manager
• Measurement Researcher (Chicago)
• Measurement Researcher (New York)
• Manager, Developer Support Engineering
• People Analytics Manager
• HR and Benefits Services Representative (Contract)
• Lead Recruiter (Hyderabad)
• University Technical Recruiter – Contract
• Manager, Measurement Solutions (New York)
• Commodity Manager
• Technical Program Coordinator
• P2P (Procure to Pay) Associate – Contract (Dublin)
• Revenue Accounting and Operations Manager
• DSO Account Manager, Japanese (Singapore)
• Client Partner, Gaming (Austin)
• Project Manager EMEA – Sales and Business Development
• Client Partner, Media (Menlo Park)
• Director, Global Accounts (New York or Palo Alto)
• Global Head of Sales Training (New York or Palo Alto)
• Compliance Manager (Palo Alto)
• Manager, Online Operations (Palo Alto)

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

Facebook added quite a few new jobs to its Careers Page this week, and no small number of postings to its LinkedIn feed. Among the jobs the company is currently advertising on these platforms are different types of engineering, research, sales and user operations, marketing, measurement and ad positions.

Posts added this week on Facebook’s Careers Page:

• Audience Researcher (Palo Alto)
• Product Specialist, User Operations
• Quantitative Business Analyst (Palo Alto)
• Sourcing Manager: Data Center Infrastructure Group
• Sourcing Manager: OEM and ODM Server Group
• Data Center Technician (CA)
• Director, Infrastructure Efficiency and Sustainability
• Research Coordinator (Contractor)
• User Support Researcher
• Director of Revenue Accounting and Operations
• Quantitative Data Analyst – Business Operations (Austin, TX)
• Strategic Sourcing Manager
• Account Manager – Online Sales Operations
• Client Partner – APAC
• Compliance Manager (Palo Alto)
• Specialist, Platform Operations (Menlo Park)
• Director of European Brand & Agency Marketing (London)
• Marketing Communications Manager (London)
• Partner Engineer
• Senior Strategist, Global Customer Marketing (Hamburg)
• Senior Strategist, Global Customer Marketing (London)
• Senior Strategist, Global Customer Marketing (Paris)
• Analyst, Measurement Solutions (Palo Alto)
• Analyst, Measurement Solutions (New York)
• Manager, Measurement Solutions (Chicago)
• Manager, Measurement Solutions (New York)
• Manager, Measurement Solutions (Toronto, Canada)
• Strategic Partner Development – Brand Marketers
• Quantitative Business Analyst (Palo Alto)
• HR and Benefits Services Representative (Contract)
• Global Head of Sales Training (New York or Palo Alto)
• Sales Manager – Global Marketing Solutions for Japan and Korea

Jobs posted by Facebook on LinkedIn:

• Head of Global Marketing Communications (Palo Alto)
• Online Marketing Associate (Palo Alto)
• Acquisition Marketing Associate (Palo Alto)
• Manager, Global Speaker Programming
• Measurement Solutions Analyst – Contract (London)
• Hardware Engineer
• Storage Hardware Design Engineer
• Software Engineer, Generalist
• Site Operations Engineer
• Site Reliability Operations Manager
• Software Engineer, Products
• MySQL Database Engineer
• Software Engineer, Infrastructure Engineering
• Software Engineer, Tools
• Application Operations Engineer
• Account Manager – German (Dublin)
• Associate, Ad Operations – Finnish (Dublin)
• Associate, Ad Operations – German (Dublin)

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

As we round the corner on election season, we at Inside Network are excited to announce the launch of the 2012 Election Tracker monitoring fan growth and marketing reach on Facebook for electoral campaigns.

Inside Facebook’s 2012 Election Tracker will begin by tracking Facebook activity for presidential primary candidates and current elected officials, and will add data for 2012 house, senate, and gubernatorial races as candidates for those races are announced. Data presented at the Election Tracker will be continually updated leading up to Election Day 2012.

As Facebook’s reach surpasses an estimated 150 million users in the United States, more entities, including political candidates and current officials, are leveraging the platform to connect directly with their constituencies. The Election Tracker is meant to shed light on candidates’ efforts in social media, and to introduce a tool for further analyzing the role of Facebook on the campaign trail.

As the nation’s pundits and opinion pollsters gather data to make predictions for the 2012 election season, social media may prove to be an important framework for evaluating candidates’ influence amongst key demographics that are increasingly engaging with brands, and each other, on Facebook.

The Election Tracker is produced in association with Facebook and can be found at http://elections.insidefacebook.com.