The lead engineer behind Facebook’s yet-to-be-launched native iPad application left the company out of frustration with continual delays around the release of his work, according to a blog post he published today.

His move underscores the fact that Facebook has not had a major mobile-related launch since November of last year at a critical time when Apple and Google are moving full-steam ahead with the Android platform and the iPad. We’re expecting to see a big announcement out of Facebook on its mobile strategy in the next two to three weeks, however.

The developer Jeff Verkoeyen said that even though Facebook’s iPad app was largely ready to go in May, the company held off on launching it for several months because of undisclosed reasons (presumably Facebook’s complex relationship with Apple or indecision over how much to invest in native versus HTML5 in the short-term).

Verkoeyen is moving to Google where he’ll work on the mobile team, after being employed at Facebook for less than two years.

> Continue reading on Inside Mobile Apps.

At f8 last Thursday, music services such as Spotify, Vevo, Rdio and Mog gained the ability to publish the listening activity of their users to Facebook’s new home page Ticker. The exposure to the friends of their users through the tickers has led to big gains for some music partners.

Most significantly, Spotify has gained one million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since f8 to reach 4.4 million MAU. It spiked from 1.12 million to 3.25 million daily active users the day after f8, and appears to be settling back to roughly a quarter million new DAU. Rdio, MOG, and Deezer have also seen significant gains in their numbers of Facebook-integrated users.

The total user growth for these services could be even higher. Exposure through the Ticker could be encouraging more users to sign up but not necessarily integrate their accounts with Facebook. This won’t be the case for Spotify, though, as it now requires new users to have a Facebook account, even if they don’t grant the app publishing rights.

Our AppData tracking service for Facebook apps only records users who grant these apps access to their Facebook accounts, so these figures should be interpreted as representative of recent user count changes rather than as absolute total user counts.

With few other Open Graph apps contributing stories to the Ticker, the home page redesign and new ability to publish activity without users having to explicitly share each listen is creating a bonanza for music apps that were prepared for the changes. The redesign appears to have rolled out already to all US users, although we’re not sure what the total potential user base was here.

Spotify in particular was poised for explosive growth, as it already had the largest user base with 2 million paying customers compared to the next largest competitor Rhapsody which has 800,000. Spotify had also been aggressively pushing users to connect their Facebook accounts in order to view the playlists of friends via large prompts on the app’s homescreen.

Spotify is falling from its peak the day after f8, with 1.61 million DAU yesterday and 1.48 million today. Still, user counts are stabilizing and so the service could come away with as many as 30% more Facebook-integrated users than it had before f8. Spotify is also the top “Featured Music Service” in Facebook’s new Music dashboard. The rapid growth of Facebook-integrated users has big implications for Spotify’s bottom line, as CEO Daniel Ek said those who connect their Facebook accounts are twice as likely to become paying customers.

Rdio, the music app we’ve seen the most of in the Ticker besides Spotify, has shot up from 23,000 to 29,000 Facebook-integrated MAU since f8. Its DAU count spiked from 3,800 to 8,000 the day after f8, but is now rapidly declining. Dedicated Rdio users might be seeing so many of their friends using Spotify thanks to the Ticker that they may considering switching services.

Mog saw strong growth from the release of its free subscription tier the week before f8. Since the conference, it has mildly grown from 32,200 to 36,800 MAU, with DAU fluctuating between 3,000 and 3,500.

Vevo, the ad-supported music video wing of YouTube, has seen strong sustained growth since f8, jumping from 85,00 to 94,000 MAU. Unlike the other apps, DAU continues to climb, building on an initial spike from 7,700 to 10,100 to now reach 10,300. Lesser known partners Earbits and Songza also saw some growth since f8.

Meanwhile, some of Facebook’s music partners have lost Facebook-integrated users since f8. This could be because they didn’t have Ticker integrations ready, their integrations broke down, or they’re being outcompeted by those with functioning integrations.

SoundCloud, iHeartRadio, and Deezer all lost DAU since f8, or have fallen lower than their initial DAU count following a spike the day after the conference. With music suggestions coming straight to the news feed, users may be seeking out less internet radio and free streaming services.

It will take a few weeks for more of Facebook’s music partners to launch their Ticker integrations. The same goes for users experimenting with the services they see their friends using and choosing the one that fits them best. Once other listening apps as well as reading, video, and non-partnered lifestyle apps get their Open Graph publishing set up, there will be more competition in the Ticker and the bonanza for the music partners who were ready at launch may end.

Until then, though, it appears that Spotify will strengthen its lead  as the Ticker bombards Facebook users with implicit social recommendations for the service.  As users may not want to simultaneously run multiple music desktop and web apps, Facebook’s recent changes could produce a “winer-take-all” scenario where users choose the music service used by the most of their friends, and right now, that’s Spotify.

Advertisers can now use tracking tags with several of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories types, allowing them to clearly measure how much traffic the social ad units are driving to their Pages and applications for the first time. A new field called “Optional URL Tags” now appears in the self-serve ad tool, allowing advertisers to append tags that can be tracked with third-party analytics tools. This helps advertisers determine which clicks to their properties came from Sponsored Stories, and more specifically from specific campaigns, targeting parameters, and ad creative.

Facebook has also increased the flexibility of Page Post Sponsored Stories such that advertisers can buy additional traffic for any of their Page’s posts, not just the most recently published update. These changes will make it easier for advertisers to determine the value of Sponsored Stories and integrate the ad unit with their existing Facebook Page publishing strategy. This could attract more ad dollars to Facebook’s unique way of amplifying word of mouth.

Tracking Tags Increase the Utility of Sponsored Stories

A Facebook Help Center page confirms the introduction of “Optional URL Tags” which was originally named “Optional Tracking URL”. The name was likely changed because advertisers enter just their tags, not the whole URL, and because Facebook may be weary of the privacy implications of the word “tracking”. The Help Center page explains that “Previously, for Sponsored Stories leading to Apps or to content off Facebook, it was difficult to distinguish whether clicks coming to your App or website were from a Sponsored Story or News Feed story.”

Tracking tags can now be appended to Domain Stories for amplifying shares of off-site content, App Share Stories for amplifying shares from within Facebook apps, App Used or Game Played Stories for promoting usage of apps on Facebook, and Page Post Stories for driving traffic to news feed updates by Pages. Advertisers could tag their ads to indicate their Sponsored Story type, geographic or demographic targeting, what Page post they promoted, their bid, or what campaign the ad belonged to.

Facebook doesn’t offer any tracking or analytics software, but these tags can be recognized by third-party advertising software to show the source of a click and identify trends in performance. For example, by tagging their ads with what age group their Sponsored Story ads are targeted to, advertisers could view what age groups responded best across campaigns.

Ads API partners will be able to append tags to their ads and feed the tracking data into their sophisticated targeting and bid management systems to improve the efficiency of Sponsored Stories campaigns run through their tools and services. This in turn help advertisers drive cheaper, more qualified clicks through Sponsored Stories. With both self-serve and Ads API advertisers able to use Sponsored Stories more effectively, the Facebook could see the social ad unit become a tool powerful enough to attract new advertisers and shift spend of existing advertisers to ad types only it offers.

Page Post Sponsored Stories No Longer Interrupt Publishing Schedules

All of Facebook’s Sponsored Stories are triggered by a user action such as clicking a Like button, except for one — Page Post Sponsored Stories. To make its social ad units easier to explain Facebook has reclassified Page Post ads in a “Sponsored Page Post” subcategory within traditional Facebook Ads rather than as a Sponsored Story.

It has also corrected the biggest problem with the ad unit. Previously, Pages could only sponsor their most recent Page post, meaning if they couldn’t publish any new updates if they wanted to buy traffic for an especially important post. Rather than ceasing to publish to the news feed for a sustained amount of time, this likely limited Pages to short Page Post ad campaigns, or dissuaded them from using the ad unit at all.

Now, as first spotted by Justin Oh, Facebook has added a “Page Post Selection” option the self-serve tool’s builder for Page Post ads. Advertisers can choose from a list of their Page’s recent posts or enter a specific “Custom Post ID” number that can be found at the end of URL of its timestamp. To automatically promote their Page’s latest post the same way the ad unit previously worked, advertisers can select “Most Recent Eligible Post”.

With this new tool, a Page could pay for ad units promoting a story about a big product release, announcement, contest, or application while continuing to publish posts that are less critical to drive traffic to, such as photos or messages of thanks. It also allows Pages to run multiple simultaneous Page Post ad campaigns for different posts. This will allow a brand’s advertising and Page management teams to work more independently rather than wasting time coordinating pauses to the Page’s publishing schedule.

Page Post Selection also unlocks opportunities for marketing campaigns that reward users or unlock content when a Page post gains a certain number of Likes or comments. For example, a Page could publish an update saying it will give away 50% off discount coupons for a day when the post reaches 5,000 Likes. If the post doesn’t reach the milestone organically through news feed exposure, the Page could buy Sponsored Page Post ads until it received 5,000 Likes rather than have the campaign appear to have failed.

In the same vein as the new Timeline profile redesign allows users to make their most important life moments more visible, Page Post Selection for Sponsored Stories will let brands amplify the reach of their most important or compelling content. As Facebook typically strives for a consistent browsing experience across the site, Timeline could be coming to Pages, which would fit well with the enhanced flexibility of Sponsored Page Posts.

For now, though, brands will be able to pay not only to drive traffic to their Pages, but to any post they’ve published that could aid their business.

Walk-throughs and strategies for using Sponsored Stories to grow your business are available in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s comprehensive guide to marketing and advertising through Facebook.

Branded games, Facebook Connect and sweepstakes are big on the campaigns that started this past week. Several TV shows are creating buzz for their premieres by promoting social games based on plot lines. Capital One’s placement in three Zynga games seems to have given the Page a huge boost while Lufthansa’s promotion of Oktoberfest is fun but hasn’t really produced a lot of Page growth. Finally, Tiger Balm is giving away a trip to Hawaii and trying to figure out who its competitors are via a sweepstakes entry.

You can see the full week’s coverage in the Facebook Marketing Bible, which also includes detailed breakdowns of over 100 other featured campaigns by top-performing brands and businesses on Facebook.

“Homeland’s” WatchCareful.ly

Goal: Engagement, Brand Loyalty, Viewers

Core Mechanic: A branded website that utilizes Facebook Connect to allow users to play a few games tightly related to the upcoming show “Homeland.”

Game: The games are actually really interesting because of how they mimic the types of games played on the Facebook platform everyday, but in a “Homeland”-specific iteration. For example, there’s a video to watch, words to descramble (a secret message), photo alteration ID (intelligence) and listening to talking then answer questions about the conversations (quizzes).

Method: The show is about a CIA agent suspicious about the loyalties of a Marine recently rescued and returned from Afghanistan, and the games on the website are tightly woven into this narrative. The games are fun and interesting, not too long or boring, but the Facebook authorization feature doesn’t really publish content to the stream — it seems like the show is missing out on some social distribution here. Once they complete the four levels, users can unlock content such as the unedited pilot of the show and show-related documents that give background on the characters.

Impact: Perhaps for the sharing problem, the Page currently stands at about 15,000 Likes before next week’s premiere. The WatchCareful.ly website is promoted both as a tab on the Page, and in status updates on the Page. PageData shows that the Page grew significantly starting last week.

Capital One, Zynga’s Three-Game Promotion

Goal: Network Exposure, Engagement, Brand Loyalty, Page Growth

Core Mechanic: Capital One and Zynga are engaging in a three-game promotion across CityVille, FarmVille and The Pioneer Trail.

Game: In CityVille, players may place branded Capital One banks in their cities, resulting in a decorative item, energy, experience points and other payouts. In the other two games, players may interact with characters from Capital One’s commercials. FarmVille’s integration allows users who visit or participate in Capital one’s farm receive a breedable, limited edition Capital One Goat with a high value, as well as the chance to get some “animal grow.” In The Pioneer Trail, players can earn branded quest rewards and permanent in-game items.

Method: In each game the integrations redirect users to Capital One’s Facebook Page. The CityVille integration is on for 30 days, while the other two will last for 10 days.

Impact: As mentioned, this integration redirects to Capital One’s Page, which began to see some significant growth last week right after the partnership launched. The Page is currently at 2.3 million Likes and a week ago it was at 1.5 million, according to PageData.

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

Facebook’s most recent redesign seems to have pushed photo and music apps to the forefront in our list of applications that grew by the most monthly active users this week.

A handful of photo apps, as well as Spotify, were on our list, in addition to a bunch of friend quiz apps, which may have also received a boost from the redesign. The titles on our list gained the most MAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 599,600 and 11 million MAU, based on AppData, our data tracking service covering traffic growth for apps on Facebook.

Top Gainers This Week

	Name	MAU	Gain	Gain,%
1.	The Sims Social	59,574,530	+11,050,401	+23%
2.	TopFace	8,583,048	+2,812,712	+49%
3.	60photos	12,900,228	+2,190,669	+20%
4.	Static HTML: iframe tabs	55,650,779	+2,184,618	+4%
5.	Text Page	1,916,397	+1,901,305	+12,598%
6.	21 questions	32,548,776	+1,318,828	+4%
7.	BeKnown	2,759,991	+1,163,153	+73%
8.	Static Iframe Tab	13,557,501	+1,020,472	+8%
9.	MyCalendar – Birthdays	15,640,430	+983,493	+7%
10.	Truth Game	12,456,549	+879,630	+8%
11.	Spotify	4,151,457	+870,517	+27%
12.	Static IFRAME Tab : ThumbsUp Icon	4,183,237	+831,872	+25%
13.	Friend Buzz	1,148,451	+801,158	+231%
14.	Friends Photos	4,890,030	+787,715	+22%
15.	My Friend Secrets	6,005,492	+778,999	+15%
16.	schoolFeed	2,214,372	+756,238	+52%
17.	Pioneer Trail	13,467,689	+718,699	+3%
18.	Static HTML… [Second Tab]	5,783,406	+676,993	+13%
19.	Truths About You	9,136,618	+631,139	+7%
20.	Between You and Me	10,017,163	+599,579	+6%

Photo apps on our list this week included TopFace with 2.8 million MAU, 60photos with 2.1 million MAU and Friends Photos with 787,700 MAU, this latter app appears to be a Badoo app. These apps basically ask user to rate their friends’ photos and then publish to the stream.

As mentioned, Spotify was also a big app on our list, growing mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom by 870,500 MAU. Then there were Page tab apps on our list, including: Static HTML: iframe tabs with 2.1 million MAU, Static Iframe Tab grew by more than 1 million MAU, Static IFRAME Tab : ThumbsUp Icon grew by 831,900 MAU and Static HTML… [Second Tab] by 677,000 MAU.

Quiz apps on our list, which as mentioned may also have grown because of the redesign, specifically the right-hand ticker. 21 questions grew by 1.3 million MAU, Truth Game by 879,600 MAU, Friend Buzz by 801,200 MAU, My Friend Secrets by 779,000 MAU, Truths About You by 631,100 MAU and Between You and Me 599,600 MAU. These apps work the same way: by asking you questions about your Facebook friends, then posting the answers to the stream.

Other apps on the list included MyCalendar – Birthdays with 983,500 MAU, asking users to first add friends to the app before use. Then the Connect app schoolFeed grew by 756,200 MAU, basically an app that creates a social network for our high school after synchronizing your profile. Text Page is an app that’s no longer usable but still grew by 1.9 million MAU and BeKnown, the professional networking app, grew by 1.1 million MAU.

All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned 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 across Inside Network this past week.

Inside Mobile Apps

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

Monday, September 19^th, 2011

• Emerging Paid iOS Apps: Disney, Capcom, EA & Other Larger Studios Rise

Tuesday, September 20^th, 2011

• Tapjoy Expands Incentivized Video Ad Network With New Native Units
• Emerging Top Grossing Apps: Horses, Dragons, Comics and Dark Tales
• Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012, Is Here

Wednesday, September 21^st, 2011

• 6waves Lolapps Announces $10 Million Social, Mobile Game Developer Fund
• Monsters Ate My Condo Leads Charge of iOS Exclusive Games from Adult Swim
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Wild Needle Games, Majesco, King.com and More
• HTML5-Focused GamesMadeMe Debuts With City Builder Dollar Isle

Thursday, September 22^nd, 2011

• Mobile Advertising Platform Velti Acquires Air2Web For $19M in Cash
• Facebook Says More Than 350 Million Users Access It On Mobile Devices

Friday, September 23^rd, 2011

• New Hires in Mobile: GREE, InMobi, Glu Mobile, Rovio and More
• Top Emerging Android Apps: Virtual Cities, Daisies, Calculators and Cameras

Saturday, September 24^th, 2011

• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: 5th Planet Games, Games Cafe, Lolapps and More
• Mobile App Roundup: f8 Review, Profitable Pizza, In-App Purchases and More

Inside Social Games

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

Monday, September 19^th, 2011

• SocialVibe Study: Incentivized Brand Ads Work Well in Social Games
• Zynga Launches Second Major FarmVille Expansion, Lighthouse Cove
• Adventure World Debuts in the Top 10 on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Facebook Games by MAU
• DoubleDown Casino Raises the Stakes in Facebook Gambling Games

Tuesday, September 20^th, 2011

• Zynga Announces Mafia Wars 2 as Traffic Declines on Classic Original
• Google+ Moves Into Open Beta, Social Features in Games Put to the Test
• Adobe Unveils Flash Player 11, AIR 3 Software for Next Generation of Social Games
• Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012, Is Here

Wednesday, September 21^st, 2011

• RockYou 3 Blokes Launches Social RTS Game Galactic Allies for Facebook
• 6waves Lolapps Announces $10 million Social, Mobile Game Developer Fund
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: Lolapps, King.com, Games Cafe and More
• Adventure World Catching Up to The Sims Social on This Week’s List of Fastest-Growing Games by DAU

Thursday, September 22^nd, 2011

• GameHouse Aims Blast at Facebook’s Top 10 Social Game Developers by DAU
• Zynga Profits Dip in June According to Regulatory Filing
• Open Graph Exposes Specific Social Game Activities to Non-Gamers
• EA & Disney Bullish on the Rise of Social Gaming
• New Hires in Social Gaming: Kabam, ngmoco, Zynga and More

Friday, September 23^rd, 2011

• Bubble Atlantis, Dirty Dancing Lead This Week’s List of Emerging Facebook Games
• Taking Baby Out of Corner, Social Game Universe Puts Dirty Dancing Game on Facebook
• Social Gaming News Roundup: Lots of Zynga, Grasshopper Manufacture, Big Talk from EA and More

Inside Facebook

Tracking Facebook and the Facebook platform for developers and marketers.

Monday, September 19^th, 2011

• Photos, Page Tabs, Phrases, Quizzes and Dating on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by MAU
• Featured Facebook Campaigns: Bonobos, Nitto Tires, Zazzle and Visiteurope.com
• Facebook Combining $50 Ad Credits and 3 Simpler Ad Tools to Attract Small Businesses
• Facebook’s Rumored Read, Listened, and Watched Buttons: A Money-Making Fit With Broad Category Ad Targeting

Tuesday, September 20^th, 2011

• New Facebook Platform Industry Hires: Vitrue, Brighter Option, Wildfire and More
• Movies, Music, Games, Angry Birds, Rihanna, “The Smurfs,” and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Pages
• Platform Update: New Bug System and Platform Live Status Page, Credits Features, Event APIs
• Facebook Combines Most Recent and Top News Into a Single Feed, Adds a Real-Time News Ticker
• Wall Street Journal’s Facebook App WSJ Social Unites Article Suggestions From Editors, Friends, and Likes
• Inside Virtual Goods: The Future of Social Gaming 2012, Is Here

Wednesday, September 21^st, 2011

• Facebook Increases Character Limit on Posts to 5000, Rolls Out Floating Navigation Bar and More Amid Unrest
• Luck, Love, Page Tabs, Birthdays, Mobile, iPad and More on This Week’s Top 20 Growing Facebook Apps by DAU
• Facebook Allows Users to Comment on Pages Without Liking Them, Adds Friend Activity Tab to Pages
• Strategies to Optimize Facebook Ad Spend, Protect and Boost Brand Reputation, and More Recent Updates at the Facebook Marketing Bible
• Viral Media Site BuzzFeed Launches Facebook App Edition to Gain Exposure
• New This Week on the Inside Network Job Board: TinyCo, TBG Digital, King.com and More
• Facebook Adds Per Post Impression Data to Page Insights Exports to Help Brands Track Their Performance

Thursday, September 22^nd, 2011

• Facebook Pushes the Hybrid News Feed to its iPhone App, Android App, and Mobile Site
• Live Blog: Facebook’s f8 Developer Conference 2011 Keynote
• Facebook Growth Brings A Half-Billion Users in a Single Day For The First Time
• Facebook Launches New Profile Feature “Timeline” For Showing All Your Important Content on One Page
• Facebook Introduces New Timeline Publishing Permissions Model for Apps
• Four Strategic Changes for the Facebook Platform and Open Graph
• Facebook Launches Integrations With Spotify, Netlfix and More to Populate the Ticker with Playable Content
• What f8 Means for Advertisers: The Ability to Target Users Based on Media Consumption
• Facebook Launches a Recommendations Bar to Keep Users Reading on Sites
• Facebook Says It Now Has 350 Million Mobile Users, Up 100 Million From March

Friday, September 23^rd, 2011

• Love, Phrases, Page Tabs, Videos, Cards and More on This Week’s Top 20 Emerging Facebook Apps by MAU
• Facebook Careers Postings: Engineering, Mobile, Ad Ops, EMEA and More
• Facebook Hires and Departures: Analysts, Engineering, Recruiting, Engineering and More
• Join Inside Network at Socialize West — October 20 – 21, 2011
• How to Use the Facebook Timeline: A Complete Walk-Through of the Redesigned Profile
• Facebook Launches Music Dashboard That Shows What Friends Are Listening to Across Services
• Facebook Roundup: Alcohol, Photos, Apps, Pokes Banks, Spam, Dating, Cars and More

The Inside Network Job Board is dedicated to providing you with the best job opportunities across social and mobile application platforms.

Here are this week’s highlights from the Inside Network Job Board, including positions at TBG Digital, Arkadium, TinyCo, Majesco Entertainment Company, 5th Planet Games, Wild Needle Games, Lolapps, King.com and Games Cafe Inc.

• Ad Ops Analyst

• Director of Analytics
• Associate Games Analyst

• User Acquisition Specialist
• Data Analyst

• Mobile Games Senior Marketing Manager

• Mobile Game Developer (iOS)

• Lead Mobile Developer at Exciting New Game Startup

• Game Lead / Engineering Manager
• Product Designer for 2nd Largest Social Gaming Company
• Senior Game Designer
• Game Design Director
• Sr. Game Engineer for a Popular Social Gaming Company

• Game Writer with passion for storytelling
• 3D Artist
• Product Manager , Social & Mobile Games
• Game Developer

• Social Game Designer
• Game Programmer

Listings on the Inside Network Job Board are distributed to readers of Inside Social Games, Inside Facebook and Inside Mobile Apps through regular posts and widgets on the sites. Your open positions are being seen by the leading developers, product managers, marketers, designers, and executives in the Facebook Platform and social gaming industry today.

Facebook Photos Provide 50% More Impressions – Roost released a report this week that looked at more than 10,000 Twitter and Facebook posts, finding that photos generate 50% more impressions than other posts and quotes 22% more interactions. Questions also generate more comments,

Facebook Apps Create Jobs – Research from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found that Facebook’s “app economy” created about 182,700 jobs and that this economy was worth $12.19 billion.

Facebook Hides Pokes – AllFacebook reported this week that Facebook minimized the Poke button into a right-hand menu ahead of a larger change.

App Acts as Banking Center on Facebook – Goal Card is a Facebook app that acts as a bank for holders of prepaid cards, allowing them to manage their money using animated photos, video games and virality.

Honestly Now Raises Funding – Honestly Now has raised a round of seed funding from Golden Seeds and Canrock Ventures. The Q&A social game is aimed at helping women 30-50 make be better decisions.

ShareSafe Proects Against Spam – ShareSafe is a new app from F-Secure that protects users against spam and malicious links in their feed. The app allows you to copy links from Facebook into the app, which then checks them for suspicious content. If they’re clean, users may post them to Facebook straight from the app.

Are You Interested? Mobile App Released – SNAP Interactive released the mobile version of its popular dating app, Are You Interested?, this week, available on several mobile platforms including Android, iOS, and Blackberry OS 6.0+.

Yarsellr Launches Fashion Marketplace – Yardsellr Inc. a social commerce marketplace announced the launch of a new fashion social marketplace, style.ly this week.

Liquidus Showcases Car Dealers on Facebook – Liquidus launched Socialink this week, enabling car dealers to showcase video of every vehicle in their inventory to potential buyers on Facebook.

Facebook Implements New Alcohol Ad Rules – Alcoholic beverage marketers on Facebook will now have to restrict access to their Pages to people of drinking age. However, the company dealt with the issue years ago by providing demographics restrictions, allowing Page owners to customize the age minimum per country to conform with local laws.

Thanks to the integrations Facebook launched with Spotify, Rdio, and many other music services at yesterday’s f8 conference, users are now finding out what their friends are listening to in the home page’s Ticker. To make it even easier to discover music, Facebook has launched a “Music” dashboard that shows users trending albums, top songs, featured music services, and a stream dedicated to the recent listens of all of a user’s friends. Clicking through to a playlist appears to be one way to activate the dashboard and make its bookmark appear in the home page’s left sidebar, though this direct link also works.

The Music dashboard will allow users to actively and efficiently seek discover new music in addition to passively seeing what friends are listening to while browsing the news feed. The “Featured Music Services” panel could be an important driver of growth for Facebook’s lesser known music partners, and it could also become a way for Facebook to monetize music by charging for placement in the panel.

Rather than showing bookmarks for individual music partners, it seems that Facebook has decided to aggregate all the services into a single hub. In the future, it could gain more engaging features such as the ability to set up simultaneous listening between friends similar to Turntable.fm. It could also serve as a payment portal through which users could buy their subscriptions to partnered music services with Facebook Credits. This would provide a direct way for Facebook to get a cut of the revenue partners are earning from the exposure and user growth they get on the site.

It’s unclear whether the Music dashboard would preclude partners from developing native versions of their services that live within the Facebook chrome as canvas apps. Such apps could silo users, and make them less likely to discover music from friends that use a different service than them. With the dashboard, a Spotify user could see a friend was listening to something on Rdio, click through the story and download Rdio, find it better fits their design and music library needs, and end up becoming a paying Rdio user.

However, Facebook also allows users to discover a song from a service they don’t use and rather than having to download that partner’s app, they can play the song in an app they already have. For example, a Spotify user could see a friend had listened to a song on Rdio, click the play button in the Music dashboard story, and use the small link in the prompt to launch or download Rdio to instead listen on Spotify. The relatively small size of the link to play a song in one’s native service could be Facebook’s way of getting users to try out multiple services, and prevent an app with an early lead such as Spotify from pulling back users who might have been prepared to try a different service.

Current Dashboard Features

The Music dashboard dynamically displays different content depending on the recent activity of a user’s friends. The Friends’ Music section of the dashboard shows full size rich media stories about the listening activity of friends, complete with play buttons on songs that launch their corresponding desktop or web applications. Most of these stories otherwise only appear in the Ticker as simple text activity stories that must be hovered over and expanded to reveal play buttons.

With the Playlist section, Facebook will reward music services that make it easy to create and publish mixes. As playlists automatically continue to play without users have to select the next song they want to hear, this section of the dashboard will facilitate a laid-back listening experience. It could also get users to burn through the free listening time users get with the unpaid tiers of some music partners, which could lead users to hit their limit faster and get them to buy subscriptions.

Users have begun to receive notifications when a friend sees a story about their listening activity and clicks a play button on of the songs. These notifications direct users to an Activity section of the Music dashboard, which encourages them to comment in order to start a conversation about a song them and a friend both listened to. Right now this is the closest thing to real-time social activity around music, but simultaneous listening or dedicated listening Chat could be on the way.

As part of its partnerships, Facebook may have promised free placement in the Featured Music Services panel in the right sidebar of the Music Dashboard. This could give services that haven’t gained any users in a network a way to gain a foothold and begin growing through exposure in the Ticker. However, Facebook could also opt to charge music services for this real estate. We’re waiting to hear back from Facebook about how services are chosen for placement.

Even without more engaging features, the Music dashboard could become stop on users’ routine browsing flow around Facebook. While the Ticker may remain the primary way users discover new music because of its prominent presence on the news feed and its eye-catching movement, that Music dashboard could become the place users to go to find something to listen to right now.

Timeline, the redesigned version of the profile that Facebook launched yesterday at f8, gives users much more flexibility in how they present themselves. Users can customize their banner image, make certain types of content more prominent, and decide what moments of their life they want to feature. Everything users have ever posted to Facebook is now much more accessible, so most will want to browse through their Timeline and ensure all their content is appropriate and has the right privacy settings.

Here we’ll walk-through all the new features available in Timeline, how to control what’s displayed, and discuss how Timeline will impact users and the rest of the site. Facebook has struck a balance between creating a common structure for all profiles but giving users to ability customize the way they present themselves within those boundaries. In this way, the site has become more personal without following Myspace’s mistake of allowing users so much freedom over arrangement of core features that browsing becomes confusing.

Those who want to early access to Timeline can sign up at its new about page. It’s also possible to get a developer release of the Timeline now. To get access, those who aren’t already developers users must  have a verified account and install the Developer app, then create an application, click “Get Started Using Open Graph”, edit some settings, then wait a few minutes and return to their profile. They should see the Timeline, and can select to make it visible it to their friends immediately or it will be automatically published on September 29th, 2011.

Cover

At the top of the Timeline is the Cover, a giant banner image. Users can select any of their their album photos as their Cover, or upload a new image. Once selected, users can click on their Cover to bring up options to reposition it, choose a new image, or remove their current Cover.

With this option, Facebook has given users more control over the look of their profile than ever before. It may also lead to the rise of applications that let users create collages or other special images specifically for use as Covers.

Info

Below the Cover users see the biographical information that previously appeared on their Info tab. This includes their work, education, current city, and hometown. There’s also an “About” link that expands the Info section to reveal work and education details, a “History by the Year” of a user’s employment and schooling, a user’s Relationships and Family connections, their About Me text, favorite quotes, basic info and contact info. Users no longer have the option to “Feature” certain friend lists, family members, or Groups.

To get users to keep their Info up to date, there are edit links in the expanded About section and a big Update Info on the main Timeline view. By getting people to share as much biographical information as possible, Facebook gains valuable data that it can charge advertisers to use for targeting their ads.

Featured Content Categories

Beside the Info section, the Timeline displays four channels of different types of content. By default, these are Friends, Photos, Map, and Likes, but users can click a drop-down to swap in other categories into the featured slots. When viewing a friend’s Timeline, this drop-down reveal the non-featured categories.

The categories users can choose from include:

• Friends – Displays all of a user’s friends including a overlaid count of their mutual friends. When expanded, friends can be searched through or sorted by characteristic. A privacy control and link to the Find Friends feature appear in a user’s own Friends section.
• Photos – All of a user’s photo albums and videos, followed by their tagged photos and videos. Each album includes a privacy control. As the old photostrip has been replaced with the Cover this this photos section, users must pick one photo to represent them instead of five.
• Likes – A user’s Liked Pages sorted by category, with their Favorite Likes shown first followed by links to see all Pages in that category. Below, a user’s Liked Pages are displayed in reverse chronological order. With access from the main profile view, Pages now have a bigger opportunity to gain new Fans from users browsing the Likes of their friends.
• Map – A Bing map of all of a user’s location-tagged posts and updates.The map can be sorted by categories such as photos, event check-ins, or restaurants. Zooming in and clicking on an individual pushpin displays the original update.

• Subscribers – All of a user’s public and friend subscribers, and settings to control notifications and privacy.
• Subscriptions – The people a user is subscribed to.
• Notes – One column of the Notes written by users, and another of Notes that tag them. There are also links to write a new Note and view drafts.
• Apps – Users can add any of their installed apps into the category channels. When clicked on, they display a dedicated timeline of all a user’s activity within the app. Users can also see the most recently used apps of friends. The ability to display Apps more prominently in the profile could lead to a boom of development of utility apps similar to those that appear in the Profile Boxes a few years ago.
• Certain preferred media partners, such as Spotify and Hulu show a special “All Time” of a user’s most frequently consumed content, such as their one most watched video and a list of their other “Top Videos Watched”. The ability to display Apps more prominently in the profile could lead to a boom of development of utility apps similar to those that appear in the Profile Boxes a few years ago. Facebook also automatically creates categories that aggregate specific types of media activity, such as “Music” category that shows Spotify and Rdio activity together.

Activity Log

Above the featured content categories is a button called View Activity that shows a red counter of posts and info that require approval before appearing on a user’s profile. When clicked, the button reveals the Activity Log, a private log of all of a user’s activity since the joined Facebook. Downward arrow buttons next to each piece of content let users select its privacy and whether its featured on, allowed on, or hidden from a user’s Timeline.

A drop-down in the top right corner lets users filter to only see certain types of activity or content published through specific apps. By visiting the Activity Log after using an app with persistent permission to share a activity, users can hide specific actions such as listening to an embarrassing song or watching a controversial video. As there is no “incognito mode” or way to preemptively prevent certain activity of an approved app from being published, this is the only way to hide specific actions.

Users should considering browsing through all their content in the Activity Log and ensuring they at least know what they’re sharing and with who. As the Timeline makes this content much more accessible to others, users should make sure nothing added to Facebook long ago is visible to the wrong people.

Besides the View Activity button on the Info panel of one’s own Timeline is a settings drop-down that lets users preview their profile from the privacy perspective of a specific friend. There’s also a link to creating an embeddable profile badge for websites.

When viewing another user’s Timeline, this area includes Friend and Subscribe options that let users send someone a friend request, add them to Friend Lists, subscribe to their public updates, and modify the volume and types of that friend’s content that will appear in the news feed. The panel also lets users send a Message to someone, and includes a drop-down menu that reveals See Friendship, poke, unfriend, and report/block options.

Timeline Publisher

A publisher on the left side of the Timeline lets users post new updates. If a user scrolls beneath the publisher, a floating bar appears allowing them to publish without returning to the top of the Timeline. In addition to the standard status update and photo options, a Places button lets users compose an update that includes a tagged location.

There are also five new types of updates that let users share important life events in more detail than a profile info change or status update. When an user indicates they are publishing a life event, Facebook knows to publish this more prominently in news feed, to a wider set of friends, and to those who’ve specifically subscribed to their life events. The types will also give Facebook more data on a user’s identity and behavior that could be used for ad targeting.

The new publishing options are:

• Work and Education:  Started a new job, graduated from a school, or military service.
• Family and Relationships: Got engaged, got married, had a child, got a pet
• Living: Moved, bought a home, got a roommate, bought a car (there’s no options for motorcycles or boats)
• Health and Wellness: Broke a bone, had surgery, overcame an illness
• Milestones – Learned a language, got a license, traveled, achievement or award,
• Other Life Event – A free form story

Recent Activity

At the top right of the Timeline below the Info section is a panel of a user’s “More Recent Activity” such as Liking Pages, new friendships, subscribing to someone’s updates, installing new apps, and more. Individual activity stories can be hidden from the Timeline, or all past and future activity stories of that type can be hidden. An edit icon lets users manage what story types they’ve hidden.

Panels for a user’s recent Music, Video, and other media types appear in this area as well. This lets a user’s friends get a quick snapshot of what they’re listening to, watching, or reading.

Timeline

Below all these other features is the Timeline itself, a reel of all of a user’s important updates from their time on Facebook. A set of links in the top right corner of the profile lets users skip to a specific month, year, or the beginning of the timeline. By scrolling to the bottom of the Timeline, older updates are displayed. Previously, users had to scroll to the bottom of a wall to view older content, and couldn’t navigate to different time periods on the profile. Timeline makes content posted even years ago accessible with a few clicks, meaning the history of a user’s time on Facebook factors much more heavily into how they’re perceived.

Hovering over an update on one’s own Timeline reveals options to hide, feature or change its date. By clicking on the center line running down the middle of the Timeline, users can insert new content at specific dates in the past.

In some cases when users scroll to the start of a month or year on the Timeline, they’ll see summaries of all their activity in that time period, such as friendships, wall posts from friends, Event RSVPs, Likes, Places tags, photos. There’s also a special panel that displays all of wall posts a user got on their birthday. At the very bottom of the Timeline, users can edit the story about their own birth.

Privacy

Facebook preserves the privacy settings Timeline users had previously set for the profile walls. The relatively new “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” privacy control lets users apply the “friends only” visibility setting to anything they’ve published publicly or to more than just their friends. Before the launch of Timeline this wasn’t as necessary, as it was so difficult to get to old content. With the Timeline’s navigation bar making older content more accessible, users may want to use this privacy control to limit the visibility of posts they published to “everyone” years ago.

Users can now grant applications persistent permission to share their activity to the Ticker and Timeline. Therefore, users should occasionally check their Activity Log to make sure they’re comfortable sharing all the things they’ve listened to or watched.

The Facebook user base’s reaction to forthcoming rollout of the Timeline is likely to be mixed. Some will enjoy the customization features and ability to use Facebook as digital scrapbook they can share with friends. Others might feel the Timeline violates their privacy by making their older content so visible. In reality, this content was already available, it was just harder to get to.

It may take some time for users to clean up their Timeline, but once they’re comfortable sharing everything on it, we think it will become popular and make the profile a much more accurate and vivid representation of people’s identities. When users want to get to know a new friend they won’t just browse all their photos, they’ll be able to scan everything they’ve ever shared, which could significantly increase the amount of time people spend on Facebook.